Thursday, September 11, 2014


News Clips For The Day


http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/darren-wilsons-first-job-was-on-a-troubled-police-force-disbanded-by-authorities/2014/08/23/1ac796f0-2a45-11e4-8593-da634b334390_story.html

Darren Wilson’s first job was on a troubled police force disbanded by authorities
By Carol D. Leonnig, Kimberly Kindy and Joel Achenbach 
August 23, 2014

Correction: This story has been updated to correct references to the time at which the shooting of Michael Brown was reported to police. Officer Darren Wilson did not call in the shooting at 12:43 p.m. as the story previously said; that is the time at which Ferguson police called on St. Louis County Police to investigate the incident. The story also previously cited the Ferguson police department as the source of information about the time of the shooting; in fact, the information comes from a St. Louis County Police report.

Aug. 23, 2014 Greg Messmer, who first gave his name as Darren Wilson, and other supporters of Wilson line the street outside Barney’s Sports Bar in St. Louis. Messmer said was supporting Wilson because the media “hasn’t given him his voice.” Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post

FERGUSON, Mo. — The small city of Jennings, Mo., had a police department so troubled, and with so much tension between white officers and black residents, that the city council finally decided to disband it. Everyone in the Jennings police department was fired. New officers were brought in to create a credible department from scratch.

That was three years ago. One of the officers who worked in that department, and lost his job along with everyone else, was a young man named Darren Wilson.

Some of the Jennings officers reapplied for their jobs, but Wilson got a job in the police department in the nearby city of Ferguson.

On Aug. 9, Wilson, who is white, killed unarmed black teenager Michael Brown after Brown and a friend had been walking down the middle of a street.

Wilson, 28, has completely vanished from public view. He has not explained publicly what happened in that brief, lethal encounter.

His lawyer did not answer phone calls or e-mails. The police union is mum.
His ex-wife is publicly silent. His friends aren’t speaking out.

His mother is long deceased, and there is no sign of his father or either of his stepfathers.

Wilson is under the protection of the Ferguson Police Department, which has chosen from the beginning of this case to opt for obscurity rather than transparency. The department did not reveal Wilson’s identity for nearly a week after the fatal shooting of Brown. By that time, his social media accounts had been suspended.

But everyone leaves a record, and Darren Dean Wilson is no exception.

People who know him describe him as someone who grew up in a home marked by multiple divorces and tangles with the law. His mother died when he was in high school. A friend said a career in law enforcement offered him structure in what had been a chaotic life.
What he found in Jennings, however, was a mainly white department mired in controversy and notorious for its fraught relationship with residents, especially the African American majority. It was not an ideal place to learn how to police. Officials say Wilson kept a clean record without any disciplinary action.

The job in Ferguson represented a step up and likely a significant salary increase.

Wilson has had some recent personal turmoil: Last year, he petitioned the court seeking a divorce from his wife, Ashley Nicole Wilson, and they formally split in November, records show.

Wilson won a commendation this year after he subdued a man who was found to be involved in a drug transaction, and he was honored in a ceremony in the Town Council chambers.
He seemed to be doing pretty well as a police officer — until shortly after noon on that Saturday when he passed two young black men walking down the middle of the street, put his police cruiser into reverse and said something to them.

Problems at home

Wilson was born in Texas in 1986 to Tonya and John Wilson, and he had a sister, Kara. His parents divorced in 1989, when he was 2 or 3 years old.

His mother then married Tyler Harris, and they lived in Elgin, Tex., for a time, records show. Tyler and Tonya Harris had a child named Jared.

The family later moved to the suburban Missouri town of St. Peters, where Wilson’s mother again got divorced and married a man named Dan Durso, records indicate.
Wilson attended St. Charles West High School, in a predominantly white, middle-class community west of the Missouri River. He played junior varsity hockey for the West Warriors but wasn’t a standout.

There were problems at home. In 2001, when Wilson was a freshman in high school, his mother pleaded guilty to forgery and stealing. She was sentenced to five years in prison, although records suggest the court agreed to let her serve her sentence on probation.

She died of natural causes in November 2002, when Wilson was 16, records show. His stepfather, Tyler Harris, took over as his limited guardian, which ended when the boy turned 18.

A family friend, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of threats, said Wilson sought out a career in law enforcement as a way to create a solid foundation in his life that he’d been missing.

“He had a rough upbringing and just wanted to help people,” the friend said. In Wilson’s childhood, “there was just no structure.”

After going through the police academy, Wilson landed a job in 2009 as a rookie officer in Jennings, a small, struggling city of 14,000 where 89 percent of the residents were African American and poverty rates were high. At the time, the 45-employee police unit had one or two black members on the force, said Allan Stichnote, a white Jennings City Council member.

Racial tension was endemic in Jennings, said Rodney Epps, an African American city council member.

“You’re dealing with white cops, and they don’t know how to address black people,” Epps said. “The straw that broke the camel’s back, an officer shot at a female. She was stopped for a traffic violation. She had a child in the back [of the] car and was probably worried about getting locked up. And this officer chased her down Highway 70, past city limits, and took a shot at her. Just ridiculous.”

Police faced a series of lawsuits for using unnecessary force, Stichnote said. One black resident, Cassandra Fuller, sued the department claiming a white Jennings police officer beat her in June 2009 on her own porch after she made a joke. A car had smashed into her van, which was parked in front of her home, and she called police. The responding officer asked her to move the van. “It don’t run. You can take it home with you if you want,” she answered. She said the officer became enraged, threw her off the porch, knocked her to the ground and kicked her in the stomach.

The department paid Fuller a confidential sum to settle the case, she said.
“It’s like a horror story in my mind. I never thought a police officer would pull me off my porch and beat me to the ground, for just laughing,” Fuller said in an interview.

The Jennings department also had a corruption problem. A joint federal and local investigation discovered that a lieutenant had been accepting federal funds for drunken-driving checks that never happened.

All the problems became too much for the city council to bear, and in March 2011 the council voted 6-to-1 to shut down the department and hire St. Louis County to run its police services, putting Lt. Jeff Fuesting in charge as commander.

Fuesting, who overlapped for about four months with Wilson during a transitional period, described him as “an average officer.”

“My impression is he didn’t go above and beyond, and he didn’t get in any trouble,” Fuesting said.

