:Welcome to our piece-of-shit home and [stolen from the] natives' land! The first image is a picture of Wally Pickton. A misogynist creep who killed women and fed their bodies to the pigs on his farm. The official count is six convictions for second-degree murder, but it's likely there were dozens more. Here was the response of the guardians of public order, the RCMP and the Vancouver Police Department:
The overall police attitude towards sex workers and Aboriginal women (60 per cent of the Missing and Murdered Women were Aboriginal) was one of indifference and disrespect, as if their lives did not matter, as if they weren't even human. Missing persons reports were often not taken or not investigated because officers relied on insulting stereotypes, such as Aboriginal women being "out on a binge," or survival sex workers being transient and "lacking address books, known schedules, reliable routines and homes" -- even though most are residents of Vancouver with homes and families.The report in question can be found here.
Police routinely used the word "hooker," even in official documents. Some officers or staff were hateful or dismissive towards sex workers, saying things like: "fucking whores," "just a bunch of fucking hookers," and "we don't look for missing hookers." A witness at the Inquiry testified that she heard an officer say "good" when told that a sex worker had been violently sexually assaulted. These discriminatory attitudes about sex workers undermined the investigation, according to Gratl, by "precluding the gathering and analysis of vital information about missing women, by misdirecting police investigators, by undermining the integrity of investigative teams, and by preventing investigators from drawing inferences crucial to solving the cases."
Comparisons with unrelated cases showed that the VPD had the resources and capability to carry out large-scale, high-quality investigations, but the "Missing Women" case was always grossly underfunded and understaffed. An officer assigned to the file in 1998 worked mostly alone and unsupervised for almost a year even though she was inexperienced and lacked training in investigative work.
Next up on our list is constable Monty Robinson watching Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski writhe in agony before he and three other RCMP cowardly thugs watched him die after they tasered him relentlessly. Dziekanski had landed at the Vancouver airport and was hoping to meet with his mother who had immigrated here earlier. Because of various screw-ups on the part of airport personnel, Dziekanski's mother had left thinking her son had missed his flight. Nobody thought it worth their time to explain to him what was going on or to help him in any way. Unable to speak English, Dziekanski spent hours in frustration, thousands of miles from home, tired after a long flight, confused by the bureaucratic immensity of international travel and a foreign country. Finally, he began to shout in frustration at the uncaring, thoughtless treatment he was receiving. Eventually, Monty Robinson and his three amigos sauntered in, and, after Dziekanski relaxed but did not respond intuitively to their contradictory hand signals, decided to electrocute him into unconsciousness with their tasers. Then they refused the requests of the emergency first-responders to remove his handcuffs or take other preventive measures that would keep him from dying from his condition. And then, after Dziekanski was dead, the RCMP goons lied through their teeth about what had happened, slandering Dziekanski as being aggressive and out-of-control. Their lies were exposed through the video evidence provided by a bystander at the airport. Clearly, these four men were guilty of murder and perjury. Not one of them has so far served a second in prison for an innocent man's death.
Oh yeah. The RCMP itself conducted an "investigation" of their own into the tragedy. Part of it consisted of going to Poland to try to dig up dirt on their victim.
Ivona Kosowska said the questions the team was asking about Dziekanski struck her as odd. "What kind of person was he, was he a drinker, drug user? Was he aggressive?" said Kosowska through a translator. "Most questions were to expose him as not a nice human being -- not to find out what kind of person he really was."Next we have riot police threatening protestors at the G20 conference in Toronto in 2008. That was where we threw over $1 billion at various police and security forces and told them to prevent violence. Curiously, despite the billion dollars, a dozen or so masked protestors were able to break some windows for around half an hour. Obviously this justified gathering up over 900 random other people the next day and holding them under barbaric conditions.
And, apparently, us Canadians are such complacent sheep that the people who were responsible for this failure and brutality are still in power.
The tragedy of Ashley Smith is so indicative of the nature of the Canadian state. Smith suffered from mental health issues. She was imprisoned at 15 for throwing crab apples at a letter carrier she'd convinced herself was withholding a neighbour's welfare cheques. Her short sentence transformed into a multi-year torture session and, eventually, a death sentence. Smith was driven over the edge by constant solitary confinements, punctuated only by injections of powerful drugs against her will and other abuses.
Hell, take a look at this picture:
What is a phalanx of riot-geared police doing surrounding the bed of a 19-year old girl? They're just the same sort of lazy, callous, cowardly, entitled thugs that Canadian ignorance and complacency has enable for decades. We're a lazy, sluggish bunch. These outrages are happening to "other people." We're sure there's another side to the story when some authority figure bashes some defenseless person's head in. These are the same goons who killed Robert Dziekanski. The same thugs who ripped off a man's prosthetic leg and told him to hop at the Toronto G20. The same sexist pigs who jerked off to porn on their office computers rather than do their fucking jobs and look for Vancouver's missing women.
Reminded by the fact that the majority of the missing and murdered women in Vancouver are aboriginal, I'm compelled to mention the tragedy of Attawapiskat.
Because of the laziness and cruelty of federal officials, the First Nation of Attawapiskat have been suffering for years with freezing, leaky, improvised, sub-standard housing. When they finally lost patience with our racist government they declared a state of emergency. Our usurper-in-chef, stephen harper, took advantage of the crisis to blame the First Nations for the problem and moved to takeover whatever autonomy they still possessed. Because that's just the way he rolls.
There. I'm done.
2 comments:
That is very much the way in Communist country's and dictatorships. Human lives are of very little value.
When F.N. children were taken away from their family's, put in those horrible schools. They were denied their language, their customs, their beliefs. They were physically abused, emotionally abused. Sexually abused and even murdered. If I were one of those children, I would drink and do drugs too. Those schools were no better, than concentration camps. Those poor kids. The F.N. people, had no Human Rights in this country.
The F.N. are struggling very hard to fix things. They are terribly grieved by their young people committing suicide. Those kids see no better future for themselves. Many bands are doing excellent work, for their communities. Resource jobs promised them, on their own damned lands, are not being given to them. There is a program, where the F.N. go to school, to work the mines. They are very happy. For the first times in their lives, they can buy nice homes for their family's. They want jobs, they want industry.
Those F.N. deserve our help, not our hate. They are our, unpaid stewards of, our lakes, rivers, streams, forests, lands, wildlife and our marine life. Especially in BC. If it weren't for the F.N. People. This province would be a polluted wasteland. We respect the F.N. and value their opinions.
More than a few of us, have told Harper. We take the word of the F.N. people regarding our eco systems, far before we would ever take his word.
meadowlark,
With every passing year I grow more depressed as I realize how thoroughly racist this society is.
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