"Ex-MBTA official says he was fired for flagging serious safety issues" by Nicole Dungca and Vernal Coleman Globe Staff, July 7, 2019
The former chief safety officer of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority says the agency fired him in retaliation after he called attention to serious safety hazards and pushed executives to stop suppressing information about dangerous mishaps, according to a federal complaint filed in May and obtained by the Globe.
Ron Nickle, the MBTA’s top safety official for almost eight years, told the Federal Transit Administration that a top MBTA employee urged the safety department to alter an investigative report related to a 2015 runaway Red Line train, a high-profile incident that embarrassed the agency. In his 97-page federal complaint, Nickle alleged the MBTA also pressured the commuter rail system to put a premium on on-time performance, not safety.
The MBTA has denied Nickle’s claims, saying he is misrepresenting events.
Nickle said he was fired in March as he investigated several accidents, including a worker’s electrocution on the Orange Line, a commuter rail train that had lost its wheel mid-commute, and a Green Line derailment during the Patriots’ Super Bowl parade, among others.....
It's called scapegoating, and it is meant to protect others from fallout.
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Related (below fold):
"Bill McGonagle, 67, is stepping down as the head of the BHA, after 40 years with the agency, including the past decade as its head. He departs with a well-deserved reputation as one of the most passionate champions of poor people in city government....."
As housing prices soared and wealth inequality yawned.
Sorry for not caring about the US women’s soccer team and the fans that cheered them to victory.
[flip to below fold]
"FBI, ICE use driver license photos without owners’ knowledge or consent" by Drew Harwell Washington Post, July 7, 2019
WASHINGTON — Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have turned state driver’s license databases into a facial-recognition gold mine, scanning through hundreds of millions of Americans’ photos without their knowledge or consent, newly released documents show.
Thousands of facial-recognition requests, internal documents, and e-mails over the past five years, obtained through public-records requests by Georgetown University researchers and provided to The Washington Post, reveal that federal investigators have turned state Department of Motor Vehicles databases into the bedrock of an unprecedented surveillance infrastructure.
The cat is now out of the bag.
Police have long had access to fingerprints, DNA, and other ‘‘biometric data’’ taken from criminal suspects, but the DMV records contain the photos of the majority of a state’s residents, most of whom have never been charged with a crime.
Neither Congress nor state legislatures have authorized the development of such a system, and growing numbers of Democratic and Republican lawmakers are criticizing the technology as a dangerous, pervasive, and error-prone surveillance tool.
‘‘Law enforcement’s access of state databases,’’ particularly DMV databases, is ‘‘often done in the shadows with no consent,’’ House Committee on Oversight and Reform chairman Elijah Cummings, Democrat of Maryland, said in a statement.
That's were the turn-in came.
Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the Oversight Committee’s ranking Republican, seemed particularly incensed during a hearing into the technology last month at the use of driver’s license photos in federal facial-recognition searches without the approval of state legislators or individual license holders.
‘‘They’ve just given access to that to the FBI,’’ he said. ‘‘No individual signed off on that when they renewed their driver’s license, got their driver’s licenses. They didn’t sign any waiver saying, ‘Oh, it’s OK to turn my information, my photo, over to the FBI.’ No elected officials voted for that to happen.’’
Despite those doubts, federal investigators have turned facial recognition into a routine investigative tool. Since 2011, the FBI has logged more than 390,000 facial-recognition searches of federal and local databases, including state DMV databases, the Government Accountability Office said last month, and the records show that federal investigators have forged daily working relationships with DMV officials. In Utah, FBI and ICE agents logged more than 1,000 facial-recognition searches between 2015 and 2017, the records show. Names and other details are hidden, though dozens of searches are marked as having returned a ‘‘possible match.’’
San Francisco and Somerville have banned their police and public agencies from using facial-recognition software, citing concerns about governmental overreach and a breach of public trust, and the subject is being hotly debated in Washington. On Wednesday, officials with the Transportation Security Administration, Customs and Border Protection, and the Secret Service are expected to testify at a hearing of the House Committee on Homeland Security about their agencies’ use of the technology.
Debate after the horse is out of the barn.
The records show that the technology already is tightly woven into the fabric of modern law enforcement. They detailed the regular use of facial recognition to track down suspects in low-level crimes, including cashing a stolen check and petty theft, and searches are often executed with nothing more formal than an e-mail from a federal agent to a local contact, the records show.
Yeah, commit a large larceny like a bank or corporation and pay a kickback, 'er, fine.
‘‘It’s really a surveillance-first, ask-permission-later system,’’ said Jake Laperruque, a senior counsel at the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight. ‘‘People think this is something coming way off in the future, but these [facial-recognition] searches are happening very frequently today. The FBI alone does 4,000 searches every month, and a lot of them go through state DMVs.’’
No, it is what bloggers have warned about for years now. We were told it was a ridiculous notion and that we were all paranoid conspiracy theorists.
Now the agenda-pushing Washington ComPost clues us into its real concern regarding the story and shifts the focus entirely:
The records also underscore the conflicts between the laws of some states and the federal push to find and deport undocumented immigrants. Utah, Vermont, and Washington allow undocumented immigrants to obtain full driver’s licenses or more-limited permits known as driving privilege cards, and ICE agents have run facial-recognition searches on those DMV databases.
More than a dozen states, including New York, as well as the District of Columbia, allow undocumented immigrants to drive legally with full licenses or driving privilege cards, as long as they submit proof of in-state residency and pass the relevant state’s driving-proficiency tests.
Lawmakers in Florida, Texas, and other states have introduced bills this year that would extend driving privileges to undocumented immigrants. Some of those states already allow the FBI to scan driver’s license photos, while others, such as Florida, Massachusetts, and New York, are negotiating with the FBI over access, the GAO said.
I will bet it surprises to advocates in Ma$$achu$etts to find that the state is in negotiations to allow the FBI to scan all our photos -- or not.
‘‘The state has told [undocumented immigrants], has encouraged them, to submit that information. To me, it’s an insane breach of trust to then turn around and allow ICE access to that,’’ said Clare Garvie, a senior associate with the Georgetown law school’s Center on Privacy and Technology. Garvie led the research.
An ICE spokesman declined to answer questions about how the agency uses facial-recognition searches, saying its ‘‘investigative techniques are generally considered law-enforcement sensitive.’’
Asked to comment, the FBI cited congressional testimony last month of Deputy Assistant Director Kimberly Del Greco, who said facial-recognition technology was critical ‘‘to preserve our nation’s freedoms, ensure our liberties are protected, and preserve our security.’’ The agency has said in the past that while facial-recognition searches can provide helpful leads, agents are expected to verify the findings and secure definitive proof before pursuing arrests or criminal charges.
Her statement is so upside-down and surreal it is hard to comprehend, especially in the wake of celebrating our freedom!
So the facial recognition tyranny that would have the founding fathers whirling at light speed in their graves is necessary to preserve freedom, protect our liberties, and preserve our security, when it in fact does just the opposite.
I guess we should all be grateful for the mess that is the RMV these days.
Twenty-one states, including Texas and Pennsylvania, plus the District of Columbia, allow federal agencies such as the FBI to scan driver’s license photos, GAO records show. The agreements stipulate some rules for the searches, including that each must be relevant to a criminal investigation.
