Tall trees stand in Elaho - thanks to those who stood tall

I was just in the Upper Elaho in September, camping at Lava Creek. Thanks to the Squamish Nation and to all those who stood strong, the ancient forest there is protected under the parks act as a Concervancy and Squamish Nation Wild Spirit Place. Here's a link to a video of our September campout...

http://wildernesscommittee.org/video/2009_elaho_reunion_campout

A few missing details

Just to clarify a few things as i was never contacted about this article...
In the article it sates that Mercer tested the ropes but in court he admitted that he did NOT physically test the ropes to our treesits, no member of the RCMP ever did, he simply tested them visually with his eyes. He admitted to not ever seeing an actual anchor point but that he simply saw some slack in the lines and deemed it safe to cut the the ropes that held the treesits in place.
The police never attempted to communicate with us until after they had cut the ropes.
If you look at the court transcripts, one can read of multiple officers getting caught lying in their testimonies as well as every officer who testified agreed that there was no way they could actually tell how the treesits were constructed.
I helped setup the elaborate blockade to defend the land not to set up some RCMP officer i had never met nor knew of before but it seemed that having spite for the RCMP was enough to convince the judge that i was the mastermind behind an elaborate plot to destroy Mercer's career.
So with no solid concrete proof of anything i was found guilty of a crime i did not commit so that one of the RCMP's top cop could get promoted further through the ranks.
He the perfect man for the the job for 2010... he's willing to do the dirty work, blow up indians, use chemical weapons, make stupid moves and endanger the lives of anyone who get in the way.

Dennis Zarelli

Thanks Dennis

Too bad the authors didn't contact you before publication - your perspective adds an interesting sidebar to Mercer's self-serving account.

Growing Adulation of Police Presence

A telling article about the real focus of BC's growing police power.
The concern of course arises from what history teaches about Italy and Germany in the 1930's: a rise in police use; more stringent laws; undermining of civil liberties; spying on local citizens; growing adulation of military and policing leaders; names on secret lists; weak political leadership; all which grew into unstoppable authoritarian regimes.

Notice how reference to real terrorists (which inspired the rise of Olympic enforcement--foreign invaders from the Middle East) is disappearing from the BC news? Instead, it has shifted (very quickly) to our own citizens who speak out against government decisions and conduct. Which was precisely the concern raised at the outset about spending $1 billion on security: it's not about foreign invaders, it never was about foreign invaders.

Expanded police powers inevitably end up being used to suppress the local population. These trends have more in common with totalitarian regimes, the exact opposite of Western Liberal Democracy. A very frightening shift.

But it can't happen here, right?

A very recent seminar with Prof. Chomsky sheds some light on this ongoing issue:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOKUVBoxJ5o

This was an impressive article, the likes of which would NEVER appear in mainstream press. More kudo's to our courageous Tyee!

Lack of Accountability leaves Police "evidence" questionable.

Without proper oversight concerning the police and government investigating themselves, there will always be doubt about the credibility of evidence they provide.

I enjoy how the Tyee typically cuts to the chase when it comes to the news - but in this case - too much credibility is given to state evidence, compared to the questioning of the individuals such as the protesters.

Supporting this is the failure to interview Dennis Zarelli while, at the same time, providing a "Stephen Harper sweater-vest" angle to the story, when Mercer relives his personal tragedy and pines for a simpler time:

"I feel pretty good, I've got to tell you. It's been six years since he laid this charge against me," a relieved Mercer told the Vancouver Sun... "Mercer still retains a clear memory of the day he cut the ropes at the activist blockade. Though he stressed it was only one assignment among many. He'd like to go climbing someday, but protecting the 2010 Winter Games keeps him too busy."

I wonder what Dennis Zarelli's sweater-vest moment would be? I wonder how his tragedy would compare next to Mercer's?

The Weather Report

"He the perfect man for the the job for 2010... he's willing to do the dirty work, blow up Indians, use chemical weapons, make stupid moves and endanger the lives of anyone who get in the way."

