It worked so far. One set of bombings,one set of attempted bombings and a dead brazilian. Things can only get better, I suppose.Porty wrote:Excellent response xxxx. You obviously didn't take your POL name from your homework marks.I wasn't pondering his motivations, but his actions.Your point about the criminal organisation: I would understand why ANY leader would seek to protect/defend hsi own, that is part of being a leader. I would not tolerate it but in the case of Ian Blair neither would IPCC.They don't make up things eitherCrimewatch do not disclose the intimate detail of crimes a) to entrap the perpetrator and b) to prevent people claiming falsely that they "done" it.Then why did he say these things, and why were they not refuted officially and immediately?The senior police officer in the Times may or may not have been party to the facts of the pursuit. He may have based his statements on secondhand information.
As ex Cheif Inspector Keith Halliwell said on newsnight thursday(I paraphrase from memory):
"If these details (the true story) had not been leaked (from the IPCC), when would we have found out about them?"All I have discussed is the information (eventually) available to all. If that's not ok with you then just ignore me.If you can't walk us through the event, through the process, through the decision to pull the trigger, I suggest you put your pipe in it and wait til we see the findings of the inquiry. We seem to know the result: unlawful killing, let us find out why?
Don't, however, suggest that I may not express my opinion according to that information. If a full accurate knowledge of the events is necessary to contribute, then there should have been no thread at all.Personally, whatever the findings may be, I am for retaining a shoot to kill policy. That is my opinion.
.
A bomb or a fish supper?
No, because the actual poll question was "torture probable terrorists". Menezes is the perfect example of how you can mistake an innocent for a suspect.Porty wrote: Dada, stop trying to torture me with your tortous attempts at starting a torture fight. We had the poll, it was specific case, the shooting makes no difference.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but did you post the poll and immediately vote "yes" yourself?
The fact that an eywitness said that there was a gun does not mean there was a gun instead of a banana. What your example illustrates that eyewitnesses can be wrong.Porty wrote:Are you serious? Eyewitness accounts can be wholly unreliable. In this case I watched BBC and saw 4 different versions of how many shots were fired. Every witness seemed plausiblexxxx wrote: Again I repeat, how can you have an eyewitness to events that did not occur?
There is a commonly knowm experiment where a person is held up in an armed raid where the bandit uses a banana. More than 50% report the weapon as a gun. You don't know that it was the police who initially claimed he vaulted the barrier or claimed he disobeyed instructions, do you?
But you were quick to identify them as having made it all up.
My point is that the vaulting/bulky clothing never existed, noone saw them, so there are no eye witnesses, only that there might well have been people in a hallucinatory state. A quick look at the CCTV would clear this up, as for the number of bullets shot, that can easily be verified. The fact that inaccuracies were allowed to persist and made up into a case for the chaos is the problem here.
You can forgive people in a traumatised state, not people with the clear refutation in front of them.
In criminal cases, you ask 'cui bono?' who benefits from this confusion/misinformation? While this is not yet a criminal case, the question is still reasonable and I would say the police, because these individual delusions were made up into an story that made their actions understandable. As they are the primary conduit for information, they should have clarified immediately, there's no loss in discarding untruths
In other words they can witness things that were not there.xxxx wrote: The fact that an eywitness said that there was a gun does not mean there was a gun instead of a banana. What your example illustrates that eyewitnesses can be wrong.
No, your point was to thank the police for making these things up. Check out your above post.xxxx wrote:My point is that the vaulting/bulky clothing never existed, noone saw them
Whether they should have conveyed the information is quite different from identifying them as having made it up.xxxx wrote:As they are the primary conduit for information, they should have clarified immediately, there's no loss in discarding untruths
We apparently know that the victim did not vault or wear a bulky jacket. We know this because the police recorded this is what occurred. The information was leaked but neither you or I know whether it would have come to light any way, any inquiry worth its salt would have ensured that it did. Do you accept that once an Inquiry is underway it is very likely that the Police are under instruction or order not to pass comment or information publicly? I don't know whether this is the case or not but it seems like a reasonable procedure. As things developed it got to the stage that the police could not comment one way or another. Its not a cover up, its not lying, it is procedure. Reasonable or not?
comment on this subject from :US, International Clearing House
"Shoot to Kill"; Blair's first Trophy
By Mike Whitney
08/19/05 "ICH" -- -- Jean Charles de Menezes, a 27 year old Brazilian electrician, was apprehended by Scotland Yard's special Firearms Unit on July 22 in the London subway, and shot 7 times in the head at point-blank range. He becomes the first victim of Britain's new "shoot-to-kill" policy and the first trophy in Blair's war on civil liberties.
