Terrorists or Tourists? Either way it's just a failed war driven by racist hate
(See link to online video at end of column): On July 22, 2005, passengers on a London underground public train panicked and began running off a train fearing that they were in the middle of a terrorist attack.
They all had good reason to run. The day before, terrorists tried and failed to detonate bombs on the London transit system, and 15 days earlier, four suicide bombers killed 52 innocent bus and subway passengers in a terrorist attack.
All of the passengers on the transit train who were running in fear were White, except for one passenger. Jean Charles de Menezes was a Brazilian electrician who was on holiday in the British capitol.
As the passengers and de Menezes ran from the train, de Menezes was immediately suspected by police as being a terrorist. He was immediately shot and killed.
You know. Brazilians with their dark, non-White skin, look like Middle Easterners and we all know that Middle Easterners are terrorists.
After it was clear de Menezes was not a terrorist or involved in any way in the incident, everyone came to the defense of the police.
The British government. The American government. All of the rightwing demagogues who pass themselves off as journalists like Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Michele Malkin and Ann Coulter, to name only the scummy cream of the crop.
Oh, they wailed in rightwing indignation, the British police had no choice. Innocent people are going to be killed in any war – that’s not what they said when Osama Bin Laden declared “war” on the United States and killed nearly 3,000 innocent American civilians on Sept. 11, 2001.
They said de Menezes deserved it because he was acting and dressing suspiciously, and refused police orders to stop.
After the killing, British police did report that de Menezes acted “suspiciously,” never defining what “suspicious” in that case meant.
They said Menezes was wearing a bulky coat. That would lead any reasonable person to believe he might be involved in the string of terrorist attacks. After all, it was in the middle of July. Hot. Humid. No one would wear a bulky coat unless he was a terrorist.
British anti-Terrorism police said they called on de Menezes to stop but he never did. So they shot him, just in case.
Well, it took two years, but this week the British Independent Police Complaints Commission released its report on the killing.
Oh. And everything that the police said about de Menezes was, according to the report, an outright lie.
He wasn’t acting suspiciously at all.
Neither was de Menezes wearing a “heavy coat” that made him Suspect Number One in the Transit Terrorist Caper of July 22, 2005.
Finally, de Menezes was never given a chance to heed the warnings of British Police because there were no warnings issued. The terror-freaked out British Police are gun happy, kind of like the lynch mobs that roamed the American West in search of any stranger or, usually, a Black person, to avenge some sacrosanct fanatic fears.
Better to kill the Black Man than to take a chance he might manage to rape a White Woman. Better to kill the Middle Eastern dude than take the chance he was involved in a terror attack.
And, if no evidence exists that the now murdered suspect was a terrorist, then make it up. Tell the media in high profile press conferences covered around the world that de Menezes acted and dressed like a terrorist, all suspicious like.
And after you shoot him seven times in the head in cold blood and at close range, tell the world that he refused to stop.
Terrorist. Tourist. What’s the difference? A major terror plot was foiled. If de Menezes was killed, it was his fault, they all said.
I heard dozens of people claim on TV interviews, in radio talkshow discussions and in newspaper reports, “What do you expect? He acted like a terrorist. Dressed like a terrorist. Refused to stop like a terrorist.”
And now I say to them, you should all be ashamed of yourselves.
You should all hang your heads in shame because an innocent man was not only murdered, but his killing was covered up by British Police.
You are all complicit and are as guilty as Bin Laden.
Shame on all of you because the lies would not have been lies had it not been for the fact that you are all willing to just accept them without even a thought that maybe, just maybe, the police were, once again, not telling the truth.
President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney lied right to all of our faces when they said al-Qaeda was in Iraq in 2003 and we had to invade. They lied when they said Saddam Hussein was planning a nuclear strike on America. And they lied when they were exposed as liars, saying, well, we were just doing this to protect the innocent people of Iraq from Saddam Hussein’s brutality.
No one is looking for the truth in the War on Terrorism. They are only looking for excuses to protect their lies and their own war crimes and their own felony killings of innocent civilians whose only real crime is that they have darker skin than the police and are not White.
Jean Charles de Menezes was an innocent man. But he is also a victim of a cold blooded murder.
And worse, he is the victim of the growing racism that is driving people in the West to separate terrorists from tourists by skin color.
Shame on all of you, because in the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes, you are all terrorists, too.
(Ray Hanania is an award winning Palestinian American columnist, author and standup comedian. He can be reached at www.hanania.com.)
Here’s the link to the Commission report published by the British Telegraph Newspaper.
Join the Conversation
Shame!
Let’s not forget that the United States helped Saddam Hussein into power and supported him, financially and strategically, when he was committing his worst atrocites.
There is a growing grass roots movement questioning the 9/11 official investigation. http://www.911truth.org
There are people questioning the official investigaton of the 7/7 London bombings http://www.julyseventh.co.uk
I don’t doubt that Osama Bin Laden was behidn the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack and I give no credence to the theories that it was somehow staged, caused by “Jews” or “Israelis” operating a painting kiosk, or even by Bush to create a reason to take over the world. All of the 9/11 theories have been debunked solidly
Take the word of someone who is extremely critical of how the US handles Middle East issues
Ray Hanania
http://www.hanania.com
The problem is that, apart from the tragic and unjustified shooting, the whole operation was a disaster. Charles and his house were under surveillance. How come the police did not realise that he was Brazilian, not Muslim, had never been to a mosque, he did drink and like many Brazilian had a good time in bars and clubs?
Didn’t they listen to his phone calls? Didn’t they follow him to work and to after-work?
Then on that tragic day, they let him out of his house, down on the street then onto the tube, and finally they shot him dead.
This is total incompetence! All done with taxpayers money, while the real terrorists were still on the loose.
Ray Hannania,
Are you aware that the FBI’s webpage on Osama Ben Laden makes no mention of 9/11? See http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorists/terbinladen.htm Why wouldn’t an attack which killed 3,000 people be specifically mentioned?
A journalist named Ed Haas’ contacted the FBI and asked them about it, he writes
See complete article at
http://www.teamliberty.net/id267.html
You are simply wrong about all the 9/11 theories having been solidly debunked.
I actually discuss one of those supposed debunkings about world trade center tower 7 at my blog here http://gettingtruth.blogspot.com/2007/05/who-is-debunking-who-why-did-world.html
and
here http://gettingtruth.blogspot.com/2007/06/when-did-they-have-chance-to-put.html