Between this piece by Dennis above, and the historical observations of Jefferey J on what we should know about how the police state evolves, we should clearly know that it comes to us from the ruling class behind the scenes through guys like Mercer. And we now have the Conservative government about to embark on a sweeping new US style prison building programme, as part of the current corporate welfare spending schemes dressed up as "stimulus" spending.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/09/24/conservative-prison-plan024.html?ref=rss

Stimulus spending alright. For what? The further evolution of a fascist style police state, as a consequence of fears that arise from perceived "threats" to the good order and discipline of "the system", that arise as a further consequence out of the collapse of the capitalist economic order?

These Goon Squad types like Mercer, as I keep saying, are the real dangerous sonsofbitches in our future.

It doesn't take a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.

an explanation

Hello everyone,

I helped report and write this story. First of all, thanks for enriching this story with your criticism. As a reporter, sometimes its hard to cover every angle on such a complex – and contentious -- incident as the Elaho Valley. That said, our goal wasn’t to provide a comprehensive history of the standoff. Rather, we wanted to highlight Mercer’s role and provide insight into the mindset of the Olympics’ top cop. In our interview, he stressed that the rope-cutting incident was just one of many, many assignments. We included this because it shows Mercer regards one of the most controversial incidents of his career as just ‘another day on the job.’ As a climber, he must have some respect for wild tracts of forest such as the Elaho. If that’s true, he’s clearly able to discard personal sympathies in the face of RCMP orders. Self-serving his account may be, but for anyone wondering how he’ll lead Olympics security, perhaps very insightful.

"claim" or "remember"

"Blunt claims..."

"Mercer remembers..."

If Dennis Zarelli were allowed to defend himself, would he "claim" or "remember" ?

A technical issue

Blunt "claims" because she wasn't at the actual rope-cutting, having been arrested two days earlier. Also, it's typical to use the word "claim" when someone is making a contentious statement that can't be proven beyond all doubt. Mercer "remembers" because he cut the ropes. He was there. But, as I've noted, he "claims" the whole setup was a ruse.

Thanks for reporter & editor responses

It's good to have a place for readers to post illuminating comments and insightful questions. It's even better when the reporters and editors of a story respond to the questions. It helps me as a reader think critically about the article and to what extent I can trust it.

Thank you, Geoff Dembicki, for your participation in the coments.

A technical interpretation

...yes - that's one way to look at it.

Securing Insecurity

"Notice how reference to real terrorists (which inspired the rise of Olympic enforcement--foreign invaders from the Middle East) is disappearing from the BC news? Instead, it has shifted (very quickly) to our own citizens who speak out against government decisions and conduct. Which was precisely the concern raised at the outset about spending $1 billion on security: it's not about foreign invaders, it never was about foreign invaders."

Very astute observation, Jeffrey J....and it pretty well defines and parallels what a supposed "war on terror" inevitably becomes...and who the real intended targets were all along.

When even a group of women knitters in the Cowichan First Nation can be considered a threat.... and then investigated for planning "a sweater-wearing" protest against VANOC, democracy has become farce.

Where is the country we once loved?

The taser. The US style prison building "stimulus package" that coyoteman mentions above:

"All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall."

Wedge Using The Foreign "Terrorist" Danger.

"... it's not about foreign invaders, it never was about foreign invaders."

We need to be making good use of our third eye here, and connecting the dots to really see what is taking shape.

And the degree to which the danger of foreign terrorists really does exist, it arises out of "their" own actions in putting us in harms way, standing too goddamn close to the Amerikans, and serving their Empire cause abroad. Which, instead of drawing the appropriate conclusion from, they are using as the thin edge of the wedge to drive a broader attack on democracy here at home.

These "controlling the third world" foreign war causes we are fighting alongside the US Empire as their client state, are now coming home to us in the form of a broader assault on democracy here as well. Walking hand in hand with the economic malaise of the system, and the war to control the world and the flow of its resources back home to over developed and resource needy Amerika, the insecurities they have created for themselves are going to be used now, as the raison d'etre for a need to control us, the home front citizenry.

We will not ourselves be exempted from the insecure state of the world they, the capitalist ruling class, have created for largely weak and impoverished peoples overseas AND at home, AND in the way of such things, themselves. But arising out of their own increasingly anxious state around the possible outcomes "over there", coupled with that, they are as well becoming increasingly anxious about what is happening in the very capitalist global economic base itself, and what they may be about to unloose even for themselves at home. And, from the perspectives of their own class interests, they have every reason to be anxious and feeling insecure.

