If I cannot see your eyes, do I feel you? Is it easier to kill you? Trudeau 21-second pause was utter honesty.



 

Social distancing is quashing empathy. Screens across humanitarian’s eyes are obscuring empathy. Cops with thick plastic shields, goggles and instructions to avoid my gaze, kill me easily. Isn’t it time to de-fund police and open our eyes?

“Now that humanitarians cannot look into and see what’s in people’s eyes without the blur of a plastic shield obscuring empathy, what will humanity be like?” asked FPM.news‘s editor in assigning this story.

“We don’t see each other’s eyes if we are ‘social distancing’ or wearing personal protective equipment. It’s one or the other all the time for those who care about not catching and spreading infection. Does this make a difference?”

Wow. No eye contact, no empathy?

But FPM.news learned something else. Most cops these days are trained to avoid looking into people’s eyes. Just smash them. The pictures we have from our essay contest of faces smashed by “rubber bullets” and “shotgun shell beanbags” are telling a horrid tale.

Read: Black Lives Matter Essay Contest allows safe protest from home. The pen is mightier…


by Melissa Hemingway


Sara Qin, a senior infectious-disease nurse supervisor in Wuhan, Hubei China once commented to FPM.news that she used a small LED soft-glow light so she could see into patient’s eyes. She said she always looked into patient’s eyes carefully before making a decision to vent or oxygenate them more. But she also said she could feel how the patient was doing if she could see into their eyes past her shield. She has won at least half a dozen commendations for her section having the best outcome for patients.

Nurses have a lot of empathy but today are forced to wear shields sometimes over and over again. Scratched, blurry shields.

Wearing plastic shields over our eyes are we losing touch with humanity?


“Those are not your streets you are killing us on. Those are our streets,” said a mom and nurse named Tina in St. Catharines Ontario, as she screamed at a TV.


 St. Catharines is the largest city in Canada’s Niagara Region next to where 75-year-old Martin Gugino was smashed to the ground, Thursday afternoon, by Buffalo City police.

Tina works as a nurse in a seniors’ retirement home.

She has seen far too many abused seniors come to live in her retirement home. She says she can tell by looking into their eyes. How much does she care? The answer: Her place has no COVID-19 cases. She says it never will. “If I keep them happy and laughing, they don’t need visitors right now.” She is strict and her patients are all alive, having fun,  and healthy.

“Police must be trained to look into people’s eyes,” said Tina whose voice began to pitch as she was getting worked up.

“I saw Mr. Gugino’s eyes,” she said.

“He was troubled by what his eyes saw,” she almost shrieked.

“Mr. Gugino had a question for the police. But one cop yelled, “knock him down”. The instant Martin’s head hit the ground, blood was pouring from his ear that we could see. I don’t know about the other one. I had to turn off the TV and start a game of bingo. I could see the sheer horror in my senior patient’s eyes. Sheer horror. Terror. Police are terrorists.”


At Erie County Medical Center Hospital near Buffalo, New York, a short drive distant,  there is a 75-year-old senior man, Martin Gugino, one of too few who have escaped death by COVID-19.

Mr. Gugino is in critical care, in very serious condition. He arrived by ambulance with blood flowing from his ear as a result of police-inflicted head injuries.

The World Watched The Video of Martin being smashed to the ground.

Everybody has a  grandpa.

On the far side of the world in Hong Kong, tears were shed for Martin. In Taiwan too. In Paris. In fact everyone FPM.news spoke to, and shared a certain video with, cried.

As a result of an essay contest the publication has hundreds of such videos sent via the Essay Contest. Police brutality is an infectious disease.

Read: Black Lives Matter Essay Contest allows safe protest from home. The pen is mightier…

Is Social Distancing tearing away at empathy? We don’t look into each other’s eyes.

Kathy Poon, a sister nurse in Taiwan was angry at this writer. “Really?” she shrieked. “I needed one more thing to cry about, did I?”

