"Editorial: A racist blast from the White House exposes the reality of Donald Trump
The racist rant President Trump launched on Twitter on Sunday was an outrage, even by his standards. Once again, he has tarnished the presidency. Worse still, the reckless way he chose to attack his political adversaries — unnamed in the tweet, but understood to be four Democratic women of color in Congress — risks long-term damage to the country.
It’s hardly out of character. Trump’s personal bigotry stretches back decades, from the time he was discriminating against black tenants in New York City, and it has served him well as a political strategy. His making disgusting statements delights his political base — and helps create media firestorms that distract from his failures and broken promises. Almost all the glimmers of resistance to this shameful political strategy within his party have died out; just a handful of elected Republicans distanced themselves from Trump’s tweet. Now there will be polls and TV pundits debating the electoral significance, but look beyond Washington — and beyond the short term. The way the president has legitimized racism has emboldened others. Twitter and Facebook boil with ugly rhetoric. Reports of hate crimes have gone up. Millions of Americans have convinced themselves that the caging of Central American children is nothing to worry about.
Wasn't under Obama.
Meanwhile, millions of nonwhite Americans experience a heightened sense of threat. The central promise of modern America, that anyone can be an American, has suddenly been called into question — by the president, no less.
Once unleashed, these xenophobic demons will be hard to push back to the political fringes. It’s not that racism didn’t exist in America before Trump came along. Some recent past presidents espoused racist views in private (Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon), or used coded language to appeal to whites (Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton), but the very fact that politicians felt the need to resort to dog-whistle rhetoric was telling: Explicit racism was off-limits, even though it meant giving up a few potential votes.
I can't hear them anymore as the Clinton legacy receives a little more tarnish to it.
That restraint is gone now.
Someday, hopefully soon, a more responsible leader will have to douse that fire. For now, Americans — including GOP members of the House and Senate — need to take sides. The president has crossed a terrible line, and made a bald assertion about who counts as a real American — and to whom this country belongs. It’s a travesty, and if America is to hold to its ideals, Americans need to speak up for them now.....
This is in no way a defense of the supremacist Trump; however, the spew from the Globe is just as bad, reminiscent of the "you are either with us or you are with the terrorists" jingoism.
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The roots of the current situation go back to 1964, when Barry Goldwater accepted the Republican presidential nomination in San Francisco and declared that ‘‘extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice’’ and that ‘‘moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.’’ That election was the first time the South voted Republican, and after Saddam Hussein became president of Iraq in 1979, Reagan won the Republican presidential nomination in 1980 as an old man saying he was going to ‘‘make America great again’’ by putting an end to busing.
"Congresswomen targeted by Trump vow to fight his ‘hateful’ policies" by Laura Krantz Globe Staff,July 16, 2019
WASHINGTON — After two days of racially charged attacks by President Trump urging them to leave the country, four Democratic congresswomen of color on Monday defiantly declared they would not back down.
The lawmakers who proudly call themselves “the Squad” – Representatives Ayanna Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib — proclaimed their devotion to the United States and urged Americans not to let Trump use the controversy to distract from what they called his “hateful” policies, but Trump spent a second day attacking the four lawmakers, using incendiary rhetoric that he believes is welcomed by his voters leading up to the 2020 election.
Either that or he wants to get the attention away from Epstein and Iran.
In particular, he focused on Omar, claiming she had ‘‘hatred’’ for Israel and falsely accused her of proclaiming “love” for Al Qaeda, but even some Republicans, including Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker and former governor Mitt Romney, now a senator from Utah, condemned Trump’s comments. The dispute reignited charges that Trump is a racist as he continues to appeal to his base of supporters with an aggressive crackdown on migrants attempting to enter the United States and undocumented people already here.
Just glimmers in a sea of hate.
“This is the agenda of white nationalists, whether it is happening in chat rooms or it is happening on national TV. And now it has reached the White House garden,” said Omar, a Muslim representing Minnesota.
It's sad to see her contribute to the distortion by using the misplaced buzzword when what we are being subjected to is Jewi$h $upremaci$m, although I suppose she learned from her previous experience calling that out.
As it is, both sides are politically benefiting from this racial dust-up, leading me to believe it is nothing more than the usual bread and circus baubles that are to be found in my jew$paper.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter Monday to fellow House Democrats saying she would introduce a resolution condemning Trump’s comments.
More wasting of time as the debt limit clock ticks.
Trump triggered this controversy on Sunday, when he jumped into an internal Democratic Party dispute involving Pelosi and the four lawmakers over their decision to vote against a bill to address the humanitarian crisis at the border.
Clearly referring to the four freshmen, Trump tweeted that they “originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe.”
“Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done,” he tweeted. “These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough.”
Pressley, Ocasio-Cortez, and Tlaib all were born in the United States. Omar emigrated from Somalia as a child and is a US citizen. Democrats immediately condemned Trump’s comments, saying they played on a longstanding racist trope in which blacks and other minorities are told to “go back to your country.”
Pelosi tweeted on Sunday that Trump’s statement “reaffirms his plan to ‘Make America Great Again’ has always been about making America white again.”
The four congresswomen also said they were not shocked by the remarks of a president who they charged has fanned the flames of racism in the country since the earliest days of his campaign.
Remember when the Bushes were being paraded around as defenders of minorities, and where do the millions upon millions of non-white victims of American empire fit into all this?
Omar called this a pivotal moment in the nation’s history, saying Trump’s tweets are an attempt to pit the country against itself to distract from his “detrimental” policies.
Trump continued to provoke, calling on Twitter Monday for “the Radical Left Congresswomen (to) apologize to our Country, the people of Israel and even to the Office of the President, for the foul language they have used, and the terrible things they have said,” and during an appearance at a White House event for “Made in America” manufacturing, Trump accused Pelosi of making “a very racist statement” about him when she chided his “Make America Great Again’’ campaign.
Of course, Zionist Jew nationalism remains unremarked upon by my pre$$ as Trump Makes Israel Great Again. The war-criminal apartheid state is above reproach and beyond criticism.
“As far as I’m concerned, if you hate our country, if you’re not happy here, you can leave. That’s what I said in a tweet, which I guess some people think is controversial. A lot of people love it, by the way. A lot of people love it,” Trump said.
That is the kind of attitude that has me fearing the FEMA camps. If you don't agree with the government, get out.
Moments before the news conference, the president again attacked the four congresswomen.
“We will never be a Socialist or Communist Country,” he tweeted, repeating that they could leave the United States if they want.
Oh, he said it again.
Democrats rallied around the four congresswomen, which Trump indicated in a tweet later Monday might have been his goal.
“The Dems were trying to distance themselves from the four “progressives,” but now they are forced to embrace them. That means they are endorsing Socialism, hate of Israel and the USA! Not good for the Democrats!” Trump wrote.
He is really doubling-down on the support of the Zionist string-pullers to save his ass, huh?
Top Republicans party leaders in Congress remained silent, while a handful of GOP lawmakers spoke out against Trump’s comments.
“I disagree strongly with many of the views and comments of some of the far-left members of the House Democratic Caucus . . . but the president’s tweet that some members of Congress should go back to the ‘places from which they came’ was way over the line, and he should take that down,” said Senator Susan Collins of Maine.
Yup, and expect a challenge next year.
The only two black Republicans in Congress — South Carolina Senator Tim Scott and Texas Representative Will Hurd — also criticized Trump. Scott said the president used “racially offensive language.”
“No matter our political disagreements, aiming for the lowest common denominator will only divide our nation further,” Scott said in a written statement.
Baker also denounced Trump.
“I thought the president’s tweets were shameful. They were racist,” Baker said at an unrelated event Monday, according to his office. “They bring a tremendous amount of . . . disgrace to public policy and public life and I condemn them all.”
Marc Short, Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, defended Trump, noting that “he has an Asian woman of color in his Cabinet,” a reference to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.
That's all they can point to.
“I don’t think the president’s intent in any way is racist,” Short told reporters Monday, saying Trump was only referring to Omar, who is an immigrant, when he tweeted about lawmakers going back to the countries that they came from.....
