>Exactly. Let's keep the amount of ink - or rather kilobytes transmitted
>over the wires - and rhetorical animus, proportional to the sense of threat
>- one guy accidentally killed by a (presumably) poorly trained cop, vs. 57
>people intentionally slaughtered by an organization superbly trained to kill
>as many people as possible and ready to kill more.
I think I need to point something out here.
The Brazilian fellow was deliberately killed. It is implausible to maintain that his death was an accident, given that witnesses have from the start testified (and the police have admitted) that the victim was shot seven or eight times in the head at point blank range by a cop who had him pinned to the ground at the time.
Perhaps Wojtek has missed these news reports? That is the only charitable explanation for his describing this death as an "accident" in these circumstances. To call it an "accident" in light of the facts is an outrage against the English language. It was, at the very least, an execution, that is to say it was a murder. Possibly a state-sponsored terrorist act, if we put the worst possible interpretation on it and assume that the motives for the execution was an official instruction to execute a terrorist in the act of attempting to set a bomb. To my mind that seems to be the most plausible explanation, otherwise why did the police let someone they say they suspected of carrying a bomb get so close to an underground train station?
The now discredited misinformation fed to the media after the execution (about the victim running away after being challenged and wearing a heavy coat and belt) is consistent with the state-sponsored terrorist act theory too. It would make sense that, if the police were intent on making an example out of a suspected would-be bomber, that they would have a carefully prepared media plan. The thing is to immediately justify the necessity given that there would be many witnesses to the murder. Who would have cared about minor details if the fellow had really been intending to set off a bomb? This would explain the bizarre dscrepancy of letting him get into a train station and before that onto and off a bus, even though they thought he might have a bomb and even though it would have been easier to take him down than out on the street. They didn't want it to be easier, they needed the justification that danger was imminent, to justify the execution.
The fact that they got the wrong man entirely is down to mere incompetence, for sure. But that doesn't make it an accident. The facts indicate that they deliberately executed a suspect who had already been apprehended and disabled. A suspect. Against whom there was no evidence. The British police have form for executing enemies of the state as an example to others (terrorism in short), lots of form, recent form, so it should not come as a surprise.
Anyone who excuses such an execution as a "mistake" is completely out of touch with reality. The only mistake is that they got the wrong person entirely. But such mistakes are a given. If executions without trial are accepted, then execution of innocent people without trial must be accepted as part of the bargain. But the executions are still deliberate, even if the victim is a mistake.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas