If not, then the Globe is not for you.
It's staring me right in the face every day:
spotlight
Aaron Hernandez
The glare of that feature drew my attention away from the ostensible lead:
"Environmental Police higher-ups helped scuttle tickets for colonel’s friend, record shows" by Matt Rocheleau Globe Staff October 17, 2018
At least two other high-ranking Massachusetts Environmental Police officers helped make traffic citations involving a friend of the agency’s top official disappear, according to a document that outlines the details of how officers were able to accomplish that.
An internal agency memo, released to the Globe through a public records request, describes a behind-the-scenes effort by police to void and round up any existing copies of two traffic citations, one of which was issued to the former neighbor of Colonel James McGinn.
The citations for operating unregistered recreational vehicles in a conservation area never made their way into the state’s court or vehicle registry systems — an unusual violation of protocol that could lead to civil and criminal penalties.
The memo suggests the alleged scheme to scuttle the pair of 2015 citations involves more officers than McGinn, who was suspended without pay earlier this month amid an investigation into what officials called “operational issues.”
Governor Charlie Baker has said the investigation includes allegations of ticket fixing, and a person with direct knowledge of the probe said it was triggered by Globe inquiries into the disappearance of a pair of 2015 citations.
The 83-officer Environmental Police Department enforces fishing, hunting, boating, and recreational vehicle laws, and has an $11 million annual state budget. It has been mired in controversies in recent years over payroll and paid detail practices, patronage in hiring, and now, alleged ticket fixing.
“The damage it does is it undermines the confidence of the public,” said Thomas Nolan, a criminology researcher and former Boston police lieutenant. “This was a bush-league thing from the top down.”
It is hard to undermine something you don't have!
McGinn, who previously served as Governor Charlie Baker’s personal driver and as a State Police sergeant, has led the agency since Baker’s administration appointed him in 2014, earning a salary of $133,000 last year. He could not be reached for comment.
Having lived here for so long, and blogged about the Globe for the past decade, you come to realize that the bloated bureaucracy of Ma$$achu$etts is nothing more than a political patronage $y$tem. Friends and family get on the public dole, with all its health and pension perks, and then they ask rank-and-file to give back their meager, hard-won concessions because no matter how good the economy they never have enough money.
The ongoing controversy centers on $250 citations issued in August 2015 to two Bedford men after their sons were allegedly caught by environmental officers riding unregistered dirt bikes in a wooded conservation area.
Little ironic, 'eh?
Yeah, only you, taxpaying citizen, can't despoil the environment. That's the law.
As for those charge with protecting it and authorized to wage that law?
Here's a ticket.
You know anybody?
McGinn’s friend and former neighbor, Neil Couvee, previously told the Globe he called McGinn to contest the tickets.
Couvee initially said McGinn promised to “help” him out and take care of things “the old-fashioned way.” Couvee recanted his statement weeks later after the Globe published a story about McGinn’s suspension. Couvee then told the Globe that the colonel only helped by having an officer explain dirt-bike-related laws to the teens, and that McGinn advised Couvee to appeal the ticket, which he said his wife did; however, there are no documents showing an appeal was ever filed. Court and registry systems have no record the citations ever existed.
Normally, police forward copies of citations — even those they void — to the registry, which logs the information in its databases.
If the offense is small and the offender still has to make a court appearance, the officer still makes the point that the person needs to obey traffic laws in the future, Nolan said.....
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It's all about putting Baker on the defensive in the hope that a Democrat will win.
They expect a ‘strong and healthy’ voter turnout, so vote No on 3.
"Shiva Ayyadurai: the candidate who represents our bizarre political climate" by Victoria McGrane Globe Staff October 18, 2018
US Senate hopeful Shiva Ayyadurai, an independent who supports President Trump, is truly a candidate of our times. Few figures in the state can capture the bizarreness of the current political moment as he does, with all its outrage, decibels, and snaps of ugliness.
He’s provocative. The 54-year-old Belmont resident, who holds four degrees from MIT, likes to tweet with LOTS OF CAPITALIZED WORDS.
That means he is a liar!
There’s celebrity. Ayyadurai was briefly married to Fran Drescher. Maybe it was only a “spiritual ceremony,” as he called it later, but he was married to “The Nanny.”
There’s name-calling. Ayyadurai calls Senator Elizabeth Warren a “Fake Indian,” a reference to her controversial claims of Native American heritage. He’s called her a “Racist Demonic Fake Indian.” A “fascist.” A “scumbag” “lawyer-lobbyist.” Geoff Diehl, who won the Republican primary for the race, is a “Fake Trumper,” “Dirty Diehl,” and “a moron.”
That's because Republicans are right about tax cuts and deregulation.
His preferred epithet for just about everyone who disagrees with him is “racist.” Warren’s supporters are racist. She is racist, he says, at least in part because — he claims — she said she was Native American to get ahead in her career. (Documents and interviews show otherwise.)
It must be like looking in the mirror to the Globe and reporter.
Warren recently released DNA test results that showed “strong evidence” she had a Native American ancestor dating back six to 10 generations. Ayyadurai crowed in response that Warren “is a BIGGER Fake Indian than we thought — even this test, clearly conducted because of my relentless expose of Elizabeth Warren’s dishonesty, confirms that she IS 99.999% WHITE.”
White people are under attack from both left and right.
The Republican Party is racist because it “is still so insular that it can’t accept a dark-skinned, independent-minded, accomplished MIT PhD, who started seven successful companies in Massachusetts,” Ayyadurai, who first declared his intention to run for the GOP nomination last year, wrote on his campaign website before switching to run as an independent.