When Tony Blair boasted two weeks ago that "the rules had changed", he probably never imagined that his edict would produce such immediate and horrific results. But, let's be clear; Blair's bloody fingerprints are all over this pointless murder just as they are in the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis who have been unable to avoid British and American aggression in their own country.
At present, the blame for the incident has been shifted onto acting Police chief Sir Ian Blair, the main-player in a massive and inept cover-up of the events surrounding the shooting. Sir Ian delivered a statement shortly after the killing that has since been completely discredited. The Police Chief said:
"Whatever else they (the police) were doing, they clearly thought they were faced with a suicide bomber and they were running towards him. That is cold courage of an extraordinary sort." There was nothing "cavalier or capricious" about the way the police carried out their duties which, according to him, were "directly linked to anti-terrorist operations".
Blair insisted that his officers had no choice but to use "lethal force".
All lies.
In fact, according to eyewitness accounts, de Menezes was actually held down and shot while sitting quietly with his newspaper!
Police Chief Blair knew from the very beginning that de Menezes was not wearing a "thick, padded coat which could hide explosives", "did not run from police", "did not vault the barrier at the underground Tube," "had used his Tube Pass" to board the subway, and "had taken a seat before being grabbed by an officer". All of these fabrications were leaked to the press and never refuted by Scotland Yard for more than 3 days, until the truth began to surface.
How do we know that Blair knew the real facts of the case?
Because at least 12 members of the various police units who were present at the crime scene had to report directly to Blair.
Every detail of incident that appeared the press has been refuted and summarily disproved.
Even more bizarre, the police had confirmed that the man they were looking for was "not white", and yet, de Menezes was positively identified as white just minutes before he was shot and killed.
As one British tabloid said, "It was a massive cock-up".
What really took place in the London subway on July 22 was a "gangland-style" hit carried out by anti-terror goons masquerading as law enforcement officers. The operation was supposed to prove that the police needed the ability to use "lethal force" to ensure public safety but, instead, it only further undermined public confidence. The entire drill made Tony Blair's Israeli-trained "Firearms Unit" look like little more than shambling storm troopers.
Now, the policy of "shoot-to-kill", the cornerstone of Blair's anti-terror strategy, will have to be reviewed and hopefully, shelved.
Law enforcement should NEVER be permitted to use "deadly force" in any situation other than self defense. Their primary duty is to protect the rights of citizens, not to provide a security-apparatus for the state. The new shoot to kill policy confers absolute authority on the police, allowing them to act as judge, jury and Lord High executioner. It's a prescription for disaster as the de Menezes case proves.
The incident in the London subway points out how Blair plans to reshape the law to enhance his own power. The Prime Minister started hacking away at civil liberties even before the dust had settled over the London subway. He immediately recommended a 12 point "Anti-terror Program" that savages free speech, suspends habeas corpus and due process, and gives the state to the right deport aliens without judicial review.
The new legislation declares "open season" on minorities; allowing the police to completely disregard the traditional restraints that protect foreign visitors.
Blair has exploited the London bombings to the maximum; trying to use the violence to curtail (what Charles Krauthammer calls) Britain's "pathological openness" through "shrinkage of civil liberties".
"Pathological openness"? Now there's a euphemism that could have been minted in 1938 Nuremburg.
Tony Blair's "The rules have changed" speech was nothing but a public relations scam intended to announce the launching of martial law against minorities. His proclamation was no different than Bush's edicts about the "war on terror", which has led to the detention and abuse of hundreds of Muslims. Both are transparent schemes designed to eviscerate civil liberties and increase the power of the executive.
The unfortunate death of young Mr. de Menezes is the inevitable outcome of policies that were devised to lay the foundation for autocratic government. Britain, Australia and the United States are moving pell-mell in the direction of Israel; the apartheid, police-state that conceals its lack of democracy behind the pretense of periodic elections. It comes as no surprise that Scotland Yard's "Firearms unit" was trained by Israeli anti-terror goons. The "shoot-to-kill" policy has a long pedigree in Israel; where justice is casually meted out by war criminals at the top of the political pyramid. The shooting of innocent suspects is just the beginning if this "Israelization" process; it unavoidably leads to endless detentions, state-sanctioned torture and collective punishment; all in the name of "fighting terror".
