They're Cowards

Reports and some video have been coming in from Mariupol, where apparently more than 100 have been killed and many hundreds injured when so-called "troops" opened fire on a large crowd, estimated at ten thousand or more, gathered to celebrate Victory Day.

The only videos I've seen so far are various angles of the scene shown in the previous post, in Mariupol.

This one shows the situation leading up to the shootings in the video (it gets pretty gory, so be warned):



While the view is clouded by something smeared on the camera lens, you can see the scene well enough to note that as the camera person gets closer to the intersection, a soldier is seen crouching down at the corner of a building while a young man in civilian clothes taunts him. Across the street there is another soldier who is shouting. APCs rattle by, and the man in civilian clothes goes to the middle of the street as they do, arms out, hurling taunts. Somebody shoots him and he crumbles to the street. Others go to his aid, and he's out of view of the camera for some time. I can't tell who shot him but I suspect it was the first soldier he was taunting.

The crowd is angry and shouting. Soldiers are trying to get across the street. There is what sounds like a lot of gunfire. In another video of the same scene,  a man in a suit who is photographing the situation near the kiosk is shot in the leg. Another man is apparently shot near the kiosk. A fourth man is seen lying on the street beside the cafe tent, and a fifth is seen lying in a pool of blood in front of the tent entrance. He's been shot through the head.

Still the crowd taunts the soldiers, who by this time have run away. They're complete cowards.

Which has something to do with why members of the APD feel they must shoot so many suspects.

They're terrified of the people. Frightened to death, and they believe that if they don't shoot first, they will be killed.

This is the mindset they're conditioned to believe, and they do.

But it is the mindset of cowards, terrified of their own shadows, and if they didn't have a gun, most of them would shit their pants.

On the other hand, the people in the streets taunting and insulting the cowardly shooters are truly brave, and much the same scene plays out time and again at the sites of police shootings.

The same conditioning, the same mindset, the same cowardice on the part of the armed, the same bravery on the part of the unarmed.