Usa Thread

[Steve]

Amazing stat. No shootings in Brooklyn for over a year!!

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/19/nyregion/no-shootings-or-killings-for-363-days-but-the-fight-is-far-from-over.html

[Steve]

Its a normal and human fear. Whites in urban centers in the '70s feared Black political power and now its Blacks in certain cities (LA, Oakland, SF) fearing Latino political clout.

 

Studies have shown that the group that benefited the most, considerably more, than any other group in Affirmative Action are white women. I've personally never been comfortabe with Affirmative Action. I've benefited from it but never felt comfortable with it personally largely due to how I was raised. Very, very proud parents who more than qualified for government aid but didn't take it. I'm not sure how all of us got lunch money each day for school lunch. We qualified for free lunch though. When I applied for colleges and had to submit my parents income, I had no idea how much they made piror, i was shocked at how little they made. My first good job i made more than they did.

 

Anyway, on my travels it seems that Americans who probably wouldn't have associated back in America get along well outside of it. Numerous times, whether its Thailand, an airport lounge, Europe, where ever, Americans of all types we get along and talk. The irony is that a person who may not have been comfortable with a Black person or Latino living next door to them in America would welcome that person as a neighbor if they had a house in a foreign country. Or sitting at a beer bar and shooting the breeze about whatever. I've met the most diverse groups of people at a beer bar in Pattaya. People who I'm sure we wouldn't have associated with each other back home but have a great time talking for a couple hours over a beer at a beer bar.

[Flashermac]

I knew there was a reason to drink. You've just found it.

 

I found unity in wearing and having worn the country's uniform. GIs and vets get along no matter what race or ethnicity. When I was an Army civilian instructor, my friends were mostly Black. We just sort of naturally got together.

 

I vaguely remember my dad going to college on the GI Bill. He graduated in 3 years, doing a full semester in the summers. He also worked part time and my mother worked too. My great grandmother came to live with us and raise the kids. But we always had clothes to wear and enough to eat. That was the old generation, too proud to take charity.

[Flashermac]

War correspondent Michael Yon, who joined the Army at 17, comments on the Martin-Zimmerman trial.

 

 

http://www.michaelyo...-in-america.htm

[Plainsdrifter]

Very interesting account though a bit long.....

[Steve]

I think its possible and even probable that Martin had Zimmerman on the ground. But lets back up a little. Everyone agrees that Martin did not initiate contact. He was going back to his Dad's home. A disciplinarian from all accounts. I've heard people try and paint Martin as a 'thug'. The only thing we know about his history was that his twitter account said he had a fight in a fight club and may have hit a bus driver. He smoked pot. The standard for being a thug has been lowered for Martin. Both those incidents have not even been confirmed and could have been teenage embellishment. I find it very hard to believe someone could hit a bus driver and get away with it. But for arguments sake lets say its all true. Is that the definition of 'thug'? Really. One of the incidents was a mutually consented fight (Fight club). It was one fight if it did happen. The other one incident we don't know why. Its never right to hit anyone but we don't know the circumstances. Using that standard a good number of the guys at my white, republican high school I went to in the suburbs were thugs. There were plenty of guys who had far more fights than what was attributed to Martin. As for pot smoking. Its been changed to 'smoking dope'. 'drug user'. If smoking pot makes someone a 'drug user' then at least half of frat row at my university were drug abusers.

The standard for racism was lowered for Zimmerman as well. The neighborhood had break ins and the suspects were Black. So absolutely nothing wrong with his suspecting Martin of possibly being up to no good. I've got no problem with that. This is where it gets murky. Martin has no history of repeitiive violence. He was certainly no thug by any definition of the word. So, if he was in a violent rage and even a murderous rage, logic and reason tells me something was said or done to him to put him in that state. Zimmerman wanted to follow him according to his call to the police. Martin knew he was following him per the phone call to his friend. So we know that much. Logic dicates to me that knowing Martin's lack of history for arbitrarily starting a fight, for him to be in that much of a rage Zimmerman must have said something to him and that something was not flattering and was so upsetting that it resulted in a rage. Martin told his friend Zimmerman was creepy. The choice of words is important. We don't arbitrarily look to confront creepy people. We avoid them. Martin didn't know he was a neighborhood watch volunteer.

So the whole thing stinks.

 

Doesn't matter what the race is, if ANY parent has his son killed on the way home from buying skittles and the person was not arrested then that parent would be raising hell. Zimmerman was exonerated and given his gun back. That action by the police makes no sense. Maybe I watch too many crime shows and maybe I'm being overly race sensitive but its hard to believe if Martin was white that the police would have done the same exact thing. Its just too hard to believe, especially spending a year and a half bussed to a suburban HS where I saw kids get no jail and a talking to by cops where the same incidents was an arrest in north Philly (light school boy vandalism such as egging, drinking and driving, drinking publicly in an open container, joyriding in their parents car without permission). The parents would tell the cop or the principal. "If you arrest my boy he can't get ino a good college'. That excuse got more guys off than anything else at that school.

 

so while I can certainly believe that Martin was in a violent rage maybe even a murderous one, I have to ask WHAT put him in that state? If he had a history of repeated violent behavior, NO PROBLEM. but the problem is he does NOT.