Blair, Bush and Howard have all turned to a model of governance that justifies the absolute, unchecked authority of the state over the rights of the citizen. De Menezes is just the first casualty in this incipient struggle. He won't be the last.
Note: a "must read" column in the New York Times "When You Have to Shoot First" 7-28-05, by ex-IDF Haim Watzman. Watzman defends the right of the London police to kill de Menezes on the mere suspicion of being a terrorist. He also supports the killing of "wounded and disabled" persons who could potentially be terrorists even if they are unarmed and trying to surrender!?!
"Purity of Arms"?
According to Watzman the officer who "killed Mr. Menezes did a horrible thing. But he also did the right thing" to avoid the risk of the "gratuitous horrors" of terrorism.
It's chilling reading for those who really want to grasp where Blair and Bush plan to take the nation.
"Shoot to Kill"; Blair's first Trophy
By Mike Whitney
08/19/05 "ICH" -- -- Jean Charles de Menezes, a 27 year old Brazilian electrician, was apprehended by Scotland Yard's special Firearms Unit on July 22 in the London subway, and shot 7 times in the head at point-blank range. He becomes the first victim of Britain's new "shoot-to-kill" policy and the first trophy in Blair's war on civil liberties.
When Tony Blair boasted two weeks ago that "the rules had changed", he probably never imagined that his edict would produce such immediate and horrific results. But, let's be clear; Blair's bloody fingerprints are all over this pointless murder just as they are in the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis who have been unable to avoid British and American aggression in their own country.
At present, the blame for the incident has been shifted onto acting Police chief Sir Ian Blair, the main-player in a massive and inept cover-up of the events surrounding the shooting. Sir Ian delivered a statement shortly after the killing that has since been completely discredited. The Police Chief said:
"Whatever else they (the police) were doing, they clearly thought they were faced with a suicide bomber and they were running towards him. That is cold courage of an extraordinary sort." There was nothing "cavalier or capricious" about the way the police carried out their duties which, according to him, were "directly linked to anti-terrorist operations".
Blair insisted that his officers had no choice but to use "lethal force".
All lies.
In fact, according to eyewitness accounts, de Menezes was actually held down and shot while sitting quietly with his newspaper!
Police Chief Blair knew from the very beginning that de Menezes was not wearing a "thick, padded coat which could hide explosives", "did not run from police", "did not vault the barrier at the underground Tube," "had used his Tube Pass" to board the subway, and "had taken a seat before being grabbed by an officer". All of these fabrications were leaked to the press and never refuted by Scotland Yard for more than 3 days, until the truth began to surface.
How do we know that Blair knew the real facts of the case?
Because at least 12 members of the various police units who were present at the crime scene had to report directly to Blair.
Every detail of incident that appeared the press has been refuted and summarily disproved.
Even more bizarre, the police had confirmed that the man they were looking for was "not white", and yet, de Menezes was positively identified as white just minutes before he was shot and killed.
As one British tabloid said, "It was a massive cock-up".
What really took place in the London subway on July 22 was a "gangland-style" hit carried out by anti-terror goons masquerading as law enforcement officers. The operation was supposed to prove that the police needed the ability to use "lethal force" to ensure public safety but, instead, it only further undermined public confidence. The entire drill made Tony Blair's Israeli-trained "Firearms Unit" look like little more than shambling storm troopers.
Now, the policy of "shoot-to-kill", the cornerstone of Blair's anti-terror strategy, will have to be reviewed and hopefully, shelved.
Law enforcement should NEVER be permitted to use "deadly force" in any situation other than self defense. Their primary duty is to protect the rights of citizens, not to provide a security-apparatus for the state. The new shoot to kill policy confers absolute authority on the police, allowing them to act as judge, jury and Lord High executioner. It's a prescription for disaster as the de Menezes case proves.
The incident in the London subway points out how Blair plans to reshape the law to enhance his own power. The Prime Minister started hacking away at civil liberties even before the dust had settled over the London subway. He immediately recommended a 12 point "Anti-terror Program" that savages free speech, suspends habeas corpus and due process, and gives the state to the right deport aliens without judicial review.
The new legislation declares "open season" on minorities; allowing the police to completely disregard the traditional restraints that protect foreign visitors.
Blair has exploited the London bombings to the maximum; trying to use the violence to curtail (what Charles Krauthammer calls) Britain's "pathological openness" through "shrinkage of civil liberties".
"Pathological openness"? Now there's a euphemism that could have been minted in 1938 Nuremburg.
