Critiquing Democracy

Any political scientist who believes that our current system of democracy is working generally well should work in customer relations for at least six months to shatter this delusion. Grade school teaches us that our democracy works well because we have elections every few years and that we can get rid of leaders that we don't like. Is that what democracy is all about? Simple elections? We have a population that is so ill-informed about the issues or even how the system works that we actually allow this population base to decide the future for us all?

Well the current system prevents that. The bureaucracy in place informs the current leaders of what is possible and what is not based upon contracts and guarantees signed by previous administrations. The leaders just put a smile on and charismatically inform us that everything is going according to plan and then try to figure out how to budget the shrinking finances. The cynics among us say "business as usual" and nothing important changes. Election ads have little to no substance about any issue. Look at the latest conservative campaign against Michael. He was out of the country for x amount of years..... and that's relevant how? At least with Stephane they pointed out the internal flaws of Stephane's own claim.

So the current system prevents ill-informed voters from voting foolishly by keeping them in the dark with flashy ad campaigns, politicians which are more charismatic than intelligent so they can say nonsense and have the majority swoon over the way they said the pretty words. And whoever is in power has so many checks and balances that they can not make any sweeping change that would help society at large..... not that they could mobilize the population at large to support them. How can a rational explanation that takes 90 minutes to understand compete with the flashy catch phrase of an opponent?

I put too much emphasis on charisma over intelligence? Just look at the speeches from George as President of the US versus the speeches from Barack as President. The Daily Show showed half a dozen excerpts which had both George and Barack saying essentially the same thing. When George said it, he was arrogant and no one would listen to what he was saying.... Meanwhile, Barack says it and we are all enthralled at the wise words and how we should listen to his advice. These are the same people who vote who could not distinguish that both leaders of opposing political parties said essentially the same things about the same issues.

You don't agree with something? Base it upon the text, not upon the delivery of that text. Of course to do that we must change how our current system works. Why do people not bother with reading the text and focus on the feel-good of the charismatic catch-phrases to make decisions? Lack of time is the best answer. Democracy requires every voter to be aware of the issues and not rely upon 3rd party interpretations. The news companies are more interested in selling you the news with sensationalism than with genuine information. A car accident this morning is the latest headline news on this morning's news.... forget the fact that the American Congress is about to vote on a law which will give the police the right to invade your privacy without the consent of a Judge first..... we want to see the car accident..... its sensational, not boring.

Ask random people if they can tell you the latest gossip from TMZ or if they know what 60 minutes was about last week (assuming they even know the show "60 minutes"). A democracy needs its citizens to be informed and educated on the many issues at hand. Currently we work longer hours than peasants in the Middle Ages. The peasants in the Middle Ages did not have political responsibilities and had a lot of leisure time on their hands. We have political responsibilities and we spend most of our energy for the benefit of someone else's profit.... who I guarantee you takes his time to look at the political issues and determines what is best for his pocket book.... and he calls that work, yet this same employer denies us that same time to allow us to educate ourselves of the issues.

Comparison-->

Peasant, wakes up does the chores around the home which includes the farming and repairing stuff. In the end he gives a portion of his crop to the Landlord. No one asks his opinion about anything so the peasant does not need to be aware of decisions and he suffers the whims of his landlord.

Today's worker, wakes up and does chores (which are not tabulated as work) around the house to keep things clean and repairing personal stuff. Heads off to work which can take up to an hour to reach (still not tabulated as work), works "officially" (this is tabulated) for a set amount of time where his lunch is measured scientifically and his breaks are counted up to the second to avoid lost productivity. Then the worker finishes his day and heads back home, does more chores around the house (again not tabulated in the calculated work hours)..... The worker is then exhausted and spends the remaining time either A) on leisure to decompress from a hard day's work (this can be video games or television watching or music listening or even drinking at a bar with other workmates) or B) doing extracurricular work activities which are not paid for nor counted on actual work hours worked but that you need to do if you want that promotion... or even to avoid being laid off when the budget cuts force lay-offs.

Using the above comparison of the peasant in the Middle Ages versus today's worker.... who of the two would actually have the time to be properly informed or educated of the issues?

