Seen the pictures of Jean, the Brazilian guy the cops killed, on the front of the Guardian or the Independent or on the BBC site? Standing with his mom and dad, laughing at a barbecue, smiling into the camera?
Y'know what? My picture could be there. Your picture could be there. Your mom or dad or son or daughter or wife or husband - any of 'em could occupy that space right now.
When the London pigs shot this man, they didn't attack just one unarmed, innocent Brazilian. They attacked all of us. Oh: In the name of "protecting" us, of course. The same way Bush and Blair "protected" us from Iraq and Afghanistan by dropping bombs on wedding parties, torturing innocent detainees, and wiping out 100,000 or so innocent people whose pictures also could occupy this spot.
When you make apologies for this kind of human garbage, you show the world whose side you're on.
I haven't written a diary in a damn long time, and probably won't for another damn long time to come. I'm tired of outrage, I'm tired period. But nothing, and I mean nothing, has pissed me off in recent times anywhere near as much as the sickening, mewling apologetics issuing from some so-called progressives on this site and elsewhere who've knocked themselves out to dismiss this
murder as a necessary bit of collateral damage. Hey, kissers of cops' asses: This diary's for you.
Look at that photo, dammit. That guy's dead. Could've been me, could've been you. Could be anyone. And you know what? As a result of YOUR disgusting endorsement of his murder, it will be someone else, and damn soon. YOU give the cops permission to do what they do when this shit happens. You provide them with just enough cover to keep it up. Not just in America, not just in England - everywhere. The state-sponsored killers rely on you to make their continued employment possible.
"The rules are different now," you say. "We have to do things like this to protect the public. WHAT IF he'd had a bomb..."
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've read it all here, and I've been seething since I started. What lovely ways you people find to cover up your own chickenshit inner natures. You're scared of the "terrorists", so you'll let a little human rights abuse slide here, a little slide there so that you can feel a little better about the world you live in. After all, it's just a little fascism...and if it makes everyone feel a little safer, well, it's worth it. Isn't it? Isn't it?
Think about it for a fucking second, if you're capable of thinking: This guy leaves his house; some plainclothes cops - just guys, from all appearances - start following him. What do you suppose he felt like? Over the course of a three-mile bus ride, his panic level rises: He's got people following him and he doesn't know why. So, when he gets to the tube station, he does what anybody would have done: He tries to get away from the sons of bitches. And he gets killed for doing what any sane person would do. He gets killed for acting within his rights.
Let's get this straight: The fucking cops who killed this guy had NO fucking business even looking crosswise at him, let alone following him, let alone questioning him, let alone chasing him, let alone shooting him. The first second the pigs followed him onto the bus, his human rights were violated. And the minute they get away with it, all of our rights are diminished. Mine. Yours. All of us become potential targets, because we didn't wear the right clothes, or weren't of the right race, or because we fit the profile, or were in the wrong place at the wrong time, or because we panicked, or because we didn't hear the orders, or for any number of reasons.
Who makes that possible? YOU do.
In my mind, the apologists here and elsewhere are accomplices to this man's death, and to the death of the next person killed as well. And in my mind, you're despicable.