We Always Kill The Good Ones Among Us

A Brief Commentary by NAL publisher Doug Draper

We can begin two millenniums ago with the brutal execution of Jesus of Nazareth, whether you embrace him as the ‘Son of God’ or in a more secular manner, as one of the most courageous and compassionate voices for peace and caring for one another on the planet.

Russian social justice advocate Boris Nemtsov murdered in Moscow, and who cares?

More recently, we humans have witnessed the gunning down of other brave voices for peace and tolerance, including Gandhi, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, Harvey Milk, and the near killing of Pakistani teen Malala Yousatzay, who fortunately lived to receive the Nobel Peace Prize this 2014 for her efforts to ensure young girls around the world have the same opportunity as boys do to get an education.

Then, this late February, there was the brazen assassination of Boris Nemtsov, a fearless campaigner for democracy in his native Russia and critic of that country’s corrupt, thuggish leader Vladimir Putin.

Canada’s tough-talkin’ prime minister, Stephen Harper, mouthed the usual words of condemnation for this crime. Yet despite all his Rambo-like posturing aimed at pandering to Canadians of Ukrainian descent and partisan base that eats up the illusion of leader kickin’ ass, Harper’s sanctions against the Putin regime don’t dare go so far as cutting off Russia’s state-owned energy gaint Rosneft and Russian Railways chief Vladimir Yakunin, two of Putin’s old-time fellow crooks and cronies.

Of course Harper won’t cut them off. They have global ties with the Harper government’s corporate masters in the petro-chemical industry. All Harper’s willing enablers need to know is that he is affecting a John Wayne stance when it comes to the likes of Putin.

So at the end of the day, let’s not any of us pretend to be all that upset about the murder of good people willing to place their necks on the line to fight all of this.

We humans are something aren’t we? We like to hold ourselves up as the most intelligent beings on the planet, looking down on animals and all the rest.

Yet what species on this planet invests more on weapons of mass destruction for killing each other and on smothering the life-sustaining resources on this only spot in the universe, etc. to do more damage and perform more killing acts than us.

You might ask why use words like “we” and “us” in reference to all this pillaging and killing of people who have put their lives on the line, fighting for a little more sanity on this planet. After all, you and I have nothing to do with it, right?

Like Pontius Pilate, maybe we think we can wash the blood from our hands. But in this day and age of global cable and social media, we are all witnesses to these atrocities. And we all have a hand in supporting governments and purchasing products from regimes responsible for policies of destruction.

Don’t go walking like a zombie through a shopping mall or big box store full of cheap plastic crap from sweatshops that treat our brothers and sisters in other regions of the planet like human garbage and pretend your hands are clean.

The late Canadian journalist and social justice advocate June Callwood once said; “Once you witness an injustice, you are no longer an observer but a participant.”

Martin Luther King put it this way; “How responsible am I for the wellbeing of my fellows? To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.”

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