This reporter, The Boston Globe, and the media more broadly are racist for not paying much attention to his candidacy. (Three recent polls showed Ayyadurai with support in the single digits.)
There are lawsuits. Ayyadurai sued the City of Cambridge for pursuing a “political vendetta” against him when it claimed the anti-Warren campaign sign he had draped on a former school bus that he and volunteers retrofitted for the campaign violated city ordinances. Now he’s suing the University of Massachusetts for excluding him from a Senate debate. (The Globe is a cosponsor of this debate.)
“If we only say Geoff Diehl and Elizabeth Warren, well what about this dark-skinned Indian guy who’s an American, who went through the American journey, who busted his butt to go to MIT. . . . Why is he left out? Is it because his campaign has captivated people? Is it because he is a street fighter — meaning he knows how to fight, he grew up in New Jersey, and he can be a statesman?” Ayyadurai lamented, sitting in the dim belly of his campaign bus, most of its windows blocked by two giant anti-Warren banners, as it thrummed down the highway in late September at roughly the decibel level of a jet engine, “but when you limit this discourse to two — which is really one,” he continued, referencing his view that the Republican and Democratic parties are really part of the same oppressive establishment dedicated to maintaining the status quo, “what are we offering our kids? Is that really freedom? And I would say that ultimately we are all slaves in some sense if that’s what we’re being given.”
Well, he is right about that. They are two different factions of the War Party.
Which one do you like?
And, of course, there’s Trump. Perhaps it will come as no surprise that Ayyadurai would not be in this race if it weren’t for the president. Casting a ballot for Trump in 2016 was the first time he voted, Ayyadurai said.
Despite his penchant for online outrage, Ayyadurai sounded perfectly civil, if discursive, as he talked to a reporter at a handmade table bolted to the floor of the former school bus and shaking wildly.
How is that helping with the greenhouse gas emissions?
He discussed policy ideas, like his plan to have the Postal Service launch a “public Internet” to protect free speech from private companies such as Facebook and Google. (“A brilliant solution!” he says Dilbert creator Scott Adams told him.) He wants to lower health care costs by creating a direct-pay health care system and improving access to organic food, to address racism and unemployment by beefing up vocational training, and to install term limits. He wants to crack down on agriculture giant and weed-killer-maker Monsanto and the proliferation of genetically modified food.
That drew my attention!
He must know all about the farmer suicides in India!
As far as candidate biographies go, his is compelling, imbued, in his telling, with a powerful American Dream theme. His parents overcame the lowest rung of India’s cruel caste system through education and hard work, immigrating to New Jersey when Ayyadurai was 7. He recalled how he was wearing shorts when he walked off the plane and it was snowing.
He continued his parents’ studious hard work. At age 14, he claims, he invented e-mail. His assertion is bitterly disputed by many in the tech world. Twice he’s sued media outlets who dared to disparage his claim.
He says he applied with a pencil, at the last minute, to MIT. He eventually earned four degrees there, culminating with a doctorate in biological engineering. He won a Fulbright Scholarship to study the intersection of Eastern and Western medicine traditions in his native India.
He’s launched successful startups, including in 1994 a company that would become EchoMail, which helps companies handle incoming customer e-mail and boasted big clients like AT&T and Nike in its heyday but is now much-downsized, but Ayyadurai has a decidedly uncivil side that comes out elsewhere on the trail and online.
In late May, he freely tossed around the n-word during a podcast that was hosted by someone that People for the American Way, a liberal group, describes as an “open white nationalist.” Ayyadurai was discussing a tweet he sent a few weeks earlier declaring that “we’re all [n-word] on the White Liberal Deep State Reservation! Only when we break free and be Independent of both Establishment parties, are we truly free.”
Globe is their mouthpiece.
In July, Ayyadurai used a bullhorn to hector Warren supporters waiting in line to see her, a typical campaign stunt for him and his clutch of supporters, except this time a 74-year-old Warren backer took offense at being called a racist. Video shows the man, wearing a T-shirt that says “Liberal,” cross the street to confront him as Ayyadurai taunted him as “racist” and “a white supremacist.”
The Warren supporter shoved the megaphone as Ayyadurai did this, bloodying the candidate’s lip.
What is it with the left and violence?
That Ayyadurai was not evident as he stepped in front of those high school students. Between his tailored pinstripe suit with no tie, and the shiny blond wood and stadium seating of the classroom, he looked more like the MIT lecturer he once was than the caustic force seen online and outside Warren events.
WTF?
Most of them can't vote yet.
America’s two-party system is “all controlled by the same plutocratic class,” he told the two dozen or so teenagers at Franklin High School. “This is not a conspiracy theory.”
It's an open $ecret, confirmed on a daily basis by the pages of my new$paper.
Trump’s election, he told them, came about because “a whole wave of people started waking up” and rejecting the establishment, he said.
“The Renaissance took place in chaos and plague. . . . And what I saw with Trump’s victory was that he was creating a chaotic situation, which opened a window to perhaps have a real discussion,” he said. “You know, expose the fact that Elizabeth Warren is part of the not-so-obvious establishment.”
His team “worked their butt off” to gather more than the 10,000 signatures he needed to get on the ballot, “and the mainstream media, the nonprofits, are denying us a place on the debate stage. Which is an attack on you, because that means you get the same old, same old, two-party system. Why is the dark-skinned Indian guy who came out of MIT, who’s an American, who has a wide range of thoughts, not allowed on the debate stage?” he asked the class.
