License to Kill

[Kat Kanning]

License to Kill

by Adam Young
http://www.strike-the-root.com/52/younga/younga2.html

It was inevitable, I suppose. Just like the sea of sewage that attempted to justify the invasion of Iraq, the ?facts? surrounding the cold-blooded state murder of poor Jean Charles de Menezes have evaporated over time. Except this time, it only took days instead of months.

First we were told that he was directly involved in the aborted terror bombings the day before he was killed. As the story goes, an ?Asian-looking man? was spotted exiting a house that was under surveillance for suspected terrorists.  When confronted by undercover police (i.e., camouflaged, armed killers), he bolted and ran, jumping a turnstile and running into a train where he was tackled by these three state killers and shot five times in the head (later revised to seven, and eight times in total). All because the police claimed he had been wearing a jacket inappropriate for London weather.

Quickly all this fell away. First we were told that he wasn?t involved at all and the British public?s first encounter with the Blair regime?s new shoot-to-kill policy (shoot first, never apologize, to hell with due process, suspicion not facts are our new methods) was all just a horrible mistake, but the police announced they were still "comfortable" with a policy that produced such a mistake.

Then we learned that he wasn?t Asian but Brazilian, and was in Britain legally and hoping to make enough money to move back to Brazil and start a business of his own. So much for his dreams.

It wasn?t bad enough that his regime had gunned down an innocent man in front of dozens of witnesses. Blair and his henchmen had to dance on the man?s grave with their insincere and hollow ?statements of regret.? Whatever Tony Blair says isn?t worth reprinting, but the statements by London's police commissioner Sir Ian Blair are, as he defended their ?license to kill,? and actually suggested that more killings of innocent people by police could occur in Britain.

"This is not a Metropolitan [police] policy, this is a national policy and I think we are quite comfortable that the policy is right, but of course these are fantastically difficult times . . . there are still officers having to make those calls as we speak. Somebody else could be shot."

What is this but an open declaration that the regime of Tony Blair has established a policy that his police forces can shoot to kill just on suspicion? Can kill anyone in Britain--including British citizens--without any safeguards at all, based all on how someone may walk or what they wear somewhere at some time. What is this but an outright Soviet-style policy directed by the regime against the general public? It?s not too surprising that this was imported from Israel, another regime tutored early on by Stalinism.

Seriously, if a British police officer is suspicious of your behavior, not that you are being suspicious, merely that he or she is suspicious of you, that officer is free to kill you on sight. For national security, of course.

The low regard that Tony Blair and his regime have for human life, even the lives of his British slaves is summed up by Sir Ian Blair?s immediate predecessor, the man who imported the shoot to kill policy, John Stevens, who sent out sympathy and a shoulder not to poor Jean Charles de Menezes, but to his murderer. "My heart goes out to the officer who killed the man in Stockwell Tube Station," he wrote.

And, now of course, we learned that he didn?t run, he didn?t hop the turnstile and that he wasn?t even wearing that suspiciously large bomb concealing jacket that allegedly lead to his murder. "He used a travel card," his cousin, Vivien Figueiredo, said. "He had no bulky jacket, he was wearing a jeans jacket. But even if he was wearing a bulky jacket, that wouldn't be an excuse to kill him."

"My cousin was an honest and hard working person," said Ms. Figueiredo, who shared a apartment with him. "Although we are living in circumstances similar to a war, we should not be exterminating people unjustly."

But exterminating people unjustly is the pattern of Tony Blair?s political career of unrestrained evil.

After their excuses collapsed into the fetid swamp of lies that is the stock in trade of the Blair regime, it was announced that the Independent Police Complaints Commission has began an inquiry into the murder. Not surprisingly, this is expected to take several months, where it is undoubtedly believed that the public will have lost interest in the results. Of the three armed killers involved in the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes, one has been put on leave, and two have been moved to non-firearm duties, lest they kill again, perhaps. Vivien Figuerdo condemned police chief Ian Blair's decision to authorize the leave, saying she wanted to confront the man who killed her cousin, and that he should be put in jail.

The de Menezes family's attorney, Gareth Peirce, condemned Ian Blair's statements on the case, saying there had been a "regrettable rush to judgment" and expressed astonishment that the phrase "shoot to kill" was being used as if it was a legitimate legal term.

Welcome to Tony Blair?s New Britain.

