Insomnia ([info]insomnia) wrote,
@ 2005-08-14 08:21:00
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But... but... but... he was still suspicious, right?!
Update on the Brazilian, Jean Charles de Menezes, who was killed by London police while boarding the London Underground.

It turns out that he wasn't wearing a heavy jacket afterall. Just a simple denim one.
... and that he wasn't wearing an electrician's belt with wires dangling from it.
... and he didn't vault the barrier. He used his card to get into the station.
... and he wasn't confronted by police. He walked to the platform, unchallenged.
... and he'd already entered the station by the time the officers arrived.
... and he was shot in the head seven times, not just five.
... and that neither the station nor the train had a working video surveilance camera recording the incident.

But the good news is that the people of London are safe, right?!

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[info]pure_agnostic
2005-08-14 09:44 pm UTC (link)
My favorite quote from the article:
[Blair] insists the shoot-to-kill policy is the 'least worst' way of tackling suicide bombers and refuses to rule out other innocent people being shot in similar circumstances. 'I am not certain the tactic we have is the right tactic, but it is the best we have found so far.'

So, shooting innocent people is the "least worst" way!? I guess that explains US and British policy in Iraq!

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[info]sleepyaardvark
2005-08-16 05:18 pm UTC (link)
And what exactly would you do in a position where you had about two or three seconds to decide whether someone was about to blow himself up and kill a few dozen innocent people? Its easy to sit back and play armchair quarterback, but probably so so easy if you're a law enforcement agent actually in that situation.

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[info]pure_agnostic
2005-08-17 12:25 am UTC (link)
Except that de Menezes was not doing anything suspicious except walking onto a subway train. If that is considered suspicious behavior, then what about all the other thousands of people who commute to work on the London Underground?

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[info]sleepyaardvark
2005-08-17 02:41 pm UTC (link)
What we have here is a lot of conflicting facts and stories, which is something that naturally happens in a crisis situation. It takes time to sort everything out. I find it hard to believe that the London police simply picked some random guy and shot him for no reason. We're finding out that some of the details differ from what were first reported but we don't yet know why that's the case. Details being different from what was originally reported, again, is something that happens in crisis situations, especially ones that are highly emotional and confusing in the beginning stages.

There is NOT enough information at this point to draw any conclusions. All we have is a Guardian report that says that details were different than what was in another earlier report (as provided by the police). We have conflicting information; its nothing that we can draw a conclusion from at this point.o reflectively blame the police is not doing anything to address the core issues here.

I'm not saying the police were right; I'm simply recognizing that we're short of facts and based on the recognition, making a decision to reserve judgement at this point.

But I'm asking you this again, as a hypothetical. Assume for the sake of argument that the original details were more or less correct. So imagine this scenario: you're a police officer, you're working in the Tube the day after an attempted bombing that would have killed many people had the terrorists not made one simple mistake. You see a man who could possibly be of South Asian origin, which you know is the profile of the people who carried out the two recent attackts that have occurred. You of course can't be certain he's South Asian; you have a few seconds to make the determination. The man is wearing a suspiciously heavy jacket on a hot day and you know that bombers often carry explosives under jackets. The man runs into a station. You shout at him that you're the police and order him to halt. He doesn't. He jumps a turnstile and continues to run toward a train. Again, you have a matter of seconds to make a decision that might very well determine whether a few dozen people live or die.

Put yourself in this scenario and don't give a knee jerk reflective response. Consider the situation and tell me what you would do and why. Yes, its hypothetical but these kinds of thought experiments do a lot toward exploring the real substance of complex issues beyond knee-jerk political responses.

So what would you do?

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[info]walkingshark
2005-08-17 03:55 pm UTC (link)
Naturally, the basic assumptions in your scenario all cast the best possible light on the situation.

Unfortunately, your fictional scenario doesn't reflect the reality, so any answer to it would be pointless.

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[info]sleepyaardvark
2005-08-17 03:57 pm UTC (link)
Assuming that the police are always wrong doesn't reflect reality either. The reality is there are bad people out there who think nothing of killing innocent civilians. Opposing everything and not offering any alternative solutions isn't going to solve that problem or make it go away. The American Left is based on opposition to everything and negativity and it cost us the last election; you'd think people would learn.

