Do you think that the US will ever reach to point where we can do what the British government did today in issuing an apology for the wrongful deaths of innocent citizens including political activists who were killed by out of control police or military acting as police?
This is what the new Prime Minister did today
LONDON — Prime Minister David Cameron offered an extraordinary apology on Tuesday for the 1972 killings of 14 unarmed demonstrators by British soldiers in Northern Ireland, saying that a long-awaited judicial inquiry had left no doubt that the "Bloody Sunday" shootings were "both unjustified and unjustifiable."
http://www.nytimes.com/...
see a sample of the British newspaper coverage:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
We had similar events in our country, including one at Orangeburg, South Carolina.
In 1968 in a quiet small college town in South Carolina where the "separate but equal" South Carolina State struggled to give a quality education to a mostly Black student body.
There was only one bowling alley in the town of Orangeburg and Blacks were not welcome, to say the least. That outrage was only one example of how rural South Carolina not only discriminated, but actively abused its citizens.
I happened to be assigned to that part of South Carolina while in the Army and spent a good bit of time in and around Orangeburg for several years after the terrible event.
The summary of it is in Wiki, below:
The Orangeburg massacre[1] was an incident on February 8, 1968, in which local policemen in Orangeburg, South Carolina, fired into a crowd of young people who were protesting local segregation at a bowling alley. They killed three and injured twenty-eight,[2] hitting most of them in their backs. After the shooting stopped, two others were injured by police in the aftermath and one, a pregnant woman, later had a miscarriage due to the beating, which brought the total up to 4 dead and 31 injured (although most only list 3 dead and 27 injured). The incident pre-dated the Kent State shootings and Jackson State killings.
See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Two professional journalists, Jack Bass and Jack Nelson, wrote and then rewrote an excellent book on the Orangeburg Massacre and copies are floating around. If you are interested, get a copy from the library or from your favorite used book site.
http://books.google.com/...
There was a bit of news coverage on the Massacre during the last presidential race when one of the debates was held at South Carolina State, now a University.
Unfortunately there has not been a national investigation like that done in the UK that the Prime Minister used as the basis for the apology today.
From what I learned in my couple of years covering the trials held of those demonstrators and supposed "outside agitators at the event and the actual news stories as well as listening to what the local law enforcement and local residents talked quite openly about, the common view in not only the Black community, but the White community and even in law enforcement is similar to what the British government announced today about the shooting of innocent people, including being shot laying prone on the ground.
It is long past time for such an investigation and an apology like the British have now done.