Tony Blair's "The rules have changed" speech was nothing but a public relations scam intended to announce the launching of martial law against minorities. His proclamation was no different than Bush's edicts about the "war on terror", which has led to the detention and abuse of hundreds of Muslims. Both are transparent schemes designed to eviscerate civil liberties and increase the power of the executive.
The unfortunate death of young Mr. de Menezes is the inevitable outcome of policies that were devised to lay the foundation for autocratic government. Britain, Australia and the United States are moving pell-mell in the direction of Israel; the apartheid, police-state that conceals its lack of democracy behind the pretense of periodic elections. It comes as no surprise that Scotland Yard's "Firearms unit" was trained by Israeli anti-terror goons. The "shoot-to-kill" policy has a long pedigree in Israel; where justice is casually meted out by war criminals at the top of the political pyramid. The shooting of innocent suspects is just the beginning if this "Israelization" process; it unavoidably leads to endless detentions, state-sanctioned torture and collective punishment; all in the name of "fighting terror".
Blair, Bush and Howard have all turned to a model of governance that justifies the absolute, unchecked authority of the state over the rights of the citizen. De Menezes is just the first casualty in this incipient struggle. He won't be the last.
Note: a "must read" column in the New York Times "When You Have to Shoot First" 7-28-05, by ex-IDF Haim Watzman. Watzman defends the right of the London police to kill de Menezes on the mere suspicion of being a terrorist. He also supports the killing of "wounded and disabled" persons who could potentially be terrorists even if they are unarmed and trying to surrender!?!
"Purity of Arms"?
According to Watzman the officer who "killed Mr. Menezes did a horrible thing. But he also did the right thing" to avoid the risk of the "gratuitous horrors" of terrorism.
It's chilling reading for those who really want to grasp where Blair and Bush plan to take the nation.
Gemini, I am issuing you with 2 POL Argument Cards, the first time I have played them with impunity.
I am afraid that large-scale cutting and pasting of enormous articles instead of telling us what *you* think tends to detract from your argument, for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, you could simply provide us with a link instead of clogging up the thread with somebody else's thought.
Secondly, whilst an initial topic post which references an article by someone else is fine, this is a discussion board where we throw thoughts at each other, not books!!
With the greatest of respect, big chunks of text aren't doing your/our side of the argument any favours, in my humble opinion.
I'm afraid I know very little about these procedures, but there was leaking aplenty, so the police weren't waiting for the inquiry to pass comment. I don't think that is reasonable. Theyshould tell the truth or say nothing.Porty wrote:xxxx wrote: The fact that an eywitness said that there was a gun does not mean there was a gun instead of a banana. What your example illustrates that eyewitnesses can be wrong.
In other words they can witness things that were not there.
No, they can only think they witness what is not there.
The problem is the use of the phrase 'eye witness', that suggests someone who can bear witness to something when all they really are is bystanders who may not be sure what they saw.
Well, according to the police source quoted, the police were pursuing a man dressed in suspiciously bulky clothingNo, your point was to thank the police for making these things up. Check out your above post.xxxx wrote:My point is that the vaulting/bulky clothing never existed, noone saw them
"He had vaulted over the ticket barrier and was wearing a dark bulky jacket that could disguise a bomb"
The police were following de menenzes, who was wearing a denim jacket. How would they identify de menenzes to intercept him if they were following a man in a dark bulky jacket. Either that or they followed a man in a dark bulky jacket who vaulted the turnstile but then decided to shoot de menezes who wasn't wearing a bulky jacket or vaulted a turnstile.
If these things didn't happen, then someone made them up. One of the first sources of information was the unnamed senior police officer, so the genesis of these details, however spurious, lies with the police.
Are there any other parties that could comment on the operation from start to finish as he or she did? Could any bystander see any more than a fragment of the events, let alone fashion a plausible if rather flawed account of the events?
I can't argue with that, as I can make more than one point.Whether they should have conveyed the information is quite different from identifying them as having made it up.xxxx wrote:As they are the primary conduit for information, they should have clarified immediately, there's no loss in discarding untruths
Yes we know now, but they kept it to themselves when there was no reason to, except of course to portray the events in a light favourable to them.We apparently know that the victim did not vault or wear a bulky jacket. We know this because the police recorded this is what occurred.The information was leaked but neither you or I know whether it would have come to light any way, any inquiry worth its salt would have ensured that it did. Do you accept that once an Inquiry is underway it is very likely that the Police are under instruction or order not to pass comment or information publicly? I don't know whether this is the case or not but it seems like a reasonable procedure. As things developed it got to the stage that the police could not comment one way or another. Its not a cover up, its not lying, it is procedure. Reasonable or not?