He said of the department during its difficult period: “There was a disconnect between the community and the police department. There were just too many instances of police tactics which put the credibility of the police department in jeopardy. Complaints against officers. There was a communication breakdown between the police and the community. There were allegations involving use of force that raised questions.”
Robert Orr, the former Jennings police chief who retired in 2010, said of Wilson: “He was a good officer with us. There was no disciplinary action.”

Tense policing

The structure of policing in these small St. Louis communities, as in many places in the United States, is innately combustible.

Officers rarely stay in the same police force for a long time, much less for an entire career. This means police and residents are typically strangers to one another — and not simply from different social, ethnic or racial backgrounds.

Ferguson is an example of a police department staffed predominantly with white officers, many of whom live far away from, and often fail to establish trust with, the predominantly black communities they serve. Policing can become a tense, racially charged, fearful and potentially violent series of interactions. Distrust becomes institutionalized, as much a part of the local infrastructure as the sewers and power lines.

A newly released report by a nonprofit group of lawyers identifies Ferguson as a city that gets much of its revenue from fines generated by police in mundane citations against residents — what the group calls a poor-
people’s tax.

The civil unrest that followed the shooting of Michael Brown suggests a deeper problem with the city’s police department, said Geoffrey Alpert, a University of South Carolina professor of criminology who has studied police shootings for decades.

“In order for a police department to weather a storm like that, it has to have social capital. And this police department didn’t have social capital in that community,” he said.

The Ferguson shooting became a national story in part because of what happened in the days afterward, when the country witnessed street protesters chanting “hands up, don’t shoot” as they faced heavily militarized police units in armored personnel carriers. The images shocked Americans across the ideological spectrum and prompted President Obama to order a review of federal programs that supply military weaponry to police departments.

The protests have grown smaller, and the looting and street violence that flared late at night have subsided, and so the community is renewing its focus on the original Aug. 9 incident and to the question of how the criminal justice system will handle Wilson’s use of deadly force — six bullets fired in a matter of seconds — against 18-year-old Michael Brown.

Grand jury reviews evidence

Behind closed doors, meeting once a week, a grand jury has been hearing evidence about the shooting from St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch. He has said he does not expect the grand jury to finish its deliberations until October.

Meanwhile, the FBI is interviewing witnesses as part of a Justice Department investigation that could potentially lead separately to federal civil rights charges.
There are two competing narratives about what happened Aug. 9.

Dorian Johnson, 22, was walking with Brown when, he said, Wilson instigated a confrontation by pulling up to the pair in his police cruiser and telling them to get out of the middle of the street. Johnson said Wilson pulled up so close to Brown that when he opened his car door, it bumped into the teenager.

According to Johnson, Wilson reached out, grabbed Brown by the throat and then grabbed his shirt as Brown tried to move away. At that point, Johnson said, he saw Wilson pull out a gun and shoot Brown in the chest or arm. Johnson said the officer hit Brown with another round as he was running away and fatally gunned him down after he stopped and raised his hands in surrender.

The police have given few details of what happened, but Thomas Jackson, the Ferguson police chief, said in a news briefing that the side of Wilson’s face was swollen and he was treated at a hospital.

The Ferguson Police Department quickly ceded the investigation to the St. Louis County police. St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said Brown “allegedly pushed” Wilson back into the car and physically assaulted Wilson. There was a struggle over Wilson’s gun, which was fired once inside the car, Belmar said. The only person to fire the gun was Wilson, he said.

Autopsies showed Brown was shot six times.

A St. Louis County Police incident report says the incident occurred at 12:02 p.m. and that county police were called in to investigate at 12:43 p.m. The body remained in the street for four hours.

Experts on police shootings say the investigation, including the grand jury deliberations, will focus on whether Wilson had a reasonable perception of being threatened with bodily harm. The experts say it does not matter how many bullets Wilson fired. Police are trained to shoot at the center of mass and stop the threat.
“If it’s an imminent threat of serious bodily harm, yeah, you become the judge, jury and executioner,” said Alpert, the University of South Carolina criminologist.
Richard Rosenfeld, a University of Missouri at St. Louis professor of criminology, adds, “It’s not simply that the officer perceives that he or she is under threat. It must be that the perception is reasonable. That term ‘reasonable’ is so legally freighted.”

Many African Americans here have little trust that the system is capable of reaching a fair decision. McCulloch, the prosecutor, is particularly controversial. His father was a police officer killed by a black man in 1964. He has resisted calls to recuse himself from the case.

“Why is it always in the African American community that it must be the victim’s fault if he got killed?” said Charlie A. Dooley, the county executive of St. Louis County and someone who has called for McCulloch to give way in favor of a special prosecutor. “That is just not right, and it’s not equal justice. African Americans are saying, ‘How dare you? We’re fed up with that. We fought for this country, too.’ ”

Dooley continued: “This is bigger than Mike Brown. What happened in those few seconds on Canfield is illustrative of how little value black men’s lives are worth. The message is clear: Police can kill a young black man and get away with it.”
‘We are Darren Wilson’

On Saturday, Wilson supporters staged a “Support Darren Wilson” rally at Barney’s Sports Pub, which is frequented by current and former officers.

“The people here don’t know him, but law enforcement is family,” said Rhea Rodebaugh, the bar’s owner and a former sheriff. “The poor guy is in hiding. He was doing his job.”

About 100 people, most of them white, showed up. A table held stacks of navy blue T-shirts for sale, each with a police badge on the front and the words “Officer Darren Wilson We Stand By You 8-9-14.”

Several in the crowd had connections to law enforcement, including one who said he knew Wilson from working in private security — and got a call from him on the night of Aug. 9. He said Wilson called to say he couldn’t make it to work because of the shooting.
“Really surprised me that he would think to notify somebody to cover a position that he was responsible for after being involved in what he was involved in,” the officer said.
The officers voiced their unhappiness with Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, who called for a “speedy prosecution” in the case, a comment that his office later attempted to retract, saying he meant a “speedy investigation.” The cops said they aren’t buying it since it was from a prepared statement, and they worry about the effect it may have on the community if Wilson is not prosecuted.

“That just sets us up for riots,” said one of the officers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear for his safety.

As the day wore on, a counterprotest evolved across the street, growing from two young women to a group of 20 by 6 p.m. — seven hours after the pro-Wilson rally started.
Motorists began driving by and honking in support of people on both sides of the road, largely dividing along racial lines.