The FBI’s facial-recognition search has access to local, state, and federal databases containing more than 641 million face photos, a GAO director said last month, but the agency provides little information about when the searches are used, who is targeted, and how often searches return false matches.
All I can say is thank God we are not Russia or China, huh?
The FBI said its system is 86 percent accurate at finding the right person if a search is able to generate a list of 50 possible matches, according to the GAO, but the FBI has not tested its system’s accuracy under conditions that are closer to normal, such as when a facial search returns only a few possible matches.
Civil rights advocates have said the inaccuracies of facial recognition pose a heightened danger of misidentification and false arrests. The software’s precision is highly dependent on a number of factors, including the lighting of a subject’s face and the quality of the image, and research has shown that the technology performs less accurately on people with darker skin.
‘‘The public doesn’t have a way of controlling what information the government has on them,’’ said Jacinta Gonzalez, a senior organizer for the advocacy group Mijente who was particularly concerned about how ICE and other agencies could use the scans to track down immigrants. ‘‘And now there’s this rapidly advancing technology, with very few guidelines and protections for people, putting all of this information at their fingertips in a very scary way.’’
That is their real concern in reporting this, not the violation of privacy regarding the average American citizen.
Even when they look like they are reporting something for the public good, it turns out it is just another agenda-pushing focus by what can be called nothing other than advocacy journali$m.
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The long train of Trump abuses are self-evident, aren't they?
At least he doesn't smoke:
"E-cigarette users seeking help in lonely struggle to quit vaping" by Ysabelle Kempe Globe Correspondent, July 7, 2019
Connor hated feeling like a slave to the slender metal device in his pocket. That’s why the rising junior at Boston College recently wrote his first-ever Reddit post on the page “QuittingJUUL,” a virtual space populated by more than 800 others who are also battling e-cigarette addiction.
Connor’s post begins with an introduction: He is 20 years old, has been vaping for almost two years, and has tried “like hell” to quit before addiction becomes a part of his personality. Although the surgeon general classified youth vaping as an “epidemic” last year, there have been few studies on how to treat e-cigarette addiction.
Maybe it was just bad chemistry.
This lag in medical research has left many, like Connor, to devise strategies for quitting on their own, such as using online support groups and weaning themselves by trying to make the nicotine experience less pleasant.
Yeah, hashtags and online support groups are the solution to everything these days, according to my Globe.
“I wound up getting hooked on cigarettes,” Connor said. Quitting e-cigarettes is not for the uncommitted, however. Kyle, a rising senior at Boston University, was unsuccessful in his attempt to quit, which he blames on a lack of motivation. A rising fifth-year student at Northeastern University, who declined to have his name published, understands the challenge of quitting all too well.
Despite being vapeheads they are rising like the smoke from the vape!
Makes you wonder who is really blowing smoke in the boy's room and out the car window.
“We don’t really know [how hard it is to quit vaping],” said Dr. Michael Siegel, a community health professor at Boston University, who researches tobacco control and has served as an expert witness in several major tobacco litigation cases. “We have no data. The truth is that the only real evidence is based on anecdotes.”
Like reefer madness.
E-cigarettes — also known as vapes — are hand-held, battery-powered devices used to inhale aerosol, produced by heating a liquid. Most brands, including Juul, contain nicotine salts, which leave the bloodstream quickly and trigger cravings. These types of e-cigarettes are highly addictive. Although vapes are less dangerous than cigarettes, any nicotine can harm the developing brain and increase susceptibility to future addiction, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
That has been disputed in the TV ads (they see you kids as a bunch of muppets?).
On its website, Juul — the leading e-cigarette manufacturer — says the nicotine in its products has not been proven to cause cancer but can create dependency. The American Cancer Society, however, says e-cigarette vapor contains some cancer-causing chemicals, although in much lower amounts than in cigarette smoke.
People quit vaping for a variety of reasons, including the cost, health concerns, and social stigma. Only one user interviewed for this story was willing to be fully identified. The others declined because of professional or familial concerns, a testament to the shame associated with addiction.
OMG!!
We have been told by the Globe that the opioid addicts need treatment and a hug, that it is not okay to fat shame or slut shame, and yet it's okay to smoke shame!
I notice that booze is okay and not even a problem as Globe promotes it.
Matt Murphy, a rising junior at UMass Lowell, quit vaping last June, when his mother unearthed his graveyard of used Juul pods, the refill cartridges that click onto the top of the device. The subsequent blowout fight was the nudge he needed.
A rising junior?
Although he still has cravings (and sometimes dreams) about hitting a Juul, Murphy credits a large part of his ability to quit to the support of his parents.
“A lot of parents decide to go the punishment route,” he said. “That doesn’t work because then you have to worry about your parents on top of the neurological dependence. It’s important to remember you both have the same goal, which is not to Juul.”
Maybe they can talk to the gamer's father before it is too late!
Today, the Reading native is an ambassador for the Truth Initiative, a nonprofit working to curb teen vaping.....
Ok, now we know who is pushing this agenda in my pre$$ because "nonprofits provide new ways for corporations and individuals to influence" -- as if they didn't have enough already.
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{@@##$$%%^^&&}
The Page A2 National Lead:
"Trump officials dismiss reports of disease and hunger in border facilities" by Emily Cochrane New York Times, July 7, 2019
WASHINGTON — With Congress set to return Monday after a recess for the Fourth of July holiday, lawmakers are preparing to confront the accounts of squalor in the border facilities and reports of current and former Border Patrol agents deriding migrants and making vulgar remarks about Democratic lawmakers in a private Facebook group.
Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, told NBC’s ‘‘Meet the Press’’ that he was stunned when administration officials say that reports on the conditions are unsubstantiated. ‘‘I'm just like, ‘What world are they living in?'’’ Merkley said, citing government and news reports. ‘‘From every direction you see that the children are being treated in a horrific manner, and there’s an underlying philosophy that it’s OK to treat refugees in this fashion, and that’s really the rot at the core of the administration’s policy.’’
What agenda-pushing echo-chamber world is he living in?
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The article was based on the report by The New York Times regarding facility in Clint, Texas yesterday, and did you know that "in 2014, President Obama appealed to Congress for $3.7 billion in emergency spending to deal with the immigration crisis on the nation’s southern border, where unaccompanied children were showing up by the thousands (Republican lawmakers rejected the request)."
Related:
"Several African heads of state gathered in Niger’s capital Sunday to launch a continent-wide free-trade area that represents a market worth an estimated $3.4 trillion. The African Continental Free Trade Area aims to create a single unified market for 1.3 billion people and support economic development. The plan got a boost last week when Nigeria, which has Africa’s largest economy, became the 25th country to ratify the agreement, which has been signed by 54 of Africa’s 55 countries. Only Eritrea has not signed up. The goal is to significantly increase trade within Africa. Currently, African countries conduct only 16 percent of their trade with each other, versus 65 percent with European countries, according to the African Union, but hurdles remain to creating a continent-wide trading area, including poor transportation infrastructure and border restrictions."
America looks like Africa!
"Madeleine Albright was at Tanglewood this weekend. Albright, who was born in Czechoslovakia, told attendees she grew up with dreams of becoming an opera singer. Though she answered a different calling, the veteran politican and diplomat said she continues to draw strength and hope from music, especially in times when “we have a policy towards migrants and refugees that would make a certain statue in New York Harbor weep.”
Along with 500,000 Iraqi kids, so Czechmate, bitch!