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The Globe's Michael Cohen says the tweets are so fundamentally anti-American that they should outrage all of us no matter what our political persuasion and that anything less than outrage is complicity as the border crisis looms.
Also related:
Globe Living in the Past: Civil War
Time to flip through history a little bit:
"A man demanding methadone opened fire at a Baltimore addiction clinic Monday, killing one person and wounding a police sergeant before he was fatally shot by police, authorities said. Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison said at a news conference that the gunman had gone into the clinic seeking the drug that helps control opioid cravings and withdrawal symptoms. The shooting was reported shortly after 7 a.m. and was captured on video by the body cameras of the officers who responded to the clinic, Harrison said....."
Time to put your gun down and contemplate the past:
"The long, sordid history behind Trump’s ‘go back’ to your country comments" by Zoe Greenberg Globe Staff, July 15, 2019
All of our history is received wisdom from Jews.
When President Trump tweeted on Sunday that four congresswomen should “go back” to the countries they came from, he was writing the latest entry in a centuries-old story equating whiteness with American citizenship.
His attacks on the women, three of whom were born in the United States and one of whom is a naturalized citizen, echoed an idea that cropped up in the early days of the republic, informed the abolition movement and the Civil War, justified strict immigration quotas in the early 20th century, and forced Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States, to produce his birth certificate for public inspection.
On Monday, Trump doubled down on his initial comments. Although his comments may be some of the most hurtful and inflammatory ones made by an American president in recent memory, historians and scholars point out that they are also part of a long history of actions by Americans and their government to draw the boundaries of citizenship so that they exclude people of color, and many people of color still hear the insult hurled frequently. “To be told to go back to your country, it’s unoriginal, it’s lazy, it’s the most basic way to be racist,” said state cannabis regulator Shaleen Title, 36, an Indian-American who lives in Malden. Title said that two weeks ago a man in a coffeeshop in her neighborhood muttered that she should “go back” to her country. People who say it, she said, are trying to communicate “you need to stay in your place.”
The flip side of that is in Palestine, where they have no right of return and have lived for generations in refugee camps.
I suppose why this all hits a nerve with the Khazarian pre$$, for where Jews told to go back from where they came.....
In predominantly white parts of Boston, Decorsie James, who is 26 and black, said sometimes people will drive by and shout out the window: “Get out of here,” or “Go back to where you’re from.” His friend, Chuck Taylor, 22, said white parents at his middle school would say things like, “Go back to Africa with your ancestors. You don’t deserve to be here.”
That's a privilege of a different time, and you will get a look at the New Bo$ton shortly!
These comments are part of a much bigger picture. The first naturalization law of the republic in 1790 defined the privilege of citizenship as the provenance of “free white” people.
In the decades that followed, much of the debate over slavery and its abolition centered on the question of what to do if the millions of black people who were born in the United States as slaves were granted freedom, according to Martha S. Jones, the author of “Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America.” They were born in the United States, so would they be made citizens? Instead of granting citizenship, many white leaders came up with another solution: a “return” to Africa, an idea popularized by the American Colonization Society.
Abraham Lincoln even espoused the idea, saying in a speech in 1854, “My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, — to their own native land.” (Liberia was, of course, not their “native” land, as many black families had been in the United States for generations by 1854, and certainly not all of their ancestors came from that part of Africa.) But, Lincoln added, “whatever of high hope, (as I think there is) there may be in this, in the long run, its sudden execution is impossible.”
That part is always left out of the conventional myth of the Great Emancipator, as is the African-American response to him which was this is their home now.
The 14th Amendment solved the issue of freed slaves, enacting a kind of retroactive acknowledgment that anyone born in the United States was a citizen, according to Jones, but even that did not settle the question of whether all nonwhite people could become citizens. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, for example, prevented Chinese people from becoming American citizens or immigrating here.
Yeah, AmeriKa has always had a hatred of the yellow man. It would later be hatred of the Japanese after Pearl Harbor.
Related: "In 1945, the United States exploded its first experimental atomic bomb in the desert of Alamogordo, N.M; the same day, the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis left Mare Island Naval Shipyard in California on a secret mission to deliver atomic bomb components to Tinian Island in the Marianas."
No distress call was ever sent, and we paid them back and then some in what were the two greatest single individual war crimes in human history.
The rallying cry against the Chinese and against Mexicans in the late 1800s was a blunt one: “This is a white man’s country.” It was that phrase that rattled in the mind of Nell Irvin Painter, the author of “Standing at Armageddon: A Grassroots History of the Progressive Era,” when she read about Trump’s comments over the weekend.
“This is the 19th century,” she thought to herself, but even after the 19th century, the idea that American citizenship is or should be fundamentally a white privilege has stubbornly held.
The 1924 Indian Citizenship Act, for example, formally made Native Americans citizens, though they had lived on US land much longer than its original citizens.
The Great AmeriKan Genocide and land theft, and now the exclusive casino rights are being stolen from them.
“Whiteness is much more associated with citizenship than birth,” said Nathan Connolly, the director of the Program in Racism, Immigration, and Citizenship at Johns Hopkins University. He added that immigrant groups often worked to separate themselves from, and place themselves above, other immigrant groups, as a way of securing their own place in the country.
That's certainly what Jews have done with their enclaves.
“The American-ness is always coming at somebody’s expense,” Connolly said. “That’s how you define the boundaries of your citizenship — by who’s outside those boundaries.”
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Now let's take a look at the New Bo$ton mentioned earlier:
"Building the New Boston through corporate diversity" by Marcy Reed and Carol Fulp July 16, 2019
Marcy Reed is chair of The Partnership, Inc., president of National Grid Massachusetts, and executive vice president of Policy & Social Impact for National Grid US. Carol Fulp is president and CEO of The Partnership, Inc.
In 2020, Boston will host the NAACP’s national conference. When the nearly 10,000 NAACP delegates arrive from across the nation, we want them to find a more diverse and inclusive city — the emerging “New Boston.” To be recognized as a community that embraces diversity is more than simply laying out the welcome mat — it is a critical step in attracting and retaining the talent that will drive innovation and make our companies even more competitive.
For more than 32 years, The Partnership has been uniting Boston’s professionals of color and the corporate worlds. As the professional service organization committed to increasing the number of multicultural professionals at all levels of organizations, we can attest that the business community is playing a significant role in shaping and building this New Boston.
To cite a few examples: State Street Corporation has incorporated diversity metrics into both their bonus structure to incentivize managers and their substantial proxy voting powers to influence companies in their investment portfolio. For Eastern Bank, diversity and inclusion has been central to its growth into the country’s largest mutual bank and the state’s largest community bank, and Massport has become a national model for ensuring inclusion at every level of the development process, including equity participation, professional services, and workforce development.
They are citing banks(!) and Massport, who just awarded the top job to a white woman insider.
Many Bostonians will recognize executives of color such as Corey Thomas, chairman & CEO of Rapid7; Mo Cowan, president of global government affairs and policy at GE and head of its Boston operations; Paula Johnson, president of Wellesley College; Dean Seavers, CEO of National Grid US; and Manny Lopes, president and CEO of East Boston Neighborhood Health Center.
Only Cowan, and that is because Patrick had him fill Kerry's Senate seat when he joined the Obama administration.
These best practices and executives reflect a changing Boston. People of color make up more than 55 percent of the population. Since 1990, according to The Boston Foundation’s recent report “Changing Faces of Greater Boston,” an additional 256,000 Asian-Americans, 158,000 African-Americans, and 350,000 Latinos are now our neighbors. The city is getting younger, and millennials — more than 40 percent of them people of color — are driving the diversification of the workforce, but significant challenges remain. The racial wealth gap reflects that we have yet to translate the diversity of the New Boston into a truly inclusive economy, as cited in The Boston Globe’s Spotlight series on race in December 2017.
The average net worth of a white household is nearly $250,000, while the average African-American household’s net worth is a staggeringly low $8.
Our region’s most successful companies recognize that creating corporate cultures where diverse professionals thrive is a business imperative. Study after study concludes that diverse organizations are more innovative and more profitable, faster at developing new products, opening new markets, and responding to changing customer demands.
They relied on the public relations firm McKinsey to provide the information.