To make democracy work we have to remember that we are citizens. The communists believe that the workers should decide, the capitalists believe that the industrialist should decide. We are supposed to be in a democracy in which citizens should decide. We need time for education and leisure to have clear heads so that we can make proper decisions and anyone who thinks that this is innapropriate and lazy I will just point out the rich. The rich have the time for education and for leisure and they make the most out of it by making sure that their political ideals are pursued and they keep their opponents busy with slave labor.

Should the rich ever be forced to work like the poor do, we would see them protesting loudly. As I have mentioned in previous blogs. We have the technology to work less hours and still maintain our lifestyle. Perhaps we would have 50% less choices in consumer products but we would definitely be in a democracy where we educate ourselves, we would have a proper leisure time to enjoy our consumer products and we would know how to vote based upon the issues and not upon the charismatic catch phrases.

My source comes from the Wikipedia entry where it shows 13th century male peasant working annually 1620 hours while it shows Canada in 2004 working 1717 hours and the USA working 1777 hours. Just remember; first, the peasants were not under the yoke of Taylorism where working was scientifically measured to the second and secondly, the peasants would be considered at work even when repairing one's own house while our 2004 measurements are only based upon "official" hours under some employer....

Isn't technology supposed to make us more free? Are we not supposedly in a democracy as opposed to the illusion of one? Does it not seem that we are more under the yoke of an employer who gives us an illusion of choice by voting for nonsense every few years?

If democracy is to work as it is supposed to, then we need the tools to insure and ensure its success. At this moment, we may be losing our democracy.... at least in North America.

Types of Apologies

You don't have to live for very long before you witness an apology or offer one of your own or even receive one from someone else. What is ironic is that we tend to gloss over what the apology really means or we just presume a meaning which may or may not be entirely accurate. Sort of like when you ask someone how they are doing today and you only half listen to the response which will usually be "I'm fine thanks, and you?" Its the kind of ritual we do that can get lost through repetition. Do you really care how a colleague you only see for seconds a day is doing? Will that colleague express his sadness of having had an argument with his brother or sister about who will bring mom to the hospital next for her check-up to see if she needs new medication? Chances are you don't want to hear someone else's problems because you have enough on your own, so the ritual continues: "Hi Fred, how are you today?" "I'm doing great!" And off you go and repeat: "Hi Sue, how are you today?" "Happy as can be!". We all perpetuate the illusion of having happy little lives and that all the problems are manageable.

But the focus of this particular blog is not to look into how we don't really communicate what we really want to, but rather how similar our apologies are to the way we ritualize our polite greetings. So if you hear an apology, how genuine is it? If you offer an apology to someone, what are you actually saying? You could seperate apologies into different types from worse to best. Naturally it is difficult to interpret which type a person is using because you are not a mind reader or a heart reader, just like you don't know what a person is thinking when they say hello to you with a smile. (Is he thinking about that goal that was scored by his favorite sports team or does he think that your shirt looks funny?)


The 1st type of apology (being the worse) >>I HAVE TO APOLOGIZE<<

I am apologizing because my position forces me to say sorry. I still think you are completely in the wrong and that you should not be doing activity X, but because I want to keep my job/career/position of prestige I must offer you some kind of apology to satisfy your ego or power trip by losing my dignity in preference to your superiority. This is the kind of apology you will see waiters giving to obnoxious clients in a restaurant who are annoyed that the steak they ordered 20 seconds ago has not arrived on their table before they even picked up their menu to decide what they were going to order. And I have witnessed this kind of situation many times. I think this is the worse type of apology because the person offering it is demeaning himself while the person receiving the apology gets high on a false premise and is encouraged to demand more apologies if he can not have his cake and eat it as well. Some rich people can get trapped in demanding apologies from the poor on anything and everything, it becomes a psychological drug/domination.


The 2nd type of apology (being the next worse) >>I GOT CAUGHT<<

Well I am apologizing to you because you caught me doing something genuinely wrong and I know its wrong. I apologize because if I don't, you will punish me worse and I want you to think that I will not do it again so that we can forget about this and I will find new ways to do the same wrong thing again without getting caught a second time. You can recognize this when the first thing that is asked by the person who got caught is this: "How did you catch me?" or "How did you know it was me?"