“You are disgusting!” screamed one protester at the Wilson supporters.
The person who started the counterprotest, NaKarla Rimson, said they began with two people, and that as motorists drove by, they parked their cars and joined them. It was hard to keep things peaceful, but she said she tried to tell people to “allow everyone to have their opinion.”

Tempers flared on the other side of the street, too, with some people screaming and making rude gestures of their own. By 8 p.m., the pro-Wilson organizers had moved their tables and chairs inside.

“We are trying to get everyone inside to calm things down,” said one of the organizers, who declined to give her name.

Achenbach reported from Washington. Chico Harlan, DeNeen Brown, Sarah Larimer and Krissah Thompson in Ferguson and Alice Crites and Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.

Kimberly Kindy is a government accountability reporter at The Washington Post.




“The small city of Jennings, Mo., had a police department so troubled, and with so much tension between white officers and black residents, that the city council finally decided to disband it. Everyone in the Jennings police department was fired. New officers were brought in to create a credible department from scratch. That was three years ago. One of the officers who worked in that department, and lost his job along with everyone else, was a young man named Darren Wilson.... Racial tension was endemic in Jennings, said Rodney Epps, an African American city council member. 'You’re dealing with white cops, and they don’t know how to address black people...'Police faced a series of lawsuits for using unnecessary force... The Jennings department also had a corruption problem.... Fuesting, who overlapped for about four months with Wilson during a transitional period, described him as 'an average officer.' 'My impression is he didn’t go above and beyond, and he didn’t get in any trouble,' Fuesting said.... The structure of policing in these small St. Louis communities, as in many places in the United States, is innately combustible. Officers rarely stay in the same police force for a long time, much less for an entire career. This means police and residents are typically strangers to one another — and not simply from different social, ethnic or racial backgrounds.... Ferguson is an example of a police department staffed predominantly with white officers, many of whom live far away from, and often fail to establish trust with, the predominantly black communities they serve. Policing can become a tense, racially charged, fearful and potentially violent series of interactions. Distrust becomes institutionalized, as much a part of the local infrastructure as the sewers and power lines.... 'If it’s an imminent threat of serious bodily harm, yeah, you become the judge, jury and executioner,' said Alpert, the University of South Carolina criminologist.”

Darren Wilson grew up in an unstable home with a mother who was charged with forgery and stealing, sentenced to five years, but got parole instead. She was divorced several times and died when Wilson was in high school. He sought out the police force “to create a solid foundation in his life that he’d been missing... he just wanted to help people.” He apparently had no disciplinary problems in either Jennings or Ferguson and even got an award.

The police union and department are maintaining complete silence on where he is now and anything else about him. Local police are blaming Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon for saying that he wants “a speedy prosecution” of Wilson, saying this sets them up for riots if that doesn't happen. Barney’s Sports Pub is a center of organization to help Wilson. The owner said “'The people here don’t know him, but law enforcement is family...'” Charlie A. Dooley, the county executive of St. Louis County has called for St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch. to step down in favor of a special prosecutor, but he has refused. The case will hinge on the question of whether or not Wilson had “a reasonable perception of being threatened with bodily harm.” This article is from the Washington Post and contains the fullest detail on the case of any that I have seen so far. It is a little over a week old, but its a very good rundown on the situation there.




Iraq's Kurds praise U.S. support, want more against ISIS
By SCOTT PELLEY CBS NEWS September 9, 2014, 7:35 PM

ERBIL, Iraq - Masrour Barzani is the head of Kurdish intelligence service, which is helping pick the targets for U.S. pilots in support of Kurdish forces on the ground.

The U.S airstrikes against ISIS are "very useful," he told CBS News. Kurdish fighters are thankful for U.S. support, but he adds: "but I don't think it's enough to defeat ISIS."

"ISIS is still very intact in Syria. ISIS still feels secure in areas like Mosul and Tal Afer," Barzani said. "We believe the strikes should target the nerve system and the leadership of ISIS wherever they may be."

And by that, he said, he also means Syria, where he would like to see U.S. airstrikes against ISIS.

Barzani told CBS News the Kurds are talking to the White House about major support for the Kurdish Military, known as the Peshmerga.

"We are asking the United States for they should help the Peshmergas with heavy armament," Barzani said. "Tanks, helicopters, heavy armaments, MRAPs especially, you know, because they are very important."

MRAPs are armored troops carriers. The Peshmerga CBS News met looked like they could use them. There was evidence of a battle, won. But all the weapons they reloaded were light -- no artillery, no effective armor.

So imagine how they feel about the sound of American jets.

"Thank you America, thank you Obama, thank you America military," one soldier said.

Iraq had been building a future. But its aspirations are now occupied by a past it cannot escape. CBS News found families -- what's left of them -- running from ISIS's brand of religious extremism.

A woman named Nadiya said the men of her village were herded behind a school. There was a shooting. A boy came to tell the women what he saw: All the men were being killed. She says they didn't believe such news coming from a little boy.

With the men, more than 100, in a mass grave, Nadiya said the women were loaded into dump trucks and taken to a city to be given away as prizes to ISIS soldiers. She escaped.

"My friends are all captive," Nadiya told CBS News. "I don't know anything about my brothers, but most of all I want my mother. Tell them I just want my mother."




“Masrour Barzani is the head of Kurdish intelligence service, which is helping pick the targets for U.S. pilots in support of Kurdish forces on the ground. The U.S airstrikes against ISIS are 'very useful,' he told CBS News. Kurdish fighters are thankful for U.S. support, but he adds: "but I don't think it's enough to defeat ISIS.' 'ISIS is still very intact in Syria. ISIS still feels secure in areas like Mosul and Tal Afer,' Barzani said. 'We believe the strikes should target the nerve system and the leadership of ISIS wherever they may be.'... 'We are asking the United States for they should help the Peshmergas with heavy armament,' Barzani said. 'Tanks, helicopters, heavy armaments, MRAPs especially, you know, because they are very important.'