Agreed but its to late. We just have to wait on the inquiry. I obviously dont know what actually happened (apart from the actual killing) but my instinct (insert hypotehtical evidence card here) tells me that it is not the way Dada depicted it, earlier in the thread,xxxx wrote: Theyshould tell the truth or say nothing.
Last edited by Porty on 21 Aug 2005, 13:00, edited 1 time in total.
If the actual poll question had been "torture likely innocent Brazilian electricians" I doubt it would have secured the result that it did. Even if it was ""torture likely innocent Brazilian electricians who forge their passport and visa and should really not have been here in the first place" I don't believe any would have voted yes.Dadaist wrote: No, because the actual poll question was "torture probable terrorists". Menezes is the perfect example of how you can mistake an innocent for a suspect.
Dadaist wrote: Correct me if I'm wrong, but did you post the poll and immediately vote "yes" yourself?
I guess we'll just have to wait and see. I'm unsure if there are no CCTV discs at all because they were removed due to earlier incidents at Stockwell, or if they do exist, who has them.Porty wrote:Agreed but its to late. We just have to wait on the inquiry. I obviously dont know what actually happened (apart from the actual killing) but my instinct (insert hypotehtical evidence card here) tells me that it is not the way Dada depicted it, earlier in the thread,xxxx wrote: Theyshould tell the truth or say nothing.
The way I depicted it was based on the ITV report, which was based on the leaked report from the IPCC - and the one which seems to have been picked up on the most is the denim jacket, because it is in a photograph.
Yes, i saw the photograph,def not padded. There were letters distributed around the carriage, A,B, C etc I wondered if they indicated where the bullets went?
I did not think that you made the trail of events up, it just doesn't seem plausible to me that they suddenly shoot the guy when all he did was behave like a normal passenger.Why on earth would they do that?
I did not think that you made the trail of events up, it just doesn't seem plausible to me that they suddenly shoot the guy when all he did was behave like a normal passenger.Why on earth would they do that?
How does that work with the people who thought the banana was a gun and witnessed same? Were they eye witnesses, bystanders or eye witnesses who are wrong?xxxx wrote:No, they can only think they witness what is not there.
The problem is the use of the phrase 'eye witness', that suggests someone who can bear witness to something when all they really are is bystanders who may not be sure what they saw.
The people in the experiment presumably had the benefit of debriefing or video footage that clarified matters after the event. However, had it been a real incident, eye witness accounts would have been conflicting. Would the Police/Judge/Courts simply identify the gun witnesses as bystanders who were not sure what they saw?
Getting back to the tube incident, allow me to throw in a googlie. What if a member or members of the public had shouted out (mistakenly) "he has a bomb". I'm not scratching around for excuses or justification but it is possible. Where would the blame lie? Would you expect the member (s) of the public to come on telly and say "well,erm I may have shouted out he has a bomb". There is something amiss about this incident and i hope we find out the truth from the inquiry.
Last edited by Porty on 21 Aug 2005, 19:15, edited 2 times in total.
As fair as I know, because the incorrect identification had long been made by that point and they'd been following him from when he came out of his house.Porty wrote:Yes, i saw the photograph,def not padded. There were letters distributed around the carriage, A,B, C etc I wondered if they indicated where the bullets went?
I did not think that you made the trail of events up, it just doesn't seem plausible to me that they suddenly shoot the guy when all he did was behave like a normal passenger.Why on earth would they do that?
He lived in a block of flats that was already under surveillance. I guess you could say that his cards were marked at the point that they mis-identified him as a suspect.
AgainPorty wrote:How does that work with the people who thought the banana was a gun and witnessed same? Were they eye witnesses, bystanders or eye witnesses who are wrong?xxxx wrote:No, they can only think they witness what is not there.
The problem is the use of the phrase 'eye witness', that suggests someone who can bear witness to something when all they really are is bystanders who may not be sure what they saw.
Definition of eye witness:
A person who has seen someone or something and can bear witness to the fact
If there is no gun, the is no fact of the presence of a gun. A person cannot bear witness to a gun that is not there, so by definition thay are not an eyewitness. Bystanders seems as good a word as any.
Dragging an interesting psychological phenomenom is rather beside the point.
As I said before, the only eyewitnesses that could support the whole story leaked by the senior police officer were policemen themselves. They were there at all points.Their actions: shooting a man who did not vault or wear a bulky jacket are totally at odds with the story leaked. So either there was a prolonged mass hallucination on their part or the story was made up.