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[info]walkingshark
2005-08-17 08:15 pm UTC (link)
Now you put "words in my mouth," so to speak. I never assumed the police are always wrong. Even in my personal dealings with the police, I always remain friendly, passive, and compliant, because I know that the rule of law will prevail, even if the police are giving me trouble then, and in the long term if they are abusing their power they will be the ones who suffer for it, not me.

In this case, however, we see an instant of police abuse where that is not given a chance to come into play, because what they have done is permanent (murder), and the rule of law is not coming into play because government officials at the highest levels are covering for them.

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[info]sleepyaardvark
2005-08-18 03:03 pm UTC (link)
Now you put "words in my mouth," so to speak. I never assumed the police are always wrong.

Actually I'm not. I never used the word "you" in that statement; it was a general statement about the approach I've seen many people take toward the issue. I never made the claim that you said the police were always wrong. So congrats--you've proven me wrong on a claim I never made in the first place.

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[info]walkingshark
2005-08-17 08:15 pm UTC (link)
Your statement that the "left is based on opposition to everything," merely displays your blatant, blind ignorance on the subject. The American left believes in many things. The difference between the left and the right is that the left tries to come up with complex solutions for complex problems, solutions which will solve problems at their root. The right comes up with simple, easy to digest band-aids for the symptoms while ignoring the disease.

An analogy: the left builds roads, a difficult, expensive, complicated task that, in the long term, benefits everyone and has more reward than cost. The right patches roads until they fall apart, giving the jobs to patch the roads to companies owned by their friends and operated by illegal aliens. Then when the road falls apart they blame the left and tell the country they are going to have to drive on dirt roads, all the while flying over the roads in their private jets.

Of course, the right will never, ever accept this. If they even read this far, they have already formulated in their mind why my statements are wrong, or have found some handle to quibble with in my analogy, or come up with a way to extend my analogy and then prove their extension of the analogy incorrect. The sad thing is, because they won't even consider my views, they don't belong in a democracy,
a government built on the concept of a free marketplace of ideas, each of which stands or falls on its merit. Instead, they have an ideology, which they adhere to as their religion. They worship the cult of the self, and their salvation is based on the accumulation of quantified power (money).

The right in this country has shown their true colors, now that they control the government they have turned a budget surplus into a deficit, passed huge pork barrel bills, and never once cut spending. They have managed to enrich the already rich at the expense of the poor. Their response to that statement always boils down to "Well, its their fault for being poor." I used to be on the right, and a Republican, but the behavior of the Republican leadership was so disgusting, corrupt, and pathetic that I decided to detach, and re-examine all of my own dearly held beliefs. Once I began to study the issues, I found out that all of my basic assumptions, handed to me on a platter by the spin machine on the right, were outright lies. I learned that the left, while often just as full of confused, simplistic, sometimes outright socialist people, was actually open to argument and dissent, and that a person who had their own ideas instead of the ones prepackaged at the GOP talking point factory was able to find people who would stand in solidarity with them.

When the right heres something they disagree with these days, they cry "traitor, heretic, hater of America!" When the left hears things they disagree with, they respond with, "I do not agree with a word you say, but I defend to the death your right to say it."

Listen, some time. Really listen. A majority of the right wing's pundits spend most of their time telling America what other people believe. You call the left the party of opposition? Listen to your right wing Heroes as they tell America that Cindy Sheehan is ________, or that Hillary Clinton believes __________. Any time these guys do talk about their beliefs, it is always in the form of simple, three or four word phrases straight out of the daily talking points. Culture of life. No Child Left Behind. Clean Skies Initiative. Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Note that, of course, all of those right wing phrases are lies, and all of them describe actions or policies that are the exact polar opposites of what the titles espouse.

The problem with Americans is not that they are on the right, its that they are on the left and they don't realize it. They've been duped by the spin machine.

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[info]sleepyaardvark
2005-08-18 03:10 pm UTC (link)
You call the left the party of opposition? Listen to your right wing Heroes as they tell America that Cindy Sheehan is ________, or that Hillary Clinton believes __________.

I was actually thinking you had a good well-thought out post until I got to this. MY right wing heroes? You assume that I'm a right-winger. You do the same thing that the Right does in saying "America-love it or leave it.--you make the assumption that just because I offer criticism of an entity's approach that I'm somehow not a part of it or am somehow disloyal. In fact, I am a very solid liberal on the vast majority of issues. With regard to theh London shooting issue where this discussion started off, I never even gave a position. I simply said, "We don't have all the facts; lets wait and see what comes out." Now all of a sudden out of that statement, you assume that I have right-wing heroes? What's so wrong with saying "lets get all the facts before jumping to conclusions"? The fact that the Right-wingers DON'T do this is the whole problem with them and its what got us into this Iraq mess.