Instead of sending heavy weapons to city police departments who have no legitimate use for them, the Pentagon should send them to the Peshmerga. I don't understand why Obama is waiting on that. ISIS is more than a terrorist group who send in the occasional bomber to civilian areas, they are trying to establish control over two nations in the Middle East and from there, pursue Western nations. They have a real army and a great deal of money from stealing oil from pipelines, plus donors around the world who are of a fundamentalist persuasion. I am worried that the Obama administration is being so cautious. I see no logical reason for not at least arming the Peshmerga. Our relationship with Baghdad shouldn't be so fragile that we are afraid of offending them in their continued rivalry with the Kurds. We need to push the Iraqi government to include the Kurds fully as a part of Iraq, as long as they are not actively trying to create a separate nation.








Commonly prescribed drugs could raise risk for Alzheimer's
By JESSICA FIRGER CBS NEWS September 10, 2014, 5:59 AM

Long-term use of some common anti-anxiety and insomnia drugs may increase the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease later in life.

According to a new study, regular use of benzodiazepines -- which include medications such as Valium (diazepam), Ativan (lorazepam), Xanax (alprazolam) and Klonopin (clonazepam) -- is associated with as much as a 51 percent increased risk for Alzheimer's  among people who use the drugs for three months or more.

For the study, published in BMJ-British Medical Journal, researchers looked at data from the Quebec health insurance program database. They tracked elderly people living in Quebec, Canada who were prescribed benzodiazepines (sometimes called 'benzos'). The researchers analyzed six years of data, and noted 1,796 cases of Alzheimer's disease.

The study found that beyond three months on the drug, the longer people took it, the higher their risk for dementia. Additionally, the study indicated that long-acting or extended release forms of the drugs were associated with higher risk for Alzheimer's than shorter acting forms of the same medication.

While the study did not prove cause and effect, researchers say the findings suggest benzodiazepine use among older patients presents a significant public health concern. An estimated 36 million people worldwide currently suffer from dementia, and rates of Alzheimer's disease continue to grow as the population ages.

This is not the first study to suggest a link between use of this class of drugs and increased dementia risk. Another study published in 2012, also in BMJ, followed 1,063 elderly individuals for 20 years. The researchers in that study determined that the risk for dementia was 4.8 per 100 person-years among people who took benzodiazepines versus 3.2 per 100 person-years in the group not taking the drugs.

The drugs are frequently prescribed because anxiety is a common problem among aging people. According to the National Institutes of Health, anxiety disorders impact approximately 3 to 14 percent of older adults each year. The condition is also one hallmark of Alzheimer's disease. People with dementia frequently experience "sundowning," a phenomenon in which a person develops high levels of anxiety, agitation and delirium in late afternoon, evening or before bedtime.

An accompanying editorial points out that the American Geriatrics Society recommends against benzodiazepine use for seniors because of their long-term impact on cognition.

"Older adults have increased sensitivity to benzodiazepines and slower metabolism of long-acting agents. In general, all benzodiazepines increase risk of cognitive impairment, delirium, falls, fractures, and motor vehicle accidents in older adults," write the authors of the American Geriatrics Society in a 2012 report.

However, the organization says this class of drugs "may be appropriate for seizure disorders, rapid eye movement sleep disorders, benzodiazepine withdrawal, ethanol withdrawal, severe generalized anxiety disorder, periprocedural anesthesia, end-of-life care."

Experts recommend older patients not use these drugs for longer than three months. Benzodiazepines can be highly addictive, and their sedative effect means many patients become reliant on them as sleeping aids.

The authors of the latest study say doctors and regulatory agencies should consider the risks of long-term use carefully. "It is now crucial to encourage physicians to carefully balance the benefits and risks when initiating or renewing a treatment with benzodiazepines and related products in elderly patients," they write. They recommend younger patients avoid long-term use of the drugs as well, as a precaution.




“According to a new study, regular use of benzodiazepines -- which include medications such as Valium (diazepam), Ativan (lorazepam), Xanax (alprazolam) and Klonopin (clonazepam) -- is associated with as much as a 51 percent increased risk for Alzheimer's  among people who use the drugs for three months or more.... The study found that beyond three months on the drug, the longer people took it, the higher their risk for dementia. Additionally, the study indicated that long-acting or extended release forms of the drugs were associated with higher risk for Alzheimer's than shorter acting forms of the same medication.”

While I didn't know the name of this class of drugs, Valium and Xanax have long been familiar to me as an addictive drug often by alcohol abusers, and as difficult to shake. I have taken none of those heavy anti-anxiety drugs, but I don't have “panic attacks” etc. I've always had insomnia, but I just went without eight hours of sleep, often existing on four to five, followed by three or more cups of coffee the next morning.

From the following website comes several alternate possibilities to the “benzos”: http://forums.psychcentral.com/psychiatric-medications/6274-buspar-vs-benzos.html. “There are a lot of meds besides benzos that work well against anxiety. Some of the SSRI's are Lexapro, Celexa, Paxil, Serzone, Zoloft. Some of the the TCA's are Anafranil, Elavil, Pamelor, Sinequan.” I do take Zoloft and Buspar, and while I get no drowsy effect, they are effective, as I have no anxiety at all. Buspar was called “the world's most expensive placebo” in this psychcentral article, so maybe I will simply stop taking it. I probably don't need it. Depression was always my main problem. I certainly don't want anything that will have long-lasting side effects or worse, brain damage.




Scotland's independent streak ignites northern Spain – CBS
AP September 11, 2014, 9:36 AM

BARCELONA, Spain -- A week before Scotland votes on whether to break awayfrom the U.K., separatists in northeastern Spain were urging hundreds of thousands to protest Thursday across Catalonia to demand a secession sentiment vote that the Spanish government insists would be illegal.

Several hours before the protests began, Catalonia regional leader Artur Mas said his government is not wavering from plans to hold the referendum on Nov. 9 in the region of 7.6 million people, even though experts say any attempt is sure to be blocked by Spain's Constitutional Court.

A recent poll suggesting that Scotland's Yes independence camp could possibly win their Sept. 18 vote has captivated Catalan separatists, as well as pro-independence Basques in northern Spain; Corsicans who want to break away from France; and Flemish speakers in Belgium demanding more autonomy, independence or union with the Netherlands.

"The dynamics at this point are with the 'Yes' side, and if the 'Yes' side actually wins it creates a strong precedent," said Hugh O'Donnell, a professor of cultural politics at Glasgow Caledonian University. "I think the political ramifications are to send a signal to other separatists that change is possible."