Logically, they would have toThe people in the experiment presumably had the benefit of debriefing or video footage that clarified matters after the event. However, had it been a real incident, eye witness accounts would have been conflicting. Would the Police/Judge/Courts simply identify the gun witnesses as bystanders who were not sure what they saw?
All these 'what if' questions are too great a challenge for me, it seems hard enough to determine what actually did happen.Getting back to the tube incident, allow me to throw in a googlie. What if a member or members of the public had shouted out (mistakenly) "he has a bomb". I'm not scratching around for excuses or justification but it is possible. Where would the blame lie? Would you expect the member (s) of the public to come on telly and say "well,erm I may have shouted out he has a bomb". There is something amiss about this incident and i hope we find out the truth from the inquiry.
I don't, I'm struggling to make you see the distinction between an event that has occured and one that hasn't. You can only bear witness to the fact of the latterPorty wrote:
Do think you are struggling with the eye witness distinction tho'.
This just in from the scurrilous anti police rag 'The Sunday Telegraph' 21 August:
'His insistence that the Met is a spin-free zone puzzled many journalists. In the 48 hours after the fatal shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, many of them received a series of telephone calls from senior police officers. They gave detailed, off-the-record briefings about the events leading up to the shooting of the 27-year-old Brazilian.
....
He did not, as Sir Ian had claimed, refuse to obey a challenge - he was not, in fact, challenged at all by police.
....
That discrepancy could easily be put down to the confusion in the aftermath of the shooting. But in the context of the number of inaccurate briefings given to journalists by senior officers from Scotland Yard, it is much harder to accept that explanation.
...
A day later, the police realised that they had wrongly targeted and killed an innocent man: it was then that journalists say they started to receive calls from officers at the Met "spinning us lines which would distract attention from the fact that the cops had shot an innocent man".
...
Stories containing those claims, appropriately credited to "police sources", duly appeared in The Sun and several other papers. But none of those claims was true.
You'd better read the rest here
or dada might send his man friend round with one of those argument cards
Don't worry about the argument cards. Gemini has several hundred other offences that had to be taken into consideration.
Got to admit that the case against the Police spinning or trying to spin the event appears to be growing both in quantity and quality.
I know what you are getting at with the eye witness thing but the distinction is semantic. An eye witness is an eye witness, they can and have witnessed things that did not occur, they are wrong but they witness in good faith. All that need have happened here is some witnesses and they don't have to have witnessed everything, made a statement, the press pick up on it and it gains credibility. For example, I seem to recall a very convncing witness who was on the carriage saying that George Galloway's best mate (he didn't say that as Jean didn't know George at that time)ran on the train then tripped and was pounced upon by two officers. That now apperas to be incorrect. You surely cannot claim that the carriage guy was not an eye witness.
Got to admit that the case against the Police spinning or trying to spin the event appears to be growing both in quantity and quality.
I know what you are getting at with the eye witness thing but the distinction is semantic. An eye witness is an eye witness, they can and have witnessed things that did not occur, they are wrong but they witness in good faith. All that need have happened here is some witnesses and they don't have to have witnessed everything, made a statement, the press pick up on it and it gains credibility. For example, I seem to recall a very convncing witness who was on the carriage saying that George Galloway's best mate (he didn't say that as Jean didn't know George at that time)ran on the train then tripped and was pounced upon by two officers. That now apperas to be incorrect. You surely cannot claim that the carriage guy was not an eye witness.
I had a look back at the beginning of the thread and Wangi had actually posted a link to the guy on the train and as Wangi and the BBC put it "eye witness account"
Here is an extract, if you cannot be bothered to read the whole of it please take my word; it contains from one witness reference to an unusually bulky jacket (for the weather). And another witness who claimed to have seen a bomb belt with wires!!!!
None of those witnesses are identified as police personnel. These statements were made almost immediately after the incident and way before the police said anything on the matter. Do you still say the Police made it all up?
I saw Tube man shot - eyewitness
Eyewitness report
A passenger has told how he saw armed police officers shoot a man dead on a Tube train at Stockwell.
Mark Whitby said: "I was sitting on the train... I heard a load of noise, people saying, 'Get out, get down'.
"I saw an Asian guy. He ran on to the train, he was hotly pursued by three plain clothes officers, one of them was wielding a black handgun.
"He half tripped... they pushed him to the floor and basically unloaded five shots into him," he told BBC News 24.