Our entire legal system, in order to protect the innocent from being jailed, proceeds with the explanation of how the person was caught to prove to the jury that the crime actually did take place. Now this legal system does help the innocent in defending themselves and this is admirable; unfortunately, on the flip side it also gives ammunition to the guilty to become more and more shrewd so that they are that much more difficult to get caught.

Just watch a child who was caught taking cookies out of the cookie jar when he was not allowed to take cookies without permission. You see the crumbs around his face and you point it out to him. The child apologizes for taking the cookies. Next time, he will wipe his precious little mouth so that you do not realize that he took more cookies. You point out that there are crumbs on his shirt and he will wipe the crumbs off there next time.... and on and on. Now if a child is cunning, how much more is the adult who gets caught?


3rd type of apology (least worse, but not the best) >>I REGRET THE CONSEQUENCES<<

This seems to be the most common form of apology we use as a society and as individuals. I am sorry of the negative consequences that my actions have caused, it is most unfortunate and I hope that these consequences do not happen again when I continue to do the actions which caused the negative consequences in the first place. I do not believe that my actions should be modified in any way but I do feel bad for the negative consequences which I refuse to believe are directly linked with my actions so I will continue in my wrong behavior and apologize for the unfortunate side effects.

This type of apology is currently being used to make us feel better for our current economic downturn. We all know what caused the recession, and to solve it we continue to do the very actions that put us in this mess in the first place. On more individual levels, this is where you see the song "Cats In The Cradle" by Ugly Kid Joe make sense. In it, the dad is constantly apologetic for not being there for his son because of X, Y or Z reason. The son accepts the apology and grows up still requesting the dad's attention and the dad regrets and apologizes, yet continues with the wrong action..... Of course the song gives us the negative results of these kinds of apologies and the dad loses his son as a result in the end because the son imitates his dad so well and apologizes to him the same way for not being there.

I am so sorry that I ended sleeping with someone else because I got drunk at some party and left with that person..... I deeply regret the consequences of this action..... and what shall I do next weekend? Well I will go and get drunk again (and hopefully not repeat the negative consequences).

I consider this the least worse of the apologies but I still categorize it as in the worse category nonetheless.


4th type of apology (the one we should strive for) >>I REVERSE MY PREVIOUS DIRECTION<<

I apologize for what I have done and will avoid doing any action that will encourage me in any way, to do this again. In other words, if my job prevents me from seeing my baby's first steps, I will strive to limit the hours at my work so that I can enjoy the true joys of life: my family. I regret that I missed the baseball game where my child got a homerun, I will attempt to find a job that enables me to spend more time with my family. I apologize that I slept with that person, I will strive to limit my alcohol consumption and ask friends to help me out if I start getting flirtatious with a stranger so that I do not betray my true love.

Our society apologizes that our current system puts decent people out of work and rewards leaders who steal our money from our pockets, our society will stop using consumption and greed to encourage economic growth and impose 99% WORLDWIDE taxes on profit to recuperate our stolen money and redistribute the 90% of the wealth in the hands of 10% of the population to the rest of us. Our society will no longer complain about the limited government budgets that are funded by the poor to serve the rich and constantly struggling to pay for deficits and health care and education, our society will get the money where it happens to be located and pay for these services that were promised us 200 years ago.

Perhaps we should start a timer where everyone gets an equal amount of resources/money and allow the current capitalist system to run for 50 years, then stop the clock, redistribute everyone's wealth again equally and restart the race. How would you like to start the year 2010 with 25 million dollars in your hands? Every other human on the planet starts with the exact same amount, and off you go.... if you succeed: YAY, and you will be honored at the year 2060 as you give away your extras.... if you fail: too bad, but there is hope, because on 2060, you will get a fair shot again..... just try to survive until then (much like 75% of the population have been doing the past few centuries). Could you accept this kind of apology from society for the current wrongdoings? Or shall we tolerate society's 3rd type of apology that it is currently giving us?

Appearances of Corporate Benevolence

Now that the listeriosis crisis is still fresh in our memories, the scrutiny on the safety practices are in place and things are being changed. Also, the economic crisis being what it is, encourages a scrutiny on certain corporations and their bookkeeping practices in giving out bonuses while filing for bankruptcy.