Things may really just be about to come unglued for them in the most dramatic way since the Great Depression of the 1930s: A time which fostered a climate of internal capitalist state rivalries and conflicts (Hitler's war drive to secure hegemony over Europe and steal empire from Britain, and all that followed there around and after.), and the class conflict driven civil wars in such as Spain, and even in the great class struggles that occurred here in North America over the period of the Great Depression and beyond.

They are feeling more than a little anxious. And when the ruling class start to feel insecure, they are never more dangerous. They turn increasingly to such as Inspector Mercer to help them "manage" the situation that is in danger of getting out of control on them.

They are not stupid, just greedy, and positioned to be viscious.

So why not have a large and

So why not have a large and peaceful protest, urging Bud Mercer to join the cause? There's still time to talk him out of this job and into that of the rest of 'us'.

I have no use for Mercer, Zarelli, WCWC, or Interfor...

But Blunt, Zarelli, George et al. broke the law and endangered loggers whose only crime was trying to go to work each day. I was there in 1997. The WCWC people (and the American activists, who were NOT nice people) try to paint themselves as saviours of the woods by stopping people from earning a pay cheque in a legal and noble profession and harming the well-being of their families, instead of going after the forest company through the courts. NONE of them get any respect from me.

Canada Boycotted Olympics over Afghanistan

"Canada boycotts Moscow Olympics:"Broadcast Date: April 22, 1980"

"Canadian athletes are upset, but they're not surprised. Mark McGuigan, minister of external affairs, has announced that Canada will not send athletes to the upcoming Olympic games in Moscow. The boycott is Canada's way of protesting the recent Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In these back-to-back CBC Television clips, athletes seem resigned as officials bemoan political intervention in sport and predict a counter-boycott of the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984."
http://archives.cbc.ca/on_this_day/04/22/

Irony never goes out of style...

Myths laid to rest.

Are you for real sunshine coast girl?

At no point did the WCWC or anyone else protesting in the woods in those days "endanger" logger's lives.

At this point it might just be a good idea to note the passing of "the myth" of sustainability which the noble loggers so willingly swallowed from the forest company advertising agencies:

"(Pat Bell) said previous forest ministers never had to worry about running out of trees, but the beetle ended the myth that the supply was inexhaustible.

'As a result of the mountain pine beetles and decisions that have been made around species-at-risk recovery strategies and land-use planning, there is a very real possibility that we will run out of trees,' he said.

Keta Kosman, publisher of Madison's Lumber Reporter, said in an interview the immediate issue facing some sawmills is the fact that they are starting to run out of wood already.

Kosman said there is only a year and a half's supply of wood remaining that's close to the mills and economic to harvest.

For those mills with a quickly shrinking supply, opening up access to timber locked up in land-use plans is an option the province needs to address, an industry spokesman said.

'All of the values of the landscape need to share equally in the damage the mountain pine beetle has done,' Council of Forest Industries vice-president Doug Routledge said in a separate interview from Prince George.

He said if timber remains locked up because of land use plans that protect old-growth forests and other 'values,' the impact of the beetle on the forest industry will be magnified."

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Pine+beetle+running+food+mills+wood/2018704/story.html

Myths cont.

How lucky we are to have the pine beetle act as the red herring for the falldown (cut too much too fast) of the BC Forest Industry the same way the Spotted Owl performed the same role for the US forest industry.

When they purchased TFL 38 (yes, with taxpayer money) the Squamish Nation agreed to put so many thousands of board feet of timber onto the market every year. Now that the the myth of sustainable forestry has finally been laid to rest, where is it going to come from once the expected second growth fails to come "online" as the myth once promised?

Meanwhile those social services and hydro bills are going to keep rolling in. Isn't that why the Squamish Nation are having to go into the billboard industry?

A very good study could also be made of how the roots of Liberal party's renaissance here in BC was related to the advent of the forest industry's Share groups. Campbell was on the Board of Directors for the Forest Alliance. Share group local executives like Ted Nebbeling, Gillian Trumpeter, Walt Cobb to mention a few that I can think of all became Liberal party MLAs.

For those of us who were Share group victims in towns like Squamish, it seems the Liberals chose people who had a track record of lying, using threats and committing criminal acts to further economic and political gains.

Remember when it was all about the poor little logger here in BC?

Logging in the real world...

