Online Journal Editors' Blog

On Wednesday federal air marshals shot and killed " threatening airline passenger" Rigoberto Alpizar. According to most accounts, and the desperate pleas of the man's wife, family and friends, Alpizar was likely mentally ill. The killing, which the Bush White House and hawkish Republicans immediately applauded, is " under investigation."

Commenting on the incident, federal air marshal spokesman Dave Adams declared: " We don't have a shoot to kill policy, we have a shoot to take care of the threat policy, and that's what they did." In the post-9/11 " war on terrorism" culture of hair-trigger fear and violence, there is no distinction. A threat is whoever and whatever panicky, testosterone-raged, trigger-happy, racist hotheads with the military hardware would rather blast away than deal with rationally. To hell with laws. Everyone is a " terrorist," or a "Universal Adversary."

There is a clear connect between the Miami shooting and the frighteningly similar execution of London 7/7 suspects, and to the militarization and police violence of post-disaster New Orleans, the indiscriminate killing of civilians in Iraq, and the rampant police brutality across the United States. The post-9/11/post-Peak Oil/ " war on terrorism" mindset, lavishly stoked by the Bush administration and its propaganda operatives, is the final poison that has irrevocably soaked to the roots of the fabric of life, all over the world.