Kathy was very upset. But listen again. In the video one out of dozens of paramilitary combat arms soldiers carrying assault weapons and grenades was one man who said, “This guy needs an ambulance.” Doesn’t that provide some hope that this patriarchal army might care about one of their own grandfathers? We all get old if we are lucky?


Apparently he did call an ambulance. I explained this to Kathy and she fired back, “Why does Donald Trump need armies of men bashing the **** out of 75 years-olds. Do you not realize how rare is a senior these days?”


She hung up and blocked me on the messaging app that we have used lovingly for months, sharing all our griefs—and they were horrid griefs, at times.

Forgotten: Both her grandparents died of COVID-19.

Then she made a voice call. She was crying. We talked and fixed it all up.

Kathy taught me things not even a masters in science and nursing had taught me. It’s something one would see in the eyes, but lockdown forbids that.

The only eyes nurses see are those seen through obscuring sheets of plastic that are more annoying than the N-95s we wear for 14 hours at a time. Not looking into people’s eyes is getting far too impersonal.

Why was Kathy crying because a stranger, Mr. Gugino, was smashed down by police in Buffalo about 11,000 kilometres away?

Now I know. I wish I had seen her eyes before sending her that video. Her grandpa whom she loved as the only male in her life, would have been 75 today. He died in March of COIVD-19.

Is that why cops kill civilians? They can’t see the eyes?

Feelings are raw. That’s the point the patriarch will never understand or feel. Its leaders have no heart, no empathy. And the humanitarians can no longer see the people’s eyes.

“Unless Donald Trump wants everyone in the world to come to America and beat his ass in the streets, he better realize that skins are thin and that those streets Trump is using for mayhem were paid for by senior citizens, not him who pays no taxes,” added Tina, the St. Catharines nurse.

"Close the US Border, Trudeau. We will shop at home. The streets this 75-year-old senior paid for are not safe for him & not for me. This is Buffalo. Canadians should not go there," says angry sobbing Mom. “Close the US Border, Trudeau. We will shop at home. The streets this 75-year-old senior paid for are not safe for him & not for me. This is Buffalo. Canadians should not go there,” says angry sobbing Mom. Photo Credit: Video Capture. I am not showing the video here. I do not want one more sister to cry. Art/Cropping/Enhancement: Rosa Yamamoto / Feminine-Perspective Magazine


The Past Ten Years of Canadian Police Human Rights Violations


Canada is worse than America for police brutality. That’s why Trudeau hesitated 21 excruciating seconds when asked about Trump violence against protesters?

Talking to women with a long history of challenging police violence and human rights abuses. They are now urging all of the G7 nations to decline an invitation to the USA for the G7 and G20 hoopla Trump says he is planning.

Read: Dignity & worth of all persons need elevation by G7, say humanitarians

“In the alternative, go to America for the G7 and we fear you must accept that you are the cause of another blood bath, like what we see unfolding in America now,” warns Katie Alsop of the global civil rights group, RINJ.

Canada is worse than America for police brutality. That’s why Trudeau hesitated when asked about Trump violence against protesters?

In 2013 when Sammy Yatim was murdered in Toronto, The RINJ Foundation launched a petition calling for the removal of weapons from police paramilitary group members below the rank of Sargent. That would end their paramilitary status, but communities need real policing.

“Elderly ladies today have no recourse against purse snatchers but they can see a hundred S.W.A.T. cops dressed like the whole American Army complete with tanks outside a dancing club shown on TV hanging out many hours after somebody was shot. But crossing Yonge street for an after-lunch doctor’s appointment and losing a purse, there isn’t a police man to help this old lady for 100 kilometres north or south of the [incident] purse snatch. I chased the blighter but I broke my heel. The nurse had to come out and get me. I could not walk.” said Mrs. Joan Jefferis to FPMag one day, a while ago.