'Remember when it was all about the poor little logger here in BC?"

I've logged myself, not for long, but just enough to make the claim. And I still live in the beating heart of logging country... and most loggers, certainly "aware" loggers, today understand as well as any environmentalist tree hugger, that the forest lands are indeed a finite resource, and need the protection of conservation law and practice. Already, they are an endangered species themselves, along with the industry they depend on for their livelihoods. And most, again certainly the growing numbers of "aware" ones, know the current demise is a consequence of past over harvesting and harmful land use practice.

And still, train and ship loads of raw logs are being shipped out of the country, at a rate that is destroying value added jobs in this country AND future logging jobs.

Don't know what sunshine coast you are living on Sunshine Coast Girl, but certainly not one in the real world.

The Whole World Is Watching

I call the Olympics an event which "The Whole World Will Be Watching". So if you have an agenda, any agenda, and you want global exposure what better venue then the Olympic Games. It follows therefore, or perhaps in my opinion, that the anarchist's that made a show of it in Seattle, at the WTO, would be meeting in basements all over Seattle and Portland, planning how to get over the boarder, and how to best expose their point of view.Enter Mercer, a high altitude climber, and member of the RCMP. Not exactly the kind of credentials to lead the opposition or security services for the Olympics. In my view a bad pick. We shall see.

Lary Waldman

Let the athletes have their day.

I worked in the forest industry myself for over twenty years plus another decade or so in other BC resource industries including on this summer's fires.

In that time, the Olympics is the biggest single ecologically destructive and most expensive event ever to happen in Sea to Sky that I have seen.

At the same time, I don't see any real point in protesting them now. Unless you're trying to pressure the Feds to adopt the UN Declaration of Rights for Indigenous People. The black blok anarchists are who they've always been - police provocateurs - and a good percentage of the security hired and trained for the Games are natives.

Police Provocateurs

I thank those activists who will put their bodies where there mouths are! We are now facing a new wave of deregulation of environmental protection (as the MFR and the Ministry of Environment and the Water Protection Act are being ammended and rewritten more and more each passing day). First Nations, concerned citizens, and concerned citizen action groups are collating now, with our elected officials, to throw out the Forest and Range Practices Act, which is a death sentence for our remaining watersheds ands forests.

The powers that be will try to insert there influence into our movement in any way possible. Be careful with whom you build coalition with. Watch out for organizations invented by the powers that be to steal our thunder! For example, the group Forest Ethics.

Dealing with agents de provocateur...

Ever beware of agents de provocateur, who often come on as more radical than anybody else... beyond all practical reason. The purpose? To lead you into foolhardy actions that are a trap, cause you to distrust your fellows and doubt your own actions, and serve their propaganda purposes. But to especially lead you in the direction of a foolhardy defeat, or even a slaughter.

It is necessary to expose them. Take "their" pictures and publicize them. Out think and out wit them. And still challenge the system, and come out of it at least as safely as you can.

The appointment of a type such as Inspector Mercer is a warning, to expect and watch out for police provocateurs. Expose them. Do not be lead around by the nose, into harms way, by them.

But don't let them paralyse you with fear of their espected presence either. They can seek to control you in that way too.

Be smart. When they, the forces of authority advance, retreat. When they retreat, advance. And be wherever they are not. Confuse them, and take advantage of their confusion, and the cumbersomeness of their hierarchical and bureaucratic structures. Spy on them whenever you can. Even create specialists at it. Develop that special confidence that comes from understanding your enemy, even better than it/he/she understands its/her/himself.

Gandhi: Non-violent, peaceful disobediance

Gandhi wrote extensively about the right and wrong way to conduct civil disobedience against unjust laws. His writings apply today just as accurately as they did when he wrote them. How citizens react to unjust laws in BC is no different than unjust laws in India.

"I wish I could persuade everybody that civil disobediance is the inherent right of a citizen. He dare not give it up without ceasing to be a person. Civil disobedience is never followed by anarchy. Criminal disobedience can lead to it."

"A civil resister never uses arms and hence he is harmless to a State that is willing to listen to the voice of public opinion. He is dangerous to an autocratic state, for he brings about its fall by engaging public opinion upon the matter for which he resists the State. Civil disobedience therefore becomes a sacred duty when the State has become lawless, or which is the same thing, corrupt. And a citizen that cooperates with such a State shares its corruption or lawlessness."

