Crime and punishment

Anyone who watched the news here in Canada tonight now knows just how the RCMP works. I'm not simply talking about the video that was released today showing exactly what happened to Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski last month at Vancouver International Airport - how four cops killed him without provocation - no, I'm also talking about the web of lies and deceit that goes into the standard RCMP cover-up.

Imagine being sexually and emotionally abused, raped and/or sodomized, and completely traumatized as a young child by someone you thought you could trust more than anyone else, your priest. Then, when you finally overcome your shame and tell someone about it, your church, the same one you were raised to have faith in as a holy institution, not only fails to punish your attacker, but does everything possible to cover up the crime while offering you no comfort whatsoever. And then, amazingly, those running the church actually go on to transfer that same sick rapist to another church where he can violate more victims and destroy many more young innocent lives.

And then imagine you find out they did the same despicable thing in hundreds of different cases.

Now imagine you wait decades to finally get a payout and an apology from the local diocese in a settlement that in no way returns your lost childhood or any of the lost happiness, self-esteem and/or mental stability you forfeited, only to find that some new sickos are right there waiting to take advantage of you in a whole different way.

It's a great day. The Black Hole of Arrogance, also known as Conrad Black or, as his pompous self would most definitely prefer, Lord Black, is going away to jail.

A man and a woman were sentenced today in Winnipeg for the kidnapping, imprisonment and rape of two young girls, aged 12 and 13. And we're not talking about some quick ordeal here. Far from it. One of these girls, the 12-year-old, was held for two months as a sex slave and continuously drugged, raped, tormented and tortured. The other girl was also raped numerous times, and she eventually became pregnant. The couple showed absolutely no remorse and asked for no forgiveness. So what kind of sentence do you think they received?

I was going to start this rant with some lame attempt to be witty, such as:

Q. Hu was that guy Bush was getting all defensive for today at the White House?
A. Yes.

or

Who's Hu and why is Bush so enamored with him?

But in the end I decided to just go with this:

I could easily write a whole rant on nothing but Bush's reaction to that heckler at the White House this afternoon. You know, the woman who was, after all, simply just shouting out some truth about the reality of the dictatorship in China and its brutal oppression of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. Did you see the look of disgust on Bush's face? Thankfully, for those who like polite meetings with dictators, he quickly apologized to Chinese President Hu. Now everything's going to be ok, right? What a pathetic hypocrite! This was the guy who was supposedly so upset and worried about the human rights situation in Iraq that he had to destroy the whole country. I could write a whole other rant about how he sucked up to Hu all day. I mean, we're talking about a country - China - that still runs gulags, er, I mean "re-education camps", which are full of tens of thousands of innocent people. But, come to think of it, America's been running its very own gulag in Guantanamo Bay for years now, so I guess they can't really call other countries on such things anymore, can they? But, still, it sure looks pathetic. Don't you think he must feel at least a little bit embarrassed about sucking up to the leader of a communist dictatorship that throws people in jail for 10 to 15 years at a time for such things as publishing articles about a peaceful transformation to democracy?

Imagine a law designed and used specifically to protect rapists and to punish those who are raped. A law - a whole legal system in fact (the Sharia Islamic law system) - that says rape doesn't actually happen, it's really just women fornicating. In this legal system with this form of "justice" 99% of rapists go free while many raped women are sent to prison to serve long sentences. Sounds ridiculous? Sounds impossible? Well, it exists alright, in a very real country called Pakistan, and thousands of very real women are wasting away in prison right at this moment simply because they were raped.

Now here's something that even the Taliban might find extreme, unjust, ridiculous and barbaric. The government of Scotland has proposed a law to jail the parents of juvenile offenders/criminals. The kid steals a car - throw the mom in jail! The kid gets into a fight and stabs someone - send dad to prison! Make the bastard pay! If mom has died or run off, well then throw grandma in jail! What the hell? Someone's got to pay for junior's bad behavior.