But what happened? The meatpacking plant that brought about the listeriosis bacteria had a proper safety procedure on paper which "technically" allowed for someone to raise the alarm if they had a suspicion. The corporations that offered bonuses for a job well done were offered based upon the measuring of performance which looked "technically" decent on paper.

Well it seems that perhaps what the corporations tell themselves or to the public at large does not correspond to the realities of the day to day operations. On the one hand, the meatpacking plant says "safety first" but during the work hour, the employee is rewarded in going quicker than before to prove he is productive which automatically means that safety is sacrificed. The employee focuses on what is measurable: like his speed to produce and ignores the safety concerns that would slow him down. This is how he gets his promotion, this is what he is encouraged to do by his direct supervisors who also have to answer their higher ups with statistics of good performance. One can almost hear a naive employee say to his supervisor: "But head office or our training video says to take this extra step to ensure proper safety." To which the supervisor answers the employee: "I don't care what the training video or head office says, they don't deal with day to day operations, do it the quick way and things will be fine."

This mentality is also seen when statistics demonstrate that corporate bosses have done well enough to deserve a bonus the very day the corporation is declaring for bankruptcy. One thing is easily measured and this is where the lowly employee all the way up to the corporate boss excel in getting their promotion or their bonus and then there is the reality. The listeriosis tragedy did occur and the corporation has gone bankrupt. Although we have scrutiny today, the lessons will be forgotten and we will continue to base our performance more on reaction speed than on proper thinking or proper precautions.

This reminds me of the car manufacturer who judges whether or not they should recall a defective car part by statistics of how many would get injured and how much they could sue the company versus the cost of recalling all the defective parts. If the cost of suing the car manufacturer is 2 million and it would cost 3 million to recall the defective parts that would cause accidents.... well the car manufacturer ignores the recall and believes that they just saved 1 million dollars. Yet this same car manufacturer has brochures that indicates that the safety of their parts are of paramount importance.

How can we trust the benevolence of any corporation whose primary focus is on an artificially created resource we call money? How can we trust a corporation that rewards each of its employees to focus on productivity which is easily measured while ignoring its own corporate vision of proper ethical practices? We all work in places like these, the proof is in the news. Yesterday it was company X, today its company Y, tommorrow it may be the company where you work at.... but they all suffer the same problem and no one is willing to truly fix the problem, only put a bandaid to give the appearance of healing.

Can the bandaid stop a stomach ache? Yet that is how we attempt to solve our economic crisis: You have a headache? Put this bandaid on your forehead. You are bleeding on your elbow? Take this aspirin. In the meantime, true doctors in society are still unrecognized and still attempt to give the proper diagnosis despite their lack of time to do so.

Oh and note how I do not blame any one particular company or any specific individual. I believe the problem is systemic as well as individual responsibility.... but too often we point the finger at one specific person or corporation and turn it into a scapegoat while the other individuals or other corporations who do the exact same practice hide in the shadows and pretend that they are innocent. So the news already has the names of corporations or individuals that you can sneer at, I don't need to add more fuel to the fire of sneering. I wish we would do less snearing and more soul-searching/thinking to actually attempt at transforming our flawed system into something better. But then again, our employers won't give us the time to actually think about solutions. So the citizen who practices democracy is transformed into the employee who produces and the consumer who consumes.... who needs to think under those circumstances?

Sad Irony

You spend years telling your housemates that the metaphorical house is not built to withstand earthquakes. For years, you are ridiculed and left to fend for yourself because you are a "doom and gloom" sayer. Then the earthquake strikes. Many parts of this house fall apart. Yesterday's experts who ignored completely what you said are now using the identical words you used in previous years to say that the house is not built properly to withstand earthquakes.

