Execution and lies
Channel 4 News tonight reported on a leak from the independent investigation into the shooting in cold blood of the poor Brazilian guy, Jean Charles de Menezes, that the Met had mistaken for a terrorist. The leak showed that:
This is so, so different from what the cops and the goverment said at the time. They didn't get the facts wrong in the heat of the moment - everything that was said about the killing in the days and weeks after it happened was just untrue. The only truth in the story spun by the government and picked up enthusiastically by the sewer Press was that he left his flat, took a No. 2 bus, and boarded a tube where he was shot dead. Every other detail was completely, utterly wrong. This isn't simple error, this is systematic, cynical, blatant lying on the part of the cops, the government, and their eager lackeys in the Press who not only reproduced the lies but embellished them with big feckin' knobs on. There was a systematic campaign by the State, the sewer Press, the barking right tabloids (Mail, Express), and the 'serious' Right-wing Press (Times, Telegraph), to blacken De Menezes' name and character by insinuation, and push the line that the cops had to make a split-second decision which any normal person could get wrong. Columns were written by earnest pundits talking about how, although it was a tragedy that an innocent person was killed (but insinuating that he was an "illegal immigrant" and thus at least guilty of something), the police had to be supported in the brave job they were doing, and that the sacrifice, however tragic, of an innocent life (although he was a foreigner and a bit dark-skinned and allegedly being an illegal made him less than human in the eyes of the barking Press), was the price we had to bear in our "war against terror". The blame for the killing, said the barking and sewer Press, lay squarely at the feet of the terrorists, for putting cops under such fearful and unbearable pressure.
And instead, it turns out that the cops had no split-second decision to make. They trailed the guy easily from his flat, he didn't run away, and they had plenty of time to suss him out. Someone, though, had decided that he was a terrorist, and gave the order that he be executed, and that's exactly what happened. No warning, no chance, just 7 shots from 3 shooters at point blank range.
So now what's going to happen? Will the lackeys in the sewer Press eat humble pie? Will they grovel for blackening the guy's name, and implying that he deserved to be killed because he ran away from cops? Will they don sackcloth and ashes, and promise to treat cop and State sources more sceptically in future? Will they feck! They'll look for other ways to unconditionally support "our brave police", to blacken the character of De Menezes, and to discredit the witnesses testifying to the enquiry. When the chips are down, our brave hacks in the Press, so loud on the subject of Press freedom and the pursuit of truth, will ditch truth like a used condom and fall in behind the State, because even if the cops got it completely wrong and killed without any justification or even without making a reasonable mistake, what's done is done, and any blame falling on the police will weaken the force at a time when it needs to be at its strongest and most resolute. Ranks will be closed, mouths sealed, tales spun, lies told.
But then the Press in this country, with occasional exceptions, ceased to care for the truth some while ago, in favour of punditry, spin, sensationalism, virulent racism, and blatant bare-faced lies. We live in a 'post-modern era', where there is no truth, just presentation and interpretation, where the media determines reality.
It's not the Press that worries me, scum though most journalists and editors and proprietors are, it's the State. This is the same State - cops, spooks, army - that the NuLabor regime wants us to trust completely in the "war against terror". We don't have to worry about all the laws being passed that will allow people to be locked up for 3 months without charge, to be deported at the whim of the Home Secretary, and to be confined to indefinite house arrest. We needn't worry our pretty little heads about being be tagged, numbered, categorised, and surveilled from cradle to grave, 24/7. We needn't be anxious that anything we say that's at all critical of, say, capitalism and the ruling social order, and that calls for extra-parliamentary action (strikes, demos, that sort of old-fashioned thing) to overturn that order, might be counted as "indirect incitement to terrorism" or even "treason" and get us locked up for being big mouths.
No, we don't have to worry about all this paraphenalia of totalitarianism because this is a government with a kind heart that is only doing all this for the safety of its citizens, that can be trusted to safeguard our liberties and our "traditions". It may look totalitarian to a naive liberal, or a "friend of terrorism", but that's only if you're looking at it in a "negative light" - our Tony, our Dear Leader, wouldn't allow any harm to come to us. Big Scrotum can lock up anyone he wants for months at a time, but he'll not do that to just anyone, to you and me, he'll only do that to mad mullahs with hairy beards and staring eyes and big mouths - we don't have to worry, us reasonable secular white folk. Ok, so the occasional dark-skinned person gets mown down in cold blood, but that's not one of us, is it? We don't have to worry, because the State's not going to shoot any whiteys, is it? Not any whiteys that count, that is - a few table-leg-carrying riff-raff white trash, or "animal rights extremists", don't count as 'proper people'. You can bet your gonads that some pundits will be writing exactly that, but dressing it up in posh verbiage so that it seems so reasonable, so English, so "common sense". But even those on the barking Right must be getting uneasy, and starting to cast nervous glances at all those cops on the streets with submachine guns slung over their shoulders. Even they must start to wonder how much the State can be trusted, when a team of cops and spooks get it so, so wrong, about an ordinary guy who wasn't doing anything even remotely suspicious, and who ended up riddled with bullets on the floor of a tube train. A squalid and obscene way to die.
