luvacuppajoe

One of my members, of what?

And my point was that is laughable to say so-and-so spun the story, read this one that spins it a better way. Before I ever saw that video I was under the prejudiced opinion that the man was probably out of his gourd on drugs, like many who die after being tased, and I practically dismissed the story from there. But after learning that his toxology report came back clean I was curious, so I watched the video, more than once. Maybe I still have prejudices at work in forming an opinion, but I do not need a handful of government reviews and inquiries to tell me what is right and wrong when I see it for myself. The coroners inquests are consistently sound, I've found, and I give them a great deal of respect in their recommendations. The RCMP Complaints Commisssion reviews are worth little more than the paper they're written on, as is any agency's review of itself. I too welcome the tabling of these inquests and reviews, I want to see that so many people dropping the ball wasn't all for nothing. If that opinion disgusts you, so be it.

I've known a few people over the years who use(d) food banks -- some working, some parents, what have you. Whatever their circumstances, without exception the one thing they all had in common was that they drank, presumably the money that would otherwise have gone for groceries. I can't help but look at food banks (and the growing reliance on them) at least in part as a self-perpetuating prophecy; their very existance seems to make it easier for some people to spend their money on other priorities, knowing the food bank is there.

When was the last Olypics which was exclusively amateur, as was its original intent? It has to have been many years now. Why anyone still cares about this corrupt and irrelevant institution is beyond my understanding.

That article is a hoot. The author takes the Globe and Mail to task for spinning the story with a bias, then does the very same thing himself. "Tellingly, no one approaches him." Wrong. A woman walked up and tried to converse with him. "He did not proceed through customs." Not a major inaccuracy but one nonetheless. The same article later mentions he cleared customs at 4:00 pm, just an hour after his plane arrived. "Is it so unthinkable that Mr. Dziekanski suffered an illness, one that removed from him the capacity to think clearly?" A rather pointless insinuation that never gets backed up with even the faintest of supporting evidence. "...(he) did not seem to welcome assistance". Purely subjective opinion. When he saw the cops approaching he yelled out for them twice. I hold the opinion that he very much welcomed assistance there was just none to be had, at least any that he understood. "He waves his arms at the police dismissively, and marches away." Purely subjective opinion once again. He did not wave his arms, put them up in the air, once. What the author calls marching I call walking. Yeah, great article.

Lord, how I hate these email chains. Snopes tags this one as true in that Stein wrote it, only up until the paragraph beginning "In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh...." Also, Dr. Spock's son did not commit suicide. It's similar to how someone anonymously pens something remotely witty and it gets credited to George Carlin. Half of Carlin's material is news to him. Stein's point is well take though (the part he actually wrote).

What I find amazing in the post-9/11 world is that an agitated man could hang around the baggage carrousel for the length of time that he did, throw things around and try to barricade himself with objects and that no one from the airport authority got a translater to talk to him, even though translation services are supposedly available around the clock. There are so many bizarre aspects to the whole story.

Actually the video does show that his hands are down at his sides when he's tased the first time. As for what position the police will take in the inquiry(ies) remains to be seen but to date they have stated a number of known inacuracies including that there were 3 officers on the scene when we know there were 4, as well as their contention that pepper spray was not appropriate because of innoncent bystanders when we can see for ourselves that they were alone with the man in an enclosed area separated from everyone else by a glass wall. Yes, those recommendations were from the BC Police Complaints Commission, however that review was conducted at the request of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police to the Canadian Police Research Centre, a partnership which includes the RCMP. It appears that the CPRC tapped the BCPCC to conduct the review but that the RCMP was a stakeholder in that report. There's a link to the report here.

Carol Ann Gotbaum's autopsy revealed that she was drunk and on antidepressants when she accidently strangled herself with her handcuffs. Link There's no indication the handcuffs were used inappropriately, which is in contrast to the news article I cited which indicates that the airport tasing was used in contravention of 3 rules. I'm not going to presume to speak for Pritchard and why he changed his mind because it really doesn't matter what he thinks any more than anyone else. For me, the tape speaks for itself. I do agree with you that the airport personnel should and could have done more, and I hope that their guidelines reflect that in the future.