I'm sorry, she really hit a sour note with me and there is a special place in hell reserved for such cretins.
If only Norah O’Donnell had done the interview, huh?
Also briefly see:
Man arrested in Washington mobile home fire that killed 4
"People are being warned to stay out of the water along the Mississippi Gulf Coast as toxic bacteria spread eastward. The Department of Environmental Quality started closing beaches June 22. It warns that polluted floodwaters have fed an outbreak of cyanobacterium, or blue-green algae, which causes rashes, diarrhea, and vomiting. It is spreading as water from the Mississippi River pours into the Gulf of Mexico. Mississippi’s beaches are a tourist attraction, but those farther east along the Gulf Coast in Alabama and Florida draw more visitors....."
Was worried there for a second amid the thawing ice caps, but at least water shouldn't be an issue.
"Officials have voiced concerns about the possibility of major aftershocks in the days and even months to come, though the chances have dwindled. The US Geological Survey said Sunday that there was just a 1 percent chance of another magnitude 7 or higher earthquake in the next week. No fatalities or major injuries were reported after the larger quake, which jolted an area from Sacramento to Mexico and prompted the evacuation of the Navy’s largest single land holding, Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake....."
In nearby Trona, a gateway for Death Valley, didn’t have water, and residents lined up for free water that National Guard soldiers handed out at Trona High School, and why is this strangely being played down? How can they know what the chances are of another quake? They can't predict them! I'm not inclined to hear HAARP strings regarding every "natural" disaster, but the reaction by authority and their mouthpiece media makes one wonder.
Accused of sex abuse, prominent Detroit priest is removed from the pulpit
[Oddly enough, I flip to page A3 and am confronted with a full-page advertisement for JUUL, For Adult Smokers Only. They are cracking down on youth smoking themselves to avoid the shame]
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
My World Lead:
"Iran announces new breach of nuclear deal" by David D. Kirkpatrick and David E. Sanger New York Times, July 7, 2019
NEW YORK — Iran said Sunday that within hours it would breach the limits on uranium enrichment set four years ago in an accord with the United States and other international powers that was designed to keep Tehran from producing a nuclear weapon.
The latest move inches Iran closer to where it was before the accord: on the path to being able to produce an atomic bomb.
There they go again, implying and inferring that Iran was and now is making such a thing.
In recent weeks, Tehran has been making deliberate but provocative violations of the accord, as part of a carefully calibrated campaign to pressure the West into eliminating sanctions that have slashed the country’s oil exports and crippled its economy.
What accord? The U.S. pulled out of it. Why does Iran have to still abide by it?
I mean, the Times turning this thing on its head and turning iran into the provocateur just exposes them for what they really are: The Jew York Times, the same one that blared all the Iraq bullshit from their front pages, remember?
Last week, Iranian officials broke through similar limits on how much nuclear fuel the country could stockpile. The steps Tehran has taken are all reversible, yet the new move that Iran vowed to take — to increase enrichment levels beyond the 3.67 percent purity that is the ceiling under the deal — is the most threatening.
They would have to enrich to over 90% to even think about a bomb.
In violating the limits on uranium enrichment, Tehran remains far from producing a nuclear weapon. It would take a major production surge, and enrichment to far higher levels, for Iran to develop a bomb’s worth of highly enriched uranium, experts say. It would take longer to manufacture that material into a nuclear weapon, but for Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, who signaled in May that he would order the country’s engineers to cross both thresholds if Europe did not compensate Iran for US sanctions, the breach of the enrichment limit would be a watershed. He is betting that the United States will back away from crushing sanctions or that he can split European nations from the Trump administration, which the Europeans blame for setting off the crisis.
While it is nice to finally see the Jew York Times admit this is an overblown concern, it's too late given their daily and ceaseless war propaganda.
As for the Iranian bet, this is likely the one time Trump won't back off. Doesn't mean he is going to war, he just can't back off sanctions.
If he is wrong, the prospect of military confrontation lurks over each escalation.
Some are praying and pushing for it.
“It is a back-to-the-future moment,” said Sanam Vakil, who studies Iran at Chatham House, a research institute in London. It has revived a vexing question that policymakers have grappled with for more than a decade: Is there a permanent way to stop Iran from developing the capability to build a nuclear weapon?
Otherwise known as Royal Institute for International Affairs, a think tank of the British establishment. That's who the JYT turns to for expert analysis!
In a phone conversation Saturday seeking to head off a confrontation, President Emmanuel Macron of France asked Rouhani to explore by July 15 whether a new negotiation was possible. Rouhani agreed, according to news reports, but said that “lifting all sanctions can be the beginning of a move between Iran and the six major powers.”
So far, Trump and his top aides have vowed to continue using “maximum pressure” to force Iran to return to the negotiating table and to accept more stringent restrictions, but some of those who had negotiated the last deal say that reaching another one may now be much harder.
The Trump administration “has discredited the very concept of negotiations, and it has strengthened the hand of those inside Iran who would argue that it is no use talking to the Americans because you can never trust them,” said Rob Malley, a former National Security Council official who helped negotiate the 2015 accord.
“We have already gone through a period of sanctions, negotiations, and a deal, and this time it will be harder because the distrust is even greater than it was,” added Malley, who is now president of the International Crisis Group, an independent organization that tries to defuse international conflict.
Go look at the funding and board members too see whom they represent. This is the range of debate and expert analysis we are getting from the JYT.
For a year after Trump withdrew the United States from what he called a “terrible” deal negotiated by his predecessor, Iran stayed within the accord’s limits. It pressed Britain, France, and Germany to make good on their promises to compensate the country for oil revenues and other losses resulting from US sanctions.
That's where my print copy stopped negotiating.
There were many meetings on the design of a barter system that might allow Iran to swap oil for other goods, evading US sanctions, but progress was slow; as of last week, not a single barter transaction has been completed, and European officials said the system would never fully compensate for billions of dollars in lost oil sales.
Two months ago, when the United States accelerated the sanctions and moved to cut Iran’s oil revenues to near zero, Tehran decided to begin step-by-step violations of the accord, saying the United States had taken the first move to dissolve it.
Iran has not said how far beyond the enrichment limit it plans to go. Historically, although it has never been known to have approached the 90 percent enrichment required for weapons-grade material, its move raises the prospect of a race toward that goal.
And a prospect that they MIGHT NOT and PROBABLY WON'T, for to do such a thing would give the U.S. the casus belli it wants!
As part of the 2015 accord, Iran agreed to comprehensive inspections by international monitors, who continue their work. They report relatively few troubles.
Mark Dubowitz, the chief executive of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies who is among the most vociferous critics of the 2015 deal, argued that despite the accord’s shortcomings, in some ways US policy toward Iran was now working out better than anyone could have planned.
The JYT turned to the FDD for expert analysis, and I don't want to splice words here, but that makes you wonder whether Obama set a trap that Iran fell into!
Although he faulted the 2015 deal for weaknesses such as its planned sunset over the next five to 10 years, he conceded that in the short term the Obama administration had persuaded Iran to dismantle so much of its nuclear infrastructure that it has drastically prolonged the amount of time Iran would need to develop a bomb.
That has reduced Iran’s leverage — and helps explain Rouhani’s drive to break out of some of the accord’s restrictions.
