"Police vow stepped-up security at Fourth show" by Maria Cramer | Globe Staff, July 04, 2013
State and local police are promising a massive presence on the Esplanade for the Fourth of July celebrations, including state troopers in bright yellow vests, hundreds of local police officers, and more security cameras.
But you won't even notice they said yesterday!
Police announced Wednesday that there will be swarms of law enforcement personnel, more than in prior years, as they sought to reassure revelers they will be safe at the first major public event in Boston since the Marathon bombings.
The BEST WAY to STAY SAFE is SHELTER IN PLACE!
“I want people to feel like this is a safe place to come,” State Police Colonel Timothy Alben said Wednesday morning. “My family is coming. I hope yours is, too.”
No, we are going to shelter in place and blog a bit.
Alben and several other law enforcement officials spoke from a Unified Command Center to announce the final touches of their security plan for the Fourth. They asked the news media not to reveal the location of the center for public safety reasons.
Surveillance cameras will be mounted on trees and poles along the Esplanade and near the Hatch Shell, where the Boston Pops perform their annual concert. In addition, celebrants will be asked to act as the eyes and ears of police through digital monitors that will instruct them to text authorities tips of any suspicious activity....
Yes, let's CELEBRATE FREEDOM by being a BUNCH OF FASCISTS!!!
This is the stuff of STALIN'S SOVIET UNION -- in the cradle of the American Revolution!
Of course, the NSA is the eyes and ears of us all and is LOGGING ALL COMMUNICATIONS ACROSS the ENTIRE PLANET! Please don't forget that as you keep your eyes and ears open!
Over the last week, officials have made it clear that security around the Fourth events would be different than anything the public has ever seen....
The restrictions and anxiety around the event have caused some to say they may steer clear this year, but officials vowed that the festivities would be enjoyable for the public....
Yes, MY ADVICE is to SHELTER IN PLACE, SHELTER IN PLACE! It is the ONLY WAY YOU CAN STAY SAFE!!
At a separate event at the State House, Governor Deval Patrick said he expected it would be a great day.
“There’s obviously going to be a lot more law enforcement presence to help assure everybody’s safety and good time, and also comfort people,” he said. “I’ll be there myself and I’m looking forward to it.”
Translation: there will be no false flag terror attack in Boston today.
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Should anyone commit a crime, police can use the cameras to reconstruct what happened, Alben said. The police and FBI relied on surveillance footage to track down the Marathon bombing suspects.
Asked how long the images recorded by the cameras could be stored, Alben said there is no policy set yet for the new cameras....
State Police spokesman David Procopio said officials plan to develop a policy but they did not want to delay implementing the cameras, which they had to rush to install in time for the Fourth celebrations.
“We were up against a deadline and we have a responsibility to protect visitors to the event,” he said....
That is troubling, in the eyes of Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty at the American Civil Liberties Union in Massachusetts. Crockford disputed the theory that cameras may act as a deterrent for terrorist activity.
“Somebody intends to kill a bunch of people, surveillance cameras are not going to stop them,” Crockford said. But she said the ACLU does not object to cameras at a public event like the Pops concert and fireworks.
“A lot of poeple expect that if they go to the Esplanade, that they’re going to be monitored,” she said. “Putting cameras at an event like this is not the same as putting one on a street post in front of my house.”
Inside the Unified Command Center Wednesday, analysts and officers watched 10 large screens set up in the front of the room. Several showed surveillance footage of the Esplanade, where families pushed strollers and elderly couples walked hand in hand, largely unaware of the cameras trained on them.
The aggressive security, Alben said, “will be the norm for large events moving forward.”
Better off SKIPPING THEM then!
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As a perfunctory move the Globe published the Declaration of Independence every year, although who knows the last time they read it.
And what are the liberties that are so important they deserve celebration?
"Celebrate our commitment to liberty" by Nicholas Burns | Globe Columnist, July 04, 2013
Last week’s historic Supreme Court decision to advance same-sex marriage rights provides a more optimistic counterpoint to the nation’s troubles.