Sorry in advance for the long post but I'm just catching up. I watched the video a few times and have some observations. Seconds after his first contact with police he raised both hands (which were empty) in the air and put his head down in a gesture of compliance. A cop points to the desk and he moves toward it but is out of view for a couple of seconds, at which point we can assume he picked up the stapler off the desk. He was facing the cops, backing away from them and had his back against the desk (with both hands down at his sides) when he was first tased. From that initial contact with police to the first tasing is only 9 seconds. He did not raise the stapler or lunge at the cops to threaten or intimidate them, he was clearly complying but was highly agitated and likely scared (observing his heavy breathing and bizarre behavior in the opening seconds of the tape). We don't even know he has the stapler until after he's tased when he raises both arms in the air to instinctively protect his head. I find it impossible to believe that his stapler was a real threat to the 4 cops since they would have known that he had cleared security and was not armed with a knife or gun. On the other hand, the cops had Kevlar vests, guns, nightsticks, handcuffs, pepper spray and Tasers at their fingertips to subdue this one man. After the tasings we can see the cops kneel down and put their knees to his neck and back as well as one cop bounce up and down with his knees around the man's head, as well as another cop take out his nightstick and bang it into the floor beside his head, even though he was on the ground, cuffed and in their control. It was completely stupid of him to pick up the stapler and if he hadn't he might still be alive today...but I saw nothing on that tape that warranted the cops' quick use of the taser. I don't know what a confrontation with 4 cops is like in Poland these days but given his state of agitation, it's maybe not surprising he'd move to defend himself against them. Not smart, just understable. The cops likely would have known that he didn't speak English from the 911 call and therefore would have known that speaking commands to him was futile. It's already been reported that they did not follow the rules in taser use, specifically: National Post As I understand it, a large part of the problem is that border officials can communicate with family members waiting outside, but family members cannot communicate with border officials, which is the problem his mother encountered. She had him paged but the page was in English even though she explained that he only spoke Polish. As well, the pages are not heard in the secure customs are where he'd been waiting, which the airport staff shoud have known. cnews.canoe.ca As a mother I find it nearly impossible to understand how his woman could have given up and returned to Kamloops without him. I don't care if my child is 14 or 40 -- if they are taking a long international flight and arriving to a country where they don't speak the language I am going to do everything in my power to assist...and that means not only being there ahead of time but also calling the airport in advance to give them a heads up and inquire about translation services and where to meet etc. I understand that hindsight is now 20/20 but the mother's actions are just one more piece of the puzzle that, had his arrival been handled differently, he would likely still be alive. The bottom line here is that Vancouver will be hosting the Olympics in just 3 years. If this is the best they can do in assisting foreign arrivals at an international airport then they really have their work cut out for them. So much blame to spread around after the fact -- Dziekanski, his mother and airport officials -- but none of which excuse the cops' use of a taser in that situation, it was clearly unwarranted and not followed to protocol. And without this average Joe having taken the video footage we would still be getting the official version of events which we now know are vastly different that what actually happened. I haven't been particularly adverse to the use of tasers until now, and I'm all for giving cops the tools and resources to do a difficult and often thankless job but I hope that this guy didn't die for nothing and that something good will come out of it by way of a review of taser usage because good intentions aside, they're obviously not always being used properly.

Any time you want to dig up and cite some of those stats, I'd gladly read them. I'm basing my own understanding purely on anecdotal evidence from having lived (as a non-native) on a reserve for 7 years where the known rate of childhood sexual abuse was easily at 90% among those who went through the schools. You're right in differentiating the two levels of compensation, but bear in mind that in order to get the additional payment for abuse they must go through a counselling/therapy program of some kind. I don't know how many have made the claim, but I do know that some are declining the extra money in order not to go open up old wounds. Not that that is right, it just is, and I'm not sure the official stats would bear that out.

Well yes, hindsight is 20/20 but I'm not sure I believe that they would be worse off today without the residential school system. I don't think they could be any worse than they already are. If they were still living as they were at least they might not have generational dependency problems on so many levels. But we'll never know...

I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you. It's not what they did, it's how they did it. I'm interested in what you're using to base your claim that the vast majority of students didn't experience abuse, that certainly hasn't been my understanding from knowing those who went through the system.