“So I’m going to end with that so we can have a conversation,” he concluded. After a round of polite applause, he asked the teacher who had organized his appearance, “Is that OK on time? Because I could keep going.”
--more--"
I wish I had a race and/or gender card to play.
Maybe someday.
[flip to below fold]
Walsh calls for major investment to guard city against flooding
This after a long, cool summer.
Yeah, it is literally all about the money.
E-mails show how donors are considered in Harvard admissions
Oh, it's who you know (like always)!
Harvard, MIT professors receive $3m Breakthrough Prizes
How odd that Xiaowei Zhuang, a Harvard professor, won for her work.
She get her DNA tested?
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Speaking of conspiracies:
"Mueller said to be ready to deliver key findings in his Trump probe" by Chris Strohm, Greg Farrell and Shannon Pettypiece Bloomberg October 17, 2018
Special Counsel Robert Mueller is expected to issue findings on core aspects of his Russia probe soon after the November midterm elections as he faces intensifying pressure to produce more indictments or shut down his investigation, according to two US officials.
Specifically, Mueller is close to rendering judgment on two of the most explosive aspects of his inquiry: whether there were clear incidents of collusion between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, and whether the president took any actions that constitute obstruction of justice, according to one of the officials, who asked not to be identified speaking about the investigation.
That doesn’t necessarily mean Mueller’s findings would be made public if he doesn’t secure unsealed indictments.
The regulations governing Mueller’s probe stipulate that he can present his findings only to his boss, who is currently Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. The regulations give a special counsel’s supervisor some discretion in deciding what is relayed to Congress and what is publicly released.
The question of timing is critical. Mueller’s work won’t be concluded ahead of the Nov. 6 midterm elections, when Democrats hope to take control of the House and end Trump’s one-party hold on Washington, but this timeline also raises questions about the future of the probe itself. Trump has signaled he may replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions after the election, a move that could bring in a new boss for Mueller. Rosenstein also might resign or be fired by Trump after the election.
Rosenstein has made it clear that he wants Mueller to wrap up the investigation as expeditiously as possible, another US official said. The officials gave no indications about the details of Mueller’s conclusions. Mueller’s office declined to comment for this story.
With three weeks to go before the midterm elections, it’s unlikely Mueller will take any overt action that could be turned into a campaign issue. Justice Department guidelines say prosecutors should avoid any major steps close to an election that could be seen as influencing the outcome.
Like what Comey did to Clinton, even though he didn't mean to and was protecting her?
That suggests the days and weeks immediately after the Nov. 6 election may be the most pivotal time since Mueller took over the Russia investigation almost a year and a half ago. So far, Mueller has secured more than two dozen indictments or guilty pleas.
Trump’s frustration with the probe, which he routinely derides as a ‘‘witch hunt,’’ has been growing, prompting concerns he may try to shut down or curtail Mueller’s work at some point.
There’s no indication, though, that Mueller is ready to close up shop, even if he does make some findings, according to former federal prosecutors. Several matters could keep the probe going, such as another significant prosecution or new lines of inquiry, and because Mueller’s investigation has been proceeding quietly, out of the public eye, it’s possible there have been other major developments behind the scenes.....
Then they would have been leaked to the media by now.
That's why they are keeping Manafort and Cohen in jail until after the election, hoping they will crack.
--more--"
I wouldn't be surprised if he reports a finding that it was a Russian troll farm with links to Iran that meddled in the 2016 election while claiming it is also likely that they are interfering in the 2018 election (when the truth is they don't give a damn, either one of them, and are moving on their way without us these days).
Of course, the so-called meddling that was allegedly forwarded to Wikileaks was an inside job:
"Senior Treasury employee charged with leaking documents related to Russia probe" Washington Post October 17, 2018
WASHINGTON — A senior Treasury Department employee was charged Wednesday with leaking confidential government reports about suspicious financial transactions related to the special counsel’s probe of Russian election interference and Trump associates.
In the DNC/Clinton case, it was disgruntled staff workers within the party upset by Clinton election shenanigans and vote theft.
The charges reflect the latest move in the Trump administration’s effort to root out leakers within the government.
Obama prosecuted more whistleblowers than all the administrations in the history of this country combined and had his AG jail and spy on reporters, and there is nary a whimper from the pre$$.
Earlier this week, a former senior Senate staffer pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents in a separate leak investigation.
Yeah, that kind of got lost with everything that is happening in Turkey.
The Treasury case centers on a dozen stories published by BuzzFeed News that described suspicious activity reports, or SARs, which are generated by banks when a financial transaction may involve illegal activity.
Prosecutors charged Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards with the unauthorized disclosure of suspicious activity reports and conspiracy.
The charges were filed in federal court in New York but she is scheduled to make her first court appearance in Northern Virginia, officials said.
Edwards, 40, works as a senior adviser at the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, often referred to as ‘‘FinCEN.’’
The stories cited in the criminal complaint filed against Edwards match the headlines, wording, and information contained in BuzzFeed News stories, though the court papers did not identify the company by name.
The 18-page criminal complaint details a search of Edwards’s phone and a flash drive she possessed, on which FBI agents say they found a lengthy digital trail of her interactions with the reporters, in which she shared SARs reports.