RINJ was big even then and one of its many active members was Sammy’s girl friend. She was a mess.

Sammy Yatim, an 18-year-old Toronto teen alone on a Toronto Transit street car, was shot at nine times, and was hit by eight of the shots fired by 30-year-old Toronto Police Service officer James Forcillo.

Forcillo was convicted of a serous crime but back on the street in months. The teen was dead. Sammy was a mental health patient who had been eating an apple with a pairing knife as his grandma always did.

The 1 August petition read: “The street car was empty. Why kill him?

“Not an anger release or revenge we instead seek a forward-looking solution to the problem of excessive use of force by police and by citizens on the streets of Toronto.”

“We need to reduce the number of guns on the street especially those in the hands of young and inexperienced Toronto Police who should not be allowed the use of firearms. A lethal response in Sammy Yatim’s case was the wrong response but one that was too readily used in too many cases.”

“Following the shooting death of Sammy Yatim and other previous examples of wrongful use of lethal force, the City of Toronto must disallow ordinary police officers the use of firearms and immediately remove firearms from police officers below the rank of Sargent.”

For the Change.org Petition “Take Guns From Inexperienced Cops To Avoid Sammy Yatim Type Tragedies”, Toronto Police tried to charge the Executive Director of the RINJ Foundation for the weakest but only thing they could find:  Lobbying City Counsel without a lobby license. The petition was essentially killed when it was changed to  Her Majesty The Queen in The Right Of The Province of Ontario Queen Elizabeth Buckingham Palace London SW1A 1AA to avoid breaking the obscure lobbyist law.

Cops called the RINJ number making death threats (about who [you] should have been shot to death), and harassed numerous members.

“We need to reduce the number of guns on the street especially those in the hands of young and inexperienced Toronto Police who should not be allowed the use  of firearms. A lethal response in Sammy Yatim’s case was the wrong response but one that was too readily used in too many cases.”

Toronto Police Services tried to charge Toronto-based women’s group, RINJ, that had amassed a couple thousand anti-rape protesters the year before when Toronto Police told York University students that if they “do not want to get raped, don’t dress like sluts.”

One officer went to Katie Alsop’s home under a ruse and said to her, “Nobody was raped. You should just f***-off if you know what is good for you.”

Another event which led to RINJ activists Micheal O’Brien, Katie Alsop and Sharon Delorme file a petition of 38,000 signatures to have Chief Bill Blair fired for kettling and violating human rights of over 1000 civilians in Toronto’s Queen and Spadina intersection at the end of the G8 meetings (2010). That was pretty much ignored but the trio and their friends were harassed endlessly.


Why? Because of what they saw. There was no “Black-Bloc” in Toronto burning a police car and smashing windows. They photographed the “Black-Bloc” switching back to being police again.


The “Black Bloc” were police operatives. There was no looting. They just broke windows along a section of Yonge Street from Queen to College streets. At the intersecting roads large squads of riot police held back and watched. Previously they set fire to an old police cruiser that was somehow left abandoned in the middle of Queen street.

The three RINJ activists photographed the fake “Black Bloc”, then with an Ontario Private investigator team, followed them. Later that day the activists photographed these men in the gallery below.

These black clothed males seen smashing windows below,  had been smashing windows along Toronto’s Yonge Street for about an hour. Police and news photographers filmed the escapade. One of the activists asked one of the licensed investigators to intervene and he said, “Shut up, they’re cops”.

The police dressed as so-called “Black Bloc” anarchists were later  video-graphed when Toronto Police Services undercover officers helped by pudgy uniformed officers recovered these so-called “Black-Bloc” men .

The whole “Black Bloc” thing was a sham put together to justify the many millions spent for 20,000 police officers from across the country, massive parties, huge budget increases, all for a city that went on vacation. The students who stayed were quietly peaceful. In some cases they made noise. Mostly they sang and chanted. It was a heartbreak knowing that the institutions of Canada hate Canadians. Many of these kids had their lives changed forever. For what? Absolutely nothing came out of the G8 and G20 in 2010 except misery and years of trials and hearings and nothing got fixed.