 

The artile says its possible for a 17 y.o. to be able to kill. I agree. Far younger than that have killed for their gangs. That's NOT the problem though. Its WHY would Martin want to kill Zimmerman. What in his history says he's capable of that kind of rage?

[Flashermac]

There are so many questions unanswered, since only two people really know what happened. And one of them is dead.

[Flashermac]

Ohio chief says 1 or 2 more bodies could be found

 

 

EAST CLEVELAND, Ohio (AP) — Searchers rummaging through vacant houses in a neighborhood where three female bodies were found wrapped in plastic bags should be prepared to find one or two more victims, a police chief said Sunday. Police Chief Ralph Spotts told the volunteers to brace themselves for the smell of rotting bodies and to look out for trash bags that might conceal a body. He declined to elaborate on his comments about the possible additional victims.

 

When asked about Spotts' remark, East Cleveland Mayor Gary Norton said authorities have "lots of reasons" to suspect there are more victims, but he refused to say why.

 

A 35-year-old registered sex offender in custody is a suspect in the deaths, Norton said. The suspect, who was arrested Friday after a police standoff, has indicated he might have been influenced by Cleveland serial killer Anthony Sowell, who was convicted in 2011 of killing 11 women and sentenced to death, Norton said. "He said some things that led us to believe that in some way, shape, or form, Sowell might be an influence," Norton told The Associated Press. The man hasn't been charged.

 

A report of a foul odor emanating from a home led police to the discovery of the first body, found in a garage, and to the suspect. Two other bodies were found Saturday — one in a backyard and the other in the basement of a vacant house. The bodies, all female, were found about 100 to 200 yards apart, and authorities say the victims were killed in the last six to 10 days. The bodies were each in the fetal position, wrapped in several layers of trash bags, Norton said.

 

He said detectives continue to interview the suspect, who used his mother's address in Cleveland in registering as a sex offender, the mayor said. "The person in custody, some of the things he said to investigators made us go back today," the mayor said.

 

Cuyahoga County medical examiner Dr. Thomas P. Gilson said Sunday that the bodies were in advanced stages of decomposition and that it would take several days to identify them and how they died.

 

About three dozen volunteers, including community anti-crime activists, fanned out Sunday morning across yards, through vacant houses and along a railroad to help police search. The chief advised them to watch for missing floor boards as they looked inside houses.

 

One young searcher crawled under a board screwed across a door to go inside a house to search. "The MO of each body we've found so far was wrapped up in a lot of garbage bags, so if you see anything .... and it might not look like it's a body, but it could be — because each bag, the way he had each person was in a fetal position,"

 

Spotts told searchers before they began. "It didn't look like a person could actually fit in the bag."

 

Pam Butcher, 55, said she came out to help search her neighborhood because she was disturbed by the death and said she knew other volunteers were, too. "They are concerned because it could have been one of their family members," she said. "It could have been one of their kids. It could have been one of their nieces. It could have been one of their aunts."

 

One neighbor, Nathenia Crosby, said she was familiar with the suspect and had seen him walking through the neighborhood. She said she had told him to stop chatting with her daughter and warned him after seeing him talk to her cousin.

 

"It's very scary, especially when he used to be talking to my daughter," said Crosby, 48. "But I told him he was too old to be talking to my daughter because she was only 19. When I found out how old he was, I said, 'You need to move on, she's too young.' "

 

The police, FBI, the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Department went through yards and abandoned houses over about three blocks Saturday and used dogs trained to find cadavers.

 

The neighborhood in East Cleveland, which has some 17,000 residents, has many abandoned houses and authorities want to be thorough, the mayor said. "Hopefully, we pray to God, this is it," he said.

 

It's the third recent high-profile case in the Cleveland area that involves missing women.

 

In May, three women who separately vanished a decade ago were found captive in a run-down house. Ariel Castro, a former school bus driver, has pleaded not guilty to nearly 1,000 counts of kidnap, rape and other crimes.

 

In 2009, Sowell was arrested after a woman escaped from his house and said she had been raped there. Police found the mostly nude bodies of 11 women in garbage bags and plastic sheets throughout the home. Prosecutors described him in court papers as "the worst offender in the history of Cuyahoga County and arguably the State of Ohio."

 

He was found guilty in 2011 and sentenced to death.

 

 

http://news.yahoo.co...-180735841.html

[gobbledonk]

On a lighter note, I was accused of being a Texan on a forum today. It doesn't get any more insulting than that, does it ?

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/4228722/George-Bushs-20-worst-moments.html

 

I put my location as 'NSW', but one of my audio forums is almost totally dominated by Yanks who have no idea that there is anything beyond the lower 48 other than Mexico. Geography must be a fascinating subject in US high schools.

[Flashermac]

The guys on your audio forum probably think NSW means North, South, West.

 

In olden times, when I was a student, we studied ancient history, British history, American history, world history, world geography etc. I don't what it is they study in schools these days, probably a lot of feel good subjects - a lot of "see, you were here too" things. I remember seeings sections in a US history text about what the Bohemians had contributed to America (building houses of sod, apparently), contributions of the Portuguese, how the Swedes introduced the log cabin in the 17th century etc.

 

BTW, in the 1980s I worked mostly with Australians. In fact, I worked for Australian Development Aid for a while and was paid by the embassy. One day some American tourists asked me for help when I was near the Grand Palace. After I gave them directions, they asked where I was from in Australia! Jesus, what had happened to my accent.