Unlike the Scottish ballot, a vote in Catalonia would not result in secession. Mas' proposed referendum would ask Catalans whether they favor secession and if the answer is yes he says that would give him political ammunition to try to negotiate a process leading to independence.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has vowed to block the vote because Spain's constitution does not allow referendums that don't include all Spaniards. Mas told reporters in Catalonia's capital of Barcelona it would be a mistake to try to prevent it.

"It is surprising, because the Catalan issue is one of the biggest issues the Spanish government is facing," Mas said. "It is an error to try and solve this through legal means. Political problems are solved through politics, not with legal threats."

If Madrid refuses to allow an independence vote, a go-ahead by Mas could put him in perilous legal terrain.

When the northern Basque region, where separatist sentiment has also raged, failed to obtain permission for a similar referendum in 2005, Spain said Basque leaders could face jail if they went ahead and held the vote.

But Catalonia's referendum and the vote in Scotland have strong support from the Basque pro-independence coalition Bildu, which won 25 percent of the Basque region's vote in the 2012 regional election. It sent a delegation to Barcelona for Thursday's protest and will send another to Scotland to observe the Sept. 18 independence vote.

"Catalonia and Scotland have again put the issue of the peoples' right to decide on the political stage, showing that this is an open question in Europe," said Pello Urizar, leader of one party in the Bildu coalition. "Our future depends on breaking ties" with Spain.




“A recent poll suggesting that Scotland's Yes independence camp could possibly win their Sept. 18 vote has captivated Catalan separatists, as well as pro-independence Basques in northern Spain; Corsicans who want to break away from France; and Flemish speakers in Belgium demanding more autonomy, independence or union with the Netherlands.... 'It is surprising, because the Catalan issue is one of the biggest issues the Spanish government is facing,' Mas said. 'It is an error to try and solve this through legal means. Political problems are solved through politics, not with legal threats.'... But Catalonia's referendum and the vote in Scotland have strong support from the Basque pro-independence coalition Bildu, which won 25 percent of the Basque region's vote in the 2012 regional election. It sent a delegation to Barcelona for Thursday's protest and will send another to Scotland to observe the Sept. 18 independence vote.”

A new contagion of cultural upheaval? We don't need a series of small local wars all over Europe. These breakaway groups, it seems to me, would do better to group together to gain constitutional changes giving protections for minorities. Pulling together a sufficiently well organized government with enough funding to carry out business and maintain an army is not that easy. That's one of the problems that Ukraine has. The factories and natural resources are mainly in Eastern Ukraine, and most Ukrainian speaking people are in the Western part. Kiev needs the East to get along financially and governmentally, so they need to give the rebels more autonomy to make them more content to stay under the umbrella of Ukraine. Likewise with Scotland. What possible reasons could they have for breaking off from the UK? An answer to that is found in the article below.

http://www.independentscotland.org/content/voting-yes-for-scottish-independence.htm:

10 Reasons to vote YES for an Independent Scotland

Below is a selection of the most heard reasons, comments and opinions from Yes-voters. If you agree with most of these reasons then make sure you vote YES at Scotland's Referendum for Scottish Independence.

1. Taking Responsibility by moving all Governing Powers to Scotland
You would like to get the opportunity to move more responsibilities to a more local Scottish Democracy instead of accept the fate of Westminster's plans? With all the powers moved to Scotland, we can make a fairer Scotland.
Find out more: Scotland's Future and Scotland's Referendum

2. Get the Government we choose
The Tories are in power in the UK, although the majority of Scots have chosen the opposition. The Scots are outnumbered ten to one, so whatever government the Scots will vote for in a UK General Election, it's highly unlikely that a Scottish Political Party will ever be part of a UK Government representing Scotland's needs. With the rising votes for UKIP in England, our goals towards a fair and harmonious society will diminish even further.

3. No more building Nuclear Weapons
We should stop building Nuclear Weapons in Scotland, it is unethical and morally wrong. Under "The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons" the UK expects all other countries to sign this agreement to disarm Nuclear Weapons, but has excluded itself. Under the treaty it continues to build more Nuclear Weapons in Scotland. If you believe in peace instead of war, let's stop building weapons of mass destruction and start caring for the people and the planet. 

4. Securing Oil Funds in North Sea
Scotland's Oil reserves are vast. Most of the revenue and tax made from Oil goes directly to Westminster. There are claims that Scotland will be one of the wealthiest nations in Europe if we become independent.
Find out more: Yes Scotland

5. Scotland has the resources and finances
Scotland has the resources and finances to become independent. One of the early myths created by the No Campaign has been debunked and even the Unionists agree that Scotland has what it takes to become independent and the Scottish people will be better off financially.
Find out more: Yes Scotland and The Scottish Government and The Independent

6. Believing in the creation of more jobs
With an ever rising energy and electricity demand in Europe, Scotland could be one of the global leading suppliers. Scotland has many natural resources that allow sustainable energy for which more jobs are created. Furthermore when Scotland becomes Independent, many centralized services and offices, like Tax Offices, DVLA etc have to be set up in Scotland. This will create many jobs and jobs provide an income, which is good for the economy and beneficial for us all.
Find out more: Scotland's Future and The Guardian

7. Believing in the benefits for Scotland and yourself as individual
Not only will there be more jobs, the future Government already has plans for creating better Healthcare and improve the situation for Pensioners and people with children. We'll keep the minimum wages, scrap the bedroom tax, etc. 
Find out more: Scotland's Future and Yes Scotland

8. Believing in a more equal wages
The difference in wage in London compared to Scotland for example is huge. This gap is growing and with the current UK Government the richest only seem to get richer and the poor becoming poorer. With a smaller gap between the highest and lowest incomes, there will be less jealousy, greed and more happiness if we're have more equal wages.
Find out more: Yes Scotland and Michael Meacher MP

9. Believing that Scotland and England have opposite Political and Social views
We love Scotland and we love England. Why should both countries suffer from having to compromise political decisions to please both sides? Let's respect each other and go our own way. In doing so, we'll become better friends and neighbours then we are ever going to be in a forced political marriage.
Find out more: The Independent and Scotland Votes

10. Understanding that NO may lead to changes for worse
Change is going to happen, whether you vote Yes or No. By voting NO for independence, you will have less control over the changes that are going to change, because the government who makes these decisions is still in Westminster. A No vote will be seen as an act of 'no confidence' in the current Scottish Government. A No vote may also be used by the UK government to withdraw powers from the Scottish Government. 
So by voting NO, not only will things be changing, things might be changing for worse.
Find out more: Scotland's Referendum and The Southern Reporter

If voting YES is best for Scotland, why are people still undecided?
It may seem pretty obvious to you that voting YES is best for Scotland, however many Scots don't have the same confidence and self-esteem as you may have. Even with new facts of benefits being presented by the Yes Campaign on almost a daily basis, the scaremongering No Campaign seems to cause confusion and leave people in doubt.
The No Campaign doesn't seem to inspire voters very much, but finds their supports by spreading fear and doubt. Perhaps they find it easier to criticize and destabilize the Yes campaign than to come up with positive benefits for voting No. Scots have been the underdog for so long and some have been brought up by thinking that Scotland cannot make it on its own. With these misperceptions it may be difficult to decide what is best for Scotland, politically and socially.