I wonder. If I was a stout young British lad, out on the town one starry night and spotted someone acting suspiciously, perhaps say, wearing a large jacket, and walking quickly, perhaps concealing some sort of package or container of some sorts, could I act as the police did? Let?s suppose that as a patriotic Briton, marching in knee-jerk lock-(goose)step with Blair and Bush and believing every noble claim they make for their killings, and knowing that those evil Arabs have infested Britain, I was determined to be a loyal soldier on the home front war against Arab terror, and had previously purchased a black market gun. And I followed this suspicious chap, tapped him on the shoulder, spun him around, and plowed seven bullets into his face. I wonder would I be hero or villain? Protector or menace? Would I be allowed to walk the streets in anonymity, free to resume my career in due course? Or would I be arrested and charged with the cold-blooded murder of an innocent man who was expecting rain that day?

Tony Blair?s evil doctrine of ?shoot-to-kill? establishes a clear marker. The police, and by extension the regime it supports, is above the law. There is the government, and then its slaves, that can be hunted and culled at whim.

Britons now must not only fear the possibility of being killed in a terrorist attack, now they must fear that they could be going about their lives and be murdered by the police. All a result of Tony Blair?s and George W. Bush?s war crimes.

Last Friday, Jean Charles de Menezes was buried in his native city of Gonzaga. Brazilian labor leaders delivered a letter to the British consulate in Sao Paulo, saying they "repudiate the assassination of a Brazilian worker." The letter also demanded "the punishment of those responsible for the killing."

"We cannot accept state terrorism as a response to terrorism," labor leader Paulo Pereira da Silva told a crowd of about 50 gathered in front of the British consulate. "Menezes was assassinated; he was executed by the British government."

Jean Charles de Menezes, just 27 years old, is one more of the tens of thousands of victims of Tony Blair?s dishonesty and evil disregard for human life.

Big Brother had the image of a boot stamping on the human face forever. I guess Big Tony's new image for Britain is seven bullets to the back of the head.     

August 8, 2005

Adam Young would like to see Amnesty International conduct a mock trial in absentia of George W. Bush, Tony Blair and the other neocons for war crimes using the Nuremburg Principles.

Adam Young Arc

[lildog]

Where to even begin with all the faults I have with that article???

First off that shooting by the British police was a good shooting!  If they had to do it over I would hope they would do it the same again.

But let?s dissect the article and look at parts that jumped out at me?

When confronted by undercover police (i.e., camouflaged, armed killers), he bolted and ran, jumping a turnstile and running into a train where he was tackled by these three state killers and shot five times in the head (later revised to seven, and eight times in total). All because the police claimed he had been wearing a jacket inappropriate for London weather.

Regarding the jacket, it wasn?t just the police who made that comment.  Several of the witnesses who were quoted by the press stated it was unusual for such a hot day to see someone wearing a jacket.

As for the number of shots, that?s irrelevant.  It doesn?t matter if it?s 1 shot or 100 shots, in law the first bullet is always presumed to have killed the person.  And police when they shoot, shoot to kill so if multiple police officers made the call that they should shoot they SHOULD unload their weapons into the person they are shooting at.

Seriously, if a British police officer is suspicious of your behavior, not that you are being suspicious, merely that he or she is suspicious of you, that officer is free to kill you on sight. For national security, of course.

I find that statement VERY over the top.  If a cop just walked up and shot someone I think ANY government would have a hard time with that? BUT if that officer gave you orders which you refused and the officer had reason to believe you were dangerous I would fully expect them to unload their weapon on you.

And, now of course, we learned that he didn?t run, he didn?t hop the turnstile and that he wasn?t even wearing that suspiciously large bomb concealing jacket that allegedly lead to his murder. "He used a travel card," his cousin, Vivien Figueiredo, said. "He had no bulky jacket, he was wearing a jeans jacket. But even if he was wearing a bulky jacket, that wouldn't be an excuse to kill him."

This is the first I?ve heard of this and being as it?s a cousin I do consider it a bias source.

And again going back to reports from that day several witnesses reported him running ?like a scared rabbit?.  Since there had been two bombings in London already leading up to this police should have ZERO tolerance.  If they yelled for him to get down and he in turn ran I see their actions of shooting him as being fully justified.

The problem we have in this country is that we continue to put more and more laws out there the prevent our police officers from doing their job and liberals continue to use cases like this one to push more and more laws which in turn lead to the police being killed because they are hindered from being able to do their jobs.

[Russell Kanning]

First off that shooting by the British police was a good shooting!? If they had to do it over I would hope they would do it the same again.

And again going back to reports from that day several witnesses reported him running "like a scared rabbit".? Since there had been two bombings in London already leading up to this police should have ZERO tolerance.? If they yelled for him to get down and he in turn ran I see their actions of shooting him as being fully justified.

