Thursday, October 9, 2008

Gnawing thought for the day

I was reading about the police and their tasers again today. Some latest outbreak of cowardly stupidity, and I thought about Robert Dziekanski again. For some fucking reason, four armed, armoured, big and strong men, RCMP constables, came into that room with the glass walls and Dziekanski visibly relaxed. He complied. You can see it in the video for Chrissake's!! And then those four big men electrocuted him after 25 seconds. And then they sat on his chest. And then he died.

And our country was disgraced. And our putrid government belched out an apology. And our putrid RCMP went to Poland to "investigate" their own brutality and incompetency by trying to dig up dirt on Dziekanski's mental health. And our country was disgraced again.

And then we moved on.

But I don't entirely move on. When the concept of "Canada" which is a country where I live, and which contains a culture that has shaped me to some degree (for better or for worse and I think better) disgraces itself, it gnaws away at me.

I don't like our continued oppression of Aboriginal Canadians. I don't like our continued imperialism in Afghanistan. I don't like that we destroyed democracy in Haiti. I don't like the way our mining firms behave in Colombia. I don't like that our "tar-sands project" is the world's biggest single source of pollution. I don't like that our RCMP killed Robert Dziekanski.

I wish there was some way that I could make it stop and then make amends.

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