"Every possible provision should be made against an outbreak of violence or general lawlessness. Its area as well as its scope should also be limited to the barest necessity of the case."

The Essential Gandhi is available used for $5 in many internet booksellers, including Chapters and Alibris. Every citizen in BC concerned about unjust laws should read this brilliant compilation. Gandhi's strategies were followed by thousand of people in India, which single handedly overturned the British empire. Mostly because of the focus on peace and non-violence.

Which is why violence and agent provaceteurs can defeat progress. Canada's willingness to use agent provaceteurs at the SPP rally in Quebec (watch it on YouTube) was extremely troubling. We live in very difficult times.

The Working Class...

"Anyhow I was curious as to what your definition of "working class" would encompass.
I know what it USED to mean, but it seems to me the lines are a lot less distinct these days, wouldn't you say?"asks happy.

Of course I recall the Pacific Tribune, being old enough to recall many things. :-)

But as to your question regarding my definition of the "working class".

There is a widespread "narrow" notion of the working class, which largely the system's propagandists have fostered, which comes from Marx's writings on "the proletariat", or specifically the "industrial working class". And the purpose of these folks focusing on just this aspect of the broader working class, was to narrow Marx's appeal for many folks, and the ideas of "socialism" etc. (In his day, Marx considered the proletariat the most potentially revolutionary element of the broader "working class", for reasons too complex to get into here.)

But the "broader" definition of the working class which tends, correctly I think, to get used more today, takes in the proletariat of course, but also takes in as it really always has, all the other various "strata" of the working class as well. Which runs all the way from the underclass (the dispossessed and most impoverished, and disillusioned and not infrequently criminalized elements of the working class, at the very bottom of the class structure of capitalism), to the other "upper" strata of the class. This broader definition of the working class also includes, likewise as it has really always, but with new emphasis, white collar workers and "intellectual" workers, as well as even the professional legal and managerial strata the ruling class utilizes to "manage" the system and its enterprises for them. (Even though many of these in the so-called true middle and upper middle class strata tend themselves, to harbour illusions of being part of the "ruling class" itself. Indeed, because of their importance to "the system", not small numbers of these intellectual and professional strata receive incomes and even "shares" in capitalist enterprises that tend to blur the class line between them and the true ruling class (who own the means of production and wealth creation) and foster their class illusions about themselves. (Many others of them stand with a foot on either side of the class line, in that grey, neither fish nor fowl area.)

By and large, however, those who "work" as intellectuals and professionals, even where they rub up against and directly "serve" the ruling class, in the strictest sense which I use the concept of the working class, they are likewise part of this broader concept of "the working class".

It may seem like our notion of the "working class" has broadened and taken in new social strata, but really, even when I was a young left radical, this was the understanding of the "working class" that existed... though the "proletariat" did get more emphasis, even from us, no doubt.

Thanks coyoteman

That was a great answer. I tend to think the term is outmoded, as I agree that just about everyone falls into the "working class" category as you described it, thats why I asked.
How about the "production class" maybe.

But I can't agree with you, or the others who are (IMO) getting a little paranoid with all this talk of "provocateurs" I mean everyone agrees the last thing the "ruling class" wants at the Olympics is civil disturbance. Given that, why would they go out of thier way to incite one?

Makes no sense to me.

Imagination and strategy

"the production class"....that's the problem these days - that the focus on production has driven out what should be a focus on living.

The dilemma in need of solving is: the acquisition of the necessities of life must become less dependent on employment - that in turn is dependent on the profitability of businesses - that in turn is dependent on the sale of products.

That is the deathly dizzying merry-go-round we are all riding on....ever faster and faster.....many people hurled to the ground in the process.

I wanted to mention one thing about Gandhi that is sometimes not given enough play and was a key element of the success to his approach to resistance - and that was his ability to expand the political imagination, especially in terms of strategy. There is a desperate need to expand our political imagination in Canada at present, especially in regard to the kinds of strategies of resistance needed in BC...certainly in terms of imaginatively effective strategy needed by a rather lifeless Opposition party here as well.

