The shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes
POSTED BY: citizen
UPDATED: Sunday, August 21, 2005 01:05
VIEWED: 5229
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I'd hold that theres just as many 'evil' people in our society as there is in 'theirs'.
Its just that they either can't gain a foot hold quite so easily here, and those that do are 'controlled' better...
Re. Lord of the Flies...
Q: What do you have when you are holding two little green balls in your hand.
A: Kermit's undivided attention.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SimonWho:
I disagree. A policeman who orders the shooting of a suspect without clear proof of identity, he's incompetent, disgraceful, sack-worthy. But he's not evil.
Thats too broad. I'd say "he's not neccessarily evil". The rest depends on the circumstances and his own heart both of which can often be difficult to discern.
I suggest a bit of tolerance for the British police as a whole. This incident is tragic, but the overall response to the bombings has been remarkable. Never the less a head should roll for this, one head and one head only.
Thats why they built the Tower of London isn't it?
H
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One head and one head only?
You mean we should find a scapegoat?
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Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:
One head and one head only?
You mean we should find a scapegoat?
Q: What do you have when you are holding two little green balls in your hand.
A: Kermit's undivided attention.
I'm suggesting that they, the English, punish the officer who reacted poorly, rather then the entire profession.
H
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Yeah, my reply was a little... *Ahem*
General point was that its unlikly one officer is ultimatly responcible...
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Two details from these stories got me thinking. First, the guy who went off to pee comes back and overreacts to cover his ass. Secondly, Ruxton says the police were instructed not to let the suspect onto a train, and I can't help thinking that the police, having obviously dropped the ball there, overreacted to cover their asses. Hrm.
It would therefore appear that the operative fear in these cases, may very well not have been the fear of terrorists, but the fear of being caught making a mistake.
Everyone in the modern world learns from grade school on that covering your ass is paramount to success. Not covering your ass will get you blamed and prolly flunked/fired. Plausible deniability, the ultimate expression of ass coverage, has made governance from the electoral process onward a contest of who can cover their ass best.
Across the board, people in authority in the modern world have too much power over the lives of the people under them. But this power is only perceived power, born (again) of fear.
We have got to stop letting fear make our decisions for us. We have got to take our power back.
HKCavalier
Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.
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HK,
I'm going to agree wholeheartedly with your first paragraph, except for the 'overreacting to cover their asses'. You are right that the police dropped the ball big time but I can't believe these police officers could ALL come to the same conclusion that they had to kill him to cover up their mistakes in the few seconds they had. I really hope that was never in any of their minds.
I think the panic and overreaction came from the fact that they had let someone who they thought might have a bomb get so far ahead of them. Their carefully thought out plan of containment was in shambles and they had no plan B so they panicked in trying to restore control of the situation.
Fivver
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Citizen,
I propose that if insurgents are mostly non-Iraqi extremists, controlling the border and currency should be sufficient to starve them out (metaphorically speaking). Sooner or later they will run out of money and hardware and personnel. The US should bring to bear all it has on controlling the border and currency.
And yet it is using a tactic completely different, which seems to be more about chasing insurgents from city to city. Do you think the US military is basing its strategy on different assumptions from yours?
Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.
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Quote:
I disagree. A policeman who orders the shooting of a suspect without clear proof of identity, he's incompetent, disgraceful, sack-worthy. But he's not evil.
Someone who orders people to be tortured for days, purely for some perceived slight, that's evil.
yes, but both the policeman and the torturer need to be punished in some way, no?
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Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:
One head and one head only?
You mean we should find a scapegoat?
If it's good enough for the ancient Greeks, it should be good enough for us (please read with irony) ... I say we do it properly and traditionally and just as it seems Jean Charles De Menezes was chosen pretty much at random, we randomly select a member of the British Police force (or even the great British public) and then joyfully feather and tar them, making us all feel a whole heap better ...
As Aristotle should have said – Ah, catharsis, absolving us of our guilt, how nice!!
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