www.simoncollier.ca

I had an interesting convesation/debate/argument today. My friend was disgusted that a muslim man was refused boarding by airport security because he was wearing a t-shirt in English and Arabic that read “we will not be silent”. She thought that was racist and oppressive.

I think profiling is a common, effective but regrettable reality in fighting any kind of crime. I think if you fit a particular profile then it’s not in your best interest to fuel that fear. If an Irish man wearing a T-shirt saying “IRA representative” tried to board a plane, I think he would be stopped too.

As for profiling, teenagers are limited to groups of two or three in convenience stores because, generally, “teenagers steal things”. Paedophiles are listed in databases and communities warned of their presence because there is a statistical probability that they will reoffend. In America, people against the death penalty cannot sit on a jury for a case where the penalty sought by the prosecution might be death because their profile creates a bias in the system.

Profiling is used all the time, and it’s a terrible thing that innocent people are caught in the same net but realistically, if they do something to deliberately make themselves seen, then some of the blame must fall on them. If I wear a stocking over my head and walk into a bank, it is not unreasonable for the guards to tackle me to the ground, despite there being no “law” against wearing a stocking over my head. It’s provocative, and an obvious thing to avoid doing.

I think it’s a sad situation that we worry about any of this. The realisty is though, that we do. And if the authorities that we employ and empower to protect us fail to do so because they ignored an obvious red flag at the risk of being called racist, fascist or oppressive, then we would be outraged at the loss of innocent life again.

I think we can all help each other out here. I won’t wear a stocking over my head when I enter a bank. The Sunderland Football Club fans can avoid wearing their Sunderland team shirts when they walk through Newcaslte and they will not be beaten up.

We are all legally permitted to express our opinions. This is a freedom our ancestors have fought for and defended in law. Society has never been so liberal though, and never will be in my lifetime. Let’s use some common sense.

Close to midnight in early November, I stood over the body as it lay motionless on the pavement before me.

Nobody else knew what to do, there was a feeling of desperate panic in the air. I didn’t want to be the one that everyone was relying on. I was sixteen. I didn’t want to be the only one that could help.

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes for a moment, and knelt beside the dead man. Everything around me was moving in slow motion, I can only guess that my adrenaline was pushing my mind faster that it had ever previously been required to think and the world appeared to slow as a result.

The noise around me was silent. The cars passing on the road, the cool autumn breeze through the trees and the passer-by’s walking home from the pub; They were all there, but all irrelevant and filtered out.

I did hear the man’s wife standing above me, not quite hysterical but speaking in a strained voice that seemed to know this was the end for him.

I opened the elderly dead man’s airway, put my cheek to his mouth and listened for his breath, which I knew already would be missing.

…Eight-one-thousand, nine-one-thousand, ten-one-thousand…

There was nothing.

With his head tilted back, I sealed my lips around his and breathed into him. As his chest rose, I considered how this felt so much like practice, but how the practice felt so little like real life. I breathed into him again, then checked his pulse.

Nothing.

I looked up from my kneeling position to see his wife and son towering over me, looking down with wide eyes and furrowed foreheads. His son looked to be in his mid-thirties but at that moment, looked like any son watching his father die in front of him. Glassy eyed, despaired, and a thousand thoughts rushing through his mind.

“You might want to take you mum over there” I suggested, nodding away from the scene.

Not waiting for a response, I moved my fingers over the chest of the body to find the outline of his ribs and sternum, placed my hands as taught, and began compressions.

As my weight pushed his sternum down towards his heart, I could feel his bones bend. As I cycled through the breaths and compressions I felt some of his ribs break under the weight of my hands as I pressed slightly off-centre – a peculiar popping sound with an awful feeling of bones snapping under hand.

He threw up. Not the kind of vomit that we see on TV where the casualty coughs and opens his eyes and thanks you for saving his life. It was an effortless vomit, where the excess air in his stomach pushed the contents back up through into his mouth. I wasn’t doing it quite right.

I rolled him onto his side, scooped the vomit, rolled him back and re-checked for breathing and a pulse, as taught. I already knew there would be nothing, but the system is the system, and that’s all that was keeping me going at that point. There were no decisions to make, just a process to follow, and that was good.

I breathed into him again. As his vomit transferred to my lips I could taste the beer he had drank before he died. It was a light beer, not Budweiser but something like it. It would be a long time before I could drink beer again without a visual of that moment flashing to mind.

After a couple more cycles he vomited again, and I repeated the process. I knew something wasn’t working, perhaps the head wasn’t far enough back. He was a fairly big man, and I couldn’t get it back very easily. I thought about rotating his body so I could move his head off the curb. That would move his head back. But I didn’t. I breathed again, and gave more compressions.

As I continued to press on his chest I noticed his head would bounce on the solid pavement with each compression. I could hear his skull knock the pavement each time I pressed and it reverberated through my head. It sounded awful.

After about 30 minutes the ambulance arrived. Somehow it had gotten lost – the average response time then was about 7 minutes. We were unlucky.