--more--"
"Video shows Chicago cop shooting unarmed black autistic teen" Associated Press October 17, 2018
CHICAGO — Surveillance video shows an off-duty Chicago police officer shooting and wounding an unarmed autistic black man, contradicting an initial police description of an armed confrontation and echoing devastating dashcam video evidence against a white Chicago officer who claimed Laquan McDonald tried to stab him before he fatally shot the black teen.
The cops lied?
The grainy video from a security camera on a South Side home, released Tuesday by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, shows Sergeant Khalil Muhammad shooting 18-year-old Ricardo Hayes on Aug. 13, 2017.
Before the shooting, Hayes can be seen running along the sidewalk then stopping. Muhammed pulls up alongside, with parked cars between them. Hayes takes a few steps toward him and Muhammed shoots the teen in the arm and chest. Hayes turns and runs.
A lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and another on behalf of Hayes and his family say his caretaker had called police to say Hayes had wandered away from home.
At the time, police officials described the incident as an armed confrontation.
--more--"
What else can they get wrong?
"New accusation of police wrongdoing in Weinstein case" Associated Press October 17, 2018
NEW YORK — The sexual assault case against Harvey Weinstein was roiled Wednesday for the second time in a week by what New York City prosecutors said was a police detective’s improper conduct.
Detective Nicholas DiGaudio, whose alleged witness coaching prompted the dismissal of part of the case last week, is now accused of urging one of Weinstein’s accusers to delete material from her cellphones before she handed them over to prosecutors.
Weinstein’s lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, pounced on the revelation, saying it ‘‘even further undermines the integrity of this already deeply flawed indictment of Mr. Weinstein.’’
Related: Manhattan DA’s Office
In her letter, Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon said that during the investigation, prosecutors asked the woman to hand in any cellphones she might have used during the time when she interacted with Weinstein. The woman was willing to do so, Illuzzi-Orbon wrote, but was worried the phones contained ‘‘data of a personal nature that she regarded as private.’’
She asked DiGaudio what to do. He advised her to delete anything she didn’t want anyone else to see before handing over the phone, prosecutors said.....
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You know what happens if you don't stop it, right?
"An increasing number of births happen outside of marriage, signaling cultural and economic shifts that are here to stay, according to an annual report released on Wednesday by the United Nations Population Fund, the largest international provider of sexual and reproductive health services. Regardless of marital status, more couples are choosing not to have kids at all....."
Want a cookie?
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Don't forget to leave a trail of crumbs:
"Record number of families crossing US border, as Trump threatens new crackdown" by Nick Miroff The Washington Post October 17, 2018
The number of migrant parents entering the United States with children has surged to record levels in the three months since President Trump ended family separations at the border, dealing the administration a deepening crisis three weeks before the midterm elections.
I can't believe the left thinks this is a winning issue for them when it helps Republicans.
US Border Patrol agents arrested 16,658 family members in September, the highest one-month total on record and an 80 percent increase from July, according to unpublished Homeland Security statistics obtained by The Washington Post.
Large groups of 100 or more Central American parents and children have been crossing the Rio Grande and the deserts of Arizona to turn themselves in, and by citing a fear of return, the families are typically assigned a court date and released from custody.
‘‘We’re getting hammered daily,’’ said one Border Patrol agent in south Texas who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.
Having campaigned on a promise to stop illegal immigration and build a border wall, Trump now faces a spiraling enforcement challenge with no ready solutions. The soaring arrest numbers — and a new caravan of Central American migrants heading north — have left him in a furious state, White House aides say.
So says the Washington ComPost.
Trump’s welling anger has left him pushing once more for a reinstatement of a family separation policy in some form, which he believes is the only thing that has worked, despite the controversy it triggered.
One senior official conceded that the separations were halted to stanch political fury, but GOP strategists working in the midterms said the separations were among the worst polling times of the presidency, and reinstituting the separations would sag numbers for the Republicans, who are already struggling in many close races.
It will also reenergize the Republicans as the Kavanaugh effect fades.
Trump continues to criticize Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and has asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to work with Mexico to make it tougher for Central American immigrants to cross its southern border, inserting the issue into ongoing trade negotiations.
Pompeo has his hands full with the Saudis right now.
Trump urged GOP candidates to campaign on the issue in a tweet Wednesday morning....
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Related:
"President Trump on Wednesday asked every major cabinet agency to draw up proposals to cut its budget by 5 percent next year, adding he could grant some exemptions to his request and suggesting he would not ask the Pentagon to cut the full 5 percent, but....."
Every president is a slave to the war machine.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Pompeo, Erdogan talk Khashoggi
Turkish officials say audio reveals torture
Khashoggi was dead within minutes, his fingers severed, beheaded, and dismembered, and for some reason the Globe has buried it.
Turkey Gets Trumped
Related:
"South Korea denied refugee status Wednesday to hundreds of Yemeni asylum seekers who had fled their war-torn country, allowing them to stay only on one-year humanitarian visas. More than 500 Yemenis arrived on the resort island of Jeju earlier this year, taking advantage of the island’s visa-free tourism policy, but their presence sparked an anti-immigrant backlash in ethnically homogenous South Korea....."
Did she even mention Yemen?
Also see:
Indian government minister steps down as country’s #MeToo movement gains traction
Bomb kills Afghan candidate in latest Taliban attack on parliamentary polls
"Hungary bans homeless people from living in public spaces, in law described as ‘cruel’ by the UN" Washington Post October 17, 2018
BERLIN — Back in 2015, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban claimed he was one of the last European leaders defending the continent’s Christian identity against a Muslim influx.
Three years on, Orban’s declared goal of defending Christianity is now part of the country’s constitution, but aid groups say that the updated constitution poses a growing threat to the ideals it is supposed to protect.
