Friday, June 23, 2006
Mike Marqusee on Forest Gate shooting. posted by Richard Seymour
A very good piece at Counterpunch by Mike Marqusee on the shooting that caused the Metropolitan's brightest and best to apologise for "any hurt that may have been caused". The effect of a bullet on fleshy tissues and the central nervous system is apparently shrouded in some mystery for the police. Which may explain why, according to the BBC, the police squad who blew Menezes brains all over the tube were - so they claim - still trying to wake him up until the ambulance crew arrived.One aspect of it that stands out is the supposedly reputable source of the 'intelligence' that led to this raid:
It has emerged that this massive and aggressive police operation was based on an uncorroborated tip-off from a single informant, a young man serving a prison sentence with a purported IQ of 69.
The average alsation has an IQ of 60, while collies are said to be even smarter. The source of this information would struggle to beat Lassie in a game of fetch the stick. (Yes, I know, IQ is an almost meaningless test, and this is a rather cheap insult - but I am insultingly cheap). But of course the more telling point follows:
According to reports in the press, the government insisted the raid go ahead despite warnings from Scotland Yard that there were “serious reservations about the credibility” of the source.
Indeed, the defensive reaction of the political establishment, from Blair to Livingstone, suggests that the raid was in fact the result of an attempt by the government to create panic. What is more, the repeated attacks - sometimes sotto voce, sometimes explicit - on Muslims by the government suggests that it is deeply worried about the way in which that community has become more confident, particularly following the extraordinary scale of the antiwar movement, and the political consequences of that which include Respect's success. The Observer, a key Blairite organ, is quoted: "Better a bungled raid than another terrorist outrage". Better shoot a Muslim than even take the slenderest chance that they might be looking at us funny, in other words.
For all the immediate flurry of excessive protestations that the shooting was not like Menezes at all, the same justificatory logic is invoked, with the same preposterous cruelty and feigned innocence at the implicit racism.