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The co-lead right next to it:
"Iranian scientists accused of violating US sanctions" by Kat Brumback Associated Press, July 7, 2019
ATLANTA — When a respected Iranian scientist left Tehran bound for the United States last fall, he had plans to complete the final stage of his research on treating stroke patients as a visiting scholar at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.
Instead, when professor Masoud Soleimani touched down, federal authorities armed with a secret indictment arrested him on charges that he had violated trade sanctions by trying to have biological material brought to Iran.
Thank God America isn't like China or Russia, huh?
Secret indictments indeed!
Nine months later, as tensions escalate between the two countries, Soleimani sits in a detention center just south of Atlanta embroiled in a legal fight over the application of sweeping US sanctions that have caused prices to skyrocket in Iran.....
If he was an undocumented illegal the pre$$ and the controlled opposition it fronts for would be protesting with wave after wave of articles!
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I think it is incredibly telling that my Jewi$h War Pre$$ leads with two articles about Iran, don't you?
Related briefs:
"Syria’s president, Bashar Assad, has replaced some heads of influential security agencies, including Major General Jamil Hassan, who has headed the powerful Air Force Intelligence Directorate since 2009, pro-government Syrian pages on social media reported Sunday. No reason was given for the shake-up, which came as government forces have made little progress in a two-month-old offensive against rebels in the northwestern Idlib province despite recapturing wide areas of the country in recent years. There was no immediate confirmation from the government or state media, which rarely report news related to intelligence agencies. Several pages, including Latakia Eagles, reported that Hassan was replaced by his deputy, Major General Ghassan Ismail. Hassan had been one of the most powerful officers in the country, and opposition activists have blamed him for atrocities during Syria’s civil war."
I can't imagine Assad shuffled deck chairs to appear the terrorist opposition; however, I do wonder if this is disinformation put out by the West to make it appear their is a lack of stability in the Syrian regime, especially with Syria being Iran's closest ally.
Now all salute the Israeli airstrikes, 'eh?
"Another massive march in Hong Kong, this time held in an enclave frequented by Chinese tourists and connected by high-speed railway to the mainland, turned chaotic on Sunday night after a smaller group of protesters occupied a major shopping road and were forcibly cleared by police. The protesters hoped to take their grievances against Beijing directly to its people and tried to engage with visitors from the mainland. The crowd was larger than expected, pushing protesters into roads not sanctioned for the march. By night, a small crowd had occupied streets in the area in defiance of riot police, prompting officers to tackle and beat some with batons. At least three were arrested, according to local press. The scenes marked the latest in an escalating crisis that has gripped Hong Kong for more than a month, with protesters on one side and their Beijing-backed government and police on the other. The protesters marched to the West Kowloon station, which opened in September and is subject to Chinese laws. It connects to China’s high-speed rail network. Along their route, volunteers handed out posters advertising the upheaval over the past weeks, sparked by a now-suspended bill that would allow extraditions to the mainland. They designed leaflets in the simplified Chinese characters widely used in the mainland, and shouted the purpose of their march over loudspeakers in Mandarin, China’s official language, rather than the Cantonese of Hong Kong. Some used Apple’s Airdrop service to share photos and demands with Apple devices ‘‘Our idea is to spread messages to travelers and tourists, especially those from the mainland,’’ said Yoanna, a 17-year-old student who declined to give her last name. ‘‘We know that mainlanders will support us, but maybe they can’t get information on what is going on.’’"
They must be reading the Globe like me, and what that agenda-pushing piece of WaComPo distortion tells you is they have lost the public!
As the protests flop the Globe is concerned and sees conspiracies with their obsession, while I am becoming indifferent to the mixed messages that are being used to keep China off balance in advance of WWIII when they will become Public Enemy #1 and given a quick ride off the rails.
Also see:
"For the second time in a week, Taliban insurgents Sunday greeted the opening of new peace discussions in Qatar with a deadly suicide bombing at home, this time killing 12 people and wounding at least 179 in Ghazni province. The defiant message from the morning attack on a national intelligence compound, which wounded scores of children at a nearby school, drew a sharp contrast with optimistic statements by US officials and negotiators, who expressed hope this week that a peace agreement — or at least the outlines of one — could be reached by Sept. 1. Just as a delegation of Afghan leaders was finishing breakfast and heading to an ice-breaking ‘‘peace summit’’ with Taliban officials in Doha, the Qatari capital, word came that insurgents had claimed a rush-hour assault in Ghazni city, the provincial capital. A spokesman for the Taliban claimed responsibility and said ‘‘dozens’’ of intelligence employees had been killed. The Ghazni governor’s office said in a Facebook post that 12 people had been killed and 179 wounded, many of them schoolchildren (Washington Post)."
The story doesn't make sense from so many angles, and having the WaComPo wave schoolchildren at us doesn't help in the old credibility department. One begins to wonder if this event happened at all, especially when it makes the Taliban look terrible. They have no motive to do it, but certain other forces do. Cui bono?
"Accident investigators in the Bahamas say they recovered the helicopter that crashed after taking off from a remote private island on July 4, killing coal billionaire Chris Cline and six others. The helicopter was expected to be taken to Fort Lauderdale and then to an accident investigation facility in Fort Pierce, Fla. Authorities have said it is too early to draw conclusions about the cause of the crash. They do not believe a distress call was made, and they only began searching after police received a report from Florida that the craft had failed to arrive in Fort Lauderdale. Those killed included Cline’s 22-year-old daughter, Kameron, and three of her close friends: Brittney Layne Searson, Jillian Clark, and Delaney Wykle. Brad Ullman, executive director of the West Virginia Golf Association, confirmed that David Jude also was killed in the crash. Bahamas Police Superintendent Shanta Knowles said Geoffrey Painter of the United Kingdom also was killed....."
Too bad there was no lawn to land on after the microburst, but at least they didn't hit a mountain; however, truth to be told I have no idea the importance of the passengers but this has the stink of assassination to it.
"A 1,100-pound World War II bomb was defused near the Frankfurt headquarters of the European Central Bank hours after thousands of people were evacuated from the surrounding district Sunday. City officials called on about 16,500 people to leave their homes in the Ostend area east of downtown Frankfurt on Sunday morning before emergency workers tackled the American bomb, which was found during construction work last month. Authorities had already moved some people out of a nursing home on Saturday. More than 70 years after the end of the war, unexploded bombs are frequently found in Germany. Disposing of them sometimes entails large-scale precautionary evacuations such as the one on Sunday.The defusing operation was completed by mid-afternoon, according to the city’s fire service, about two hours after police verified that no one was left in the area. Officials chose Sunday to defuse the bomb to allow preparation and to minimize disruption in Frankfurt, Germany’s financial center."
Again, one wonders if that is an excuse to move people around and see how compliant they are. If not, what does it tell you about the murderous allied bombing campaign against Germany so long ago.
I flip the page and find them still fighting WWII:
"A political murder and far-right terrorism: Germany’s new hateful reality" by Katrin Bennhold New York Times, July 7, 2019
Oh, Jew York Times again, great.
BERLIN — The death threats started in 2015, when Walter Lübcke defended the refugee policy of Chancellor Angela Merkel. A regional politician for her conservative party, he would go to small towns in his district and explain that welcoming those in need was a matter of German and Christian values.
Hateful e-mails started pouring in. His name appeared on an online neo-Nazi hit list. His private address was published on a far-right blog. A video of him was shared hundreds of thousands of times, along with emojis of guns and gallows and sometimes explicit calls to murder him: “Shoot him now, this bastard,” and then someone did.