While Christian communities across Europe work to provide support to homeless people, Orban’s government passed a constitutional amendment this summer that bans people from ‘‘living on the streets.’’ The vague legislation has been criticized as ‘‘cruel and incompatible with international human rights law’’ by UN experts.
Hungary argues that it offers sufficient space in emergency shelters to accommodate all people without a home and would provide additional support starting this week. Officials said the law that took effect on Monday would save lives, but human rights groups dispute that there are enough safe shelter spots, arguing instead that the measures are part of a broader illiberal crackdown without humanitarian motivations. The Hungarian government has passed a number of laws in recent years that have directly or indirectly targeted homeless people. In 2013, Hungary prohibited begging in many public spaces. At almost the same time, Parliament also banned individuals from collecting and selling discarded furniture, which had become an alternative to begging.
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{@@##$$%%^^&&}
"Student gunman kills 19 and wounds dozens at a college in Crimea" by Neil MacFarquhar New York Times October 17, 2018
MOSCOW — A lone suicide gunman attacked his fellow students at a technical college on the Crimean peninsula Wednesday, killing 19 people and wounding more than 50, Russian authorities said.
Oh, this absolutely reeks of CIA destabilization!
The gunman, who also detonated an explosive device, was found dead, apparently a suicide.
Meaning the hit team killed him and left him to take the blame.
The assault at Kerch Polytechnic College was initially investigated as a possible terrorist attack, but officials quickly reclassified it as murder after learning that the gunman, Vladislav Roslyakov, 18, was a fourth-year student at the college.
There were no immediate reports of a possible motive, although a friend said Roslyakov was a loner who had expressed an interest in the 1999 school shooting in Columbine, Colo., where 12 students and a teacher were killed.
So what kind of CIA mind control was he under?
Roslyakov’s body was found with a gunshot wound in a room at the college, Russia’s Investigative Committee said in a statement, bringing the overall toll to 20 dead. That represented the greatest loss of life in school violence in Russia since the Beslan terror attack of September 2004, in which 333 people died, many of them children, and 531 were hospitalized.
School shootings are rare in Russia, and none previously have approached the scale of Wednesday’s blood bath. In the only recent case, a lone gunman opened fire in a Moscow high school in 2014, killing a teacher and a police officer.
I've read this cover story script too many times before.
Cui bono?
Not Putin!
President Vladimir Putin, who called the attack “a tragic event,” held a moment of silence for the victims at an official ceremony he was attending with the president of Egypt, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, in the resort town of Sochi.
Now why would my print copy edit out who he was meeting with?
Daniil Pyatkov, 17, a student at the school, said people on the campus began to panic as they realized that they were under attack.
He ran to find his girlfriend, who he knew was in the building under assault, he said in an interview on VKontakte, the Russian social media platform.
“The main hall was all covered in smoke, all the glass was broken, there were corpses, injured people everywhere,” he said. “I thought this was a dream.”
The student found his girlfriend at the front of the building, covered in blood and with a broken leg. He said he scooped her up and ran as fast and as far as he could from the building.
Pyatkov said he saw a picture of the student who reportedly carried out the attack, but it was not someone he had seen before.
Huh?
Denis Y. Gridchin, the friend of the gunman, said Roslyakov had a dim view of his own prospects, with only technical training.
“He did not see a future for himself,” said Gridchin, also speaking over Vkontakte, and he complained that there was little hope for someone from a small town with no education.
AmeriKa, AmeriKa, God shed his Grace on Thee!
Roslyakov lived with his mother, who works as a nurse at a Kerch hospital. Local news reports said the mother was treating patients from the shooting, apparently unaware that her son was involved, when investigators came to the hospital to find her.
The director of the college, Olga Grebennikoba, described a scene of carnage in the school’s cafeteria, with the assailant first setting off the explosive device that shattered the windows and then firing indiscriminately at students who crowded the room during the lunch hour.
“There are many corpses, lots of children,” Grebennikoba told a local television channel. “Children died; staff members died.”
Television pictures from the site of the explosion showed the leafy campus swarming with ambulances and other vehicles sent to take the victims to the hospital. One bloodied, mangled victim was transported on the back of an open truck, while another stretcher was shoved onto a small bus.
Kerch, on the eastern end of Crimea, is the landing point for the Kerch Bridge, a $7 billion, 12-mile-long link that Putin inaugurated in May. The construction, opposed by Ukraine, was freighted with symbolism as it provided a physical link to Russia, which annexed the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014. The euphoria that accompanied Russia’s annexation has long since faded into resentment, even among the pro-Russian majority.
OMG, NYT!
They have become so shameless it's hard to comment anymore.
Yup, this event, if it even happened and isn't some sort of staged and scripted crisis drill we see so much of (and expecting me to accept the veracity of my pre$$ these days is asking way too much), happened in the most strategic area imaginable.
Forget about the endless repetition of annexation, and outright lie they keep repeating. After the Obama-sponsored coup in 2014 (Turkey managed to foil one in 2016. Interesting, no?) that imposed the neo-Nazi fascist regime in western Ukraine, the Crimeans held a vote and overwhelmingly -- by 97% yes, it was reported -- voted to secede from Ukraine. They then petitioned the Russia Federation to join, and Russia accepted.
You know, when the lead new$paper in AmeriKa proves itself to be a shameless liar and distorter time and time again, what are we American news consumers to think?
This isn't for me!