It looks to me very similar to the basic argument between the Democrats and the Republicans, only in this case the Democrats want to form a breakaway government, while keeping many ties with Britain. I hope, if they do vote to secede, or whatever they call it in the UK, that they will have the economic, military, and other resources needed to form a separate country successfully.

I have always loved Scotland. One of my favorite movies was called “Local Hero,” and was about a large oil company trying to buy out all the land in a beautiful little Scottish coastal village. The oil was located off shore, and the story was about the local politics surrounding the issue. The local hero was a man who refused to sell to the company, and Burt Lancaster is the basically romantic owner of the firm who ends up negotiating with Ben, the local holdout. All is well and Lancaster moves the refinery offshore, while setting up an oceanographic research facility instead in the village. It's a great movie and won some awards. The movie shows the great beauty of the area and the unsophisticated, but charming local characters.





Once below gas station, Virginia cemetery restored
By WYATT ANDREWS CBS NEWS September 10, 2014, 7:49 PM

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Imagine coming to a cemetery kept secret for a century, and finding ancestors you never knew existed.

"I am so proud," said Zuny Matema. Proud because of who they were.

Most of the people buried in the Contrabands and Freedmen Cemetery in Alexandria, their names now etched in bronze, were former slaves and children who escaped to freedom during the Civil War.

Matema's relatives descended from Martha Washington's maid.

"To actually see your ancestors name is, oh my god," she said.

The dedication of the cemetery happened almost by accident. Alexandria was a gathering place for escaped slaves during the Civil War. But after the war, with no headstones on the graves, the city found a way to forget. In the 1950s, a gas station was allowed to pave it over.

But eventually the cemetery was rediscovered, and the city tore the gas station down. Archaeologists found more than 600 graves, and a genealogist Char Bah found more than 200 living relatives.

"First they were shocked, and then they said 'you mean to tell me that gas station?!'" said Bah. "I said 'yes' and then I would hear crying.."

Yvette Lewis and her father Donald Taylor had lived five blocks away. They even bought gasoline at the station, without knowing their ancestors lay below.

One by one they found six of those relatives on the wall.

"Daddy, it's okay," said Lewis, comforting Taylor as he wept.

"We're sad, but it's tears of joy," he said. "Joy that I know where they are...

"...and they were free," added Lewis. "Yes, free."

Most of the families have forgiven the city for the long held secret, because now their forgotten ancestors have been freed a second time.

They were once lost, but now are found.




“Most of the people buried in the Contrabands and Freedmen Cemetery in Alexandria, their names now etched in bronze, were former slaves and children who escaped to freedom during the Civil War.... The dedication of the cemetery happened almost by accident. Alexandria was a gathering place for escaped slaves during the Civil War. But after the war, with no headstones on the graves, the city found a way to forget. In the 1950s, a gas station was allowed to pave it over. But eventually the cemetery was rediscovered, and the city tore the gas station down. Archaeologists found more than 600 graves, and a genealogist Char Bah found more than 200 living relatives.... Most of the families have forgiven the city for the long held secret, because now their forgotten ancestors have been freed a second time. They were once lost, but now are found.”

Another beautiful story. Finding your relatives is always great, and discovering that they escaped from slavery is even better. https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110621233555AAkU98D is an article on the presence or absence of racism in modern day Alexandria.

nickdc1960 answered 3 years ago
Racist? I can assure you, New York is far more racist than Washington DC. I've spent time in both places and can assure you of this.

“sky k answered 3 years ago
Try Alexandria, Virginia. It is just over the bridge(s) to DC, and only about a 30-40 minute commute. It is also much safer and less expensive than actually living in DC. 





Sagging Pants And The Long History Of 'Dangerous' Street Fashion – NPR
by GENE DEMBY
September 11, 2014

Plenty of fashions adopted by young people get under the skin of adults, but the opposition to sagging often has the feel of a moral panic.

Mary Sue Rich finally had enough.

The council member from Ocala, Fla., was tired of seeing the young people in her town wearing their pants low and sagging, and successfully pushed to prohibit the style on city-owned property. It became law in July. Violators face a $500 fine or up to six months in jail.

"I'm just tired of looking at young men's underwear, it's just disrespectful," Rich said. "I think it would make [people who wear sagging pants] respect themselves, and I would wager 9 out of 10 of them don't have jobs."

The rationale behind the ban enacted last year in Wildwood, N.J., was similar. "I'm not trying to be the fashion police, but personally I find it offensive when a guy's butt is hanging out," said Ernest Troiana, the town's mayor, after he announced that his city would very much be policing fashion.

Pikeville, Tenn., switched it up a little: Officials there said they were doing so in part because of health concerns related to the "improper gait" of the saggers. The mayor even pointed to a study from a Dr. Mark Oliver Mansbach of the National American Medical Association that supposedly found that around 8 in 10 saggers suffered from sexual problems like premature ejaculation. One problem: Neither Mark Oliver Mansbach nor NAMA actually exist; the much-referenced study was an April Fools' joke.

This isn't merely the hobbyhorse of small-town politicos — no less a figure than President Obama has weighed in on sagging. "Brothers should pull up their pants," he told MTV a few years ago. "That doesn't mean you have to pass a law ... but that doesn't mean folks can't have some sense and some respect for other people. And, you know, some people might not want to see your underwear — I'm one of them."

