The second inquiry is over and once again the evidence-based outcome is the same.
Robert Dziekanski needed a drink of water, a cigarette and an interpreter ? not a Taser attack.
The man from Poland, who was coming to live in Canada, never really got here officially and died in a Vancouver airport reception room with a stapler in his hand wondering what the heck happened? There were so many errors made, not just in those few seconds with the RCMP, but also the nine to 10 hours leading up to their decision to deploy the Taser.
OK now class, hands up all of you who feel sorry for Tony Hayward, the erstwhile CEO of BP?
I?ve tried to feel some empathy for the guy and his cause, but at the same time understand that before the disaster in the Mexican Gulf there were a lot of overly well paid executive with huge bonuses making bad decisions. Guys like Tony are paid the big, big, big bucks to shoulder the heavy load if it ever arrives and so it?s his turn to step up and forget about ?getting his life back? for awhile.
It is nice to see some of those Canadian sucker ships out doing some vacuum work. There are about 80 more of them available from the Middle East if anyone would like to hire them. Now is not the time to worry about whether the people on these barges and cleaning crews are union or not. It?s time to pitch in to save a chunk of North America.
The last time we saw pettiness and politics get in the way of common sense was in New Orleans about five years ago.
I promised you I?d discuss the World Cup stuff with you this week. Well, they?re still playing and it?s still boring for the uneducated. When one of the top 32 teams in the world can play soccer for 90 minutes and get exactly one shot on goal. Well, I rest my case.
I liked the big to-do they made about those 30 Dutch girls who snuck into the stadium wearing orange mini-skirts with the tiny logo of a beer company inscribed on the hems of the skirts. The Bavarian beer company received a lot of attention for a non-official sponsor of the World Cup games and venues and of course all the kerfuffle that flew around the incident gave them even more attention.
Two of the 30 girls ended up in court ? temporarily and then were released. End of story. No guy wearing a beer shirt was arrested.
I guess that ending is sorta like those 800 so-called protestors who were picked up on Toronto?s streets during the G-20 summit. Didn?t I tell ya that things would pick up once the professional demonstrators arrived!
The whole situation was overdone, like c?mon, 19,000 police and military people. Really now! Two busloads of protestors dressed like mini-ninja?s, broke some windows, one police car that was left out as a decoy to be attacked. So it was. Part of the $1.2 billion budget I expect. Windows were smashed just like Estevan after a cabaret.
Tourists and joggers got thrown in jail and then released after police managed to sort out the demonstrators from the wannabe demonstrators from the pretenders and the totally innocent bystanders. The whole thing was overkill, right from the security setup to the Sunday night stupidity ? on both sides.
I just hope the summit folks got something done that was worth all the fuss.
By the way, the last summit that was held nearby was in Pittsburgh. Total cost for security was $100 million including police, FBI, CIA (no military were involved), 105 arrests made of professional demonstrators and $50,000 in damages. Please compare with Toronto?s fiasco!
By the way, does anybody know yet what the demonstrators were demonstrating about? The media in TO kinda dropped the ball on this one. We got the picture of the burning car and the broken window for 32 hours but nothing about the causes or concerns of the protestors.