The annexation was always anathema to the indigenous Tatars, who have complained bitterly in recent years of widespread discrimination, including the shuttering of their local legislature and their independent media.
I don't think they have used the word annexed, or any variation thereof, in describing all the Palestinian land Israel has stolen. Just saying.
In the process of suppressing the critics, Russia meted out lengthy jail sentences to some arrested on terrorism charges and drove many others to seek refuge in neighboring Ukraine.
Yeah, whatever, NYT.
--more--"
Reminds me of this:
"In Siberian mall’s ashes, outrage builds; Disaster fuels Russian angst" by Yuras Karmanau Associated Press April 01, 2018
KEMEROVO, Russia — The deaths of 64 people — including 41 children — in a Siberian shopping center fire on March 25 have tormented their loved ones, bringing not only grief over those they lost but deep dismay about the state of life in Russia.
OMG!
Now a fire is emblematic of the deep dismay in the state of life over there.
No wonder I'm so down every day after reading a Globe.
Their paper is full of stuff like that!
I noticed the date of the event; this wasn't a joke, was it?
Now a fire is emblematic of the deep dismay in the state of life over there.
No wonder I'm so down every day after reading a Globe.
Their paper is full of stuff like that!
I noticed the date of the event; this wasn't a joke, was it?
Relatives of the dead — and many others in Russia — ask why the shopping center’s emergency exits were locked, why the mall’s fire alarms didn’t sound, whether the center ever met building standards or if inspectors were bribed to turn a blind eye to deficiencies.
My initial reaction was a CIA hit team locked the exits, disabled the alarms, and then started the fire. It's called destabilizing a regime, and they have gotten pretty good at it after 65 years.
My initial reaction was a CIA hit team locked the exits, disabled the alarms, and then started the fire. It's called destabilizing a regime, and they have gotten pretty good at it after 65 years.
Living in Kemerovo, a Siberian city 1,900 miles east of Moscow, they are hurt and angry over what they see as official callousness after the fire.
The regional governor didn’t visit the scene, President Vladimir Putin didn’t declare a national day of mourning until two days after the fire, and officials have dismissed their protests over the blaze as political opportunism.
‘‘This tragedy reflects all of Russia’s problems — the corruption of officials who closed their eyes to problems with fire safety, uncoordinated work of the special services, the imperviousness of authorities,’’ said Rasim Yaraliyev, head of a citizen’s group pressing for answers about the fire.
America and other places just as much a tragedy, wow.
Aman Tuleyev, who had been governor of the Kemerovo region for 20 years, resigned on Sunday. Tuleyev was under intense pressure from residents after the fire, although Putin said last week that it was too early to talk about disciplining officials.
In a video message addressed to the people of Kemerovo posted on the local administration’s website Sunday, Tuleyev said that he had taken it upon himself to vacate his post.
11-year-old Vika Pochankina was one of six schoolchildren from the village of Treshchevsky who had traveled 30 miles that day to Kemerovo, a trip rewarding them for being good students. Teacher Oksana Yevseyeva, the trip’s chaperone, had left the children to watch the movie themselves in the theater while she did some shopping.
?????????
She made it out alive?
?????????
She made it out alive?
Six people have been arrested in the case, including the head of the regional construction inspection agency when the shopping center was developed in a former candy factory and the general director of the company that owns the mall, but distrust in Russian officials’ promises of a thorough investigation is strong.
This smoke has the strong stench of propaganda. How shameful considering the tragedy. AP has to grind the axe instead.
This smoke has the strong stench of propaganda. How shameful considering the tragedy. AP has to grind the axe instead.
‘‘They’re not telling us the truth. Judging by everything, nobody saved the children, they closed them off and abandoned them,’’ said Olga Begeza, whose daughter Diana wanted to go on the trip but couldn’t because her mother didn’t have the $7 to pay for it.
‘‘It seems that our lives don’t count for anything. That’s the only thing my family has understood,’’ she said.
You get used to it.
You get used to it.
Complaints about official corruption and incompetence are widespread in Russia, and in Kemerovo they are aggravated by what’s seen as an insensitive response from officials.
Although Putin visited Kemerovo on Tuesday, he did not speak to a large gathering of demonstrators demanding answers, protesting corruption, and calling for regional officials’ ousters.
Deputy regional governor Sergei Tsivilyov did show up but incurred the crowd’s anger when he dismissed as ‘‘a PR stunt’’ concerns that the death toll was far higher than officially reported.
In a meeting with Putin, Tuleyev added to the anger by blaming ‘‘the opposition’’ and ‘‘local busybodies’’ for fomenting the 10-hour protest.
In the days after the fire, tens of thousands of people in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other cities streamed to makeshift memorials to the fire victims, bringing flowers and stuffed toys.
Looks like an excuse to mobilize if nothing else.
--more--"
Yup, waving dead kids at you, the hallmark of a CIA false flag. That would be considered crazy talk, except they have been doing it for decades.
Related:
Trapped in Russian Mall Fire, Children Said Farewell by Phone
Another NYT rip job if you want to pay for the call, blaming Putin and waving burned children at you!
They don't ask how the fire started or who locked the exits, it's just mourners with candles and tears. I'm told Putin called in his version of the FBI, "another tool in his repertoire of responses to most problems."
"A fire at a luxury hotel in the Black Sea resort of Batumi killed 11 people and injured 21 more. Ten of those killed were Georgians and the other was a citizen of Iran. The blaze broke out at the Leogrand Hotel on Friday night, most likely in its spa center. All those who perished had died after inhaling fumes, the regional health minister said. The Leogrand, which opened in 2015, had been fined for failing to comply with fire safety regulations (New York Times)."