In a radio interview with David Barsamian, Indian author and activist, Arundhati Roy alludes to this in regard to Gandhi:

" Gandhi was one of the brightest, most cunning, and imaginative politicians of the modern age. What he did was what great writers do. Great writers expand the human imagination. Gandhi expanded the political imagination. But, of course, we mustn't ever think that the Indian freedom struggle was a revolutionary struggle. It wasn't. Because the Indian elite stepped very easily into the shoes of the British imperialists. Nor was it only a nonviolent struggle, because that's the other myth, that it was an entirely nonviolent struggle. It wasn't. But what Gandhi did was democratic because of the ways in which he devised strategy. It included a lot of people. He found ways of including masses of people. For instance, in 1931, when they did the Dandi march, where they decided to march to the coast–it took 21 days, I think–to make salt in order to break the British salt tax laws, which prevented Indians from making salt, it was symbolic. But also, then millions of Indians began to make salt, and it struck at the economic underpinning of empire. So that was his brilliance.

But I think we really need to reimagine nonviolent resistance, because there isn't any debate taking place that is more important in the world today than the one about strategies of resistance. There can never be one strategy. People are never going to agree about one strategy......"

Violence, Non-violence, and the evolution of tactics...

"But I think we really need to reimagine nonviolent resistance, because there isn't any debate taking place that is more important in the world today than the one about strategies of resistance. There can never be one strategy. People are never going to agree about one strategy......" wrote Lynn.

Excellent piece of writing Lynn, and especially the insertion of that piece by the Indian writer Arundhati Roy, which in his fuller description of the Indian freedom struggle than is generally understood here in the West, he makes clear that in a great historic struggle, very often, many forms of struggle go on at the same time. And this is the more likely what is going to happen in our time here as well; that various forms of struggle will go on. Complete unanimity of tactics and forms of struggle are unlikely to exist here and now, no less.

Whatever one's particular reading of the times and the struggles that are going to emerge, those of us in the great emerging New Opposition need to understand this, and have some tolerance for each others chosen form of struggle. You don't have to agree with it, but realize that many forms of struggle are simply likely to come to be tested, have their effect, some be discarded and others advance.

All that said, for myself, I agree likewise with Lynn, at least at this stage in the evolution of things, "... we really need to reimagine nonviolent resistance..." And I think this because, if this nonviolent method is chosen to be crushed by the ruling class and its State minions, it will at least help make clear where the repression and the responsibility for it is coming from, and thereby prepare the way for whatever it is proven needs to come after. On the other hand, nonviolence MAY, in our time and situation, prove sufficient to the task, and if so, why would one want to choose violence over it, as a first chosen course.

I would rather choose nonviolence, at least as my first chosen tactical methodology... and hope that proves sufficient to the task. (And I would not quickly discard it either, because you know it will be tested, and mightily.)

Thanks Janie Jones

"A very good study could also be made of how the roots of Liberal party's renaissance here in BC was related to the advent of the forest industry's Share groups. Campbell was on the Board of Directors for the Forest Alliance. Share group local executives like Ted Nebbeling, Gillian Trumpeter, Walt Cobb to mention a few that I can think of all became Liberal party MLAs."

Thanks for reminding us of this bit of political history where few have connected the dots.

Arundhati Roy

... is a woman. Reference was made to Roy and her writings above, but there was some confusion.

It could be worse; they could appoint Kwesi Millington instead

Remember Kwesi Millington? He Tasered Robert Dzeikanski five times. Monty Robinson was in charge.

As long the chief RCMP officer i/c Olympic security is sober and as long as he doesn't shoot any of the foreign athletes at VIA or get caught driving drunk, he will come out of this looking good. As you can tell, I have profound respect for the RCMP - as long as they are sober. They make mean drunks though; especially when they start wavinbg guns around.

aside from the usual comments

The attitude of Bud Mercer is typical of the RCMP and one of the reasons that force has fallen into such disrepute.I have had a lot of experience with that group and with very few exceptions they can lie without a blink or looking to their left.They have the capacity not only to lie through their teeth but to convince themselves and their comrades that what they say is gospel.It's no coincidence that they have been caught out so often lately.The days when a cops word is beyond reproach are in the past.It's unfortunate that when it comes to the actual laying of criminal charges,the police still investigate the police and just about always find themselves without fault.We have seen that they can kill a man on video,lie about it,get caught and still walk away unscathed.Let the circus begin.