I still think you have a good post and I agree with most of it, but you are drawing conclusives (ie, that I'm a conservative) that aren't in any way supported by anything I've said.

Is it too much to ask to not degenerate into the same sort of behavior that our opposition uses?

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[info]sleepyaardvark
2005-08-18 03:30 pm UTC (link)
Your statement that the "left is based on opposition to everything," merely displays your blatant, blind ignorance on the subject.

I assume you mean my blatant blind ignorance that comes from being a liberal, working with liberals on a wide variety of liberal causes, extensive reading on political topics and extensive conversations with a wide variety of liberals?

The sad thing is, because they won't even consider my views, they don't belong in a democracy,

Some people wouldn't consider your views and others would and would simply disagree with them. I could be wrong, but my impression of you so far is that you're unable to recognize the difference.

Instead, they have an ideology, which they adhere to as their religion. They worship the cult of the self, and their salvation is based on the accumulation of quantified power (money).

Agreed. But when you jump down the throat of even another liberal for simply dissenting from established opinion (in my case saying lets wait till we have all the facts instead of issuing knee-jerk condemnations of the police), you're quickly falling into the same behavior patterns as our opposition.

I used to be on the right, and a Republican, but the behavior of the Republican leadership was so disgusting, corrupt, and pathetic that I decided to detach, and re-examine all of my own dearly held beliefs. Once I began to study the issues, I found out that all of my basic assumptions, handed to me on a platter by the spin machine on the right, were outright lies.

I went through a similar process in my own life.

However, your description of their "true colors" is merely serving to prove my point. Everything you are saying is opposition to conservatives. Are you capable of stating in POSITIVE terms without reference to opposing others, precisely what it is that you believe that a liberal stands for? It is this kind of presentation that is turning off the American people and causing the Left to get its collective ass kicked. I agree with a point you bring up later in your post; that most Americans are liberal but they don't stop to really think about it and so they don't realize it. But a huge part of the blame goes squarely on us: the Left is sorely lacking about selling its ideas or even realizing the necessity of selling them. We've got to stand FOR something, and not simply be about "we hate george bush", "we hate the rich", "we hate corporations" or whatever the latest demon happens to be.

When the right heres something they disagree with these days, they cry "traitor, heretic, hater of America!" When the left hears things they disagree with, they respond with, "I do not agree with a word you say, but I defend to the death your right to say it."

Both of these approaches leave much to be desired. Of course, I'd rather deal with someone who tolerates dissent rather than the "love it or leave it" crowd. But both approaches take the easy way out. The real question is whether a person can have a civil (and yet still candid) exchange of views with people who think vastly different than they do and not degenerate into personal arguments and possibly even find some areas of consensus. People on both the Left and Right need to do better at this--though I will say that most liberals have a better head start because they're not as locked in to seeing the world in terms of black and white.

Note that, of course, all of those right wing phrases are lies, and all of them describe actions or policies that are the exact polar opposites of what the titles espouse.

Yes, they're screwing with the language and fucking with our heads. The question is figuring out what to do about it.

The problem with Americans is not that they are on the right, its that they are on the left and they don't realize it. They've been duped by the spin machine.

Agreed.

But whining about this fact accomplishes nothing. We need to figure out what to do about it.

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[info]de_nova
2005-08-17 09:14 pm UTC (link)
Well, he was being brown... and that's pretty suspicious in our day and age of 'a terrorist behind every Bush'.

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[info]sleepyaardvark
2005-08-18 03:13 pm UTC (link)
We don't KNOW why the police shot. The investigation isn't over yet, meaning we don't have all the facts. I'd suggest waiting until we do have all the facts to draw sweeping conclusions such as the London police being racist. All we have is conflicting information about a confusing situation--that does not support drawing a conclusion.

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[info]walkingshark
2005-08-15 02:24 am UTC (link)
Why do I have the sneaking feeling if Tony Blair was shot in the head 7 times, he wouldn't hold that opinion?

:-)

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[info]sleepyaardvark
2005-08-17 02:44 pm UTC (link)
I refer you to this comment.

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