If it was a "good shooting", why is everyone on leave?

Had the guy done anything wrong yet? Was he fleeing a murder scene? Are they supposed to shoot us if we don't obey orders?

[lildog]

If it was a "good shooting", why is everyone on leave?

It isn?t unusual for an officer to be given leave after a fatal shooting pending an investigation.  Also killing someone justified or not is traumatic.  Talk to those who have served in the armed forces.  Even in kill or be killed situations it?s a very traumatic event and in the case of an officers point of view to learn that after making that split second life or death call and finding you killed an innocent person? Even if you agreed that the officer given the circumstance was 100% justified and right for his actions, that?s one heck of a thing to live with.

Had the guy done anything wrong yet? Was he fleeing a murder scene? Are they supposed to shoot us if we don't obey orders?

Look at the case of Amadou Diallo ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amadou_Diallo_(shooting_victim) ), this is very similar to what we have here.  Police looking into a crime in which people have already died (in London it was the two prior bombings and in NY city they were tracking a dangerous rapist) and they had strong reason to believe any suspects they encountered would be dangers. 

For whatever reason this guy in London was viewed as a suspect they gave an order for him to stop most likely for questioning? he didn?t.  Police believing he was dangerous did what they felt they needed to in order to prevent harm to themselves first and any innocent by standers second.  And as we?ve learned from Israel, if you have a suicide bomber you have to shoot them in the head? otherwise if you only wound them, they WILL set off the bomb killing themselves and you with them.

If you fit the view of what the police view as a danger suspect and you?re in an area viewed as being a dangerous area (which after two bombings the subway was) the police have every right to question you? if you resist their first and foremost job should be to assure their own safety (if you disagree I would love to hear why).  If they believe you to be dangerous I would fully expect them to shoot to kill the minute they feel their own lives are in danger.

[Russell Kanning]

"Police believing he was dangerous did what they felt they needed to in order to prevent harm to themselves first and any innocent by standers second. "

how rotten

[Kat Kanning]

They should make their motto public:  "We save ourselves first!"

[Pat K]

Hell why don't they just shoot everyone can't be to careful ya know and this would certanly eliminate any threat!

The innocent are shot down in blind panic and we make excusues ( some cold hearted bastards even cheer for it)? ? ? ? The terrorists have won.

[Lloyd Danforth]

Now you know why Andy didn't want to give Barney any bullets.

[Kat Kanning]

They made a mistake giving the bobbies guns.

[lildog]

The last couple posts seem to lead me to believe the police should not be armed in your view? is this a correct assumption?

If so then how exactly would a cop handle a situation when they actually were confronted with a dangerous suspect?  Should they just sit back and be cannon fodder in your minds?  Does the 2nd amendment only apply to citizens and not those actually enforcing the law as part of their job?

The police officers in London had two bombings just days apart.  They saw a suspicious person in the areas where the bombings occurred (the underground) and when they asked him to freeze he took off running.  If you were a police officer in that situation what would you have done?  Waited until a suspect was able to reach into their jacket and set off the bomb if they had one?  You have a split second to make up your mind and the wrong move could lead to your death.  The error should ALWAYS be on the safe of the cop?s life.  If they give an order to freeze and you don?t listen then they need to do whatever it takes to make you freeze while keeping themselves safe.

Remember police have families too? these are fathers, brothers, mothers best friends, etc.

One other question? did any of those of you who feel this was not a good shooting get a chance to visit NY City within the months following 9-11?  I did and I actually know people who had close friends die.  I saw the pictures in front of fire and police stations of those killed.  These were men and women who put their own lives at risk to save ours.  To even suggest that the majority of them would senselessly shoot innocent people is offensive at best.

[Lloyd Danforth]

I understand why police need guns, although it is unusual in Britian.  I think the guy with the gun was callled as back-up which, as we know, in the US would be a SWAT team with a cannon.
I also understand why they would have shot him so effectivly, so he could not detonate a device. This is if, in reality,  he had a puffy jacket and ran and did not stop when asked to.  In other words, if he met the discription of a potential bomber. I think he was within his rights not to stop, but, stupid for not doing so.
I just think there should be accountability.  If he was wearing a denim jacket and did not meet the discription of a potential bomber, someone should go to the Gaol for murder.

[KBCraig]

someone should go to the Gaol for murder.

Applause for the use of "gaol" when talking about Britain.

Kevin

[Kat Kanning]

Free Market News Network has an audio interview about this subject:

http://www.freemarketnews.com/portfolio/index.php

Click on:
LONDON POLICE SHOOTING
An innocent man was shot to death because police thought he might be a terrorist. FMNN Legal Analyst Craig McCarthy raises a concern.

