"We are now satisfied..."

From the people who claim to define 'civilized' society, we have an example that should be instructive to all of us.

From the Sunday, July 24, Cowtown Dispatch:

LONDON - The man gunned down Friday by police as he ran onto a London subway train had no connection to last week's terrorist attack, police said yesterday. They called the death "a tragedy."
... "We are now satisfied that he was not connected with the incidents of Thursday," police said in a statement.
... According to the official version of de Menezes' death, police had been watching his apartment block as part of their search for Thursday's would-be bombers. When the man emerged, plainclothes police followed him from Tulse Hill to the Stockwell station in south London.
... The official report simply states: "He was then followed by surveillance officers to the underground station. His clothing and behavior added to their suspicions."
A plainclothes officer shot Menezes five times in the head as he lay on the floor of the subway.

The rest of us can feel so much safer now, knowing that our upright British allies are indeed getting with the program. The special relationship that has long existed between the two English-speaking racist-imperialist-militarist world powers extends to the shooting of dark-skinned people on the subway whom police observe behaving suspiciously.

Respectable people in the better neighborhoods of London, New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, Cincinnati, Calcutta, Johannesburg, Sydney, and Hong Kong - or anywhere superior people bring their superior culture to the benighted 'others' - can rest assured that plainclothes police are out there killing those 'other' people (you know who they are) just in case they might be connected. Then after they've shot them eight times in the head while lying on the ground in the tube station, they can be satisfied that he, in fact, was not connected. (A later report corrected the first official account. They shot him eight times in the head as he lay on the ground.)

Jean Charles de Menezes was a 27-year-old Brazilian electrician who had lived in London for three years. They shot him in the head because he looked suspicious. Note to self: Watch your back.