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charlatan: well yes. of course. but had that happened, everything would have transpired otherwise.
i am not pretending that i have some procedure in mind that would prevent such things from occurring, if it was followed--some checklist of features that would justify shooting someone at point blank range 5 times. the shooting itself seemed to me a very very complex situation unfolding very quickly in which very quick decisions were made with tragic and politically complex outcomes. and i cannot pretend that i know what kind of decision i would have made had i been in mr. menezes's place. i do not think anyone nows how they would have reacted. but getting killed is a pretty stiff penalty for making what apparently was the wrong choice in an instant---plainclothes cops shouting that they were cops while waving a gun around---i dont know. do you?
what i was focussing on is the willingness of folk from the states (referring to the posts above exclusively) to rationalize such an act in favor of the cops--who are in a crappy situation, btw---and i focussed on this because of the extraordinary distance that seperates these responses from everything i have been reading in the british press as to reactions, official and otherwise. i explain the divergence to myself with reference to the american ideological climate.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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