Standard Operating Procedure and Police Accountability

During the Nuremberg Trials for Nazi War Criminals, the victorious allies brushed aside the defense protestations that orders were simply being followed with the rejoinder, that certain orders are beyond the pale.

So why is that same dynamic alive and well in police departments across the nation. People are being killed and brutally beaten by police officers across the nation and after every incident, a police spokesperson is paraded across national jumbotrons uttering Standard Operating Procedure was used by the Siegfried in Question.

If Lessons learnt from all these episodes of the human condition are not to be seen simply within the dicta, organized violence makes the rules and human aspirations, redeemed from environmental- antagonisms affirms the dialectic of accountability, then accountability should not be relative.

Police officers have their responsibilities and summary-executions and assaults upon suspects isn't a part of it.

By Apropos

A toast to Reagan Democrats

The term, Reagan Democrats, was coined in Michigan to describe the phenomenon of Blue Collar Union Workers voting against their interest.

Is it any surprise and wonder that Michigan and Detroit more than any other state and city have negative population and job growth.

Most of whats nihilistic about big business asserted itself during the Reagan years and administration. So here is a toast to those Reagan Democrats who by cutting their noses off to spite their faces can now reminisce about their swoon--- now they rant against the consequence of the seduction.

By Apropos

Bush and Ahmadinejad, Labeling Genocide

Isn't it ironic after all the hue and cry over Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's revisionist position over the holocaust, the Bush administration's position on the Armenian Genocide now mirrors the Iranians.

On 10/10/07; President Bush, Secretary of State Rice, Secretary of Defense Gates, Senior elements at the Pentagon and certain Republican opportunist came out in strident opposition to the passage by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, a resolution that the 1915 killings of Armenians in what was then the Ottoman Empire, but is now Turkey, was Genocide.

The Bush and pentagon position is based on the shameful argument that contemporary Turkey is a U.S. Ally in it's adventurism, the war in Iraq and as such Turkey should not be offended and this is the wrong time for the U.S. Congress to be declaring critical resolutions of Ally's, even if the Ally's in question have 90 year old genocidal blood on their hands.

By Apropos

One Day Short, too many too long. The Incident of the Minnesota National Guard and the 729 Days.

The Minnesota National Guard which goes by the moniker Red Bull, found itself on the short end of the real meaning of the support the troops slogan, which as the history of the Iraq War teaches has only been a diversion from the absence of material for the Republican led Bush War in Iraq.

Certain well earned benefits, for example educational benefits are being denied members of the Guard unit in question. Because some one with authority to do so, insidiously and with utter disdain for their service terminated their tour of duty One day before they would have been eligible for benefits.

The Minnesota troops would have been eligible for benefits on the 730 Th day of their duty, but orders terminating their duty named 729 Th day as official termination.

Spokespeople for the army are as usual characterizing and describing this misdeed as a simple snafu, an administrative bungle and it's being corrected. But that is not the issue. The issue is this institutionalized disdain now rife in all branches of Government, locally and nationally. Regardless of the reasons, the result and consequence as experienced is mediocrity, incompetence and an exercise in reinventing the wheel, that bespeaks colossal stupidity.

By Apropos

Where is Whoopi, Who is Whoopi Goldberg?

English: Whoopi Goldberg at the Cannes film festival. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Domestication of Whoopi Goldberg. Are you kidding me? Has anyone seen whats happening to her on "The View"? Is this what happens when you are point in a Barbara Walters model that's taking in water from the wake of the Oprah juggernaut?

I'm wondering who or what is being redeemed, rediscovered, Phoenix like rising from the ashes. Is it, "The View" from the inferno that was Rosie-Hasselbeck or is it Whoopi positioned to stir askant interest in the editorial skew of Barbara "I have hobnobbed with the puppets of history, so who is Oprah" Walters.


By Apropos