You know, that one that worked for Saudis and was Exhibit A in the Ukraine.
Building inclusive corporate cultures and developing the talent to succeed within them does not happen by accident.
Every member of Boston’s corporate community has a role to play in making inclusion both a corporate priority and an engine of innovation. This starts by recruiting and retaining talent of color at every level of our organizations — from board members to early-stage professionals. That is a commitment our entire business sector must be willing to make now.....
Yes, the ruling cla$$ would be so much more palatable with a lot of a different faces throwing crumbs at you.
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It's all waiting for you if you can cross over the border:
"Online posts lead to investigation of 62 border employees" by Colleen Long Associated Press, July 15, 2019
WASHINGTON — US Customs and Border Protection officials said Monday that 62 current and eight former Border Patrol employees are under internal investigation following revelations of a secret Facebook group that mocked lawmakers and migrants.
Did Israel train them, because that who what they are acting like.
Most are under investigation for posts that surfaced in a secret group called ‘‘I’m 10-15,’’ where messages questioned the authenticity of images of a migrant father and child dead on the banks of the Rio Grande River, and depicted crude, doctored images of US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., purporting to perform a sex act on President Trump.
Matthew Klein, assistant commissioner of the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility, said his agency referred the case to the Homeland Security Department’s watchdog agency, which declined to investigate and sent the case back to Customs and Border Protection. He said they are now focused on fact-finding and would identify criminal behavior if there was any, but it was not considered a criminal probe.
The potential punishment is based upon the severity of the misconduct, whether the employee has previously engaged in misconduct and whether there’s a direct tie to their employment. An agent could get counseling or they can get anything from a written reprimand to suspension, demotion, or firing.
ProPublica first posted details of the Facebook group, which boasts 9,500 members, just as Ocasio-Cortez and other Democrats were headed to tour border facilities.
That's a Soros-funded outfit, FYI.
Some were graphic, doctored images of Ocasio-Cortez, including one that shows a smiling Trump forcing her head toward his crotch, according to screenshots obtained by ProPublica. Other comments refer to Ocasio-Cortez and fellow Democratic Representative Veronica Escobar of Texas as ‘‘hoes,’’ and one member encouraged agents to throw a ‘‘burrito at these bitches.’’
A news story about a 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant who died in Border Patrol custody in May elicited a response from one member, ‘‘If he dies, he dies.’’ Another member posted a GIF of the ‘‘Sesame Street’’ character Elmo with the quote ‘‘Oh well.’’
Investigators sent a letter to Facebook to archive the data and have been identifying members and interviewing them.
The posts threatened to tarnish the Border Patrol’s image at one of the most challenging times in its 95-year history. Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost said the posts were unacceptable.
‘‘These posts are completely inappropriate and contrary to the honor and integrity I see — and expect — from our agents day in and day out,’’ Provost said in a statement at the time. ‘‘Any employees found to have violated our standards of conduct will be held accountable,’’ but news reports have since surfaced that she may have also been a member at once point, though there is no indication she knew about the inflammatory posts.
This fits in line with the concentration camp comments, with the Border Patrol now being equated to a Gestapo.
Officials on Monday would not say whether those under investigation included Provost or other top brass, but said they were working through the level of responsibility a member would have, depending on how active he or she was. ‘‘To be clear, the expectations of professional conduct don’t end at the end of a shift,’’ Klein said.
Not reporting misconduct is also considered misconduct, he said, and they were working to determine who was active on the page, who knew about the posts, and who were just bystander members of the group, and the investigation was ongoing regardless of rank, they said.
Since 2016, 80 other individuals have been investigated for misconduct for social media posts, and Klein said his office put out a reminder on policies last year. Customs and Border Protection officials didn’t immediately have the outcome of those investigations but said they were working to gather the information.
A former agent who belongs to the 10-15 Facebook group told AP that members had to provide the administrator with their graduating class number from the Border Patrol Academy and have a current member vouch for their credentials. The agent, who retired last year in San Diego, spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he feared a public backlash.
The agent likened the forum to a bar where agents would gather after work and swap stories. He said any agent active on Facebook would have likely received an invitation to join.....
Nothing but a big fraternity!
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Of course, if you don't make it across you can always return home:
"‘1950s racism straight from the White House’: Trump’s tweets revolt politicians around the world" by Jennifer Hassan Washington Post, July 15, 2019, 6:29 p.m.
LONDON — Lawmakers and commentators abroad expressed shock and disgust Monday after President Trump targeted Democratic minority congresswomen in tweets over the weekend and told them to ‘‘go back’’ to their countries.
On US soil, the tweets prompted outrage, and while Republicans largely avoided commenting on the president’s statements, lawmakers around the world did not.
British politician David Lammy branded Trump’s comments ‘‘1950s racism straight from the White House’’ and called for Boris Johnson, who is in the running to replace Theresa May as prime minister, to condemn the remarks.
On Monday, May, who has just days left in office, condemned the tweets.
‘‘The prime minister’s view is that the language used to refer to these women was completely unacceptable,’’ a Downing Street spokesman said.
No offense, but really, what business is it of theirs?
May’s sharp rebuke of the president has put pressure on other lawmakers, especially Johnson and Jeremy Hunt, who is also vying for her job, to condemn the tweets. Both men have been silent so far.
‘‘The President of the United States telling elected politicians — or any other Americans for that matter — to ‘go back’ to other countries is not OK, and diplomatic politeness should not stop us saying so, loudly and clearly,’’ tweeted First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon.
Sadiq Khan, London’s first Muslim mayor, who was born and raised in the city and has frequently clashed with Trump, told a British radio station that this is the type of language he has heard for much of his life — though never from such a source.
‘‘I’ve heard it from racists and fascists. Never from a mainstream politician,’’ he said. ‘‘Here you have the president of the U.S.A. using that same sort of language.’’
The outrage came from outside Britain as well.
They mean Belgium and Germany.
In the West Bank, where Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan has relatives and is considered a hometown hero despite having never lived there, many saw Trump’s tweets as a confirmation of what they view as a pro-Israel bias — and an insult to values America purports to uphold.
Bassam Tlaib, one of the congresswoman’s uncles in the West Bank, told the Associated Press Trump’s tweets were ‘‘a racist statement meant to target Rashida because she has Palestinian roots.’’
The Palestinian Authority, which has cut off ties with the White House over a succession of Trump policies that have favored Israel, called Trump’s statement an ‘‘insult’’ to the concept of American rule of law, according to the AP.
‘‘It’s an insult to the Statue of Liberty, America’s most famous symbol, an insult to the American values where migrants from all over the world are united as one nation under one law,’’ said Ibrahim Milhim, a spokesman for the authority.
And that is as close to a comparison to Israel and its apartheid state policies -- with a real wall, I mean, separation barrier, to boot. Trump must be so jealous!
In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau denounced the tweets when asked whether he considered them racist during a joint press conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Monday.
Canada going to be part of the frontlines, too!
‘‘That is not how we do things in Canada,’’ he said at a military base in Petawawa, Ontario. ‘‘A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian, and the diversity of our country is actually one of our greatest strengths and a source of tremendous resilience and pride for Canadians. We will continue to defend that.’’
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Related:
Most migrants at border with Mexico would be denied asylum protections under new Trump rule
You will all have to head for Canada and try to come through that way.
Fire rages through reserve in Mexico’s resort-filled Yucatan
Yeah, you won't be able to stay there.
Also see:
Man sentenced to 2d life term in Charlottesville car attack
Maybe this will help douse that fire:
Final blast of torrential rains unleashed by weakened Barry
As Ma$$achu$etts residents prepare for its arrival "researchers at the University of New Hampshire say governments should start building roads with different and thicker asphalt now so they will be ready to withstand the effects of climate change in the future. Pavements can crack and crumble under the stress of increased temperatures, said the study, which was published in May in the journal Transportation Research Record. “If global warming continues, then we know temperatures will rise and pavement doesn’t respond well to increased temperatures. The hope is to find some answers now so cities and towns can plan for the future,” Jo Sias, one of the authors of a new pavement study and a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UNH. As temperatures rise, asphalt gets softer and cannot handle traffic loads, Sias said in a telephone interview......"