They put him on a stretcher and loaded him into the ambulance. It was dark outside so the light in the ambulance made it possible to see through the normally one-way glass. I could see them following the same process: Airway, breathing, circulation. The ambulance bounced with every compression they gave. We all just stood and watched and waited for them to come back out and tell us what to do next.

I later learned that he had collapsed in front of my house on the road and his wife (a smaller lady) dragged him to the footpath. She then ran to her son’s house (about 100 meters away) and brought him to the scene. He knocked on my neighbour’s door, who wasn’t in, then knocked on my door. It must have been 10 minutes before I even got on the scene, despite it happening right outside my door. I was watching Trainspotting inside, 10 meters away.

Not my favourite story. Sometimes though, like tonight, I lie in bed and relive that night.

I never did see the end of Trainspotting.

I went shopping down Whyte Avenue this week. New snow was falling and everything looked clean and white. The street sounded quieter, with the snowfall muffling the noise of car engines and people. Everyone was wrapped tightly in their coats, their cheeks and noses rosy red.

I was Christmas shopping with my friend. We walked into every gift shop along the north side of Whyte, checking out the soaps, the teas and coffees, the local crafts, the hand-made paper, and a mix of gadgets and toys.

It was a great feeling, to detox from the Wal-Mart shopping and patronise local stores. Even better, local stores selling fair-trade merchandise and locally-produced goods. I bought some soap made in Africa, some coffee farmed in Tanzania (also in Africa), some UNICEF Christmas cards and some other general gifts from small, locally-owned gift shops.

I liked shopping like that a lot, I really did. I’d like to look at other alternatives too, I’m sure there must be some. I’ve heard of a “store” in Edmonton where you bake your own meals for a week, with the help of a Chef. That means you get good homemade food, properly cooked. I want to check that out. I also know of some small organic vegetable shops on the North Side, which have also been recommended to me. Maybe this will make shopping more interesting… Or at least it might make me feel better about the way I shop.

It would be nice if the big chains would also recognise that there might be some good business in ethical products like fair-trade coffee and local organic produce. Stores in England already have recognised that, and they seem to be doing good business with it – even in the poorer neighbourhoods.

Let’s take the Co-Op for example. They sell fair-trade goods. They label genetically-modified foods. They tell you who produces their “no-name” products. They label products clearly – including where animals are used (even in non-food products). They voluntarily ban advertising of “bad” foods during Kids TV. They… You know what? Look for yourself.

http://www.co-op.co.uk/foodretail/index.php?pageid_grp=113

We need more companies to do this. Good, human business practices.

I’m sure there’s money in it.

As readers of my blog will know (um… hi, mum), people annoy me. They might annoy me less if they didn’t speak.

There are some things that people say that do nothing more than infuriate me. In fact, I wonder if the world is conspiring to make me insane by way of saying stupid things to me.

Let me give you my list of three most annoying things people say to me.

“Are ya workin’ hard or hardly workin’?” Stop it. It’s not funny any more.

“It’s totally addicting.” Funny, because THAT’S totally not a word. Seriously. Even Google agrees. (Here’s the real word.)

“I could care less.” If you could care less, then that suggests you DO care at least SOME, so this phrase is  completely misused. An antagonym, if you will.

I’m very aware that I’m not perfect, and I recognise that. I do many, many things that make the world a worse place to live. I shop at Wal-Mart, I buy clothes without checking that they were not made by children, I buy coffee that is not Fair-Trade, I waste energy more than I need to. I know all of this. But I try not to get on my high-horse about one issue, then do something that completely contradicts my logic.

Here, then, are my 5 top contradictions that I think hurt us all. I don’t mean to dismiss any particular view or behaviour as being bad, I just don’t think you can have your cake and eat it.

A coffee morning at a church. While we sit and talk about how we are trying to make the world a better place and how great Christianity is, we drink coffee that was produced in a land of violence and brutality. Surely an effort to buy Fair-Trade coffee for a church event is not too left-wing a request? To make sure that we only send our church money to companies that agree to pay their workers fairly, and not kill them too often.

People that claim to “support the troops” when they drive a truck or SUV – the war for oil is why our troops are there in the first place (whether it’s Afghanistan or Iraq).

Pro-Lifers that support the war. You’re pro-life for a foetus but pro-war for our soldiers? If you’re only pro-life when it comes to someone else’s uterus then maybe it’s time you re-evaluated your contribution to society.

Anti-abortion activists that don’t believe in welfare support or social services. Make a decision: If you force someone to have a baby, you had damn well better agree to pay for their support through taxes.

Any civilised country that supports the hanging of Saddam. Making a martyr out of a monster is not a great way to win the hearts and minds of a country. There are basically no civilised, developed countries left in the world that still support capital punishment. Ideals and beliefs are still worth something, unless you make exceptions. Saddam is one of the most evil people in the world right now, but that doesn’t make it right for us to kill him. An eye for an eye is not acceptable in this age. In fact, this is probably the most important time to avoid that.