25 June 2010 — Activism against G8 was done by “kids” who were very peaceable. Most of Toronto left the city to their cottages up north in “cottage country”. The kids who were from across Canada attending University and private High Schools stayed in Toronto. File photo. File Photo Courtesy The RINJ Foundation archives.

Look:

26 June 2010 —  Police dressed as the mythical “Black-Bloc” Breaking windows on Yonge Street, but no looting per se. File Photo Courtesy The RINJ Foundation archives.

26 June 2010 — “Bringing them in.” At the end of the day they are recovered some distance to the East by Toronto Police who tried to block and harass the photographers. File Photo Courtesy The RINJ Foundation archives.

26 June 2010 —  “Bringing them in.” The “Black Bloc” who are actually cops came skulking across a wooded park where they hid from us, says Katie Alsop. They were to be met by police operatives and then taken behind a wall of bicycles. File Photo Courtesy The RINJ Foundation archives.

26 June 2010 —“Bringing them in.” Closing the egress and threatening the photographers and journos, cops knew they were busted. Said Private Eye Bud Vanchuk, “You can’t follow a bunch of undercover cops all afternoon without being burnt to at least the level of suspicion.” File Photo Courtesy The RINJ Foundation archives.

The G8/G20 event was concluding with 20,000 police in attendance and no arrests. They needed something, so they kettled, roughed up, and illegally arrested 1000 citizens including dozens of media reporters, Steve Paiken from TVO among them (which blew people’s minds).

27 June 2010. TTC workers, Nurses headed to work at the hospitals, waitresses getting off the day shift, police headed to work, journalists, police just swept up everyone to put into a makeshift jail out at the lake shore that was until then, empty. File Photo Courtesy The RINJ Foundation archives.

In the past ten years the police violence against the most vulnerable Canadians has increased.

If you are black, more importantly if you are an indigenous Canadian, you are fair game to Canada’s cops. Why anybody adores the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is beyond reason. Usually they are extreme right wing advocates of the death penalty and universal concealed carry for even grandma without question or permit.

 

2 June 2020 — Kelowna BC.  RCMP Superintendent Brent Mundle of the Kelown RCMP indicates that this three-on one violent encounter with an intoxicated Canadian is just another arrest of an intoxicated senior during the lock down.

Read: Regis Korchinski-Paquet Death Toronto crisis not racism but sad event in an already sad community.

“In order to gain control of the situation, he [the intoxicated senior] was struck several times until he fell to the ground”. All as a matter of fact. RCMP Police abuse is the norm and not exceptional is what this superintendent was trying to explain said three reporters who covered the matter.

“There are hundreds of videos. What is most worrying are the missing or murdered indigenous Canadian girls. Cops rape them, kill them and bury them in a remote wooded area. I know it and I can say it. Prove me wrong,” says Katie Alsop.

The RCMP are known in the north as the most violent, misogynistic, racist hosers on the planet. Most of their crimes take place in the isolated yet somewhat populated places of Canada.

“In 2020, RCMP violence against Canadians is right out in the open and we are to expect it,” says the Mayor of one small town who does not want to be identified.

 “Today there are thousands of raped, missing or murdered indigenous Canadian girls and we have no idea where they are. They were last seen being picked up by police. But there are lots of stories,” she added.

Watch what Canadian police think are their rights. This is an extraordinarily good work done by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Fifth Estate”.

 

The Longest Pause has Cause.

It looks like Trudeau also finds Canada’s hidden secrets Abhorrent. Empathy can be inconvenient and make one’s face red but it is needed now to save the human race. How can we help?

Yes, Canada is worse than America for police brutality. That’s why Trudeau hesitated 21 excruciating seconds when asked about Trump violence against protesters?