Related: Happy to Be Done With This Post
It portrays the unique American experiment in liberty as still moving forward and still succeeding. Our core national mission has always been the promise of individual liberty for all our citizens. On a leading civil rights issue of our time, the court acted not to curb individual rights but to reaffirm and expand them.
This glorification of the myth of AmeriKan exceptionalism is sickening.
This American pursuit of liberty was a core theme of Jon Meacham’s recent book, “Thomas Jefferson and the Art of Power.” Meacham chronicled Jefferson’s central role in creating the very first country devoted to liberty. He emphasized that, in the years following the republic’s founding, Jefferson feared a return to the rule of the few or even monarchy.
And look where we are now (the thumping you hear is Jefferson twirling at light speed in his coffin).
Jefferson believed that America must become instead, an “Empire of Liberty” both at home and around the world.
I find it hard to believe that the founders wanted us to be an empire of any kind, and just because Burns says it... sigh.
This stood in sharp contrast, of course, to his failure to address the most urgent moral issue of his time — slavery and the rights of African-Americans.
Readers, I just want to say how SICK I AM of being DIVIDED on these WEDGE ISSUES when the RIGHTS and LIBERTIES ENUMERATED are for EVERY SINGLE INDIVIDUAL!
That struggle to overcome what former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has called “America’s original sin” is far from finished. That is why last week’s other major Supreme Court decision to strike down parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was so disappointing....
Condi Rice is a lying war criminal with no credibility, one who is partially responsible for the deaths of millions over damnable lies.
The battle for liberty is far from finished in the United States. In our time, that means extending full equality to African-Americans, women, and the gay and lesbian community.
Who were ALL SUBJECT to NSA SURVEILLANCE!
July 4 reminds us that, despite our imperfections, our greatest strength is our continued commitment to liberty.
This is really sickening!
It is the central story of our history. That is why we are still the indispensable advocate for freedom in the world today and the measure by which all other nations are judged.
Then "we" have failed!
China and Russia, by contrast, will never be great so long as they deny basic human and religious rights to their own citizens.
At least they are not SPYING on the ENTIRE WORLD!
Millions of immigrants are not pressing to cross their borders as they are ours to find the blessings of a free life.
Actually, word is they are going back because of terrible economic conditions here, but why let that get in the way of a good shit roll?
Their denial to their own people of essential civil freedoms is their greatest weakness — and their greatest future vulnerability. America is the far more appealing country because our democracy rests on the solid promise of freedom and equality enshrined most brilliantly in the Declaration of Independence.
Take a trip to the Esplanade today to experience the "freedom" first hand.
We can be true to Lincoln’s belief in America as humanity’s “last best hope of earth” and to Martin Luther King’s magnificent dream by reaffirming our determination to advance liberty for all our citizens and billions more people around the world.
Maybe it was that way once, but we are from from those days. Him citing MLK is offensive to me.
That is, and has always been, the great promise of July 4th.
Nothing about the total surveillance society that has violated EVERYONE'S RIGHTS!
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Of course, that is the same Nick Burns that said we should invade Syria regardless of the mess, and why his former position in the Bush State Department is omitted I know not.
Other Globe celebrations:
"N.Y. gay resort community is recognized; Cherry Grove’s historic theater on National Register" by Frank Eltman | Associated Press, July 04, 2013
CHERRY GROVE, N.Y. — Decades before the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City, lesbians and gay men were living freely and openly in a place called Cherry Grove.
The seaside resort on Fire Island, about 60 miles east of Manhattan, was known as far back as the late 1940s as a sanctuary where gay writers, actors, and businesspeople from the city and beyond escaped to relax, hold hands, and show affection in public.
‘‘It’s probably one of the earliest examples of don’t ask, don’t tell,’’ Carl Luss said after learning in June that the Cherry Grove Community House and Theater, opened in 1948, was added to the National Register of Historic Places. It was cited as the oldest continuously operating gay and lesbian theater in the United States.
‘‘The message is we have arrived, finally,’’ said Diane Romano, president of the Cherry Grove Community Association.
