the sovereign society offshore a-letter

Date:   7/27/2005 8:30:22 AM ( 19 y ago)

COMMENT: Shoot To Kill.

Dear A-Letter Reader:
The media dispatches from London are anguished because police shot (8
times) and killed an unarmed 27-year-old, dark skinned man who was
mistaken for a terror bomber. Police say the officer had good cause to
believe the fleeing suspect might detonate a bomb and take the lives of
others. Within the last eight days bombs in London killed nearly 60
people. Police had orders to shoot in the head suspects in order to
prevent activation of suicide bombs.

The NY Times reports: 'Britons are raising questions about their ability
to sustain an image as tolerant, open and unwilling to sacrifice civil
liberties for security.'

But stop and consider what that British bobby, pumping eight bullets
into Jean Charles de Menezes, was really doing.

Wasn't he (presumably as authorized by current UK law), acting as
instant accuser, investigator, judge, jury and executioner - all in one?
A sort of streamlined anti-terror system of justice?

If this young man really had been a bomber, would anyone have been as
disturbed? Even PM Tony Blair made this very point before Commons,
as he apologized for the police 'mistake.'

After all, dear reader, isn't this what the PATRIOT Act and the UK
anti-terror laws are all about -- suspension or repeal of traditional
due process of law in the name of the greater good of saving lives -
even if the survivors must live in diminished freedom as the price
of continued existence.

Haven't armed police become the Supreme Court interpreting the new
Constitution on the spot? And in America scores of black, ethnic and
impoverished suspects have been mistakenly shot to death by US police
in almost every state, many in senseless anti-drug raids. So what's
so new in one mistaken death in London?

Due process of law used to require notice before deprivation of life,
liberty, or property and an opportunity to be heard and defend one's
self. All these rights are explicitly guaranteed by the Constitution
and implied in British common law. Or at least they once were.

But in America today, in the name of fighting terrorists, citizens are
jailed in solitary for years without charges, denied the right to
counsel and contact with families. Defense lawyers are also jailed.

Bank accounts are confiscated on the say-so of faceless bureaucrats
without charges, without any judicial review. FBI agents issue search
warrants at will with no need to justify probable cause. Homes and
offices are searched in secret based on what police think they need to
know. Phones and computers are tapped and recorded. And all this is
done in unaccountable secrecy because this is the 'war on terror.'

The 18th century British philosopher, Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832),
advanced his theory of the panopticon, a prison designed to keep the
inmates under constant scrutiny. The imprisoned never knew who was
watching and when. This theoretically reduced bad behavior because of
the likelihood of getting caught. Orwell called this 'Big Brother.'

We are all under in the panopticon now, all or most of the time. In
banks, in airports, on the street, we are all treated as suspects, while
real terrorists go about their horrible carnage. And we are all liable
to vary degrees of official summary judgment -- perhaps not so final
and tragic as London's dead young Brazilian, but judgments all the same.

So, if the anti-terror warriors are right, Brits should feel much safer
now that police have the right and power to deal lethally with suspected
terrorists on the spot.

But somehow, they (and we) don't feel any safer. Why is that?

That's the way it looks from here.
Bob Bauman, Editor



 

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