Ceremony marks Menezes death
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Link: 'Ceremony marks Menezes death'.
I realised the country I had loved was dead when this young man was shot. Not because a terrible mistake was made. That could happen anywhere. Because of the reaction of government, press and public.
Jean Charles died in an atmosphere of hysterical incompetence following the London bombings. The "stiff upper lip" sang-froid that once characterised the English was nowhere to be seen. The consequences of educating a nation in a spirit of "anything is good enough;" awarding marks and lavishing praise for inadequate performance and behaviour were everywhere to be seen. As were afternoon-tv sentimentalism and focus on "feelings" rather than reason.
We are not allowed to know the facts. We were not even told the names of the men our government wants us to see as "heroes". From all the accounts I have read, my understanding of events is as follows. A police team had an apartment building under surveillance because one of the London bombers had been known to visit there. A surveillance officer was taking a leak in a bush. Over his shoulder he glimpsed Jean-Charles go by and misidentified him as one of the bombing suspects. A game of Chinese whispers by police radio ensued as a hit squad was deployed to follow him, ordered to kill if he boarded a Tube train. He did.
Even as the detaining police officer called out not to shoot, knowing that he was holding down a lightly-clad man who was carrying no bombs, some kind of special police or military officer or officers shot Jean-Charles seven times in the head, damaging the hearing of the bobby who seems to have been the only man on the scene not consumed by blood lust.
In the hours that followed, the Metropolitan Police defamed the dead man in the most shocking and disgraceful way. Every kind of excuse was mustered for what seems to have been, quite simply, fatal incompetence. The government - itself guilty of having given illegal "shoot to kill" orders - supported this campaign of lies.
Police death squads often kill suspects in other countries. However, this happened in what was once England. Had you or I killed a man we wrongly suspected of being a suicide bomber, a jury would have decided our fate As the events of the last week have shown, the apparatchiks of the British State now look after their own - and to hell with truth, law and justice.
As the events of the last week have also shown, the degenerates who now occupy the space formerly populated by true Englishmen do not care. There has been no public outcry that the officers who killed an innocent man were not brought to trial. Perhaps they would have been acquitted. Perhaps there is some justification for their sickening actions that has not been made public. We shall never know. Those few of us who still care about justice, fair play and honest government in England are left with a bitter suspicion. If there was a better story than we have been told, we would have heard it.
If I were in England today, I would be at Stockwell Station. Those commemorating Jean-Charles' death are acting in the best traditions of what was once a nation worthy of love. I thank them. Today I shall drink a silent toast to the memory of an innocent young Brazilian, killed and defamed by citizens of a nation I am ashamed to own as mine.
I believe that although the initial reports suggested he ran, he in fact walked through the station onto the train, where he was not challenged before he was shot. He was not wearing bulky clothes that might hide a bomb or other weapon.
Nevertheless, we ought to recognise that in this appalling case, there are positions mid way between "he deserved it" and "it was state murder".
The police officers who were in the surveilance team were not the officers who shot the suspect. It seems plausible to me that a report of a possible sighting was translated into a positive identification. The armed officers were trained, not to injure but to kill, on the basis that the former can still set off a bomb. Add them together and someone was killed - the system had no means of fail safe after initiated with a false identification.
We want the marksmen not to hesitate when there definitely is a bomb, but we also want him to hesitate when common sense indicates otherwise. This might not be an easy circle to square.
Posted by: TDK | Tuesday, July 24, 2007 at 05:52 PM
A just rebuke, dearieme. My point was weak and ill-expressed, not to say rather cold-blooded. As I understand it, the official version is that it was a tragic accident; and (as I suppose) that the armed policemen (or whoever they were) had been instructed to make sure that the supposed bomber could not detonate himself. But the number of times he was shot strongly suggests that they had gone berserk, and I don't know if any convincing and less damning explanation for their behaviour has ever been given. Tom has essentially said this anyway.
Posted by: pedant2007 | Tuesday, July 24, 2007 at 05:42 AM
How to weaken a good case: ask "Why was Mr de Menezes shot so many times?"
Posted by: dearieme | Tuesday, July 24, 2007 at 12:06 AM
How I agree! As another expatriate, I may be ill-informed. But, if there is to be no trial, why has the press been so compliant? What did really happen? Why was Mr de Menezes shot so many times? Why has no-one ever resigned?
Posted by: pedant2007 | Monday, July 23, 2007 at 10:59 PM
...As the events of the last week have also shown, the degenerates who now occupy the space formerly populated by true Englishmen do not care...
We're not in any disagreement about the substance of what you say here, Tom. Only about who those degenerates are.
Posted by: jameshigham | Monday, July 23, 2007 at 04:47 PM
I just love the idea that anyone who objects to the killing of an innocent man is a pandering to Islamist violence, No Dhimmi.