Good thing it was snowing at the time:
Yup, waving dead kids at you, the hallmark of a CIA false flag. That would be considered crazy talk, except they have been doing it for decades.
Related:
Trapped in Russian Mall Fire, Children Said Farewell by Phone
Another NYT rip job if you want to pay for the call, blaming Putin and waving burned children at you!
They don't ask how the fire started or who locked the exits, it's just mourners with candles and tears. I'm told Putin called in his version of the FBI, "another tool in his repertoire of responses to most problems."
"A fire at a luxury hotel in the Black Sea resort of Batumi killed 11 people and injured 21 more. Ten of those killed were Georgians and the other was a citizen of Iran. The blaze broke out at the Leogrand Hotel on Friday night, most likely in its spa center. All those who perished had died after inhaling fumes, the regional health minister said. The Leogrand, which opened in 2015, had been fined for failing to comply with fire safety regulations (New York Times)."
Good thing it was snowing at the time:
More sand in the gears:
Separatists name temporary leader
He was assassinated soon after.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
House Speaker Ryan rebukes Trump for insult of Stormy Daniels
He's a client of hers!
O’Rourke adopts ‘Lyin’ Ted’ epithet for opponent
Biden acknowledges age is a factor in presidential race
So is his touchy-feely past.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Students, parents denounce plans to shutter Boston schools
How are those arrival times and contract negotiations going anyway?
Smoking is rampant in hiphop videos and that could be a public health problem
Heart-wrenching obituary of a young Vermont mom struggling with addiction gains attention
Mega Millions jackpot reaches all-time high of $900 million
I may have to play a ticket or two.
Imagine if I win.
"Beverly man pleads guilty to mailing threatening letters, powder to Trump’s sons" by Travis Andersen Globe Staff October 17, 2018
Daniel Frisiello is a “prolific letter writer” who regularly sent notes to celebrities and public officials seeking autographs and a sounding board for sharing his thoughts, a prosecutor said Wednesday.
However, Assistant US Attorney Scott Garland said Wednesday in federal court in Boston that Frisiello’s correspondence took on a far more sinister tone when he mailed threatening notes containing white powder to the homes of President Trump’s adult sons and other public figures.
Frisiello, 25, of Beverly, pleaded guilty Wednesday to 19 counts of mailing threats and hoaxes. He was ordered to remain on home detention at his parents’ residence while he awaits sentencing, currently slated for January.
And now he will get lost amongst the weeds.
Prosecutors said Frisiello sent threatening letters laced with powder to Eric Trump in March 2016 and Donald Trump Jr. in February 2018.
He demanded in the 2016 letter that then-candidate Donald Trump Sr. drop out of the presidential race, or “the next letter would not be a fake,” US Attorney Andrew E. Lelling’s office said in a statement. Garland said that letter triggered a “full-on” hazmat response by police.
Court records show the later note to Trump Jr. said, “You are an awful, awful person, I am surprised that your father lets you speak on TV. You make the family idiot, Eric, look smart. This is the reason why people hate you, so you are getting what you deserve. So shut the [expletive] UP!”
The white powder wasn’t hazardous in either case, though Donald Jr.’s wife was taken to a hospital as a precaution after being exposed to the powder. The White House and Trump Organization did not immediately respond to inquiries seeking comment.
Then it was a hoax.
Prosecutors said Frisiello also mailed threats to authorities investigating the high-profile New England cases of Nathan Carman and Michelle Carter.
Other threat recipients included a federal prosecutor in California, a Stanford law professor, a Congressional candidate, and the district office of US Senator Deborah Stabenow of Michigan, authorities said.
William Fick, a lawyer for Frisiello, said his client has cognitive and developmental issues stemming from brain damage at birth and is also autistic. He also suffers from anxiety, Fick said.....
Too many vaccinations, 'eh?
--more--"
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
The Globe must have forgot to STAT the drug prices.
"Trump ditches 144-year-old postal pact that boosts Chinese retailers" by Danielle Paquette Washington Post October 18, 2018
WASHINGTON — President Trump moved Wednesday to withdraw from a 144-year-old international postal agreement that enables businesses in China to mail small packages to the United States at a hefty discount, an arrangement government officials said boosts foreign competitors and costs the post office roughly $170 million per year.
Trump’s notice to exit from the Universal Postal Union treaty comes as the White House cranks up the pressure on Beijing to drop what it calls predatory commercial practices, including swiping trade secrets from American companies operating in China.
‘‘This has been a long-standing, long-festering problem,’’ said Robert Taub, chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission, an independent federal agency.
The administration framed the departure as separate from the trade war which has seen Trump impose tariffs on roughly half of Chinese goods entering the United States.
Dropping out of the postal treaty, first ratified in 1874, is expected to exacerbate tensions with China, but the US Postal Service and business groups applauded the action Wednesday.
‘‘The current system has led to the United States subsidizing the imports of small packages from other countries,’’ said Jeff Adams, spokesman for the US Postal Service.
The UPU treaty has allowed the country to flood the US with cheap goods at shipping discounts of up to 70 percent, putting American companies at a disadvantage and straining the US mail system while fueling growth abroad, Taub said.
It's a pillar of our economy.
The postal treaty irked leaders from both parties long before Trump took office, Taub said. The Reagan administration pressed for change with few results, and a 2015 government report warned mail from abroad was straining America’s postal system.