You have to appreciate that both the intentions and delivery of their education went far beyond reading, writing and arithmetic and included the removal of their very successful social systems (some of which were outlawed). White school kids in early Canada weren't routinely rounded up and sent long distances from home to be abused while being boarded for months and years at a time away from their families in the name of bettering their lives. Growing communities in the 18th and 19th centuries saw the proliferation of schools built on the local level -- Native Affairs contracted out their initiatives to the churches to build residential schools that were far and few between. These kids didn't go home every night (or even every weekend) like Little House on the Prairie. Compulsory education for white kids may have changed their families' lives when they had less help on the farm but it proved to be beneficial for them and their descendents, I'm certainly not arguing the benefit of our ancestors' education. Unfortunately, the reverse has proven true for native students, it had a devastating effect on them, their immediate families and descendents as well as their communities at large. I understand that you are appreciating the good in what was attempted (literacy etc) but based on current outcomes I don't know how anyone can believe that it was the right approach to take. Canadian natives are among the bottom of the list in terms of education, physical and mental health, crime and other social problems, not to mention wealth and productivity -- and all that can be traced back to the implementation of the residential school system and the subsequent breakdown of the family unit and social systems. Education-based assimilation has been an abject failure, despite what may have been some good intentions at the time.

Everyone votes for the political party which most closely reflects their own morals and belief system, there's nothing new there and that trait is as true with the left as it is with the right. The most ardent of religious believers can be hostile to the Conservatives for not being right enough and will gravitate to the more religious-based fringes, just as some on the left will find the NDP lacking and instead find a home among the left-leaning fringes. It's ironic -- in a chicken and egg kind of way -- that as church attendance has steadily declined, the churches are now more inclusive and open (women in power, acceptance of abortion and homosexuality) and are attempting to recruit more members in a secular and progressive society. Which is the cause and which is the effect I'm not sure but the correlation between attendance and progression is interesting. Speaking of chickens and eggs, it's interesting too that as we have become less dependent on extended family and church family for support, we've become more dependent on government. Taxation has supplanted tithing as state welfare has replaced the church. Some might find that a good thing, some...not so much.

You've got that right! I've eaten hospital food a couple of times in the past and never saw anything to complain about until I was in for 36 hours last year when I delivered my baby. My breakfast (which I was greatly looking forward to after a long and energy-depleting night) consisted of a side of dry toast and two sausages. Where were my obligatory scrambled eggs? Surely the kitchen had missed my plate when the yellow gelatinous mess was dished out...but I said nothing and just sent my husband to Tim Hortons for a bacon and egg sandwich. The next morning when my breakfast arrived I thought surely they would have my eggs this time, so imagine my surprise when I lifted the lid from my plate and found not toast and sausages but just toast. That was my breakfast, a side of dry, unbuttered toast, a cup of coffee and some inedible pale fruity-looking substance. Given that the government and hospital so adamantly encourage us new moms to breastfeed our wee ones (and rightly so) it doesn't seem out of line to expect a wholesome, square meal -- and given that breastfeeding mothers need a couple hundred extra calories above the norm, you can imagine how well a lonely side of toast went over. Thank God for my husband and Tim Hortons. It's little wonder that patients regularly need friends and family to supplement their hospital diets with bags of takeout.

I wouldn't call it a moral duty so much as a tactic used for expedient assimilation, and by what better means than with the (re)education of a new generation? The theory broke down when the kids, having forgotten their languages, were returned to their homes and found themselves increasingly unable to communicate with their parents who couldn't understand English. The kids from more remote communities had often stayed at the schools year-round (or close to it) when parents were unable to travel long distances to bring them home summer and winter, and in the process they'd lost the benefit of being truly and effectively parented. Maybe became effectively institutionalized at a young age. In turn they became dysfunctional parents themselves and the generational effects of that are still evident today. Australia's aborigines were schooled in much the same way and it too now faces the same lingering problems with its native population as Canada, in some ways even worse. Unfortunately there are many who believe money is the answer, when it's not. Everyone would have been better off had native residential schools (and the reserve system) never existed and a slower, more natural assimilation process was left to those who desired it. What we have now is a group of people with one foot in the future and one in the past, managing neither. Even attempts to revive their cultural roots are dependent on assistance from us, from logging companies providing the timber to build their longhouses to government money for language programs. What was once a very strong and self-sufficient society is now anything but. It's a mess, and the work needed to fix it is beyond what the governments and natives are willing to endure. And so on it goes...