What is happening after the earthquake is the attempt to place blame on someone, so for every room that has collapsed we attempt to find the carpenter who worked on that particular room and expect him to fix it to earthquake proof standards and we scrutinize his very tools and his methodology. When the carpenter takes his 3 day long lunch break (which he always took before the earthquake struck), the experts who were responsible for allowing this 3 day long break to happen in the first place begin pulling their hair and are ready to lynch this particular carpenter. Other unrelated carpenters wisely hide in the woodwork so as to not be the next targets of lynch mobs. What the mobs don't seem to know is that they are being guided by the same experts who allowed this disaster to happen. The experts received money from the carpenters to pronounce publicly that the house was safe, the experts negotiated contracts that allowed the carpenters to have 3 day long lunch breaks.... Its only after the earthquake hit the house did the experts smoothly became the housemate's best defender against the carpenter.... after all the experts don't want to be targetedby the mob so they concentrate on assigning blame on the carpenter who was unlucky enough to have worked on the collapsed room.

So here we have it, our economy has gone poof, the unlucky corporations/industrialists who were following the accepted procedures of how our society is run are now being grilled by our politicians who never did anything about this economy until after it went poof. The politicians are trying to take responsibility now and are seeking someone to blame for this disaster. Are things going to change for the better? Here is what will happen, the rooms which have collapsed will be rebuilt using earthquake proof methods, the carpenters who have been unlucky enough to be behind these rooms will be forced to reduce their 3 day lunch breaks to a mere 6 hour lunch break. Other carpenters who were lucky enough not to be in the spotlight will volunteer to fix up their assigned rooms to make it more earthquake proof but in reality it will be mere cosmetic changes. The experts will then be bought off as before to say that the house is now earthquake proof. In the end, the house will be in worse shape and everyone will congratulate themselves at having averted the last disaster and prevented the next one..... until the next earthquake strikes.

What happens to the people who warned everyone that the house was not earthquake proof in the first place before the disaster struck? Well they are still ignored as doom and gloom sayers even though once again history has proven them correct. They will only be accepted as experts if they accept to be bought off and say that the Emperor is wearing the latest fashion. Seems like the Emperor is still naked after all of this. When do we truly change our carpenters and experts and replace them with hard-workers and wise individuals? Why are we still accepting lazy rich people as our CEOs who would get fired after the second week of a real job for being lazy? Why are we still accepting politicians who before the earthquake, said that everything was built properly and then poof after the house collapses they act as if they are outraged at having been duped.... yet decide to let the same people dupe them again?

Sad irony, the house will receive some overhaul but in the end will still not be earthquake proof because to truly do that we would have to rebuild it from scratch and no one is ready to do that. And the solution offered is still to try to get the citizenry to become avid consumers to restart the economy which is exactly what brought us to where we are today..... Sad irony.

Why the rich get richer.

There is a common saying: "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for life." This is a saying that gives comfort to the rich as they convince themselves of their benevolence to the poor who are ignorant. It justifies the action of not giving the poor what they need but rather making the poor jump through more hoops to get their daily bread (or fish).

What this saying neglects to mention is that while you are teaching the man how to fish, he is already starving and needs the fish NOW so then he can concentrate on the lessons. It also neglects to mention how the "teacher" loans him fish until the lessons are over to keep the student alive enough to finish the lessons.... and then the "teacher" gives the student the bill (the price for having learned such an invaluable lesson and also to pay back the loan while the student was learning how to feed himself for life).... the price is fair, for every 4 fish caught, one goes to the "teacher"....

With this scenario, the "teacher" just needs to teach 3 people how to fish and he never has to fish again and can now spend time on other pursuits.... hence he spends his free time to acquire more fish without having to fish for himself and he can then pay for bodyguards with fish to protect himself when the students wise up to the con and decide to "renegotiate" this "deal".

Of course, if you go far back in time, you discover that the student's ancestors knew how to fish but were prevented from teaching their children how to fish because the "teacher's" ancestors made a clever-sounding proposal that conned those ancestors and took advantage of them back then.... (but then again this blog is not about 3rd world history so we won't go and explore what that particular deal may have been about).... suffice it to say, the poor is not learning to fish free of charge, and he is not given fish while he learns how to fish for himself, everything is a loan to make the individual independent..... except for the fact that he is now indentured to his teacher for life.

There is a common riddle or choice given to test one's wisdom: You have a choice of receiving a one time gift of ten thousand dollars to do with what you want with it, or you can receive a penny on the first day of the month and each succeeding day of the month you get double of what you received on the previous day until the end of the month. How do you choose? If you are shrewd, you will take the penny which doubles each day of the month so that by day #21, you have received over ten thousand dollars for that day (without counting everything else that you have accumulated during the previous days). With a standard 30 day month you receive on the last day: over 5 million dollars.