Singapore and European countries also benefit from the arrangement.
Packages from China surged as the country morphed over the last decade into an e-commerce powerhouse with the world’s largest online retail market, which logs approximately $354 billion in annual sales.
Small packages from China to the United States jumped by 182 percent between 2011 and 2012, according to the latest figures from the US Postal Service.
Sean Heather, vice president of the US Chamber’s Center for Global Regulatory Cooperation, praised the administration’s step to negotiate higher rates for China and other countries.
‘‘American companies should not pay more for package delivery within the United States than what the US Postal Service collects to deliver packages from overseas,’’ he said in a statement, but some analysts brushed off Wednesday’s move.
Derek Scissors, who studies China at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank, said Trump’s announcement doesn’t carry much heft compared to what he vowed to do in September.
After Beijing imposed new duties on $60 billion in American imports, Trump said he would punch back with levies on $267 billion in Chinese goods, effectively placing higher border taxes on everything the United States buys from China.
So far, that plan hasn’t materialized.
‘‘It’s a stunt to distract from the fact that the president promised more tariffs last month and doesn’t want to act,’’ Scissors said.....
OOOH!??
I was told the tariffs were why prices were being raised.
--more--"
Now we are getting to the meat of it:
"Workers in demand in meat processing" by Mario Parker and Megan Durisin Bloomberg News October 18, 2018
CHICAGO — On any given Monday, America’s biggest supplier of ground beef has 1,000 jobs unfilled, pushing Cargill Inc. to aggressively sweeten the pot on benefits to retain existing workers and hire new ones.
The openings, largely at the meatpacker level, are the result of the Trump administration’s tough stand on immigration and a US unemployment rate reaching decade lows. While the number represents less than 1 percent of Cargill’s work force, the shortage is slowing output and hindering production of new higher-margin products, executives say.
With global demand for meat rising in a robust economy, Cargill and other industry leaders say the need to expand gives them little choice but to boost worker benefits — with added pay in some cases, as well as new housing, health care, and busing incentives.
Companies are adding plants, but “whether or not they can run those plants efficiently is kind of a jump ball,” Christine McCracken, New York-based analyst for Rabobank International, said by telephone. “What we’re seeing today doesn’t indicate that they’ll be able to fully ramp up production.”
“Recruiting and retaining qualified workers in the meat and poultry processing industries was always difficult,” wrote in a note in July. “But it is now a perpetual grind.”
Nice pun.
In its August earnings call, Pilgrim’s Pride Corp., the second-largest US chicken company, said it expects tight labor conditions “will govern the pace of industry capacity additions in the near to mid-term.”
Meat processing is tough work, with frigid temperatures, sharp equipment, bloody meat, fast-moving conveyor belts, and hours on your feet. In the past, the plants have offered go-to-jobs for new immigrants, but with immigration rules drastically tightened under President Trump that well is running dry. At the same time, the September unemployment rate was 3.7 percent, the lowest since 1969.
Oh, right, that's why we need all the illegals pouring in.
Otherwise, we might not get our meat!
While consumers haven’t yet been affected with a glut of meat still available, the unfilled jobs are preventing Cargill from producing higher-margin meat products, according to Brian Sikes, the agribusiness giant’s head of protein.
Only problem is, the stuff spoils quick.
Companies are experimenting with automation and robotics. For instance, Cargill has robots that stack boxes. But the progress is slow and expensive and, in the meantime, the company has had to be “creative” with incentives to draw new meatpackers, Sikes said.
This as they say they have a shortage of employees!
While simply paying more is in the mix, it is not all of the equation, according to Sikes.
Don't wanna $hare!
In Schuyler, Neb., Cargill is working with the governor’s office to secure funding for affordable housing. The company also provides bus service for employees at its Fort Morgan, Colo.-based plant, from Greeley and Denver, 84 miles away. In other areas. it’s set up local clinics to provide free medical services.
Yup, you can live in the company town and shop at the company store!
Cargill isn’t alone in its efforts.
Tyson Foods Inc., the nation’s largest meat packer, is building a $300 million chicken plant in Humboldt, Tenn., and the company is already working with area schools to build needed skills for workers, said Hector Gonzalez, vice president of human resources in the poultry division.
They see a potential customer!!
Tyson has raised base wages, according to the company’s fiscal 2017 sustainability report. It implemented varying levels of hourly pay hikes at all poultry plants, moving the average hourly pay between $12.88 and $20.50, depending on the worker’s role. Meanwhile, it’s helping workers with literacy classes and to get their high school equivalency diplomas and citizenship, the report noted.....
Doing jobs Americans don't want to do, right?
--more--"
All to bring you this:
"A franchise owner of a North Carolina Wendy’s said an employee who called a customer ‘‘Chubby’’ on an order has been fired. News outlets report the Carolina Restaurant Group issued a statement Tuesday that said it apologized to customer Jimmy Shue and terminated the employee, whose identity hasn’t been released. Shue said he went to the Gastonia restaurant this month and ordered two sandwiches, providing the cashier with his name ‘‘clear as day.’’ He said he then noticed the receipt listed his name as ‘‘Chubby,’’ which he said was an attempt to make fun of his weight. He said another employee then hesitantly called out ‘‘Chubby’’ to alert him the order was ready and restaurant patrons laughed. He said he was embarrassed and left, later contacting Wendy’s corporate."
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were having lunch at the same time, and Trump didn't even leave a tip for the waitress -- to which she appropriately responded Fuku!!