Never mind the ever-increasing traffic, or the winter weather, melting salt, and snow plows that eat shit out of 'em, and what is that out there floating in the harbor?
Meanwhile, a hidden stretch of East Boston waterfront draws developer’s interest, and as part of their duties, the state Department of Transportation and the MBTA put the easement rights for roughly nine acres along the creek out to bid, but the company will need to contend with critics who say the state shouldn’t relinquish a transit right-of-way so quickly, particularly in such a traffic-choked corridor.
Speaking of choking traffic:
"Epstein’s safe had ‘piles of cash’ and a fake passport, prosecutors say" by Benjamin Weiser and Ali Watkins New York Times, July 15, 2019
NEW YORK — Investigators discovered a safe in Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan mansion that held “piles of cash,” diamonds, and an expired passport from a foreign country which had what appeared to be Epstein’s photo, but was registered to a fake name and listed his residence as Saudi Arabia.
Prosecutors revealed the safe’s contents as they argued in US District Court in Manhattan that Epstein should be denied bail before his sex-trafficking and conspiracy trial because he was a flight risk and a danger to the community. He is accused of abusing dozens of girls at his residences in New York City and Palm Beach, Fla.
Two women who said they were sexually abused by Epstein also spoke at the hearing, urging Judge Richard M. Berman to deny him bail.
“He’s a scary person to have walking the streets,” said Courtney Wild, one of Epstein’s accusers, who said she was assaulted at age 14.
Berman said he would not rule until Thursday about whether Epstein should be granted bail while he awaits trial.
Epstein had proposed in court papers that he be allowed to remain under house arrest in his $56 million mansion on the Upper East Side, and pay for 24-hour security guards who would ensure he did not flee.
His attorneys say Epstein has been law-abiding for more than a decade.
“He didn’t reengage in this activity,” one of his lawyers, Martin Weinberg, told the judge on Monday, adding, “It’s not like he’s an out-of-control rapist,” but prosecutors, citing what they called Epstein’s “yearslong scheme to sexually abuse underage girls” and his fortune of at least $500 million, have argued that Epstein would pose a danger to the community and might flee the country if granted bond.
The government had also said Epstein might try to obstruct justice if he were given bail. Prosecutors said that last year he wired $350,000 to two people who were potential witnesses against him at a trial.
Epstein’s lawyers said Monday that the payment could have been “an act of generosity” to Epstein’s associates and that government lawyers were unable to prove otherwise.
Epstein, 66, who faces up to 45 years in prison if convicted on the charges, has been held since his July 6 arrest in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan, a highly secure jail that has housed accused terrorists, mobsters, and, recently, Mexican drug lord El Chapo.
At least Acosta's head rolled after public outrage reached a fever pitch.
On Monday, defense lawyers for Epstein listed four additional Justice Department officials — two of whom now hold high-level government positions — who approved Epstein’s deal at the time. The agreement not to prosecute Epstein was approved by Mark Filip, then the deputy attorney general, and Alice Fisher, who at the time led the Justice Department’s criminal division. Both have since departed the government for private practice.
According to Epstein’s lawyers, the deal was also cleared by Sigal P. Mandelker and John Roth, who were both senior officials in the Justice Department. Mandelker is currently an undersecretary for the Department of the Treasury, and Roth serves as the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security.....
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I'll bet things are real quiet at night, and I'm sure he would trade places with him in a second.
Related(?):
Bethenny Frankel has a witty response about her relationship with Boston’s Paul Bernon
She is the “Real Housewives of New York City” Barbie doll and has been known to do some yachting with others.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Once again, Iran is on the front burner when it comes to my World section:
"EU foreign ministers scramble to save Iran deal" by Matina Stevis-Gridneff New York Times, July 15, 2019
BRUSSELS — European Union foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday scrambled to work out how to salvage the Iran nuclear deal despite Tehran’s breaching the agreed limits on its uranium enrichment program and warning that it might go much further.
You mean the nuclear deal that is defunct because of Trump's pullout?
Yeah, the EU is scrambling to salvage a deal for which they have had almost two years to come up with something -- and as they are seizing Iranian oil tankers!
What a charade!
Arriving at the meeting, British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said there was a little time left to save the Iran deal.
“Iran is still a good year away from developing a nuclear bomb,” Hunt said. “There is still some closing, but small window to keep the deal alive.”
If they want to develop one, something for which there is no evidence.
This is playing out like Iraq in 2003, with the British poodle backing up AmeriKa with its dodgy dossier.
Although the United States has withdrawn from the agreement, the EU foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said that the deal was still the only available option to curb Iran’s nuclear program.
“The deal has avoided Iran developing a nuclear weapon and today everyone recognizes that there is no alternative,” she said after the foreign ministers’ meeting. “This is the most dramatic and difficult stage.”
Bunch of thumb-twiddling, hand-waving, and arm-flailing to make it look like they are trying to do something.
The European signatories to the deal, Britain, France, and Germany, said in a joint statement Sunday evening they were still committed to the deal and regretted that the United States had reimposed sanctions on Iran “even though that country had implemented its commitments under the agreement.”
Except they are not committed to the deal, and are obeying U.S. demands instead.
Do they think the Iranians are stupid, or is this just to provide cover for when the war actually comes? The, you know, we tried to make peace but Iran wouldn't do it trope.
“We believe that the time has come to act responsibly and to seek ways to stop the escalation of tension and resume dialogue,” the three countries said in the statement. “The risks are such that it is necessary that all stakeholders take a break, and consider the possible consequences of their actions,” but Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that he saw little reason to be optimistic that the European signatories could save the agreement — known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — by alleviating the punishing effects of US sanctions against Iran.
The time has come to resume dialogue, blah, blah, blah.
“The Europeans claim they were willing to maintain the JCPOA, but we have not seen Europe yet to be ready for an investment,” he said Sunday after arriving in New York City for a meeting of the United Nations, Iran’s state-run Press TV reported. Iran has sent mixed signals about its intentions in recent days, with President Hassan Rouhani expressing a willingness to open new talks with Washington — once sanctions are removed.
“We are always ready for negotiation,” he said in a televised speech. “The moment you stop sanctions and bullying, we are ready to negotiate,” but a spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Behrouz Kamalvandi, said Monday that unless Europe could salvage the deal, his country would return its nuclear program to its status before the accord, when its uranium stockpile was much larger and some of the element had been much more highly enriched.
Tensions with Tehran have mounted since President Trump last year withdrew the United States from the 2015 accord that scaled back Iran’s nuclear program and reimposed economic sanctions that had been lifted under the deal. The limits set in the deal were intended to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
They finally get around to mentioning that it was Trump who initiated this whole crisis by withdrawing from the deal at the behest of Israel.
Trump imposed additional sanctions this year, trying to cut off Iran’s ability to sell oil, a pillar of its economy.
Britain, France, and Germany have made a commitment to ease the impact of US sanctions but so far have not found an effective way to do so.
If they had really wanted to find away around sanctions, they would have.
The centerpiece of their efforts is the creation of a kind of exchange that would allow European companies to do business with Iran in a way that bypasses the American banking system, but Tehran has said that the system, known as Instex, is inadequate.
Arriving at the meeting of Europeans on Monday, Josep Borrell, the Spanish foreign minister and nominee to become the EU’s foreign affairs chief, said, “We will do what we can to guarantee that there is no economic embargo against Iran and that European companies can continue working there.”
Never have more hollow words been spoken.
Despite the renewed sanctions, Iran complied with its commitments under the nuclear deal for a year after Trump’s withdrawal, but the confrontation has escalated since the US president imposed further sanctions.
Why are they given no credit for abiding by the terms of the deal when they were not bound by it?