Now the rich congratulate themselves again because they consider themselves generous for offering this "gift" to the poor.... so that when the poor chooses the immediate 10 thousand dollars, the rich can then say that the poor "chose" to be poor and that the rich gave them a fair shot. If you are poor and have no money, can you wait 10 days before you can afford to buy one loaf of bread for the day? Well the rich who proposed this choice know that you can't and they scoff at the poor for choosing the "wrong" choice because if they were given the choice, they would take the penny on day one and allow it to double..... They already have food in their kitchen, so they can afford to wait 21 days before seeing the results of their wise choice.....

The irony in all of this? Well the rich are given this choice by our governments to help jumpstart our economy whenever the economy is in a crisis.... Look at how we are "solving" the current economic crisis.... Jon Stewart of the Daily Show has the right idea, we should give the money to the poor who are about to lose their houses so that they can repay their debts to the banks and that way the banks regain what they lost..... the wise solution. Instead, we want to reward the rich who stole from the collectivity, who conned the majority by giving them more money so that they can con and steal from more of us.....

And that is why the rich get richer, we don't learn from our losses.... "Fool me once, shame on you.... Fool me twice, shame on me."..... Well we definitely should SHAME ourselves for giving the tools to thieves and liars..... AGAIN.

What Economic Crisis?

Well here it is, the world has a crisis, an economic one. People are losing their jobs, the rich management who made poor decisions are taking a breather and requesting public money to kickstart the economy and........ WAIT, WHAT? The business leaders who brought about this mess in the first place by abusing public funds to line their pockets, the same leaders who push the citizenry into becoming consumers and production machines, the same leaders who now face the consequences of their corruption..... THEY WANT WHAT?

Isn't that how we got into trouble in the first place? Bad decisions, no preparation for the future, reacting to situations instead of THINKING and preventing unusual situations. What do we get from this economic downturn? A knee-jerk reaction where all the nations immediately agree on a solution (proving that with the proper political will, the governments of the world can make an important decision..... of course this decision bailed out the rich from troubles more than the majority of us who are now suffering job losses).

The economy has shown its hiccup and demonstrated that our current direction is a bad one.... How do we respond? We slow down this metaphorical car but maintain the same direction despite the last bump where we damaged our car. The bureaucracy stays the same, the corruption is found and covered up (to be replaced by a yet more sophisticated corruption scheme that we will uncover in 20 years and act as shocked when it is discovered as we are "shocked" today), the business leaders or industrialists are not replaced or brought to trial..... So nothing has really changed.

If an employee or a bureaucrat had done that much damage to his company or to his bureaucratic system, we all know how that would end: a lost job and prison time. Yet when the leaders of our society do this (and I really don't mean politicians), they keep their money, they keep their assets..... AND TO ADD INSULT TO INJURY, they request public funds to bail them out..... So much for the trillions of dollars of profits done by these leaders (guess that money is gone). So the poor who followed the direction of the rich, now have to pay for obeying their master's direction.

Should society be run on charisma? knowledge? wisdom? riches? Well at the moment, it is run by riches irrelevant how you got the money, you now have the law firm to defend your acquisitions. With riches, you sponsor the charisma you need to transmit the message you want. You hire the knowledge you want and you pay for "wisdom" from sophists. Anyone tells you something you don't want to hear, you have the money to ignore that unpleasant sound....

Plato's Republic mentions that the metaphorical city would be in ruins if it was run by the industrialist who seeks after riches..... Here we live in a society that is run by the motivation of acquiring riches and we have a hiccup to make us pause and reconsider our future..... How do we respond? Seems like we will continue to fund the confirmed rich to continue stealing from us and make decisions that are senseless for society but very profitable for the few rich.

Maybe I should become a sophist.... I'd have more money and flatter my rich customer with trivialities....

So to conclude, what economic crisis? We aint changing anything..... more of the same attitude, produce and consume, ignore anything unrelated to those two activities and let the rich leaders continue in their role of our coaches as we continue to produce and consume.... If we work hard enough, we may finally get that carrot dangling in front of our faces, just beyond our reach.... just a bit more effort now!