Kind of the way the Hong Kong kids doxxed the police, huh?
I'm going to say it now, I'm sick of the hypocritical, pot-hollering-kettle, mind-manipulating agenda-pushing of the quality of my pre$$. Maybe they should be cremated.
On June 2, Lübcke was fatally shot in the head on his front porch, in what appears to be Germany’s first far-right political assassination since the Nazi era. The suspect — who made a detailed confession last month, only to retract it this past week under a new legal team — has a violent neo-Nazi past and police record, renewing criticism that Germany’s security apparatus, with its long track record of neglecting far-right extremism, is still failing to take the threat seriously enough.
That is excluding Operation Gladio, right?
Far-right militancy is resurgent in Germany, horrifying a country that prides itself on dealing honestly with its murderous past. Raw and hateful language has become increasingly common online, and politicians are increasingly under threat.
“The murder of Walter Lübcke shocked me like it shocked a lot of people,” Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on public television recently, while calling for Germans to hold weekly protests against extremism.
Wasn't he just in Iran?
“I asked myself — what is happening in our country?” he said. “If you look at how much hatred and harassment there is on the Internet — a lot of it directed at local politicians, bureaucrats, sport and cultural clubs — then I think we need to stand up and say that this is unacceptable.”
Ah, this is about censorship then.
Of course, certain kinds of hate a chosen supremacism is all right.
Hate speech has surged in all corners of Europe and, with it, political violence.
In Britain, lawmaker Jo Cox died after being shot and stabbed multiple times by a man with far-right sympathies a week before the Brexit referendum in 2016. In Poland, the liberal mayor of Gdansk, Pawel Adamowicz, was killed in January after being the target of a relentless and hateful campaign against him on the state-owned broadcaster.
Sorry to be so apathetic about Cox, but I'm going on vacation to Europe.
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, known as the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, was set up in the wake of World War II with the explicit aim of preventing the rise of anti-democratic forces like another Nazi party, but with the arrival of more than 1 million migrants since 2015, many of them from Muslim countries, the agency has concentrated resources on threats of Islamist terrorism.
Today, the agency estimates that there are 24,100 known far-right extremists in Germany, 12,700 of them potentially violent, and there are nearly 500 outstanding arrest warrants for far-right extremists.
Horst Seehofer, who oversees the agency, denied that officials had been “blind on the right eye” but conceded that more should have been done in the Lübcke case.
“This political murder is a moment, a kind of signal,” Seehofer said, “because it is directed against our free democratic culture.”
Why did JFK just flash through my thoughts?
The suspect, Stephan Ernst, was well-known to the authorities. Ernst, 45, circulated in the orbit of a neo-Nazi party and nearly stabbed an immigrant to death in 1992. He spent time in prison after an attempted bombing, and owned at least five weapons, including a machine gun and the .38 caliber handgun used to kill Lübcke.
Here we go again, another patsy to which they had access. It's the same script every time!
“People will die,” he predicted in an online post before the murder.
Nothing like implicating yourself first!
After his prison term, domestic intelligence agents had kept tabs on Ernst but he fell off the radar at a time when many of them were diverted to focus on militant Islamists. Then time limits on storing personal data kicked in.
The answer, of course, is more tyranny.
“He should have remained on the radar continuously,” said Stephan Kramer, head of the domestic intelligence agency in the eastern state of Thuringia, but for too long, Kramer said, “the possibility of far-right domestic terrorism was neglected at the federal level.”
Politically, Germany saw a sharp uptick in right-wing fury after the 2015 migration crisis. The far-right Alternative for Germany party shocked the establishment by winning enough votes to take seats in Parliament. During the past year, support for the party has flattened, but analysts say that while the Alternative for Germany has not been linked directly to political violence, the party’s noisy presence has contributed to a normalization of violent language that risks legitimizing violence itself. The party has vowed to “hunt” Merkel.
This is totally disgusting crap coming from a war-mongering, war-promoting paper like the JYT!!!!!
For some politicians, the angry political mood has meant peril. The mayor of the northern city of Altena, Andreas Hollstein, survived a knife attack in 2016.
In 2015, the mayor of Cologne, Henriette Reker, was stabbed in the throat by an unemployed man who said he wanted to send a signal on the country’s refugee policy. In an interview, Reker said death threats, rare before 2015, had become an everyday reality and she now had private security agents posted outside her office.
In recent decades, far-right extremists have committed scores of murders in Germany — 169 since 1990 alone, according to one investigation conducted by two German newspapers, Die Zeit and Der Tagesspiegel, but Lübcke is the first politician to be assassinated by far-right militants in postwar Germany.
So now it's an issue and concern, huh? Self-serving assholes is all, huh?
Tanjev Schultz, an expert on far-right extremism, said the new threats against politicians carried echoes of the Weimar Republic, the period between the two world wars, when far-right terrorists killed a number of politicians to destabilize Germany’s young democracy, ultimately succeeding.
Yup, he is coming back -- if he was ever dead at all, that is.
“Destabilizing the state has always been the strategic aim of neo-Nazis, but the German authorities have never really looked at it that way,” Schultz said. “They have tended to treat far-right violence as the result of random acts committed by lone-wolf actors.”
Reading this has become absurd given all the lone gunmen we have been treated to for decades!
What it tells you is that the JYT engages in projection, and that what they accuse of others is what they are guilty of themselves, and as for violence against political puppets and the rest, my attitude has always been why waste your time?
There has been a striking disconnect between Germany’s strong collective consciousness of its Nazi past and its far weaker collective consciousness of neo-Nazi terrorism in recent decades, he said.
Reker, the mayor of Cologne, has her own theory for this collective blindness. “Maybe our history is actually limiting our view,” she said. Germans like to think they have definitively dealt with that history, resulting in a self-deceptive attitude of “What mustn’t be cannot be.”
Tell it to the you-know-whos!
--more--"
Did you see who took over the investigation?
Related:
"Germany is at the forefront of a deeper realization among regulators and policy makers globally that laws must evolve to keep pace with technological change. Critics say Germany’s aggressive approach stretches the limits of antitrust law and won’t stand up to court reviews. Facebook is appealing the German decision, and even those who support Germany’s broader goals question whether its approach will be effective. Jason Furman, a senior economic adviser in the Obama administration and a Harvard professor advising the British government on tech regulation, said that rather than relying on antitrust law alone, countries should create a dedicated regulator for the tech industry, to match those covering the banking, health, and transportation sectors of the economy....."
Gotta pick your fights, I gue$$:
Long-ailing Deutsche Bank will lose 18,000 jobs in overhaul
I'm sure they will investigate that, too (or pa$$ the buck)
What I conclude here is Germany must be lagging on attacking Iran.
Gotta go through Greece first, right?
"Greek prime minister loses reelection to center right" by Matina Stevis-Gridneff and Niki Kitsantonis New York Times, July 7, 2019
ATHENS — Greeks voted out their leftist prime minister in elections that came after a decade of grueling economic austerity, casting their lot with a resurgent center-right New Democracy party.
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras called his opponent, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, a Harvard-educated former banker and son of a former prime minister, to concede defeat.
Initial results showed that Tsipras’ Syriza party, which has ruled Greece for the past four years, had suffered a major defeat at the hands of New Democracy.