I am no dhimmi too, but the rule of law is what we are defending here. If to prevent becoming a feral theocracy, we must resort to being a feral totalitarian state, wtf would be the point exactly? You are making the classic Daily Mail error of assuming that "doing something" is good, regardless of what the something is. You might like to engage a few brain cells in considering what the "something" was in this case.
The Government could not, by executive action, create a new defence to murder of "I was only following orders." Only Parliament could do that. It was never asked. So there is blood on the hands of the then Prime Minister and Home Secretary who had no right to authorise the Met to shoot to kill without the usual defences (self defence etc). We now know though that the CPS has a blind spot when it comes to the chaps who set their pay and pensions, don't we?
The leadership of the Met should have declined their illegal orders. I hate to think ill of them, but perhaps the leadership of the Met has a similar blind spot?
The individual officers remain (as the Nuremberg Defence is not a valid defence) responsible for their actions. Whatever they believed when they set out in pursuit, at the point the trigger was pulled, it was apparent to anyone still thinking rationally (did you see the picture of Jean Charles lightly-clad corpse, by any chance?) that this man was wearing no bomb belt. If the report that the officer who pinned him down called out as I said is true, then blood lust is a reasonable theory as to why the trigger was pulled regardless. As we are not even allowed to know who did this in our name, some speculation is justified.
As for the lies about his "suspicious" actions, those have all been admitted. What is your problem there? Why are you repeating the one that they called on him to halt. They don't now claim they did. You are just perpetuating the disgusting Met press office slanders (or they would be slanders if you could slander the dead).
This story killed the country in which I could (and did) tell an out-of-line policeman where to get off. When in Britain, I steer clear of them now. I would not help them. I would not willingly have anything to do with people who, if pissed off, could take me out and say they thought I was a terrorist. That's not to say I think that of most policemen. Most are good men and women doing their honest best. But how I am to know who I am dealing with on any given occasion? God help us, for all I know, you may be a policeman!
So the country I loved, with policemen policing with consent and with no powers over and above those enjoyed by every citizen, is gone. The relationship between citizen and State has been transformed. Any student of history knows where this can lead. Let's hope your blind optimism is justified.
Posted by: Tom Paine | Monday, July 23, 2007 at 08:33 AM
What a brilliant counter No Dhimmi: The man was not wearing a seat belt so he should get shot.
My observation is a person, a country do not get trouble makers around them if they are clear-headed, resolute and bold.
"the degenerates who now occupy the space formerly populated by true Englishmen" makes this point on many levels.
Posted by: Kinderling | Sunday, July 22, 2007 at 11:44 PM
With this blog entry, no one will ever confuse you with Jack Webb's "Sgt. Joe Friday" and "Just the facts, ma'am."
Now, you left out quite a bit, overwrought as you were with your own crazy talk of apparachiks, death squads & blood lust, like 9/11/01 & the world not being as it was only a day before, a wealthy resurgent Islam, the unhidden calls for a worldwide Islamic caliphate from Rabat to Davao; the knife stuck in Theo Van Gogh's chest; Nick Berg's, Ken Bigley's & Daniel Pearl's beheadings; cartoon riots & the muslim attack on free speech; muslims kidnapping journalists; the fatwas against Salman Rushdie & Ayaan Hirsi Ali; Richard Reid the would-be shoe bomber; muslim physicians-to-be, in earshot of a Georgia waitress, muttering bin Laden's name & "Take it down."; muslims testing police responses; muslims still approaching flying schools wanting to learn to fly but not to take off or land & muslims frightening fellow airline passengers with behavior which recalled that of the 9/11 terrorists.
You were somehow able to write this grotesquerie without remembering those well off muslim physicians who in the name of Islam very recently sought to slaughter hundreds of real innocents, London club goers who did no one any harm & merely wanted a good time.
You say Jean Charles de Menezes is an innocent. Not so. He was an illegal immigrant who had no right to be in Britain at all. He was a dishonest man who jumped the queue of honest migrants who played fair & abided the rules. He was a cheat, a scab who depressed wages & robbed a law abiding Briton of responsible work with decent pay.
Jean Charles de Menezes chose his subterranean existence at a time when Great Britain was threatened by Islam from within & without. Jean Charles de Menezes chose his subterranean existence with its attendant risks, & he chose to run & to die in the shadows, rather than face deportation to Brazil, rather than halt, as the police told him to do.
With your proclaimed shame of the nation you once owned as yours I was waiting for you to conclude with the British version of the Alec Baldwin (non)flounce off. My question for you is: where are you going to go?
Posted by: No Dhimmi | Sunday, July 22, 2007 at 03:54 PM