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Also see:
"Alan Turing, a founding father of computer science and artificial intelligence, was revealed Monday as the face of Britain’s new 50-pound bank note. Turing was also famed as a World War II code-breaker whose work was widely credited with hastening the end of the war and saving thousands of lives, but at the time, his achievements were overshadowed following his conviction of engaging in homosexual activity — then a criminal offense in Britain. Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, said that ‘‘as the father of computer science and artificial intelligence, as well as war hero, Alan Turing’s contributions were far-ranging and path-breaking.’’ He called Turing ‘‘a giant on whose shoulders so many now stand.’’ Carney made the announcement Monday at Manchester’s Science and Industry Museum, which will also feature an exhibition of the 12 finalists who were considered for the note, including theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking. During World War II, Turing worked at Bletchley Park, where he helped to develop a machine that cracked the Enigma code used by Nazi Germany. His work also laid the groundwork for the modern computer and artificial intelligence. His famous ‘‘Turing test’’ is still used as a benchmark for examining whether a machine can be considered to be thinking. After the war, Turing pleaded guilty to a charge of ‘‘indecency’’ related to his homosexuality and was sentenced to chemical castration. In 1954 — at age 41 — he was found dead from cyanide poisoning. A bitten apple was found by his bedside. The new note, expected to enter circulation at the end of 2021, will include an image of Turing, ticker tape of his birth date in binary code, and a table and formula from a 1936 paper that introduced the concept of how computers could operate.
He got the Dr. David Kelly treatment, huh?
It's like our guys. The government kills them, and then honors them.
British Prime Minister Theresa May tweeted Monday that Turing’s ‘‘pioneering work’’ played a ‘‘crucial part’’ in ending World War II. ‘‘It is only fitting that we remember his legacy and the brilliant contribution LGBT people have made to our country’’ on the new 50-pound note, she wrote. Dermot Turing, Alan Turing’s nephew, said in an e-mailed statement that the entire family was ‘‘delighted.’’ He also praised the Bank of England for focusing on his uncle’s work in computer development and computer science. ‘‘It reminds us that this was what he was best known for during his own lifetime and — I think — what he would most wish to be remembered for today,’’ he said. The Oscar-winning 2014 biopic ‘‘The Imitation Game,’’ starring Benedict Cumberbatch, brought further attention to the complex math genius and his team’s role in the defeat of Adolf Hitler. On Monday, Cumberbatch told the BBC, ‘‘I couldn’t think of a more deserving candidate.’’ Turing was an ‘‘extraordinary human being, a unique mind, and he suffered a great deal in an intolerant time,’’ he said. Kim Sanders, a spokeswoman for Stonewall, a gay rights charity, said in a statement: ‘‘It’s important that we remember and recognize the impact of LGBT figures throughout history, so it’s great that Alan Turing will be the face on the new £50 bank note. It’s vital that we celebrate LGBT history, which is often less visible, and make sure that we represent the diversity of those who paved the way before us.’’ She added: ‘‘The world we live in now is very different to Turing’s time, and LGBT rights have come a long way, but the fight for true equality is far from over.’’ In 2013, after a lengthy campaign, Queen Elizabeth II granted Turing a royal pardon for his ‘‘crime’’ of homosexuality. In 2017, under legislation that became known as ‘‘Turing’s law,’’ Britain granted pardons to thousands of gay and bisexual men who were convicted of offenses related to their sexuality. It will also include a quote from Turing about the ascent of computers, given to the Times of London newspaper in 1949 but perhaps just as apt today: ‘‘This is only a foretaste of what is to come, and only the shadow of what is going to be.’’ (Washington Post)."
It's all the talk, as is this great American, who fought the Nazis (just giving credit where credit is due):
"In an open field on the outskirts of the Syrian city of Raqqa, workers in black uniforms, surgical masks, and red hard hats toil under a scorching sun to dig up bodies from a large mass grave discovered last month. They have so far unearthed 313 bodies from the grave since it was discovered last month, the official said. All of the dead are men, women, and children believed to have been killed or died during the Islamic State group’s rule over the northern city, once the de facto capital of the extremist group’s so-called Islamic caliphate and the site of atrocities committed by the group against residents who opposed its extremist ideology. The group at the time commanded large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq that it administered based on its own radical version of Islamic rule. US-backed Syrian forces retook Raqqa from the Islamic State in 2017 after a lengthy campaign that left the city in ruins. Since then, an organization known as the Civil Council of Raqqa has been working to uncover mass graves in and around the city, amid concerns about the preservation of bodies and evidence for possible war crimes trials.
Against whom?
International human rights groups say they are concerned that local groups are not getting the support they need in terms of forensic expertise and human resources. Yasser al-Khamees, who leads a team of first-responders, said workers have unearthed 4,760 bodies from a series of mass graves starting from January 2018. The mass grave discovered in mid-June in al-Fukheikha agricultural fields south of the city is the latest grave located in and around Raqqa to date. An Associated Press video showed workers on a recent day wearing surgical masks using shovels to dig up bodies from the field. Forensic workers then put the remains in white body bags, marking them with the date and location and other details. Asaad Mohammed, a forensic worker, said workers were exhuming an average of 10 to 12 bodies daily. ‘‘We inspect the body, identify the sex, age, time of death, cause of death. We take samples from each body and give it a number, we document it on official papers, and then save the information on a computer database along with samples taken from this area,’’ he said. The bodies are then reburied in another plot of land outside the city for future identification (Associated Press)."
Time to wheel east:
"A populist mayor in Taiwan who favors closer ties with China won the opposition party’s nomination to run against President Tsai Ing-wen, who has been sharply critical of Beijing’s attempts to pressure the island into unification. The nomination of Han Kuo-yu, who survived a challenge from Terry Gou, founder of the world’s largest iPhone assembler, will offer Taiwan’s voters a stark choice in January’s election between governments leaning toward Washington or Beijing. Tsai, the incumbent from the Democratic Progressive Party, drew sharp condemnation from China last week when she visited New York City and spoke at Columbia University. The speech underlined the warmest ties between Washington and Taipei in two decades. Han, mayor of the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung, was selected by the opposition Kuomintang based on the results of public opinion and phone surveys taken over the last week that showed he was backed by 45 percent of respondents compared with 28 percent for Gou.
The visit and speech was never reported, and it seems wherever you go the antiwar sentiment is strong.
“Han’s primary victory was quite convincing,” said Austin Wang, an associate professor of political science at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, who studies Taiwan politics. “The gap between Han and Gou was huge.” Han has accused Tsai’s government of failing to improve people’s lives, while suggesting that some recent authoritarian East Asian leaders offer a model for Taiwan, which democratized in the early 1990s after nearly four decades of brutal martial law. At a large June 1 rally in Taiwan’s capital, Taipei, Han singled out three political figures for praise: Chiang Ching-kuo, the former Kuomintang dictator of Taiwan; Lee Kuan Yew, the late authoritarian ruler of Singapore; and Deng Xiaoping, who initiated economic overhauls in China in the 1980s but was responsible for the Tiananmen Square massacre. Han visited China earlier this year, where he met with top Communist Party officials in the former British colony of Hong Kong and the former Portuguese colony of Macao. Both territories are administered by Beijing under a “one country, two systems” framework that, in theory, allows a high degree of local autonomy in all areas aside from diplomacy and national defense.
Sort of what we have in AmeriKa.
China’s Communist Party claims self-ruled Taiwan as its territory. In January, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, urged Taiwan’s 23 million people to choose peaceful unification with China under a “one country, two systems” arrangement. In the same speech, Xi also said he would not rule out war as a means of bringing Taiwan under Beijing’s control. Han has promoted the view that Taiwan and China belong to the same country, and had argued that closer ties with China would lift Taiwan’s economy. His tone has changed, however, in the wake of the recent wave of large protests in Hong Kong, where residents have demonstrated against a bill that would allow extraditions to mainland China and against police abuses during the protests. In June, shortly after one of the biggest protest marches in Hong Kong, Han said that if he were elected president, Taiwan would only accept China’s “one country, two systems” proposal “over my dead body.” Gou has been critical of the support Han has received from what many Taiwanese call the “red media,” or local news outlets that are more sympathetic to Beijing — led by those belonging to the Want Want Group, which has often been critical of the outspoken tycoon. There has been widespread speculation that Gou may run for president as an independent. Although he appears to have lost convincingly to Han, the nature of the public poll, which also surveyed nonparty members, led to suspicion that supporters of Tsai had said they backed Han, viewing him as a weaker opponent for Tsai than Gou. In addition to a possible independent bid by Gou, Taipei’s independent mayor, Ko Wen-je, may also announce his candidacy for January’s election. Should they both join the race, it would most likely benefit Tsai, since like Han they are seen as more China-friendly than Tsai, and would very likely split voters who favor closer ties with China. Despite his victory, Han faces challenges within his own party, the Kuomintang. Having campaigned as the “president of the common people” who will help Taiwanese get rich — without offering details on how he intends to do so — he now needs to win over the party elite. “Well-educated Kuomintang elites may not want to openly support Han,” Wang said. “He needs to focus on issues that those elites will want to work on with him.” (New York Times)."
