Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Extremist ex-Met Chief John Stevens in mouth-opening disaster

Hangum Floggum | 20.11.2005 13:20 | Analysis | Anti-racism | Social Struggles | London

Ex-top Met cop Stevens opened his mouth again earlier today with disastrous results. The noises coming out of John's enormous gob coagulated, in the dank air surrounding his weatherbeaten and rapidly-ageing face, into a rabid demand that the British government should start hanging people at the earliest opportunity.

John Stevens, the same guy who told us that there were a squillion Al Qaeda terrorists hiding in London waiting to murder us in our beds, claims to have had a Pauline conversion on the issue of the death penalty.

Stevens claims that for 40 years he opposed the death penalty, but now that a police officer has been murdered in Yorkshire he supports it.

But why would this one police murder any more tragic than the dozens of others that have taken place over the last decade? If Stevens thought that the death penalty was wrong when WPC Yvonne Fletcher was murdered in 1984 and when PC Blakelock was murdered in Tottenham the following year, why does he think that it's AOK now? It's completely irrational.

It's hard to avoid the conclusion that Stevens' alleged Pauline conversion is just another poisonous lie, serving a rhetorical purpose, to follow the various other poisonous lies that have emerged from his ageing and cantankerous mouth.

That mouth has done enough damage to our country already, and it's time that Stevens learned to keep his poisonous opinions to himself.

If John Stevens isn't lying when he piously claims to have held a lifelong opposition to the death penalty, then he is clearly not mentally fit to get involved in this kind of public debate. In either instance, the media should not be giving this insidious little extremist a platform for his obscene and irrational views.

It's often said that people who have lost loved-ones to murder are the ones who should be listened to most in this kind of debate. I'm not sure that this is true, but as it happens, I lost someone I loved very much to a vicious murder not so long ago. The same people who often say that those who have lost loved ones should be listened to also seem quite keen to do the talking for us, and quite keen to assume that people like us want nothing more than to see one more human being gassed, eloctrocuted or strangled to death, or better still, killed slowly and chopped into little pieces.

Sorry, John, it just doesn't work that way. Plenty of people who've seen what death really means find your ideas on the death penalty disgusting and obscene.

So here's a life-lesson from the young to the decrepit:

Engage the BRAIN before you open your MOUTH and go saying things that are going to get yet more innocent people killed. Careless talk costs lives.

Now here's a six-word reminder, just for old-time's sake of why the death penalty is a very, very stupid idea:

Birmingham Six. Guildford Four. Winston Silcott.

Thousands of your police are liars just like you, John, and we know it. We know we can't trust them to tell the truth in court, even when someone's life is on the line. Now you may think that 10,000 dead Iraqis aren't enough. You may think that yet even innocent people getting murdered by the British government is a nice idea. But some of us aren't bedwetting sociopaths like you, even those of us who have seen loved ones murdered ourselves.

So next time you find yourself on the point of opening your mouth and pronouncing on a subject you know so little about, repeat this little six-word mantra to yourself, and everything will be OK. Birmingham Six. Guildford Four. Winston Silcott. AND RELAX....

And then once you've done that, think about your spiritual home, the State of Texas, where almost everyone who gets executed is not only poor but yes, you guessed it, BLACK. Think about the fact that the death penalty is, in practice, a nice big machine for killing ethnic minorities. Like that idea, do you, Johnny?

To everybody else, please let's work together to stop this madness. Where John Stevens goes, Tony Blair and the Tories soon follow. I can hear David Blunkett's dictaphone running right now, as he sketches out the "Big Idea" for his next all-expenses-paid keynote-speech: Time to Think The Unthinkable, David will say. Time For An Honest Debate About The Death Penalty. Shall we garotte them with cheesewire or tear out their internal organs with little hooks? Shall we hack them to death with machetes or herd them into gas chambers? And maybe David Cameron can join the fray too, with a little Tory working party on "rebranding Mediaeval justice".

John Stevens is trying to exploit the murder of an innocent woman for a disgusting piece of opportunist gameplaying. With the Blair cabal clearly intent on legalising torture, it was only a matter of time before the death penalty reared its ugly head again. These guys will not stop until they have destroyed everything that's decent about our country. It looks like the death penalty is next up...

Hangum Floggum
- Homepage: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4453848.stm

Comments

Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech