It’s remarkable how the fact this guy turned out to be completely innocent has provided a kind of alibi for the even worse justifications which were originally provided. Now it’s just a plain and simple fuck up - they killed the wrong guy, hell, he wasn’t even moslem. “Are you sure he wasn’t Egyptian?” asked the lady at the coffee shop just then. Damn that Moorish Invasion!
The initial explanation was that he was a suspect, and therefore, he should have his “brain destroyed completely” as Mr. Plod put it, since that was the only way to stop a suicide bomber according to the Israeli officials who trained these cops. So that’s ok: suspect falls to the ground cowering in fear - shoot him five times in the head. But now, as much as I fear for my life being also a Brazilian and liable to run if I am late for a train, this original explanation seems to me even worse than the one offered later, which was that they merely assassinated the wrong person. If I go out to kill someone, I can’t really plead it was an accident, since I really meant to kill someone else, who deserved dying…
This revision in light of the poor Mineiro’s total irrelevance to the terror crusade has effectively constructed the issue as one of Police versus Imminent Danger - you know, reach for your wallet whilst darkly coloured, and die: but reasonably so… That’s bad enough, but the original point, however, was that they had set out to kill some other guy in a deliberate operation, and the only reason the media are complaining is that they failed. So Death Squads is precisely right.
But I think that this is probably too far, though people have been famously wrong about such matters before. In fairness, most of the people interviewed on TV and radio seemed horrified about this thing on principle. Maybe the English could pull this kind of stuff off in Ireland, but I will be surprised if this doesn’t cause a serious backlash.
Given comments like those from ‘Red Ken’, I’m not sure this will be considered as having gone too far - more along the lines of ‘a tragic but understandable mistake’. I do like how the reports keep slipping in remarks about Mineiro having visited/stayed “in a house under surveillance.” What could this possibly mean, other than a de facto and rather vague form of a subversive association law such as they have in Italy, with the added but all-important extra of the sanction of extra-judicial force + ‘racial profiling’.
Sorry, I was being cryptic. Brazil trivia: A Mineiro is a native of Minas Gerais, a state renouned for having railways, many pigs and an obsession with cheeses. The guy’s name was Jean.
It’s remarkable how the fact this guy turned out to be completely innocent has provided a kind of alibi for the even worse justifications which were originally provided. Now it’s just a plain and simple fuck up - they killed the wrong guy, hell, he wasn’t even moslem. “Are you sure he wasn’t Egyptian?” asked the lady at the coffee shop just then. Damn that Moorish Invasion!
The initial explanation was that he was a suspect, and therefore, he should have his “brain destroyed completely” as Mr. Plod put it, since that was the only way to stop a suicide bomber according to the Israeli officials who trained these cops. So that’s ok: suspect falls to the ground cowering in fear - shoot him five times in the head. But now, as much as I fear for my life being also a Brazilian and liable to run if I am late for a train, this original explanation seems to me even worse than the one offered later, which was that they merely assassinated the wrong person. If I go out to kill someone, I can’t really plead it was an accident, since I really meant to kill someone else, who deserved dying…
This revision in light of the poor Mineiro’s total irrelevance to the terror crusade has effectively constructed the issue as one of Police versus Imminent Danger - you know, reach for your wallet whilst darkly coloured, and die: but reasonably so… That’s bad enough, but the original point, however, was that they had set out to kill some other guy in a deliberate operation, and the only reason the media are complaining is that they failed. So Death Squads is precisely right.
But I think that this is probably too far, though people have been famously wrong about such matters before. In fairness, most of the people interviewed on TV and radio seemed horrified about this thing on principle. Maybe the English could pull this kind of stuff off in Ireland, but I will be surprised if this doesn’t cause a serious backlash.
T.C.O. [July 24, 2005 @ 8:17 pm]
Given comments like those from ‘Red Ken’, I’m not sure this will be considered as having gone too far - more along the lines of ‘a tragic but understandable mistake’. I do like how the reports keep slipping in remarks about Mineiro having visited/stayed “in a house under surveillance.” What could this possibly mean, other than a de facto and rather vague form of a subversive association law such as they have in Italy, with the added but all-important extra of the sanction of extra-judicial force + ‘racial profiling’.
s0metim3s [July 25, 2005 @ 1:45 am]
Sorry, I was being cryptic. Brazil trivia: A Mineiro is a native of Minas Gerais, a state renouned for having railways, many pigs and an obsession with cheeses. The guy’s name was Jean.
T.C.O. [July 25, 2005 @ 10:07 am]
Well, if you’re going to go around not speaking English, you really are asking for it.
s0metim3s [July 25, 2005 @ 3:17 pm]