Music Monday ~ Loosening Up!

It's good to see police officers "letting their hair down"- when they have any that is!


Here Are The 10 Best Police Officer Lip Sync Videos

Cops across America are challenging each other to sing and dance to pop songs.........


My own two favourites:




"Shake It Off"






"I Should've Been a Cowboy"

Bernie Sanders and BLM

After last weekend's Netroots Nation intervention of Black Lives Matter activists during speeches by Democratic presidential candidates Martin O'Malley and Bernie Sanders, there was, it seems, a veritable onslaught of anti-Bernie stuff in the Twitter-verse, and ongoing argument, still, at some political websites.

A 20 minute video of the full segment of Senator Sanders' contribution at Netroots Nation is at the end of this post.

I, as no regular reader will be surprised to read, agreed with Bernie Sanders' responses. Some could have been made in better tone, and with a few additional points more relative to what the BLM people were shouting about. A little less discourtesy on their part and a little more tolerance on his part wouldn't have gone amiss. Still, he made the point that the issues he was speaking about: income inequality, inequality of opportunity, low wages etc. were at the root of much that is causing the wrongs felt by the African American population now.

Senator Sanders was, to my mind, taking what medical people might describe as an holistic approach - looking at the whole body of the USA, not a single symptom. In medicine this can be good or not so good, depending on circumstance. Treating a specific symptom is good, but ignoring underlying, and very serious conditions which are creating the situation is unwise and sometimes even fatal.

Police violence on African Americans is a very obvious wrong. Senator Sanders knows that it is a wrong powered by deeper factors, and unless those are dealt with there'll be no justice.

BLM activists made their point, I guess. It's odd, though, that they felt the need to make it in the place and at the time they did. I wonder from whom that idea originated? Sanders and O'Malley did show up to speak at Netroots Nation. Would it not have been more reasonable to direct some of the BLM's shoutings towards Hillary and the Republicans for not even bothering to attend, or maybe go to campaign speeches by Republicans such as Scott Walker, and try for a disruption there?

Throughout his career Bernie Sanders has been avidly pro-civil rights, that is a starting point from which to decide his attitudes. He is calling for controls on the police, the dismantling of the prison systems, full employment, free education....yet BLM, and countless on-line commenters choose to go after this candidate, attempting to discredit him?!

I feel certain that Senator Sanders' mis-step on Sunday, if it can be called that, as well as any hint of unpreparedness for hecklers, will be put right. He is a shrewd and experienced politician who has campaigned for mayoral and senate positions more than once during his long life. Yet he has never campaigned for the presidency of the USA. That has to be something entirely different, and something for which there is no possible preparation other than actually "doing it". It's a good thing Bernie began campaigning early, he has time to polish his game, and so have his advisers.




UPDATE: Sanders Calls Violent Arrest of Sandra Bland 'Totally Outrageous Police Behavior'....Recently challenged to address issues of racial injustice and police brutality more forcefully, Sanders does just that.

FERGUSON

Events in Ferguson, Missouri this week have been reported everywhere at length, discussed on radio, TV and online. I stayed well away from commenting, not because I don't care, but because I decided that, unless one had been present during the struggle between Michael Brown and police officer Darren Wilson in August, it'd be impossible to come to any reliable conclusion. I do think, though, that whatever happened, and however it happened, there was no need for so many shots, at least one of them fatal, to have been fired at an unarmed man by a police officer.

Police forces in the USA these days, encouraged by ownership of hand-me-down military equipment, seem to have concluded that they are, in fact, just one degree distant from the military - the armed forces - and will act accordingly.

For anyone who is still puzzled about how events unfolded on that street in Ferguson in August, there were a couple of really good, even-handed articles by Ezra Klein at Vox this week.

Darren Wilson's Story

Dorian Johnson' Story (Johnson was Brown's friend, and present during the events).

The concept of a grand jury was puzzling to me. In Britain grand juries have not been part of the system for many decades. (See Wikipedia's page on Grand Jury). While I understand the need for some kind of preliminary hearing in certain cases, to my mind setting such hearings before a jury of laymen doesn't seem like a good thing. On the other hand, as pointed out by husband during my queries, if lawyers or other official individuals only were involved, too much opportunity for collusion, corruption etc. would arise. Hmmm - well, that says a lot about the integrity of said lawyers and officials!

These lines from a piece by Walter Brasch, Perceptions of Reality — And a Failure to Indict, at Smirking Chimp website yesterday are significant -

..........because prosecutors are the ones who control grand juries. They are the ones who present evidence, call witnesses, and create the narrative the grand jury follows. There are no defense attorneys. There are no cross-examinations.

In one city in America, a prosecutor chose his witnesses and how to question them.

In one city in America, a 12-member grand jury—each with his or her own backgrounds and perceptions—listened to what was presented to them. They struggled to determine the facts, to try to reach a just verdict. And, after the prosecutor presented what he chose to present, that grand jury decided not to indict a police officer who shot and killed a suspect.

A maxim of the way the law is practiced, not how it is written, is that if they wanted to, prosecutors could get grand juries to indict a ham sandwich.

A maxim of life is that truth will eventually emerge—no matter how long it takes.

In my opinion a full trial, with a trial jury, would have been the only just way to go in this very sad case. But, as a relative outsider still, what do I know?

Unintended Consequences....Breeding Resistant Varieties?

 (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

I'm musing again on the issue raised in Tuesday's post: militarization of US police forces, and on part of a comment beneath this related piece at Common Dreams.


Part of that comment, made by Garrett Connelly, which widens the topic somewhat but poses an interesting theory:

.....Totalitarian dictatorship always fails for the same reason, they cut themselves off from distributed human intelligence and become too stupid to exist. Imagine a few months of killing on a military scale, by militarized patriot civilian police warriors; they are happily maintaining homeland security in, for example, Saint Louis, when word comes through that their families were collateral damage back home. How many years before repression and brainwashing breed resistant varieties?

Response from "Plank"

Yes, there is some credence to the theory of an act causing the opposite to be created. Hegelianism in which and idea evokes its opposite to form a new complete self sustaining loop.

I looked up Hegelianism but didn't find in my brief, limited search that it relates to an act causing the opposite to be created. Perhaps it went over my head - not hard to do!

When considering cyclic movement, there has to be a point when extremes meet, resulting in opposite actions, ideas...whatever taking over. Mike mentioned this effect (the Ouroboros) in a comment on Monday's post on current movie The Giver.

Wikipedia

"The Ouroboros or Uroboros is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail.

 The Ouroboros often symbolizes self-reflexivity or cyclicality, especially in the sense of something constantly re-creating itself, the eternal return, and other things such as the phoenix which operate in cycles that begin anew as soon as they end. It can also represent the idea of primordial unity related to something existing in or persisting from the beginning with such force or qualities it cannot be extinguished. While first emerging in Ancient Egypt, the Ouroboros has been important in religious and mythological symbolism, but has also been frequently used in alchemical illustrations, where it symbolizes the circular nature of the alchemist's opus. It is also often associated with Gnosticism, and Hermeticism."

Another good post on Ouroboros, at Crystalinks, is HERE.

Any thoughts on acts causing opposites to be created, Hegelianism, Ouroboros, unravellings when extremes meet, and so on ?