"As [the suspect] got onto the train I looked at his face, he looked sort of left and right, but he basically looked like a cornered rabbit, a cornered fox.
"He looked absolutely petrified and then he sort of tripped, but they were hotly pursuing him, [they] couldn't have been any more than two or three feet behind him at this time and he half tripped and was half pushed to the floor and the policeman nearest to me had the black automatic pistol in his left hand.
"He held it down to the guy and unloaded five shots into him.
Heavy coat
"He [the suspect] had a baseball cap on and quite a sort of thickish coat - it was a coat you'd wear in winter, sort of like a padded jacket.
I was distraught, totally distraught. It was no less than five yards away from where I was sitting
Mark Whitby
Eyewitness
Send us your accounts
"He might have had something concealed under there, I don't know. But it looked sort of out of place with the sort of weather we've been having, the sort of hot humid weather.
"He was largely built, he was quite a chubby sort of guy.
"I didn't see any guns or anything like that - I didn't see him carrying anything. I didn't even see a bag to be quite honest.
"I got into the ticket hall. I was approached by a policeman and London Underground staff asking me if I needed counselling.
"I was just basically saying I've just seen a man shot dead. I've seen a man shot dead. I was distraught, totally distraught. It was no less than five yards away from where I was sitting. I actually saw it with my own eyes."
'Popping sounds'
Another passenger on the train, Georgia Law, told BBC Radio 5 Live she heard the shots.
There was a real wave of panic on my train, people were banging on the doors
Jason Dines
Tube passenger
"I heard all these popping sounds, it sounded like gunshots, but quite quiet ones.
"I could hear shouting, 'get down' and people going 'run, run'. I thought there was just someone shooting randomly.
"So I lay on the floor of the carriage and then I decided to get up and have a look out.
" could see someone lying on the floor and police all standing around.
"But it was all quite panicky so I then ran up the platform and out of the Tube."
Commuter Anthony Larkin, who was also on the train at Stockwell station, told 5 Live he saw police chasing a man.
"I saw these police officers in uniform and out of uniform shouting 'get down, get down', and I saw this guy who appeared to have a bomb belt and wires coming out and people were panicking and I heard two shots being fired."
Here is an extract, if you cannot be bothered to read the whole of it please take my word; it contains from one witness reference to an unusually bulky jacket (for the weather). And another witness who claimed to have seen a bomb belt with wires!!!!
None of those witnesses are identified as police personnel. These statements were made almost immediately after the incident and way before the police said anything on the matter. Do you still say the Police made it all up?
I saw Tube man shot - eyewitness
Eyewitness report
A passenger has told how he saw armed police officers shoot a man dead on a Tube train at Stockwell.
Mark Whitby said: "I was sitting on the train... I heard a load of noise, people saying, 'Get out, get down'.
"I saw an Asian guy. He ran on to the train, he was hotly pursued by three plain clothes officers, one of them was wielding a black handgun.
"He half tripped... they pushed him to the floor and basically unloaded five shots into him," he told BBC News 24.
"As [the suspect] got onto the train I looked at his face, he looked sort of left and right, but he basically looked like a cornered rabbit, a cornered fox.
"He looked absolutely petrified and then he sort of tripped, but they were hotly pursuing him, [they] couldn't have been any more than two or three feet behind him at this time and he half tripped and was half pushed to the floor and the policeman nearest to me had the black automatic pistol in his left hand.
"He held it down to the guy and unloaded five shots into him.
Heavy coat
"He [the suspect] had a baseball cap on and quite a sort of thickish coat - it was a coat you'd wear in winter, sort of like a padded jacket.
I was distraught, totally distraught. It was no less than five yards away from where I was sitting
Mark Whitby
Eyewitness
Send us your accounts
"He might have had something concealed under there, I don't know. But it looked sort of out of place with the sort of weather we've been having, the sort of hot humid weather.
"He was largely built, he was quite a chubby sort of guy.
"I didn't see any guns or anything like that - I didn't see him carrying anything. I didn't even see a bag to be quite honest.
"I got into the ticket hall. I was approached by a policeman and London Underground staff asking me if I needed counselling.
"I was just basically saying I've just seen a man shot dead. I've seen a man shot dead. I was distraught, totally distraught. It was no less than five yards away from where I was sitting. I actually saw it with my own eyes."
'Popping sounds'
Another passenger on the train, Georgia Law, told BBC Radio 5 Live she heard the shots.