“Citizens made their choice,” Tsipras said. “The popular verdict will be perfectly respected. I just spoke with Kyriakos Mitsotakis to congratulate him on his democratic victory.”
The prime minister declared that “in a democracy, a change in government isn’t strange” and said, “I will receive him tomorrow to hand over the prime ministerial office.”
Speaking shortly after Tsipras’ public concession, Mitsotakis tried to strike a conciliatory note.
“The people’s will is clear: Society want us to push forward together,” he said. “I’ll work to convince you that I’m everyone’s prime minister. We are too few to be split.”
Tsipras once walked Greece to the brink by calling an effective referendum on its euro membership, and then walked it back when he refused to heed its outcome. In July 2015, he convinced Greeks to reject another international bailout and the onerous austerity that came with it — then acquiesced and fell into line.
He followed the demands of the program drawn up by international policy makers in the European Commission in Brussels and the International Monetary Fund in Washington, whipping his party members in line to vote for more austerity.
What the New York Times (ugh!) is leaving out is that Syriza came to power on a populist platform. The fact that it betrayed everything it stood for was not lost on the Greeks, and exposes European $ociali$m for what it has become.
The result was a semblance of stability in Greece’s economy — it is today growing at a tepid 2 percent — and the enduring enmity of many voters. Unemployment continued to hover above 18 percent, remarkably high for a European country.
For who? The bankers?
Tsipras pushed through some privatization, cut pensions, raised taxes and trimmed spending to meet stringent fiscal targets, but the Greek public sector, often criticized as bloated and as slowing down innovation and entrepreneurship, was not revolutionized. Now, it will fall to Mitsotakis to cut it back and modernize it, if he can.
They haven't got enough blood from you Greeks yet, and he just handed of the job to be finished by someone else.
Yianna Elafrou, 55, a schoolteacher, is a onetime socialist supporter who switched to Tsipras during the crisis years after seeing her salary cut several times. This time, she said, she gave her vote to Mitsotakis.
“We tried them, it didn’t work,” she said of Syriza after casting her ballot at a polling center in Athens.
New Democracy may not capture her political beliefs, she said, “but it’s the lesser of two evils.”
Still evil.
With more than 80 percent of votes counted, New Democracy appeared set to get just under 40 percent of the popular vote, securing 158 seats in the 300-seat parliament — a comfortable majority. Tsipras’ party, Syriza, was trailing by 8 points, and had 86 seats.
Four more parties, including the Communists, appeared set to gain seats in parliament.
Golden Dawn, the neo-Nazi party that rose to become Greece’s third largest amid the migration crisis, collapsed in this election and was poised to have no presence in parliament at all. Several prominent members are standing trial on charges including murder, but another far-right upstart, the Greek Solution, appeared to have won 10 seats. Their leader, who once telemarketed letters supposedly written by Jesus, has suggested using land mines against migrants trying to make it to Greece.
Oh, you Greeks have rigged elections, too, huh?
A new party formed by a populist from the left who is a eurozone crisis veteran also gained seats. MeRa25, formed by Yanis Varoufakis, a finance minister under Tsipras, won nine seats.
--more--"
Hey, as long as the Greeks are happy, I'm happy.
Now about getting that war against Iran off the ground:
"In leak, UK ambassador calls Trump administration ‘inept’ and ‘clumsy’" by Ellen Barry New York Times, July 7, 2019
LONDON — In a series of leaked diplomatic cables, Britain’s ambassador to the United States described President Trump as “radiating insecurity” and his administration as diplomatically “clumsy and inept,” a withering assessment that threatened to damage bilateral relations at a delicate moment for Britain.
Wikileaks?
I'm sorry, but that is not the impression I get when I see him live. That's not an endorsement of him, far from it; however, it is an acknowledgement of the distortion put out by the agenda-pushing, war-promoting pre$$.
Oh, NYT again! That explains it!
The cables were published late Saturday by The Mail on Sunday, which called them “The Washington Files.” They span a period from 2017 to the present and include candid assessments of US domestic politics and Washington’s treatment of Iran over its nuclear weapons program.
The leak IS ABOUT IRAN!!!
It is unclear who leaked the documents and how The Mail obtained them, but the British news outlet identified only one recipient in Britain: Mark Sedwill, the nation’s national security adviser, who became Cabinet secretary in 2018.
I guess they know where they came from then, huh?
Asked about the leaked cables, Trump told reporters that Darroch ‘‘has not served the UK well.’’
The British government recently hosted the president for his first state visit, which included a lavish banquet at Buckingham Palace and a 41-gun salute — gestures seemed aimed at winning his good will.
They gave him the royal treatment, but that was before he wimped out on the war.
As Britain barrels toward Brexit, set for Oct. 31, a hard exit from the European Union appears to be more likely, and Trump has repeatedly dangled an advantageous trade deal with the United States.
In the cables, the British ambassador, Kim Darroch, says British analysts do not believe that the Trump administration “is going to become substantially more normal; less dysfunctional; less unpredictable; less faction riven; less diplomatically clumsy and inept.”
I don't care as long as not one more country is attacked.
On Sunday morning, Nigel Farage, the Brexit Party leader who has a close relationship with Trump, called for Darroch to step down, calling him “totally unsuited to the job.”
A formal investigation of the leak may be set in motion in the coming days.
That is where this is going?
Darroch noted that Trump has regularly survived scandals in the past and suggested that he could win a second term as president. “Trump may emerge from the flames, battered but intact, like Schwarzenegger in the final scenes of ‘The Terminator,’” Darroch wrote, referring to the 1984 science-fiction film.
Is that really a good analogy?
He warned of “real risks on the horizon,” as Trump guided US policy away from consensus with Britain. “This ‘America First’ administration could do some profoundly damaging things to the world trade system: such as denounce the WTO, tear up existing trade details, launch protectionist action, even against allies,” he wrote. “It could further undermine international action on climate change, or further cut UN funding.”
What about Iran?
There is some history to the relationship between Trump and the British ambassador. Shortly after he took up the post in 2016, a memorandum by Darroch was leaked, suggesting that Trump would be “open to outside influence if pitched right.”
And who know who pitched him the best.
Trump then recommended, via Twitter, that his friend Farage, then the leader of the Independence Party, be appointed as ambassador to Washington in Darroch’s place.
“He would do a great job!” Trump wrote.
A diplomat for 29 years, Darroch has served as Britain’s permanent representative to the European Union.....
OMG!
He's a Never-trump globalist!
--more--"
For some reason the Globe scrubbed that article from the World section, and this didn't make print for second day in a row:
Sex-trafficking charges could put Jeffrey Epstein behind bars for 45 years
It's another New York Times pos, and "in the era of #MeToo, Epstein’s case had remained stubbornly unresolved. For years, women have accused Epstein, in lawsuits and in complaints to police, of preying on them when they were underage. Still, for more than a decade he was shielded from federal charges by his secret plea deal. That will end Monday, two law enforcement officials said. On Saturday, a neighbor near an East 71st Street home purchased by Epstein in the mid-1990s, took a photograph, reviewed by The New York Times, that showed FBI agents and New York Police Department officers using a crow bar to force open the mansion’s tall wooden doors."
I'm thinking the bloggers may be right on this one.
The Globe opines that to avoid another war and resurrect peace will require veterans as well as citizens to face up to history:
"America facing a third war with no exit strategy" by Kevin Flike, July 8, 2019
I decided to speak up after I heard President Trump’s recent answer when asked if he had an exit strategy for a potential war.
