Disclosing Information about RCMP Taser Use in Canada

You're missing a lot, as we all are in every country. I was in Vancouver, B.C. whilst Bush was visiting your PM. On the front page of the newspaper was a huge photo of the two sitting down and Bush extending his hand to your PM, who seemed to be looking at the hand as if it were a dead fish he wouldn't touch if his entire family were threatened with slaughter. I thought, Wow, our relations with Canada must be really bad. When I got back to the States and saw video footage of that meeting, both men eagerly extended their hand at the same time and shook hands with genuine warmth. The camera can shoot up to 8 frames per second and catch things the human eye can't see. The media chooses which of those split seconds they'll present to the public to shape our perceptions. The media do this with both words and photos, and none of us has a fair chance of knowing and seeing what's really happening in the world.

Despite the power of the media, they cannot, and will not, ever be as powerful as the people. Any and all people. From what I've read and seen in the media, I've been terrified to travel outside the country as an American. In England, Scotland, Austria, Germany, Italy, Canada, and Mexico I was treated with a bit of curiosity, but mostly with warmth, welcome, acceptance, and kindness I never would have expected. We may be the most hated country at the moment, but people everywhere are smart enough to understand the difference between a government and the people subjected to the actions of their government. Austria was the only place where people reacted to us the most strongly. They had once been at the mercy of Hitler, and they now see Americans as victims of Bush. (I happen to agree.) In that country, we were greeted with warmth and pity.

Another huge thing we're all missing, because it isn't sensational enough, is that the United States and Canada share the largest unguarded border in the world, and we do so in peace. We may bicker at each other, and we have our differences, but still there is peace. Canadian people were especially friendly to us when we were up there, and I have a lot of friends and co-workers who are Canadian, and we're never at odds with each other. Something is going very, very right between the two countries, yet nobody anywhere is looking at what works and maintains peace. We just want to focus on what's wrong. We can't fix what's wrong with anybody or any thing, but we sure the heck can look at what's right and do our best to re-create those conditions. The fear of terrorism may force us to put up more barriers between our two countries, but nobody can ever take away the long history we have of peace across the largest border ever known to mankind.

Yay, Canada! :-)