There was a real wave of panic on my train, people were banging on the doors
Jason Dines
Tube passenger
"I heard all these popping sounds, it sounded like gunshots, but quite quiet ones.
"I could hear shouting, 'get down' and people going 'run, run'. I thought there was just someone shooting randomly.
"So I lay on the floor of the carriage and then I decided to get up and have a look out.
" could see someone lying on the floor and police all standing around.
"But it was all quite panicky so I then ran up the platform and out of the Tube."
Commuter Anthony Larkin, who was also on the train at Stockwell station, told 5 Live he saw police chasing a man.
"I saw these police officers in uniform and out of uniform shouting 'get down, get down', and I saw this guy who appeared to have a bomb belt and wires coming out and people were panicking and I heard two shots being fired."
Apart from synonyms, all words are semantically distinct.Porty wrote:
I know what you are getting at with the eye witness thing but the distinction is semantic.
You mean my use of the word and yours, I use the dictionary definition, which requires a present fact to define an eyewitness, you include people who think they see things as well
I wouldn't question their good faith, (though we seem to have to rely on this elusive quality more and more these days). Despite the efforts of our film and computer games industries, I don't think anyone can be prepared for the horrific strangeness of the reality of such an event. It would inevitably be disorientating. Most of us, will happily miss out on such that experience and few could predict the effects it would have on us.An eye witness is an eye witness, they can and have witnessed things that did not occur, they are wrong but they witness in good faith.
As above,I surely can by the dictionary defintion:All that need have happened here is some witnesses and they don't have to have witnessed everything, made a statement, the press pick up on it and it gains credibility. For example, I seem to recall a very convncing witness who was on the carriage saying that George Galloway's best mate (he didn't say that as Jean didn't know George at that time)ran on the train then tripped and was pounced upon by two officers. That now apperas to be incorrect. You surely cannot claim that the carriage guy was not an eye witness.
A person who has seen someone or something and can bear witness to the fact
If there is no fact ,there is no eywitness
Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to change your mind, I'm just supporting what I was asked to defend ,as I should, and as best I can
It all reminds me of this:
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make what words mean do many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master--that's all."
Alice was much too puzzled to say anything; so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. "They've a temper, some of them--particularly verbs: they're the proudest--adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs--however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That's what I say!"
"Would you tell me, please," said Alice, "what that means?"
"Now you talk like a reasonable child," said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. "I meant by 'impenetrability' that we've had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you'd mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don't mean to stop here all the rest of your life."
You go with Humpty, a man for our troubled times, and I'll stick with the lexicographers.
Make it Humpty, Wangi and the BBC who share my definition and you can have the lexicographers. 
Given the above testaments by bystanders/eye witnesses, particulalry in relation to the padded jacket, do you still feel justified in your claim that the "police had the presence of mind to make all these things up"?xxxx wrote:It makes you glow with pride that, in such difficult circumstances, the police had the presence of mind to make all these things up.Dadaist wrote:
didn't run away from the police, didn't ignore their instructions, didn't vault the barrier, wasn't wearing a padded jacket, didn't trip and fall over, and officers weren't "forced" to fire the shots.
Yes if by all you mean the story they so diligently leaked.Porty wrote: Do you still say the Police made it all up?
In the 48 hours after the fatal shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, many of them received a series of telephone calls from senior police officers. They gave detailed, off-the-record briefings about the events leading up to the shooting of the 27-year-old Brazilian.
The fact that they cherry picked statements from bystanders which they must have known to be untrue
eg The bulky jacket, the wires,
(as the man they followed and shot had neither of these) and incorporated these into the 'official story' they gave to the journalists mentioned above, makes their initial account, one which they declined to clarify, a work of fiction.
Police follow man in denim jacket, who uses travelcard ,reads a free newspaper and shoot him without warning.
Bystanders say they saw wires, bulky jacket, vaulted turnstile etc.
Police then say to press off the record and repeatedly: they followed man in bulky jacket, who vaulted turnstile, ignored warinings and shot him.
Remember the police were there, they did it, they knew what the person did, what he was wearing etc, and then fabricated a story. The fact that they ommitted anything that might question their actions and repeated things such as the bulky jacket etc which could not be true says they were lying.
If they repeat an innocent error by a bystander and they know it to be untrue, which they must, as they were following de mezenes, not a man in a bulky jacket who vaults barriers, then they are making things up, and not innocently either
Have to call time now, will look in later
Last edited by xxxx on 22 Aug 2005, 14:22, edited 1 time in total.