Running away from armed policemen ordering you to stop moving, in a London subway in the wake of the bombings, is a recipe for suicide. Was he dressed suspiiously or acting untoward? Were the authorities justified in shooting an unarmed man at point-blank range? I can't really say if I wouldn't have done differently, had I been in their shoes. It looks like the suspect forced them onto the edge of a knife, giving them precious little time to analyze him or the situation.
At the same time, the notion of an officer of the peace gunning down an apparently unarmed citizen at point-blank range, right in front of who knows how many bystanders, is not something I'm completely comfortable with. That type of governmental behavior is something I do not want to see on a regular basis. It's bad enough with these people locked up in Gitmo and elsewhere, not allowed to have counsel or allowed the rights of the Geneva convention. It's bad enough that an officer of the peace can demand my identification even if I am not even suspected of having committed a crime; bad enough that the reason I have to show ID at the airport is classified.
I don't feel safe. I feel coldly, thoroughly, and secretly surveilled by an increasingly draconian institution whose aims become more ominously ideological and less democratic with each passing year of the Bush administration. When I read about Rove allegedly leaking the name of a CIA operative to undermine an operation that fundmentally called the Iraq war into question; when I read about the Rove leak and the media repeatedly does not ask about the motivations behind the leak , I feel like I'm the member of an endangered species banging on a soundproofed window, on the other side of which is a country falling asleep to the lullaby of a nearly delusional crusader surrounded by craven pimps of influence and connection.
At the same time, the notion of an officer of the peace gunning down an apparently unarmed citizen at point-blank range, right in front of who knows how many bystanders, is not something I'm completely comfortable with. That type of governmental behavior is something I do not want to see on a regular basis. It's bad enough with these people locked up in Gitmo and elsewhere, not allowed to have counsel or allowed the rights of the Geneva convention. It's bad enough that an officer of the peace can demand my identification even if I am not even suspected of having committed a crime; bad enough that the reason I have to show ID at the airport is classified.
I don't feel safe. I feel coldly, thoroughly, and secretly surveilled by an increasingly draconian institution whose aims become more ominously ideological and less democratic with each passing year of the Bush administration. When I read about Rove allegedly leaking the name of a CIA operative to undermine an operation that fundmentally called the Iraq war into question; when I read about the Rove leak and the media repeatedly does not ask about the motivations behind the leak , I feel like I'm the member of an endangered species banging on a soundproofed window, on the other side of which is a country falling asleep to the lullaby of a nearly delusional crusader surrounded by craven pimps of influence and connection.
p.s. kinda like me
I think the pedulum swings. Honestly, I do(sometimes).
In '00 a few months before the Republican Conevention came to town here in Philadelphia a homeless man was shot to death by police on a subway platofrm, his crime was shouting 'shoot me, shoot me' and swinging a plastic chair over his head, threatning police and comutters with it. So I have a hard time getting too worked up over a terror suspect shoot to death on the tube a week after the bombings.