Tag: killing

Ferguson, MO and police militarization: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver


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“If even the Governor can’t distinguish between the good and the bad elements of the community and has decided to punish everyone equally, then that should go both ways. I know the police love their ridiculous, unneccessary military equipment. So here’s another patronising test: let’s take it all away from them. And if they can make it through a whole month without killing a single unarmed black man, then, and only then, can they get their fucking toys back!”

John Oliver

A minute of silence

Last week I got caught up in the traffic jam that followed the killing of an innocent man at Stockwell tube station. Today, I passed the same spot again. This time I stopped.

Remembering Jean Charles de Menezes one week after he was shot and killed by police at Stockwell tube station in London. What did the ubiquitous CCTV cameras record that morning?

Update: Reports are now emerging that Jean Charles de Menezes had already been restrained by an officer when he was shot in the head seven times.

Echoes of war

World Press Photo is the largest and most prestigious press photography contest in the world. Every year, the exhibition is visited by more than a million people in over 40 countries. Today I got a chance to see the Winners Gallery 2005 in Hamburg. Of all the images on display, that of Private Eric Ayon had the biggest impact on me.

“Private Eric Ayon of Echo Company of the Second Battalion, Fourth Regiment of the US Marines stares through the windshield of a Humvee ambushed at Ar Ramadi in Iraq on April 6, 2004. Eight out of the nine marines on board were killed. Ayon himself died in an ambush at the same intersection only three days later. During its tour of Iraq, Echo Company suffered the worst casualties of any US company since Vietnam.”

2nd Prize in the category General News Singles, World Press Photo 2005.
© David Robert Swanson, USA, The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Reproduced with kind permission.

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