I'm sure there is a lesson for Trump in there somewhere, and could it mean the return of the Han Dynasty in China?
The mayor of Kaohsiung, Han Kuo-yu (center), from the Kuomintang party, gestured while speaking to supporters during a campaign event in Taipei.(DANIEL SHIH/AFP/Getty Images/File 2019)
Looks like the streets of Hong Kong were clear today.
Africa will be a battlefield between us:
"Jacob Zuma, the former president of South Africa whose tenure was marred by scandals, told a high-profile corruption inquiry Monday that he was the victim of a long-running smear campaign, and had been “vilified” and “alleged to be the king of corrupt people.” “There has been a drive to remove me from the scene, a wish that I should disappear,” he said, in his first appearance before the commission, which is looking into accusations that he enabled the plundering and misuse of state resources. Under Zuma’s leadership, the governing African National Congress became embroiled in what South Africans have come to know as “state capture” — corruption at the highest levels of government, for the benefit of wealthy private interests and ANC officials. In a long, meandering opening his statement Monday, Zuma, 77, invoked what he said were multiple conspiracies against him, and argued that the entire concept of state capture had been exaggerated in a campaign to oust him from power. He went on to claim that spies from the former apartheid government and two unnamed foreign intelligence agencies had begun plotting against him in the early 1990s, when he was serving as the ANC’s head of intelligence, and he said he had survived multiple assassination attempts, including a suicide bombing.
He's either a paranoid conspiracy theorist, or he's telling the truth.
Amazing how all governments are the same, huh?
The commission, chaired by Judge Raymond Zondo, has brought to light stupefying accusations of graft, including multimillion-dollar cash bribes being paid “like Monopoly money” to senior ANC leaders. Aubrey Matshiqi, a political analyst, said Zuma’s testimony showed that he was willing to jeopardize the ANC to protect himself. “The claims he’s making will divide the party further, perhaps even paralyze it,” Matshiqi said. South Africans had keenly awaited the testimony in Johannesburg of Zuma, who had not yet given a public account of his conduct while president from 2009 to 2018. It was not clear until Monday whether Zuma, a dogged political fighter, would cooperate with the commission. He had promised only that he would “go there and see.” There was a risk that Zuma would instead use the public platform to embarrass his rivals in the ANC, including President Cyril Ramaphosa, who ousted Zuma in 2018 while promising to stamp out corruption. Political allies of Ramaphosa, including his deputy, David Mabuza, have been linked to corruption scandals of their own, and Ramaphosa has himself been accused of receiving bribes from Bosasa, a company that has featured heavily in the commission’s inquiry. “I hope people are not opening a can of worms which they might regret,” Zuma warned on Twitter in March, after a damning report from Ramaphosa’s office.
He has been offered exile in Russia.
In his remarks Monday, Zuma accused Ngoako Ramatlhodi — a former government minister and ally who testified earlier during the commission that Zuma had “auctioned” his executive authority to an Indian business family, the Guptas — of having been a spy for the former apartheid government. Responding to the local media, Ramatlhodi strongly denied the charge and challenged Zuma to a lie-detector test. Among other allegations, Zuma is accused of abusing state funds to lavishly upgrade his private home; steering lucrative government contracts to the Guptas; and dismantling key state institutions to allow unfettered looting of the treasury, in some cases with the help of consulting firms like Bain and McKinsey.
Oh, man!
After insulating himself against prosecution for years, Zuma has also been formally charged over his role in a multibillion-dollar arms scandal in the late 1990s. Referring to the Guptas as “friends,” Zuma said Monday that former presidents Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki had also been close to the family. “There is absolutely nothing wrong,” he added, but other witnesses have told the commission that the Guptas wielded extraordinary, inappropriate power over government decision-making. Members of Zuma’s Cabinet have testified that the Guptas offered them high-ranking government posts, including that of finance minister — in one case, in the presence of Zuma’s son, Duduzane, a business partner of the family. Zuma is scheduled to appear before the state capture commission until Friday, but from the start there were signs that he would not surrender easily. When questioned by Paul Pretorious, leader of the commission’s legal team, Zuma frequently stalled, clearing his throat, or professed to have forgotten the events being discussed (New York Times)."
Is he setting up a dementia defense, or has he just been sick?
"Ebola outbreak reaches major city in Congo, renewing calls for emergency order" by Denise Grady New York Times, July 15, 2019
The one-year-old Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo has reached the city of Goma, which has a population of nearly 2 million, an international airport, and ferries and buses that fan out over much of the region. Goma is also just half a mile from the border with Rwanda.
Just one infected man reached the city over the weekend, but it is a development that health officials have long dreaded.
“The identification of the case in Goma could potentially be a game-changer in this epidemic,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, speaking on Monday in Geneva at a high-level United Nations meeting about the outbreak. He called Goma “a gateway to the region and the world.”
Because of the Goma case, Tedros said he would once again convene a WHO committee to decide whether it is time to declare the epidemic a “public health emergency of international concern,” which could draw more international help to the region. This would be the fourth meeting of the committee, which has declined three times to declare an emergency and has drawn sharp criticism from many public health specialists.
It also allows for medical martial law, and who is going to argue with an army of hazmat suits, huh?
The last refusal to declare an international emergency occurred even after the disease had reached Uganda, where there were three cases in people who had crossed the border from Congo. Uganda has experience with Ebola and containment measures, and no more cases have been detected there.
South Sudan, which also borders Congo, is considered far less capable of controlling an outbreak, and there is great concern about the possibility of the disease spreading there.
The place is already in chaos, too.
A major argument against declaring an emergency is that it could lead to restrictions on travel and trade that could harm countries in the region and hamstring efforts to get more people and supplies into epidemic zones.
Well, what is more important, money of people dying horribly from this disease?
The decision will give a clue as to their ultimate value $y$tem.
In his speech on Monday, Tedros also said that two health workers responding to the outbreak had been murdered in their home in Beni. The epidemic region, in the northeastern part of the country, is a conflict zone with many armed militias, and deep distrust of the government and outsiders.
And they want to send more people in there.
The outbreak, the second-largest in history after the one in West Africa in 2014 and 2015, has infected 2,489 people, and 1,665 of them have died. Nearly a third of the cases have been in children, and slightly more than half in women. Some public health specialists believe the outbreak could last into next year.
People in the affected communities have sometimes rejected or avoided treatment or vaccination, out of unfamiliarity with the disease, distrust of foreign health workers, and even fear that outsiders have brought the disease.
They are not as primitive as you might think despite the standard of living conditions.
There is also resentment over all the attention given to Ebola when the impoverished region has other severe health problems, like a measles outbreak that has killed 2,000 children, as well as cholera outbreaks, endemic malaria, and high rates of women dying from childbirth.
I'm sure they sense an ulterior agenda at work, too.
In fact, they are probably used to it.
Tedros said people in the street in Congo have asked him, “‘Are you here to help us, or to prevent this thing from coming to you? Are you doing this for us, or for yourself?’ It embarrasses me.”
He said people in the region needed to be reassured that the international assistance would stay long after Ebola was gone. “We should not appear to be seen as if we are parachuting in and out because of Ebola,” he said.
Speakers at the UN meeting on Monday said there was an urgent need for more money from member countries to fight the outbreak. If nations do not open their coffers now, the situation will only spiral further out of control and cost far more in the long run, warned Mark Lowcock, the UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator. He said that $2 billion had been spent on the West African outbreak.