For sagging's many detractors, kids wearing their pants below the waist — or below the butt cheeks, in the case of the look's most fervent adherents — has doubled as a reliable shorthand for a constellation of social ills ostensibly befalling or propagated by young black men. A dangerous lack of self-respect. An embrace of gang and prison culture. Another harbinger of cultural decline. Those are all things that people say about hip-hop, which helped popularize the sagging aesthetic. And if those are the presumed stakes, it's hardly any wonder why opposition to sagging sometimes has the feel of a full-on moral panic.

Such is the apoplexy around the styles that many of the most vocal proponents of sagging bans are people who might otherwise be wary of putting young black men into unnecessary contact with the criminal justice system. When Jefferson Parish, La., banned sagging last year, the move got a big cosign from the head of the nearby chapter of the NAACP. "There is nothing positive about people wearing saggy pants," he told a local TV station. (The national NAACP, it should be noted, has fought back against bans like these.) And a group called the Black Mental Health Alliance of Massachusetts began airing public service announcements in Boston last year that pointedly used the threat of arrest as deterrent. "Our community and our people are tired of these kids walking around like this," Omar Reid, one of the initiative's leaders, told the Boston Globe.

There's certainly nothing novel about adults thinking that young people's fashions are distasteful — indeed, that's often kind of the point. Full disclosure time: Like an awful lot of people in my generational cohort, I used to sag. Here's what I'll say about that: Everyone who thought he was cool as a teenager and reaches his 30s will look back at photos of himself from high school and cringe mightily. But that isn't specific to sagging, of course. Like goth dress, it freaks out old people, and then most of its practitioners move on to other things. The difference is that the anxieties around something like goth dress don't get codified into laws that threaten jail time.

There's another argument against sagging, which you can see in this video that's part of the "Pull Up Your Pants Challenge," that tries to appeal to respectability and pragmatism: Black kids should jettison the look if only to avoid agitating unnecessary suspicion from police and strangers.

But if history is any indication, that suspicion has proven to be pretty sticky, and it's attached itself to a bunch of different styles — hoodies, construction boots, do-rags.
Sagging, though, has been a uniquely long-lived source of agita.

The Murky Genesis Of Saggy Pants

Los Angeles police officer Victor Vinson was talking to an audience of local parents, warning them about the lure of street gangs. He told them how they might recognize if their own kids had come under the thrall of gangs. The biggest tell, he said, was their sagging pants.

"Kids today are dressing for death," Vinson said.

That sentiment sounds a lot like the feelings of Mary Sue Rich, the Ocala, Fla., council member. But Vinson is quoted in a Los Angeles Times article from way back in 1988, one of the earliest mentions of the trend in the press. It's a reminder that people have been fretting about sagging for nearly three decades.

The world has changed a lot since then. Los Angeles in 1988 really was a violent place, especially compared with today, and much of that violence was gang-related. Hip-hop hadn't become a staple of mainstream music yet. Fashion has changed, too, as people have moved to more contoured, fitted clothing. Sagging has tracked with that: the huge, baggy jeans of the 1990s have been replaced with skinny jeans and pants today. (Unless, you know, you're Michael Jordan.)

But let's back up a bit. The most familiar origin myth for sagging goes something like this: Convicts prohibited from wearing belts often wore sagging prison-issued uniforms, and they carried that look with them once they were back on the outside. Another story goes that some prisoners would wear their pants low to let other inmates know they were sexually available. Both have been tentpoles of "scared straight" arguments against sagging for a long time. Um, literally so in the case of the latter.

"You want to walk around looking like a criminal? Pull up your damn pants!"

"You know that in jail that look meant you wanted to have sex with other prisoners? Pull up your damn pants!"

But it's murky as to how true this be.

"I don't think we can definitively say that sagging began in prisons," said Tanisha C. Ford, an Indiana University historian who researches fashion.

An entry about sagging's genesis on Snopes, the online dictionary of urban legends, says the trend did in fact originate in prison, but the article doesn't link to its sources.

Consider the many other fashions that once carried the stigma of imprisonment that have migrated to the outside world. It's probably not an accident that the mainstreaming of tattoos and body art have coincided with the explosion of the American incarceral state.

Whatever the origins, people have actively courted that connection by positioning themselves against mainstream American ideas of propriety through their dress. But when that fashion itself goes mainstream, what counts as oppositional requires some occasional recalibrating.

It's highly possible, then, that sagging might still be a thing all these decades later because it hasn't lost its unique ability to rankle.

When 'Hoodlums' Wore Suit Jackets

But all this drama around young brown kids, baggy clothes and crime goes back much further than hip-hop and street gangs. In the 1930s, black and Mexican-American men in California began rocking big, oversize suit jackets, and pants that tapered down at their ankles: zoot suits.

Ford, the fashion historian, said the look was born out of improvisation, since many of those kids couldn't afford tailors. "A lot of kids would just go to the thrift store to buy those suits, and then get their mom or their aunts to taper the pants," she said.

But Luis Alvarez, a historian at University of California, San Diego who wrote a book on that period called The Power of the Zoot, said that just like the origins of sagging, the genesis of the zoot suit is pretty murky. "Some might argue that [people started wearing it because] it looked better when they were spinning girls around the dance floor," he said. "I argued with a guy who said they got it from [Clark Gable] in Gone with the Wind because he was sort of wearing a baggy suit in that movie."

What isn't in doubt, he said, is that the look was spread by black jazz musicians as they traveled around the country.

Today, those zoot suits are synonymous with Jazz Age and World War II-era cool. But back then, they were seen as the wardrobe of black and Mexican-American delinquents and gang members. Zoot suiters' opponents — and there were lots — saw them as harbingers of a moral decline. In his book, Alvarez cites a 1943 Washington Post article that was typical of the way the trend was covered in big-city newspapers. The language in it sounds an awful lot like the speech Officer Vinson would give those Los Angeles parents decades later on the dangers posed by saggers.

"Chief features are the broad felt hat, the long key chain, the pocket knife of a certain size and shape, worn in the vest pocket by boys, in the stocking by girls, the whisky flask of peculiar shape to fit into the girl's bosoms, the men's haircut of increasing density and length at the neck — all of which paraphernalia has symbolic and secret meanings for the initiates. In some places, the wearing of the uniform by the whole gang is a danger signal, indicating a predetermine plan for concerted action and attack."

"The style is linked to jazz music, it's linked to urban spaces, it's linked to a criminal underworld — gambling and numbers-running," Ford said. And those crimes were associated with blacks and Latinos.