‘‘We remember when we could be arrested just for being gay,’’ Romano said. ‘‘To now be applauded and to be allowed to marry and to be recognized by the government for being a gay theater for so many years is just thrilling. It’s thrilling.’’
Cherry Grove is one of about 17 hamlets and villages on the 30-mile-long barrier island five miles off the southern shore of Long Island.
Virtually obliterated in a 1938 hurricane, the community now has about 250 houses that can sell for $400,000 or more. Two miles of white, sandy beaches facing the Atlantic are accessible via a network of narrow boardwalks. Denizens either walk or get around on golf carts; no cars are permitted in most Fire Island communities.
Cherry Grove and the nearby Pines neighborhood are the predominantly gay communities on Fire Island, although the Pines developed its reputation decades after Cherry Grove.
‘‘By the nature of its isolation and beauty, it became a safe haven for gay people, where they could not be afraid of repercussions from work, or anger from their families about being gay,’’ said Thom ‘‘Panzi’’ Hansen, president of the Cherry Grove Arts Project. He and others noted there were occasional raids in which police would enforce laws prohibiting same-sex dancing or ticket people for lewd behavior, but isolated residents were generally left alone.
Landlords and businesses desperate for cash after the Depression, the 1938 hurricane, and World War II generally overlooked their tenants’ sexual orientation in order to fill what were then mainly rental properties, locals said.
Every July Fourth, a ferry filled with men in drag travels from Cherry Grove to the Pines in a fun-loving commemoration of a man in drag being refused service at a Pines bar in 1976. The event commemorates the advances of gays, lesbians, and transgender people in the ensuing decades....
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What has become obvious is the gay lobby may even be more powerful than the Lobby these days (or maybe it is all one in the same; that would certainly explain all the attention in my agenda-pusher). As for me, I've just given up on this issue even though he may very well be right about the goals.
Also related:
Six Zionist Companies Own 96% of the World's Media
Declassified: Massive Israeli manipulation of US media exposed
Operation Mockingbird
Why Am I No Longer Reading the Newspaper?
Just wanted you to see who the agenda-pu$hing me$$anger is.
"Yacht that capsized in N.Y. called overcrowded" by Frank Eltman | Associated Press, July 04, 2013
MINEOLA, N.Y. — A 34-foot yacht that capsized last year while leaving a July 4 fireworks show, killing three children, tipped over because it was overcrowded, a New York prosecutor said in a report released Wednesday.
What took so long getting the report out, or did you sit on it for timing's sake?
Nassau District Attorney Kathleen Rice, who said earlier this year that no criminal charges would be filed, noted that despite the findings, federal boating regulations still do not require capacity limits for vessels 20 feet and longer.
There are two systems of justice in this world, one for the elite and one for the rest of us.
The Silverton yacht Kandi Won had 17 adults and 10 children on board when it capsized in Oyster Bay shortly after 10 p.m. and quickly sank. The children who died, ages 12, 11, and 7, drowned after becoming trapped inside the cabin. Two adults tried to rescue the children, but they quickly became separated in the dark as water inundated the vessel, the report noted.
Related:
3 children dead after yacht capsizes
Sunken yacht to be raised in N.Y.
Rice’s report called for a review of the policy exempting larger vessels from capacity limits. It also recommended changes in state laws regarding drunken boating, expanded boater safety regulations, and safety inspections for boats similar to those required for motor vehicles.
The 2013 Titanic for yachts?
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Not much seems new, does it?
That's why I go here and here for my environmental news now.
Also see: Fallen soldier’s lost medals returned to his family
Time to watch the fireworks:
Fireworks over the Charles River, as photo-graphed by the writer
from Memorial Drive in Cambridge on July 4, 2011, with a 20-second
exposure (Yoon S. Byun/Globe Staff).
Are you sure that photo is even real?
Related: Did You See the Fireworks?
Sunday Globe Special: CBS Cancels Boston Fireworks
I guess the fireworks caused quite a fuss.