Canada's Shame?

Well we have heard the conclusion on the RCMP's tasering of a foreign visitor at an airport in BC. This tasering activity happened moments before this individual's death, but we must not blame the RCMP officers for this death. Oh no, the conclusion offered is that this visitor was exhausted from being in the airport for about 12 or so hours without any form of understandable human contact (he didn't speak a word of english and was waiting for his mother who was prevented from speaking to him because the system never acknowledged his arrival and the fact that outsiders are not allowed into the official arrival zone). Add to the fact that the individual did not eat and was apparently a recovering alcoholic and we can understand that the taser or the RCMP wielding it were not held responsible for this death.

Imagine if a criminal had murdered someone with a taser and this was what his defence attorney brought forward to completely absolve him of any crime or wrongdoing..... well the prosecution and every law enforcement agency in the world would laugh at such a tactic.... but hey, this is different, law enforcement officials are at the wrong end this time around.... and the public is supposed to accept this as an acceptable conclusion.

Now I really don't blame the officers themselves.... they were following procedures set in bureaucratic manuals on how to deal with a situation such as this.... What I find sad is that none of them were allowed to use human judgment and make a common sense decision to deal with this instead of following proper procedure. Its simple, a person acts out, we give him command to stop or else we deploy the taser.... the individual refuses to comply, we use the taser and situation is normal as we handcuff the rowdy individual.... The training works for most offenders.... but the situation here was that this individual was OBVIOUSLY unaware of any english commands and ALL witnesses reported this to the RCMP upon arrival, but they chose to follow bureaucratic procedure than to use human judgment.

What we have here in the conclusion of the incident is an attempt at whitewashing the incident and putting blame upon the medical condition of the individual as the culprit for the unfortunate death..... Now I sympathise with the RCMP officers who arrived to deal with this unknown factor and I believe that they should not be punished.... they followed their training, to the letter.... BLINDINGLY obedient to the procedures..... the death of this victim will haunt these officers, and perhaps they will use their human judgment to assess a similar situation in the future and get some interpreter involved before using force against someone not understanding what situation he happens to be in.

What I would like to see happen is the acceptance that bureaucratic rules can not cover all situations and that we must allow senior officers to make on-the-fly judgment calls to ignore procedure when it is necessary and think outside the box. If I had been in the position of the RCMP officer on this very specific occasion, I would have determined if what the witnesses were saying was true on the comprehension of the language, I would have asked questions of how long this individual was there..... (I would have treated this as as "science-fiction-first-contact-scenario", found some food and use gestures to make him calm down until we could get someone to interpret my commands/instructions and understand this individuals needs/desires)..... Of course knowing how the security/law-enforcement mentality works, I would have been laughed at and pressured out of the force for being a "softie" for trying to understand someone who is obviously aggressive. Hey, if he made an aggressive move towards me or one of my partners or even towards some witness, I would have been the first to deploy the weapon..... but if you look at the video of what actually happened, the victim did not make any aggressive move when the 4 RCMP officers were surrounding him.... he had cowed down (perhaps he was waiting to spring.... but I would have waited for him to make the first move at that particular spot and then take him down).

As mentioned before in a previous blog.... Peaceful at first, then use of force without guilt if the person prefers the less peaceful approach. The video released to the public showed the opposite of what the RCMP tried to make us believe.... and months later, the investigation tells us that the victim's medical condition is more responsible than the tasering itself.....

So if you are ever forced to stay in some area for over 12 hours and you have not eaten during that time and no one understands what you are saying and you don't understand what they are telling you..... make sure you didn't have some alcohol to drink the night before and don't lose your temper..... you must remain calm and smiling when people in uniforms you do not recognize bark something incomprehensible to you..... if you do anything else, you will be responsible for your own death. Acceptable to you? Well that's what the conclusion of the investigation wants us to believe.

Shame on us. Sympathies to the mother who lost her child in such a way. Pity to the RCMP officers who were the unfortunate ones to be involved in this.... accident. Hate the procedures that prevent humans from using human judgment at appropriate times.