- he had not been wearing a heavy unseasonable overcoat, but a plain denim jacket
- he didn't vault over ticket barriers, but instead used an electronic ticket to pass through them normally
- he was never challenged by any police officer at any time, from the moment he left his flat to the time he was shot dead
- he did not run from the police, or even at all - at most he quickened his step to catch a tube
- in the train, a cop grabbed him from behind, holding his arms behind him, and another cop shot him in the head from a foot away
This is so, so different from what the cops and the goverment said at the time. They didn't get the facts wrong in the heat of the moment - everything that was said about the killing in the days and weeks after it happened was just untrue. The only truth in the story spun by the government and picked up enthusiastically by the sewer Press was that he left his flat, took a No. 2 bus, and boarded a tube where he was shot dead. Every other detail was completely, utterly wrong. This isn't simple error, this is systematic, cynical, blatant lying on the part of the cops, the government, and their eager lackeys in the Press who not only reproduced the lies but embellished them with big feckin' knobs on. There was a systematic campaign by the State, the sewer Press, the barking right tabloids (Mail, Express), and the 'serious' Right-wing Press (Times, Telegraph), to blacken De Menezes' name and character by insinuation, and push the line that the cops had to make a split-second decision which any normal person could get wrong. Columns were written by earnest pundits talking about how, although it was a tragedy that an innocent person was killed (but insinuating that he was an "illegal immigrant" and thus at least guilty of something), the police had to be supported in the brave job they were doing, and that the sacrifice, however tragic, of an innocent life (although he was a foreigner and a bit dark-skinned and allegedly being an illegal made him less than human in the eyes of the barking Press), was the price we had to bear in our "war against terror". The blame for the killing, said the barking and sewer Press, lay squarely at the feet of the terrorists, for putting cops under such fearful and unbearable pressure.
And instead, it turns out that the cops had no split-second decision to make. They trailed the guy easily from his flat, he didn't run away, and they had plenty of time to suss him out. Someone, though, had decided that he was a terrorist, and gave the order that he be executed, and that's exactly what happened. No warning, no chance, just 7 shots from 3 shooters at point blank range.
So now what's going to happen? Will the lackeys in the sewer Press eat humble pie? Will they grovel for blackening the guy's name, and implying that he deserved to be killed because he ran away from cops? Will they don sackcloth and ashes, and promise to treat cop and State sources more sceptically in future? Will they feck! They'll look for other ways to unconditionally support "our brave police", to blacken the character of De Menezes, and to discredit the witnesses testifying to the enquiry. When the chips are down, our brave hacks in the Press, so loud on the subject of Press freedom and the pursuit of truth, will ditch truth like a used condom and fall in behind the State, because even if the cops got it completely wrong and killed without any justification or even without making a reasonable mistake, what's done is done, and any blame falling on the police will weaken the force at a time when it needs to be at its strongest and most resolute. Ranks will be closed, mouths sealed, tales spun, lies told.
But then the Press in this country, with occasional exceptions, ceased to care for the truth some while ago, in favour of punditry, spin, sensationalism, virulent racism, and blatant bare-faced lies. We live in a 'post-modern era', where there is no truth, just presentation and interpretation, where the media determines reality.
It's not the Press that worries me, scum though most journalists and editors and proprietors are, it's the State. This is the same State - cops, spooks, army - that the NuLabor regime wants us to trust completely in the "war against terror". We don't have to worry about all the laws being passed that will allow people to be locked up for 3 months without charge, to be deported at the whim of the Home Secretary, and to be confined to indefinite house arrest. We needn't worry our pretty little heads about being be tagged, numbered, categorised, and surveilled from cradle to grave, 24/7. We needn't be anxious that anything we say that's at all critical of, say, capitalism and the ruling social order, and that calls for extra-parliamentary action (strikes, demos, that sort of old-fashioned thing) to overturn that order, might be counted as "indirect incitement to terrorism" or even "treason" and get us locked up for being big mouths.
No, we don't have to worry about all this paraphenalia of totalitarianism because this is a government with a kind heart that is only doing all this for the safety of its citizens, that can be trusted to safeguard our liberties and our "traditions". It may look totalitarian to a naive liberal, or a "friend of terrorism", but that's only if you're looking at it in a "negative light" - our Tony, our Dear Leader, wouldn't allow any harm to come to us. Big Scrotum can lock up anyone he wants for months at a time, but he'll not do that to just anyone, to you and me, he'll only do that to mad mullahs with hairy beards and staring eyes and big mouths - we don't have to worry, us reasonable secular white folk. Ok, so the occasional dark-skinned person gets mown down in cold blood, but that's not one of us, is it? We don't have to worry, because the State's not going to shoot any whiteys, is it? Not any whiteys that count, that is - a few table-leg-carrying riff-raff white trash, or "animal rights extremists", don't count as 'proper people'. You can bet your gonads that some pundits will be writing exactly that, but dressing it up in posh verbiage so that it seems so reasonable, so English, so "common sense". But even those on the barking Right must be getting uneasy, and starting to cast nervous glances at all those cops on the streets with submachine guns slung over their shoulders. Even they must start to wonder how much the State can be trusted, when a team of cops and spooks get it so, so wrong, about an ordinary guy who wasn't doing anything even remotely suspicious, and who ended up riddled with bullets on the floor of a tube train. A squalid and obscene way to die.
posted by Fred at 9:00 PM
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