So far, more than 161,000 people have been vaccinated, with a Merck vaccine that is considered highly effective. Other companies have also produced Ebola vaccines, and health specialists had hoped to deploy those as well, but Congo’s health ministry has said it will use only Merck’s vaccine, because it has taken tremendous efforts to gain the community’s acceptance of that one.
“We need to close the debate,” said Congo’s health minister, Dr. Oly Ilunga. “We have a vaccine that is highly effective, accepted by the population after a period of mistrust.”
He added: “We don’t want contradictory messages going out, or contradictory schemes. We have an effective weapon. Let’s focus on that.”
It's all about getting that needle into you.
Ilunga also urged the participants at the UN meeting to refrain from talking too much about money, because perceptions that the response was bringing cash into the region had led to “rare cases of hostages being taken.”
He said, “Let’s not talk about figures too much, to not put the teams on the ground in danger.”
The man who brought the disease to Goma was a pastor who had preached and laid his hands on the sick in seven churches in Butembo, a hot spot in the outbreak. He first had symptoms on July 9 and was treated at home by a nurse, but boarded a bus to Goma on July 12. He passed through three health checkpoints on the bus ride without any symptoms being detected, and gave a different name at each checkpoint, apparently hoping to avoid being detained, according to local health authorities.
He was ill by the time he reached Goma, and he went to a clinic, where Ebola was diagnosed.
Because of precautions already in place to help control the epidemic, health officials had the names of 18 other bus passengers and the driver, and were to start vaccinating them on Monday.....
A man received a vaccine against Ebola from a nurse outside the Afia Himbi Health Center in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, on Monday.(Pamela Tulizo/AFP/Getty Images)
--more--"
The flashbacks are no joke:
"The World Health Organization on Friday said the Ebola outbreak in Congo, which spilled into Uganda this week, is an ‘‘extraordinary event’’ of deep concern but does not yet merit being declared a global emergency. The UN health agency convened its expert committee for the third time to assess the outbreak, which some experts say met the criteria to be designated an international emergency long ago. This outbreak, the second-deadliest in history, has killed more than 1,400 people since it was declared in August. Three members of the family who brought the virus into Uganda have died after attending the burial of an infected relative, a popular pastor, in Congo....."
It's all about more funding for vaccines, and give them time.
"One of four people interviewed in eastern Congo last year believed Ebola wasn’t real, according to a new study, underscoring the enormous challenges health care workers are facing in what has become the second-deadliest outbreak in history. The survey released late Wednesday found that a deep mistrust of the Ebola response resulted in those people being 15 times less likely to seek medical treatment at an Ebola health center, according to the study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal. The study was based on interviews conducted last September, about a month after the outbreak began. It comes as the number of probable and confirmed cases has exceeded 1,000. At least 639 people have died from Ebola since August, according to the World Health Organization. This is the first time the region has experienced an Ebola outbreak. Researchers said their study showed more precisely how individuals’ misinformed views about Ebola were undermining the response and helping to spread the deadly virus."
And crimping vaccine revenues.
Also not real:
"After delay of Chandrayaan-2 launch, Indians are disappointed but hopeful" by Jeffrey Gettleman New York Times, July 15, 2019
NEW DELHI — With the minutes ticking down, less than an hour to launch time, and scores of top scientists and VIPs gathered at a remote coastal site, it appeared that all systems were go.
The skies had cleared after a short drizzle. The towering rocket stood on the launchpad, full of fuel. The rocket carried an orbiter, a lunar lander, a robotic rover and, in many ways, India’s space dreams.
India was going to be only the fourth country to land on the moon, and the first to reach the moon’s mysterious south pole. This was a huge leap forward for the country’s ambitious space program, and around the world, scientists and defense experts were watching to see if the Indians could pull it off.
The plan was to launch the mission, called Chandrayaan-2, at 2:51 a.m. Monday, but with 56 minutes to go, the countdown stopped. At the media center a few miles from the launchpad, the screens from mission control suddenly turned a blank blue.
In the end, Indian scientists announced that nothing disastrous had happened but that the much-anticipated launch needed to be postponed because “a technical snag” had been discovered while filling the rocket with cryogenic fuel.
It's as I predicted! I knew something was going to happen to screw up the production!
The spacecraft had been mounted on India’s most powerful rocket, a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle — Mark III, which has successfully launched at least two times.
Once in space, the orbiter would follow a slow and steady trip to the moon, making ever-widening orbits around Earth before being captured by the moon’s gravity and pulled into lunar orbit. This would conserve fuel and take about 50 days.
Then a lunar lander would emerge and make a soft landing on the moon’s powdery surface, considered the trickiest aspect of the entire operation.
Yeah, the U.S. forgot to add a dust cloud when they filmed their alleged landing.
The mission had been delayed several times already.
Singh said he was confident that India’s space agency would fix the problem and choose a new launch time soon, though he was not sure when.....
--more--"
Related:
"In 1969, Apollo 11 blasted off from Cape Kennedy on the first manned mission to the surface of the moon, while in 2009, in an embarrassing admission, NASA said that in all likelihood, it had recorded over the original videotapes of the Apollo 11 moon landing."
It's called destroying evidence to further a cover-up, and what would John Glenn have thought?
Also see:
"What would happen if a crowd of people stormed the gates of Area 51 looking for aliens, and all of them ran really fast with their arms outstretched behind them? We probably won’t find out, but the idea has captured the interest of more than a million people on social media. It has caught the attention of the Air Force, too, but conspiracy theorists have long suspected that the base was devoted to the study — or even the captivity — of extraterrestrial life forms. The post was made in jest, but as it turns out, some people may be taking the event seriously....."
The very fact that the CIA admits an alien conspiracy -- along with its ubiquitousness on TV -- makes me doubt the flying saucer over Sheffield.
Besides, what goes up....
"A wobbly day of trading ended with meager gains for US stock indexes on Monday, but enough to nudge them further into record territory, as the curtain rose on what’s expected to be the weakest earnings reporting season in years....."
.... can keep going up:
"White House presses for fall-back plan on debt ceiling if budget talks fall through" by Damian Paletta Washington Post, July 15, 2019
WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Monday that lawmakers could be forced to raise the debt ceiling without a broader budget deal if an agreement isn’t reached very soon, warning that time was running out to ensure that the government had enough money to pay all its bills.
White House officials have begun discussing such a scenario with some congressional aides, several people briefed on the talks said Monday. They are eyeing a plan that would temporarily raise the debt ceiling, by perhaps just a few weeks, to give them more time to negotiate a budget package. The fallback plan would be aimed at ensuring there is not a financial crisis if negotiators misjudged the government’s balance sheet and Treasury did not have enough money to make payments while lawmakers were out of town.
They are almost as bad as the Ma$$achu$etts statehouse, who is hard at work running in place, and I hate wrapping all that up in red, white, and blue, but think of the in-your-face absurdity of what is presented to you there.
We are told there is no budget and they are going to run out of money, it's an emergency, got be allowed to borrow more and en$lave ourselves further to the central bank cartel, but lawmakers will probably be out of town on vacation. I can't think of a clearer definition of neglect and dereliction of duty.
Of course, they did throw $733 billion into the jaws of the war machine already, but maybe this debt ceiling crisis will provide a brake on the march to war. Hard to wage a winning war when you are in debt to your eyeballs, although that is part of the reason you must fight. Never going to be able to repay them the odious debt.
Democrats and Republicans have not told the White House that they will approve such an approach, but it has emerged as a fallback option as they run out of time to broker a broader budget deal before lawmakers are set to depart at the end of next week.
The chaotic planning comes after Mnuchin has spent more than a week trying to negotiate a broader budget and debt limit deal with Congress.
‘‘I’m very hopeful we can come to an agreement quickly,’’ Mnuchin told reporters at the White House. But, ‘‘if for whatever reason,’’ a budget deal isn’t reached, ‘‘before they leave, I’d either expect them to stick around or raise the debt ceiling.’’
Otherwise, the bankers will ruin your vacation.