[Kat Kanning]

State Violence and Limited Government

by Anthony Gregory
http://www.lewrockwell.com/gregory/gregory86.html

The American right has long dedicated itself to the promotion of limited government ? limited to its key functions of cracking skulls, caging sinners and leveling cities. Helpful to this program of state violence is the fact that most people, left, right, center and libertarian, believe that protecting people?s rights to life, liberty and property against foreign and domestic threats is the one unquestionable purpose of government. People tend to consider organized force a legitimate means to defend the innocent against violent criminals, terrorists, and the like.

It is along these lines that the most universally accepted government programs are its most explicitly coercive, and that conservatives tend to go overboard in their enthusiasm for the "legitimate" functions of "limited" government. Liberals and leftists generally favor the soft-and-cuddly side of the state. They want it to feed, clothe, nurse and instruct those in need. They look forward to a utopian future in which the state manages to care for the environment, level the economic playing field, and distribute wealth to the less fortunate. Surely, this political program taken to its extreme can lead to disaster, even mass starvation or totalitarianism. But it is not the nakedly coercive part of the state most exalted by the left. It is the free lunch, not the theft of taxation and the violence of regulation, which drives most liberals in their socialistic designs.

Conservatives, on the other hand, may very well envision a state smaller than do the liberals. But they also celebrate the state?s open violence with far greater fervor. They seek a state that has few laws, including any number that are anathema to the libertarian, and which enforces those laws mercilessly and relentlessly. The construction of prisons should commence and accelerate. The death penalty should be preserved and extended as punishment for a widening class of crimes. Even the gun laws already on the books should be enforced without prejudice. Imprisoned drug dealers and small-time thieves should be forced to suffer their unwritten punishment of submission to their bigger cellmates. In a skirmish with a citizen, the police should get the benefit of the doubt.

There arise many troubles with accepting everything that the state does in the name of protecting "its" citizenry. The state, like any protection racket, has always advertised itself as an organization concerned with defending people from injury. This has always been its main trick, and millions have died at its hands believing it. Inevitably, the list of actions that qualify as proper means of defending people from crime becomes ever longer. Drug prohibition is sold as a way to stop miscreants from becoming violent addicts. Gun control is packaged as a preemptive strike against rapists and murderers. Assaults on due process are described as pragmatic necessity in a dangerous world where the Bill of Rights cannot be a suicide pact. War ? the largest and least limited of all government programs ? is advanced as righteous self-defense.

When the most prominent government projects involve the iron fist and not the velvet glove ? most especially, at wartime ? the right will defend and glorify state authority and power over individual sovereignty and liberty in ways that make all but the most collectivist elements on the left appear Jeffersonian by comparison. Many of those who regard the state as enemy on tax day or when it hands out food stamps come to see the police and military as extensions of their own personalities.

On this sixtieth anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we hear all sorts of excuses for those acts of mass terror. The Rape of Nanking justified it. The Japanese were unwilling to surrender. The bombings saved a million American lives and even more Japanese. The specific rationalizations have all been thoroughly debunked, but what is most striking is the eagerness of some people to believe that anything at all could justify nuking two cities filled with innocent people, including countless little children. It takes a special kind of ideology, and not one at all individualistic, to defend the war crimes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and, as the case may be, to lament the epidemic of abortion in the next breath. To praise Truman for "saving lives" by murdering hundreds of thousands, and to do so at a time of solemn remembrance of those atrocities, must require a bold certainty in one?s view. Being wrong about Hiroshima is worse than being wrong about a tax cut.

Yet people, especially rightists, err on the side of state slaughter all the time. For another example, let us reflect on the recent shooting in the London subway. Police officers, in accordance with what Prime Minister Tony Blair later called a "shoot-to-kill-in-order-to-protect policy," held a wholly innocent Brazilian man down on the floor and filled his head with seven bullets. The victim?s family disputes some of the officially described details of exactly what happened beforehand. Whatever happened, it is hard to imagine why shooting the man so many times would have been proper even if he had a bomb at the time. If there were a fresh corpse, dead by your first three bullets, lying atop a bomb, would you think it best to continue shooting in its (and the bomb?s) direction? Only a conservative would defend this as standard operating procedure.

The right-wingers assume that the police version of the story is correct. They assume that the dead twenty-seven-year-old got what he deserved, probably because he didn?t do what he was told. They assume that when the police tell someone to do something, it is always best to comply, and compliance will always ensure your safety. They champion a low-tax government that has all the powers and resources necessary to straighten up society, battle evildoers, and defend the homeland against all threats everywhere, and they see social failings, evildoers and threats wherever they look. They want limited government and the total state at the same time.