In complete ignorance to the lessons paid for in blood from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, he said, “You’re not going to need an exit strategy. . . . I don’t need exit strategies.”
Dick Cheney said the same thing in 2003, and look where we are still -- and it was always about Iran (he knew fracking was fool's gold, too).
At worst, this is an admission of malfeasance by our country’s commander in chief. At best, it’s a statement ignoring the lessons of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars — something we cannot afford.
Consider this: I was shot in Afghanistan on Sept. 25, 2011. That was 10 years and two weeks after the 9/11 terror attacks. Nearly eight years after my life-altering injuries, we remain in Afghanistan, with no end in sight.
I had no issue with our country avenging a coordinated series of attacks by a group of terrorists rooted in Afghanistan. However, when the invasion began, in October 2001, no one anticipated what the war would become. We’ve now been in Afghanistan nearly 18 years, and 14,000 of our troops remain on the ground, with no end in sight.
The wisdom of launching a war in Iraq two years later will be debated by historians for decades, but like Afghanistan, we remain enmeshed in a second country despite the president’s campaign promise to bring US troops home.
Is our country ready for a third war with an all-volunteer force? Can we ask our troops, the 1 percent of men and women who volunteer to protect our country, to fight on a third front? With no exit strategy, a force made up only of those willing to step forward, and the threat of North Korea looming over our shoulders, is this really sustainable?
Rising suicide rates among veterans — an average of 22 per day — are a sign of the cost of a prolonged war. It would be nearly impossible to assign a dollar amount to the mental and physical toll these wars have taken on our veterans and their families.
At least $1.3 million was raised for veterans dealing with mental health issues at a lavish bash in London by those who bring you the wars.
Are we ready to pay this price a third time in less than two decades?
Yeah, because Israel demands it.
Before we consider military action against Iran, we first need to think about a way out beyond a bullet, a pine box, or a sense of futility.....
--more--"
He now works for a cybersecurity firm in Boston.
Related:
"If our country had a military draft in effect, or if we had to pay additional taxes to support war efforts (as we did for a few years during the Vietnam War), I suspect the war in Afghanistan would have ended years ago. As it is, we basically continue outsourcing our wars over perceived “imminent threats” to a physically and psychologically worn out volunteer military. Somehow, we need to build incentives to inspire an effective peace movement....."
The writer is a Marine captain who served from 1971 to ’73, and I think he is wrong. In this day and age, Americans would meekly accept such a thing before getting back to their phone.
The fact is, any attempt to throttle back on AmeriKa militari$m would literally collapse our economy, that is how tentacled the MIC has become in the 60 years since Eisenhower warned of it. The guy who succeeded him took it seriously and had his head blown off for it. After that, it's been war president, war president, war president, war president, war president, war president.
Here is your peace candidate for 2020:
Do most voters even know who Bill Weld is?
Do Globe readers know who is Jennifer C. Braceras?
She must be there in the interest of balance, right?
Think of it as a rebranding.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Related:
"Lisa Peterson, a financial planner who was first elected to the Salem City Council in 2017, will announce Monday in a video that she intends to battle Representative Seth Moulton for the nomination in the district, which includes the North Shore and parts of Essex and Middlesex counties. Moulton’s presidential ambitions are front and center in Peterson’s case for why she would be a better representative for the Sixth District. “It’s clear he’s moved on from the district,” said Peterson, 41, in an interview. “I mean, obviously he’s running for president so he’s not here, he’s not representing us. I think we can do so much better.”
She wants to “show. . . her own daughter what’s possible and that we can step into our political power and that we can really make a difference.”
"Massachusetts says hemp-derived CBD is illegal — but CBD stores are still everywhere" by Felicia Gans Globe Staff, July 1, 2019
It finally made the paper on July 8?
Across Massachusetts, customers can find CBD everywhere, from the small shops selling CBD up and down Newbury Street to the products lining shelves at national stores like Bed Bath & Beyond and Sephora.
CBD has become so common that you can even buy gummies in the small corner store in the lobby of the office building that houses the Boston Globe.
The popularity of cannabidiol, which can be extracted from marijuana or hemp — two different varieties of the cannabis plant — has prompted questions and confusion from consumers who want to make sure their products are safe, legal, and reliable, but the overarching question remains: Is this even legal?
Now, the state has an answer.
The Department of Public Health and the Department of Agricultural Resources said recently that certain types of CBD are illegal under state regulations. The new policies outline legal uses for hemp and its derivatives, and said two common uses of CBD are now prohibited: “any food product containing CBD” and “any product containing CBD derived from hemp that makes therapeutic/medicinal claims,” according to a June 12 notice from the Department of Agricultural Resources.
Those two restrictions affect a vast majority of products on the market, from gummies that claim to help with pain management to oils that allege to help with sleep.
So why are these products still on shelves? The answer, it seems, comes down to enforcement.
Well, then we are no longer a nation of laws and the Globe just admitted it.
I'm not taking a side on the products and whether they should be sold or not or whether the law should be enforced or not. If it helps some people, it should be there regardless and authority needs to get with the people.
What I want to focus on is the arbitrary enforcement of law. What it means is, you don't have rule by law, you have the fiat whims of a dictatorship -- sometimes that of a president, but more often than not it is the in$titution of the $tate it$elf!
We have a two-tier $y$tem of JU$TU$ now, where a certain cla$$ of people and corporate intere$ts are above it, or in the case of Epstein, outed to save the greater project, and you have the prison-industrial complex for the rest of us based upon what government deigns to call a crime at any moment (it's retroactive, too, even though that is unconstitutional).
You can sort of see how one can get into a "government that governs least governs best" type mentality while reflexively opposing all new law for that very reason. They propose a law, and when it is on the books they turn it on you (unless they abort).
Local boards of health would ultimately be responsible for deciding enforcement strategies in their own cities and towns, according to spokeswomen for each state agency.
Boy, that is going to be a real patchwork and fragmentation for sales, and I suppose the travel won't help with carbon footprints. Probably be more accidents, too.
Don't get me wrong, local is better, but I'll bet the lack of consistency across the state will get it landed in the legi$looture's lap again.
Brendan Moss, a spokesman for Governor Charlie Baker, reiterated that sentiment, noting that the policies were released “consistent with previously announced federal policy.”
That answer has left some hemp cultivators, many of whom are already selling CBD products, concerned about what it means for them.
Well, you should be.
Jonathan MacDougall, who cofounded BayGrown Farms, a licensed hemp farm in Rochester, is worried he could lose his cultivating license if he sells CBD, so he has directed suppliers to pull his product off the shelves for now — even for suppliers outside of Massachusetts.
He’s been working with the newly formed MASS Hemp Coalition, which has put together a series of recommendations for the Department of Agricultural Resources. Among other requests, the coalition wants a clear set of regulations for hemp cultivators and retailers to follow. They also want state officials to let hemp cultivators and CBD retailers continue operating while those regulations are figured out.
“We’re not trying to be hostile with them. Obviously we want to be able to be compliant with them. That’s the last thing we want to do is do something illegal,” MacDougall said. “We just want guidelines to follow and guidelines that make sense from the beginning to the end.”
A bill filed in the Massachusetts House last month would reverse the guidances recently released by the state, enforcing, among other things, that:
1) Hemp-derived cannabinoids like CBD “are not considered controlled substances.”