Mnuchin met with President Trump about the budget talks on Monday morning, and he spoke with House minority leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell about the negotiations over the weekend. Democrats want the White House to agree to increase spending levels for defense and nondefense programs over the next two years. White House officials have agreed to increase spending levels, but not as high as the levels demanded by Democrats.
So they did drive Pelosi into the ditch.
As these talks drag on, some White House officials have pushed for the consideration of a separate measure that would simply raise the debt ceiling to ensure that they have more time to negotiate without worrying about whether Treasury can pay all of its bills, but lawmakers from both parties have told the White House that they aren’t sure if they have the votes to raise the debt ceiling unless it is part of a broader budget agreement. Mnuchin’s decision to float the option publicly on Monday could signal that he believes time is running out, though some Democrats believe that the White House has been trying to pressure them to raise the debt ceiling without offering concessions in the budget talks.
You know, 18 years after the mother of all mind-manipulations and false flags, I reflexively want to slam on the brakes when these guys start telling us time is running out, you gotta do this now, give me your car keys and wallet, hurry, hurry, gotta go Joe, ya nice to know.... vroom, gone!
We gotta go invade Iraq because he's hiding WMD on mobile labs and he's 45 minutes of the cost with a model plane drone that could spread spores, etc, etc, you get my point, and it's an every day drip-drab issue and enemy du jour on the old fear and concern factor in the agenda-pu$hing pre$$.
Mnuchin has warned that the Treasury Department could run out of money to pay all of its bills in early September if a debt ceiling deal isn’t crafted before the August recess, a position that some outside experts have also said is accurate.
Yeah, a bill selling us deeper down the road to fiscal en$lavement needs to be crafted like an artist or artisan crafts a fine piece of work. Why don't you guys just drop down and unzip trou?
If the debt ceiling isn’t raised in time, the Treasury Department might not have enough money to pay all of its bills. This could lead to a spike in interest rates and stock market crash, among other things, because it could call into question the full faith and credit of the United States.
HA-HA-HA!
I'm sorry, that last bit gets me every time -- as if they had any credibility or anyone had faith in them. Wow!
Beyond that, is the $care-mongering regarding the spike in interest rates and stock market crash. That flies entirely in the face of the prevailing pre$$ narrative regarding the Fed's skill at navigating interest rate hikes and decreases and the mention of a stock market crash literally came out of nowhere.
What do they know that we don't, or won't until it is foisted upon us as breaking news worthy of daily headlines?
The US government spends much more money than it takes in through revenue. To pay all of its bills, the Treasury Department issues debt as a way to borrow money, but it can only issue debt up to a limit set by Congress.
I kind of figured that first sentence out, it being basic math and all. The debt means taxpayers are on the hook for the principal while making annual interest payments to the bondholders.
The US government had $19 trillion in debt when Trump took office, and now total government debt has surpassed $22 trillion.
No one seems too concerned, and I guess when you have the military club to bake up the central banking clan, you don't have to be.
Many Republicans decried raising the debt limit during the Obama administration, saying the government should do more to cut back on borrowing, but they have mostly gone along with Trump’s efforts to widen the debt through tax cuts and large spending increases. Still, lawmakers do not like to hold votes that simply raise the debt ceiling and prefer to do it as part of a package, which is why many have pushed for including the debt ceiling increase as part of a broader budget deal.
Lawmakers must craft a new budget deal by the end of September, because that’s when funding for many agencies is set to expire. If lawmakers don’t fund the agencies after Sept. 30, there will be another government shutdown. Mnuchin said on Monday that the White House does not want to see another shutdown, but he said they didn’t have enough time to wait until late September to deal with the debt ceiling and budget talks, as the debt ceiling deadline could be much sooner.....
I just reached for my wallet.
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Maybe you should, too:
"Car plant closings, corruption color Detroit Three-UAW talks" by David Welch and Gabrielle Coppola Bloomberg News, July 15, 2019
On one side of the bargaining table will be union brass angry about plant closures and embarrassed by scandal. On the other will be auto executives sweating shrinking sales and risky billion-dollar bets to survive an era of disruption.
This is the difficult backdrop the United Auto Workers and Detroit Three have to overcome to clinch new four-year labor contracts. Negotiations kick off this week with handshake ceremonies hosted by one of the largest US unions and car manufacturers employing almost 150,000 members.
General Motors riled the union months ago by putting four US factories on the chopping block. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and its UAW counterparts are still dealing with the legal fallout from ex-union and company officials draining millions from a union training fund to enrich themselves, and Ford is said to be prepared to ask hourly workers to pony up more for health care that will otherwise cost the carmaker dearly next year.
This is in the face of record profits at Ford.
‘‘We’ve had a 10-year run of strong economics in the US — that doesn’t stay on forever,’’ Joe Hinrichs, Ford’s automotive president, told reporters Monday. ‘‘We need to maintain a competitiveness and a negotiations process that give us a way to be competitive in any economic cycle.’’
That is so disingenuous, and what does he and Mnuchin (one of the few Trump Cabinet officials untouched by scandal) know that we do not?
That’s a sentiment UAW president Gary Jones doesn’t want to hear.
‘‘Despite record profits, labor is still being asked to take concessions,’’ he said. ‘‘Our jobs have been outsourced to companies paying lower wages in the United States, Mexico, China, and all over the world. This must stop.’’
I certainly understand his sentiment, but must it?
Here’s a look at the key issues the union and automakers have to overcome to before their contracts expire in mid-September:
It's about protecting plants, the role of temp workers, and health care, but the dark cloud hanging over this year’s talks will be the corruption scandal embroiling the training center jointly run by Fiat Chrysler and the UAW in what has been a slow-moving public relations nightmare whereby federal prosecutors have indicted former officials for participating in a years-long scheme that the federal government has said funneled millions to ex-leaders at the company and union.
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Here are a few more things for them to talk about:
Amazon Prime Day has lots of competition
Aren't the workers on strike?
Order dictates more American components
President Trump signed an executive order Monday requiring federal agencies to purchase products using more American components.
Yeah, Trump is a dictator even though he isn't even in control of his own government (yeah, I suppose that was true of the fascist bureaucracies as well).
Former Fox 2000 president to work with Sony Pictures
Elizabeth Gabler, whose Fox 2000 produced acclaimed literary adaptations like ‘‘Life of Pi’’ and ‘‘Hidden Figures’’ before being axed in the aftermath of the Walt Disney Co. acquisition, has found a new home at Sony Pictures.
At least she can go shopping again:
LVMH enters into partnership with Stella McCartney
LVMH will enter a partnership to develop the Stella McCartney fashion brand as luxury companies race to show consumers and regulators their commitment to reducing their environmental impact. The move follows her decision to buy back a 50 percent stake in her label that was owned by LVMH’s rival, Kering, last year.
Nice way to goo$e that stock!
Price at the pump up a penny
I don't worry about that anymore. They will soon be giving it away.
WHO says baby food often contains too much sugar for infants
Again?
I grew up on that stuff in the 1960s. That's why I have a sweet tooth.
Might want to avoid the fruits and vegetables, kids:
"Bayer AG won a ruling slashing a jury verdict to $25.3 million from $80.3 million in the second case to go to trial over claims that exposure to its Roundup weed killer causes cancer. US District Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco previously said the $75 million portion of the verdict intended to punish the company was too high based on legal precedent that punitive damages shouldn’t be more than nine times bigger than compensatory damages. The case was brought by Edwin Hardeman, who used the herbicide on his large plot of land in Sonoma County, about 60 miles north of San Francisco. As with many of the other 13,400 consumers suing Bayer, Hardeman alleged that his years of exposure to the chemical caused his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma."
That's a lot of people suing, and that also shows you the raw power of the chemical lobby for a judge to step in.
Here is where to go if you want to go out to eat:
Chipotle soars as it puts illness outbreaks behind it
Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. touched a record high on Monday, showing it’s recovering from a string of food-borne illness outbreaks that began in 2015.
Are they using GMO products now?
Alitalia could get a new lease on life
The Italian government is hoping the Alitalia airline will turn a new page after four private investors expressed an interest in joining the state railway, the Italian treasury, and Delta Air Lines in trying once again to relaunch the struggling flagship carrier.
Turns out the merger is off and I'm done punching.