Unfortunately, due to the circumstantial overlap of the libertarian and conservative movements in years and decades past, a good number of authoritarian rightists continue to mislabel themselves as "libertarians," and too many genuine libertarians occasionally adopt the conservative avenue on police and military power. Now there are those few cultural conservatives who have some deviations from libertarianism yet who reliably oppose the very worst excesses of state activity. Generally speaking, however, the difference in ideology could hardly be sharper.

Libertarians believe in the supremacy of the individual over the abstraction of the coerced collective. We believe in the radical separation of economy and state, leading to a free market grounded in private property, voluntary cooperation and exchange, all for the betterment and liberation of workers and entrepreneurs everywhere. We detest the state?s attempts to cultivate morality as much as its projects to spur equality. We distrust the government even in its conduct of criminal justice policy. We hate war as the total negation of civilization and the most destructive of all state works. Don?t we?

Consider torture, another foul policy lionized by conservatives and tolerated by all too many libertarians. A policy of torturing people who have not even received any due process rights has no place whatsoever in a decent society, however "limited" its government might be. Libertarians should oppose the detentions in Guantanamo, Afghanistan and Iraq at least as strongly as the radical left denounces them ? and at least as strongly as we denounce the radical left! Libertarians would have presumably cheered as the writ of habeas corpus became enshrined in the Magna Carta in 1215. Yet today a horrifying number of free marketers and alleged individualists have swallowed the conservative line that as long as you?re fighting terrorism you can repeal any and all ancient strictures on power.

It is fine for libertarians to debate the status of the state as either a necessary or an intolerable evil. Merely believing that a state should be confined to protecting life, liberty and property, however, is not enough to be a libertarian. These laudable ends boasted of the state cannot cancel out the evils of the means used. Indeed, this is the principal argument against the welfare statism of the left. Charity and healthcare are not ideas that libertarians oppose. Nor do we object to clean air or water, an educated populace or higher wages for workers. What we reject, for both practical and ethical reasons, is the use of aggressive force against innocents as a means of achieving these ends. In welfare statism, it is not the giving side, but the taking side, with which we have the most problem. Conservatives also advocate the coercive instrument of taxation, but tend to want the money used to fund schemes violent and objectionable in themselves ? to lock up drug users and other outcasts, to clobber and abuse prisoners, to bomb cities. The model rightist state might be smaller than the leftist ideal, but it is no less coercive. It is violent in its funding and even more so in its ends. Libertarians must reject the "limited" government of the right as readily as the nanny state of the left. The conservative attachment to state violence is no small issue.

August 9, 2005

Anthony Gregory [send him mail] is a writer and musician who lives in Berkeley, California. He is a research analyst at the Independent Institute. See his webpage for more articles and personal information.

[lildog]

I understand why police need guns, although it is unusual in Britian.  I think the guy with the gun was callled as back-up which, as we know, in the US would be a SWAT team with a cannon.
I also understand why they would have shot him so effectivly, so he could not detonate a device. This is if, in reality,  he had a puffy jacket and ran and did not stop when asked to.  In other words, if he met the discription of a potential bomber. I think he was within his rights not to stop, but, stupid for not doing so.
I just think there should be accountability.  If he was wearing a denim jacket and did not meet the discription of a potential bomber, someone should go to the Gaol for murder.

Accountability goes both ways and it all comes down to what a reasonable police officer would believe in that split instance.  And without actually being there, seeing the guys appearance (I saw a couple reports claim he had wires sticking out from his jacket, which could have been headphones or could have been wires from a bomb for instance), seeing how he actually reacted, and knowing the surrounding details such as the fact there had been two bombings in the past few days in the underground?  we can only speculate on what facts we do know and what information we do have.  And from what I?ve heard and read so far I believe most cops with reasonable judgment would have shot him and they would all have been right for doing so.

But this brings us back to the first part of what you posted? how exactly is it within someone?s right not to stop for the police?  You don?t know who the police are searching for or the situation leading up to their asking you to freeze (unless you are the suspect they are searching for).  You have to assume they are searching for someone armed and dangerous any time they ask you to freeze? if your innocent you should have nothing to worry about.  And if you put yourself in their shoes (assuming they are looking for someone armed and dangerous) it?s not unreasonable to suspect they WILL shoot you if you make quick sudden moves? it is NOT in the cops best interest to wait to see you actually pull a gun out and point it at them as by that point they will be the ones getting killed.