2) And products that contain CBD that are “intended for ingestion are to be considered foods, not controlled substances.”
The bill could significantly help hemp cultivators, many of whom had hoped the 2018 Farm Bill, which legalized industrial hemp federally, was a turning point for the industry. Though the state agricultural department says farmers can still sell hemp seed, hulled hemp, and a variety of other hemp products, cultivators say those sales likely wouldn’t be profitable enough to keep them in business.
Who knows when they will get back around to it, and I guess if you want to put someone out of business....
MacDougall, and so many farmers like him, thought the federal legalization of hemp meant all the compounds within hemp were legal, too.
That's a mistake. Can't ever think anything when it comes to government.
The US Department of Agriculture has said as much, writing in a legal opinion in May that the Farm Bill has taken effect — and hemp has become legal — without any other federal agencies having to take action, but the Farm Bill also gave oversight of CBD regulations to the Food and Drug Administration, which has only approved one drug containing CBD — Epidiolex, used for severe forms of epilepsy. Despite the USDA’s ruling on hemp, the FDA has told consumers that CBD is illegal in food or dietary supplements until the agency issues its final rules on the substance, which could take three to five years.
It wasn’t until this month that the state seemed to uphold that FDA ruling.
“The state never said anything. The Farm Bill went through, and everybody was like ‘Game on,’” MacDougall said. “They’ve made it into the Wild, Wild West by making it federally legal but leaving it up to the state, and then the state saying you can’t do anything.”
In other states, a game of tug of war has played out over the legality of CBD. Large corporations are jumping on the CBD bandwagon, creating products that, in some cases, sit just on the outskirts of FDA oversight. (Cosmetics, for example, are not subject to FDA pre-market approval.)
Why is this not surprising?
Meanwhile, some law enforcement agencies are still raiding CBD stores and arresting people for possessing CBD. In one case, a 69-year-old woman was arrested at a Disney World security checkpoint in April after a guard found CBD oil in her purse. Those charges were later dropped.
It's the police $tate, people.
State authorities say similar arrests are unlikely to happen in Massachusetts because the state agricultural department’s statement on CBD did not delineate any criminal charges or repercussions for consumers.
Yeah, don't worry, the state will protect (blog editor rolls eyes toward the ceiling) you even as they let the FBI add your DL to the database.
“We have this mass confusion,” said Sarah Lee Gossett Parrish, an Oklahoma-based civil litigation attorney who specializes in cannabis law. “And it’s compounded by the fact that nationally, we have a patchwork of state laws.”
They seem to be implying federal action is needed, and the mass confusion of the populace is a planned strategy of tension, keeping the population ever fearful of breaking the law -- even when they don't even know what the law was or who was charged with enforcing it.
This is a total mind-f*** worse than any hit off the pipe!
Of course, there’s an irony in being allowed to buy marijuana-derived CBD at one of the state’s 20 recreational marijuana stores when most hemp-derived CBD products are being considered illegal.
The irony is not lo$t on us.
That’s not lost on those who spent years working to bring legal marijuana to Massachusetts, said Will Luzier, the former campaign manager for the ballot initiative that legalized marijuana in Massachusetts in 2016.
“It’s certainly anomalous that you can walk into a dispensary and purchase not only THC, but products that contain CBD and THC,” he said, “but you can’t walk into another store and buy a product that’s just CBD, even though CBD is not psychoactive.”
Hey, since when did Ma$$achu$etts ever make sense!
--more--"
They would have made Woodstock no fun at all, and get down in front!
Worcester woman arrested on drunken driving charge in N.H. after allegedly speeding
Oh, no big deal. Just a brief on the blotter with consumption of a perfectly legal product.
Too bad there were kids in the car.
"As more communities deploy police body cameras, a bill in Massachusetts looks to set statewide standards and regulations for the devices. The proposal is scheduled for a hearing on Thursday before the Legislature’s Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security. It calls for a task force that would develop a “uniform code” for body-worn cameras and procedures for handling the recordings that are made. Under the bill, the task force would consist of 17 members, including legislators, police officials, a judge and a representative of the American Civil Liberties Union....."
Here is what I saw when they were turned on:
Two men shot in Boston early Sunday
Police arrest man on gun charges in Roxbury
Party pooper!
"Promoting peace in Roxbury through sport and community" by John Hilliard Globe Correspondent, July 7, 2019
After a spate of violence starting on the Fourth of July, hundreds gathered at Jeep Jones Park in Roxbury Sunday for the conclusion of a two-day basketball tournament to promote peace on city streets.
State Representative Liz Miranda, who represents parts of Roxbury and Dorchester, is a member of Score 4 More, the nonprofit that organized the tournament, which drew about 500 players.
Hey, it is a richer's paper through and through.
“We’ve got to always remember that the best that we can offer is love, peace, and community,” said Miranda, who lost a brother to gun violence in 2017.
Among those who played in the tournament was Matthew Drayton, 14, of Roxbury.
“It brings a good crowd,” Drayton said. “and I’m the type of person that, when the crowd’s out and the lights are flashing, I perform at my best.”
About 1,500 people attended the Community Peace Weekend, which along with the tournament also included face painting, musical performances, and a barbecue. Community members who have died from violence were also honored.
This is so f***ed when we have been embroiled in mass-murdering wars for the last 18 years.
The tournament was planned long before a string of shootings over the last several days. Since July 4, 16 people have been shot, according to Boston police. All 16 shooting victims will survive, and police are investigating, according to Boston police spokesman Sergeant John Boyle.....
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Look, up in the sky:
"In 1947, a New Mexico newspaper, the Roswell Daily Record, quoted officials at Roswell Army Air Field as saying they had recovered a ‘‘flying saucer’’ that crashed onto a ranch; officials then said it was actually a weather balloon. (To this day, there are those who believe what fell to Earth was an alien spaceship carrying extra-terrestrial beings.)"
Yup, to this day there are still kooks who don't believe the official story, according to the pre$$, nor do they believe the limited hangout because of the ubiquitousness of the military-led psy-op surrounding extraterrestrials that is all over the TV.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Only a couple of more things to talk about:
"WeWork Cos. is seeking as much as $4 billion in coming months through a debt facility before the company goes public, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing unidentified people. The debt would fund WeWork’s growth until its business is profitable, the newspaper reported. Cash from the debt facility could help shore up demand for the initial public offering, in part by showing investors the company can finance growth for years without having to turn again to the equity markets. Goldman Sachs Group and JPMorgan Chase are structuring and backing the deal, potentially along with other banks."
It's another pump-and-dump $cheme to goo$e the $tock market, as WeWork is nothing but a glorified landlord renting out office space. The in$anity of the banker$peak, debt funding growth until profitable as they $kim off the top would be laughable were it not so sad.
Poll: 1 in 4 don’t plan to retire despite realities of aging
I laughed when I saw that, in the face of a 37% non-participation rate that acts as a forced retirement for so many.
Btw, the reason you have to keep working is to sate the insatiable bank$ters.
That brings us to the end of the section and a pair who have been permanently retired:
Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, face of Indonesia disaster relief efforts dies at 49
Says he died of cancer, and one wonders what secrets he knew.
Cameron Boyce, who acted in ‘Grown Ups’ and on Disney Channel, dies at 20
They are claiming a medical condition, not drugs.