Alvarez wrote that "[z]oot syle came to represent what was morally and politically deficient with the home front during World War II — violence, drinking, premarital sex, and the threat of street attacks." That distaste for the clothes and the culture associated with it persisted even though a good number of the people in the military and war industry were themselves zoot suiters.

As the war ramped up, Americans were, uh, tightening their belts. (My bad, y'all.) There were strict rations put on textiles and fabrics, which angered zoot suit opponents even more — those baggy, bulky threads weren't just criminal, but an affront to the nation's war goals.

"In '42 and '43 it becomes a flashpoint for ideas that were larger than just youth style," Alvarez told me. "This is when it becomes the platform for arguments about who is or who isn't American."

That anger exploded into violence in Los Angeles when bands of white servicemen — joined by hundreds of police officers — left their posts to search for young black and Mexican-American men dressed in that style to beat up. People were pulled from streetcars and pummeled by crowds. They were bludgeoned in the streets. The violence went on for more than four days.

"These kids wearing those outfits were stripped by sailors and LAPD and their suits were burned in the street," Ford said. But the anti-zoot marauders were hardly picky; people who weren't wearing zoot suits were jumped, too.

Similar but smaller paroxysms of violence would unfold in other big cities across the country as zoot suiters clashed with the police and angry whites. When things calmed down, the Zoot Suit Riots became a kind of national scandal, with both left-leaning folks and conservatives arguing that they might have been part of a plot to sow disunity on the domestic front.

Dangerous Fashion Goes Mainstream

The war ended. Fashion moved on. Ford said that as time went on, looks like dashikis and Afros would come to take on their own aura of black menace, although the threat in those style choices was more about fears of militancy and political unrest than street crime.

"We look at the Afro and the dashikis ... as part of iconography of the 1970s, but we don't remember how controversial and political those were," she said. Some historically black colleges like Hampton University once placed bans on Afros, and the hairstyle was verboten in Cuba and Tanzania.

Untethered from their contemporary messiness, though, those looks have folded into mainstream life. Afros used to scandalize white folks and older black people alike. Today college-educated women post their "big chop" pics to Facebook, Instagram or the countless blogs dedicated to natural hair, and they're greeted with affirmation and cosigns.

And zoot suits? Ford joked that the "Steve Harvey suits" that were the preferred dressed-up look for millionaire athletes looked a whole lot like the zoot suits of the World War II era. "You'd see these huge, 6-8 basketball players walking with the big, long suit jackets," she said. (I've been looking for any excuse to link to this draft night photo of Jalen Rose. Thank you, Dr. Ford.)

You might still see teenagers rocking them, too. "Nowadays I can't go a week or two in May or June without driving past some kids wearing zoot suits to their prom," Alvarez said.

I wondered if sagging was likely to ever make that same transition into ordinariness. "Once historians go and tell the story of the late 20th century — which we haven't done yet — there's a way that sagging and hoodies and t-shirts will be revered as markers of a particular era," Ford told me. She said that the hoodie and sagging pants look might even become the way we remember the youth resistance of our time. But, she said, "it's definitely still going to be tied to [ideas of] criminality."

Alvarez said zoot suits and sagging share much of the same DNA: They were ways that people made statements about their relationships to other people and their circumstances.

"[For the wearers,] it's a mechanism to reclaim dignity that's been taken away from them," he said.

A lot of people would roll their eyes and shake their fists if you told them that there was anything dignifying about sagging pants, I said.

"Youth culture, in general, is not always decipherable to those outside of the inner circle," Alvarez responded. "In many ways, our dress and our vocabulary and our vernacular becomes powerful because [outsiders] can't understand it."




“The council member from Ocala, Fla., was tired of seeing the young people in her town wearing their pants low and sagging, and successfully pushed to prohibit the style on city-owned property. It became law in July. Violators face a $500 fine or up to six months in jail.... 'I'm just tired of looking at young men's underwear, it's just disrespectful,' Rich said. 'I think it would make [people who wear sagging pants] respect themselves, and I would wager 9 out of 10 of them don't have jobs.'... This isn't merely the hobbyhorse of small-town politicos — no less a figure than President Obama has weighed in on sagging. 'Brothers should pull up their pants,' he told MTV a few years ago. 'That doesn't mean you have to pass a law ... but that doesn't mean folks can't have some sense and some respect for other people. And, you know, some people might not want to see your underwear — I'm one of them.' … has doubled as a reliable shorthand for a constellation of social ills ostensibly befalling or propagated by young black men. A dangerous lack of self-respect. An embrace of gang and prison culture. Another harbinger of cultural decline. Those are all things that people say about hip-hop, which helped popularize the sagging aesthetic.... When Jefferson Parish, La., banned sagging last year, the move got a big cosign from the head of the nearby chapter of the NAACP. "There is nothing positive about people wearing saggy pants," he told a local TV station. (The national NAACP, it should be noted, has fought back against bans like these.) And a group called the Black Mental Health Alliance of Massachusetts began airing public service announcements in Boston last year that pointedly used the threat of arrest as deterrent. "Our community and our people are tired of these kids walking around like this," Omar Reid, one of the initiative's leaders, told the Boston Globe.”

These quotations show that mature and highly ranking members of the black community don't like the sagging pants one bit. It's really one of the silliest, most disgusting, disrespectful things I've ever seen. No intelligent person could approve of it. I have to put alongside it, though, the craze among girls (not all black) who are wearing clothing that fully shows their bra straps or even the cup and their thongs in the back as they, too, let their pants sag just enough. I saw on the net one mother who was complaining that the school had sent her daughter home for that. She thought the school was depriving her daughter of valuable classroom time. I just thought that “the apple doesn't fall far from the tree,” in that case. The mother probably wears her top down to the very limit, as well.

I hate to be a prude, but these things are not helping our society in any way. Just because teenage kids want to rebel in every way they possibly can, doesn't mean that parents should be allowing them to do it. It's insane. Juvenile delinquency is often the direct result of lenient parents, or of those who just don't seem to have time to pay any attention to their kids. I'm just glad I don't have to ride the bus right now. I used to see these things every other day a year ago when I was busing it downtown. These obscenities are so downright stupid and ignorant that I thought they would disappear, but from this article I see they haven't. I'm very glad I didn't train to teach in high school. I would enjoy the six to eight age group, but not the teens.