Loving Big Brother (London Police Shooting)

The New American ^ | 07.26.05 | William Norman Grigg

[Coleus]

Loving Big Brother by William Norman Grigg July 26, 2005

The killing of Jean Charles de Meneze by London police, who wrongly suspected Meneze of being a suicide bomber, demonstrated the folly of giving police a license to kill on the basis of suspicion. Yet some neoconservatives "love" this and other Big Brother policies.

The July 22 shooting death of Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes at the hands of plainclothes London police left Fox News commentator John Gibson swooning with admiration.

"I love the way the Brits have 10 million cameras sticking up the nose of every citizen no matter where they are, except in the loo [bathroom]," exulted the host of the Fox program "The Big Story." "What is also good is the Brit police tactics that we saw at work in the subway Friday morning. The tackle and kill team is incredible, if for no other reason than their bravery. Can you imagine the job of those cops? Tackle the guy wearing a vest bomb and hope your colleague is right behind with the gun to put five bullets in the noggin before he sets off the bomb."

The problem is, the Brazilian national didn’t have a bomb, wasn’t connected in any way to the terrorists responsible for recent attacks in London, was in the country legally, and hadn’t been involved in any illegal activities of any kind. Much of this was known at the time Gibson wrote his mash note to the British cops just hours after the event. Still, he continued, one has to admire "the cojones of those Brit cops to go after him like that…. Five in the noggin is fine. Don’t complain that sounds barbaric. We’re fighting barbaric."

Gibson, like many other neo-"conservative" media figures, is a nebbishy pencil-neck whose pipe-cleaner arms would snap like dry twigs if he were forced to perform a push-up. It’s tempting to say Gibson’s essay, riddled with unconvincing tough-guy slang, represents what Dr. Thomas Fleming calls "vicarious masculinity." More serious than Gibson’s man-crush on British counter-terrorism cops is his unbuttoned embrace of totalitarian police state tactics – a type of behavior becoming very common among Bush’s conservative followers.

The lethal tactics extolled by Gibson ("five in the noggin" first, ask questions later) were taught to British counter-terrorism police by Israel’s National Police (INP), and the Israeli Security Service, Shin Bet. Notes Canadian international affairs analyst Michel Chossudovsky: "The shoot to kill policy was undertaken under the auspices of `Operation Kratos,’ named after the mythical Spartan hero. It was carried out by the London Metropolitan's elite SO19 firearms unit often referred to as the Blue Berets…. The training of the S019 marksmen was patterned on that of Israel." According to The July 23 Scottish Daily Record, S019 had been briefed "by officers who had been to Israel to meet their counterparts there and pick up tips gleaned from the experience of dealing with Hamas bombers."

Chossudovsky also points out that "Israel has also collaborated in the training of members of the FBI and the LAPD." A report in the July 15 Houston Chronicle documents that "the combat-garbed men patrolling light rail stations and bus transit centers" in Texas, individuals who "look like soldiers, but their uniforms say POLICE" have also received specialized training by Israeli counter-terrorism specialists.

In Houston, officers of the Special Operations Response Team (SORT) consists of "16 Metro police officers and two sergeants [who have] trained with `experts from Israel’ as well as from the FBI, Transportation Security Administration and several U.S. transit agencies," reported the Chronicle. The team "was formed shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks … but had not been deployed in public until the July 7 terrorist bombings of trains and a bus in London."

It’s reasonable to suspect that SORT-style teams are being prepared in other major cities across the U.S., presumably trained in the same "five in the noggin" rules of engagement that made Gibson’s heart beat ever so faster. And it’s both interesting and unsettling to wonder what other surprises of this sort will be unveiled next time a terrorist attack occurs in London, New York, or elsewhere.

Incidentally, while Israeli counter-terrorist specialists have been training local police in Great Britain and the U.S. back in the 1990s, Washington was lavishing similar attention on the "security" forces of Yasser Arafat’s regime. As The New American reported in 1997, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms disclosed that fact during a counter-terrorism seminar in Chicago.

Complicating things even further is the fact that Hamas – the terrorist group whose murderous depredations justified the "shoot-to-kill" tactics employed by the Israelis, and taught to British and (most likely) U.S. police – was essentially a creation of Israeli intelligence. "Israel and Hamas may currently be locked in deadly combat, but, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials, beginning in the late 1970s, Tel Aviv gave direct and indirect financial aid to Hamas over a period of years," reported United Press International in 2002. "Israel `aided Hamas directly -- the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO [Palestinian Liberation Organization],’ said Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies."

It’s an old story, one captured in Frederic Bastiat’s despairing observation that governments increase their powers by creating the poison and the antidote in the same laboratory. The same governments supposedly protecting us from terrorism have long cultivated many of the same terrorists and terror organizations that now threaten us, leaving the public insecure and increasingly willing to surrender personal liberty in pursuit of safety.

And abetting this cynical power grab are purported journalists like John Gibson, who rather than confronting the corrupt exercise of power lecture the public about their duty to love Big Brother.

[freepatriot32]

Libertarian ping.To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here