That's how I would like to see a referendum set up is with some options -- abolition, Triple E, limited terms, minimum mandatory attendance, etc. It would be a hell of a thing to see an appointed Senate overrule the direct voice of the citizenry should a nationwide referendum choose to limit or abolish their powers. It's going to be an interesting ride, this one...and frankly I think it's time has come.

I'm not clear either in what position the government would take in the case of Emery, I don't know that any of us are which is my point, this policy has the potential to be quite contradictory in execution (pardon the pun). I'm going on the Tories' own words when Day said "It would send a wrong message" to ask for extradition because it flies in the face of their tough-on-crime policies. I wonder therefore, which other cases (besides that of a confessed murderer) may come to light where extradition would also fly in the face of Tory policy -- Emery for example. It all just seems so very ill-thought out on their part. There well may be a very thorough and comprehensive policy already in place, but if so they would do well to be more forthcming about it. Good point, and because some may not view Thailand as being a democracy in the quite same way they would view our own country as such, the terms of reference could get a little shaky when the hair-splitting commences. It's one thing to consider our citizens facing death row in a relatively comparable country such as the States, it could be quite different in a case somewhere else and for crimes other than murder confessed to by a legally sane adult.

This sounds like us conservatives a couple of years ago.

I know you were speaking to Trex, but while what you say is true, Day also said a bit more. "We will not actively pursue bringing back to Canada murderers who have been tried in a democratic country that supports the rule of law," Day told Parliament. "It would send a wrong message. We want to preserve public safety here in Canada." The Tories' might also not want to send the wrong message where it relates to crimes other than murder, such as the case of Marc Emery as was mentioned earlier. Given their recent anti-drug policy announements, for example, it might be perceived as inconsistent to fight for clemency of a convicted drug dealer. The more I think about this, the more wrong-headed and destined for failure it appears. Undoubtably there will be a test case at some point, perhaps Emery or perhaps someone else, and the Tories will be caught with their pants down. Will they still be prepared to take a hands-off approach in the execution of a Canadian juvenile or mentally challenged, given the record of the US?

Ahh, the proverbial fox, complaining that he got pecked all night after being caught in the henhouse. "DeYoung's mother said she would be filing a complaint against police on her son's behalf." I wonder if this has much of a bearing on his perceived victim status? "Every other time that I've been chased, it's never been like that. I can see if I got shot because they had to stop me because I was too erratic, but I didn't even begin being erratic and was already shot," he said. If I didn't know any better I would think he's implying that there's some benefit to the idea of criminal deterrence -- I thought I could get away with it because I did 30 times before.

What concerns me on this issue is that for most Canadians who probably do not follow the story of Ronald Allen Smith, the dead-horse topic of capital punishment has seemingly come out of nowhere, and for no apparent reason. It's further disconcerting that it was raised with no parliamentary debate whatsoever, that Stock Day didn't appear to welcome any questioning of his statements and that it is fundamentally inconsistent with other policies of the canadian government, such as its current support of a UN resolution on the matter. I'm more concerned about the way in which this has been handled than about the issue itself. It's played right into the waiting hands of the Opposition that we are secretive, inconsistent and untrustworthy lapdogs for the US. There was absolutely no need for it. The Tories will have no one to blame but themselves when their mishandling of this blows up in their face come election time.

I doubt it is a true account (why would an airline captain have a copy of a passenger's congressional Medal of Honor in midflight?) but it's a nice sentiment just the same. As the saying goes, "If you can't stand behind our troops, please feel free to stand in front of them".

It certainly would make a difference, but no one will stand for daycare subsidies even in the neighborhood of $3000 a month, especially since the current Daycare Benefit is available to everyone whether they work outside the home or not. It irritates me that daycare is even on the federal radar, it should rightly belong as a provincial matter but we have the left to thank for convincing the country at large that it is a federal concern, and unfortunately the Tories took the bait and that hook will not be easily dislodged. If anything, perhaps some tax incentives for business to establish more onsite daycare would be more appropriate, but that's not an easy easy order to fill particularly for smaller businesses. Available space seems to be more of a concern than the means to pay for it, given that sliding scales of provincial subsidies are already available. I don't know how to sway more women voters, I think at the end of the day the Liberals' used abortion and the scary hidden agenda more to their lasting advantage than we conservatives would like to admit.