Sunday Globe Special: Trump at War

They are doing everything they can to drive him to it. 

Maybe he will be on the cover of Time this week.

"Standoffs with Iran test Trump’s resolve to use military force" by Peter Baker and Eric Schmitt New York Times, September 21, 2019

WASHINGTON — By the time President Trump met with congressional leaders on the afternoon of June 20, he had already decided to retaliate against Iran for shooting down a US surveillance drone, but for once, he kept his cards close to the vest, soliciting advice rather than doing all of the talking, but barely three hours later, Trump had changed his mind.

Without consulting his vice president, secretary of state, or national security adviser, he reversed himself and, with ships readying missiles and airplanes already in the skies, told the Pentagon to call off the airstrikes with only 10 minutes to go. When Vice President Mike Pence and other officials returned to the White House for what they expected would be a long night of monitoring a military operation, they were stunned to learn the attack was off.

Thank God he wimped out and averted WWIII.

That about-face, so typically impulsive, instinctive, and removed from any process, proved to be a decision point for a president who has often threatened to “totally destroy” enemies but at the same time has promised to extricate the United States from Middle East wars. It revealed a commander in chief more cautious than critics have assumed, yet underscored the limited options in a confrontation he had set in motion.

Three months later, some of Trump’s own allies fear the failure to follow through was taken by Iran as a sign of weakness, emboldening it to attack oil facilities in Saudi Arabia this month. Trump argues his decision was an expression of long-overdue restraint by a nation that has wasted too many lives and dollars overseas, but he finds himself back where he was in June, wrestling with the consequences of using force and the consequences of avoiding it, except now Iran is accused of an even more brazen provocation, and the stakes seem even higher.

There they go again as he took another step back regarding who is ultimately responsible, and how about ending some wars before starting new ones, 'eh?

You think they would have learned by now. Time to let the government stand on its own, if it can, or else it will be all-out war.

As Trump again weighs retaliation against Iran, this time for the Saudi attacks, the choice he made in June is instructive in the insight it provides into how the president approaches a life-or-death decision committing US forces against an enemy.

This account of that day in June is based on interviews with White House aides, Pentagon officials, military officers, American and foreign diplomats, members of Congress, and outside presidential advisers, most of whom asked not to be identified describing private conversations.

That day clearly stays with Trump, who has ruminated on it over the past week.

“When I was running, everybody said, ‘Oh, he’s going to get into war, he’s going to get into war, he’s going to blow everybody up, he’s going to get into war,’ ” he told reporters on Friday. “Well, the easiest thing I can do — in fact, I could do it while you’re here — would say, ‘Go ahead, fellas, go do it.’ And that would be a very bad day for Iran,” but as eager as he is to fight with 280 characters on Twitter, Trump has proved profoundly reluctant to fight on a real battlefield. “For all of those that say, ‘Oh, they should do it, it shows weakness,’ ” he said, “actually, in my opinion, it shows strength.”

Think what you want of him, but he is right on that score. The easy thing is to acquiesce to the war mongers. One guy who didn't had his head taken off almost 56 years ago, so pray for the Trump.

Trump had come to office fixated on Iran as an enemy to be confronted. In abandoning the nuclear agreement negotiated by President Barack Obama in 2015 on the grounds that it was a bad deal, Trump set himself on a collision course with Tehran that was bound to test him.

That's more like Netanyahu, and so far Trump has passed the test; however, it looks like the dynasty may be over for Bibi (he blames the Arabs, of course).

Strained by the “maximum pressure” sanctions that Trump has imposed, Iran this summer acted out aggressively, targeting oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman and vowing to reconstitute its nuclear program. The overnight downing of the Global Hawk drone in June seemed to climax a campaign of escalation that would draw in Trump.

The New York Times acts as if they are a child and not an ancient, proud, and honorable civilization that is under attack from the USraeli empire. It's one reason, among so many, as to why I have become sick of this swill.

Hours after the drone was destroyed, the president’s team met for breakfast at 7 a.m. in the office of John Bolton, then the national security adviser. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were joined by two acting secretaries of defense, Patrick Shanahan, who had just announced his resignation and was days away from departing, and Mark Esper, his designated replacement.

They just outed the source of the article! Many predicted that a pissed-off Bolton would begin leaking to the pre$$, and here it is on an issue dear to his heart! Thanks for being a neo-con conduit once again, JYT!

At the meeting, several strike options were discussed. The Pentagon’s preferred plan was to attack one of the missile-laden Iranian boats that the United States had been tracking in the Gulf of Oman. US forces would warn the Iranians to evacuate the vessel, videotape them doing so, then sink the boat with a bomb or missile strike.

The end result would be zero casualties, which Shanahan and Dunford argued would be a proportional response to the downing of a $130 million drone that had itself resulted in no loss of life.

Bolton and Pompeo were concerned that would not be decisive enough and pushed for strikes on Iranian soil. Bolton argued for what was described as a “comprehensive list” of targets, but only so many could be hit if the operation was to be carried out quickly, so the officials settled on three Iranian missile batteries and radars.

The same advisers reconvened along with more officials at 11 a.m. in the Situation Room to brief the president. The meeting lasted for about an hour as various possibilities were discussed.

Four officials said that striking the three targets would result in about 150 casualties.

The national security team emerged from that meeting convinced it had a decision from Trump to strike, and soon the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and other ships and aircraft were on the move, preparing for an attack around 9 p.m. Washington time, or just before dawn in the region.

Still, there continued to be pushback from Pentagon civilians and Dunford. They argued that killing as many as 150 Iranians did not equate to the shooting down of a drone and could prompt a counterstrike by Iran that would escalate into a broader confrontation.

As if that amount of lives lost would deter them after all the lies that have led to the slaughter of millions. What crap.

Moreover, Dunford argued that a sustained conflict in the Middle East would require the United States to divert more forces to the region, including from the Pacific theater, which would benefit China.

Well, China has benefited, and is it possible that wars in Afghanistan and on Iran are really all about China?

Trump seemed to be nursing doubts of his own, partly because of reports that the Iranian commander who shot down the drone had acted on his own, not on specific orders of the national government. Just after the Situation Room meeting, he sat down with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, who was visiting, and floated that scenario.

“I find it hard to believe it was intentional, if you want to know the truth,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office shortly after noon. “I think that it could have been somebody who was loose and stupid that did it.”

Speaking of those loose and stupid, helloooooo, and for all you ladies out there, how come the groping is being ignored? The woman he is grabbing has her hand firmly placed over his, while the woman to his left has a hold of his elbow.

In the days leading up to this moment, he had talked with Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host, who reminded him that he had come to office to get out of endless wars, not start a new one.

He is the only antiwar voice on television, such as it is.

At 3 p.m., Trump convened a dozen congressional leaders from both parties in the Situation Room, a rare act of inclusion. Pence, Pompeo, Shanahan, Esper, Bolton, and Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, joined the meeting.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was late because she was meeting with Trudeau, and the group debated waiting for her, but with so much history of animosity between Democrats and Republicans, there was no small talk and the room fell into an awkward silence. Finally, they decided to go ahead with the discussion.

Trump rambled on about how bad Obama’s deal had been and insisted over and over again — one lawmaker estimated a dozen times — that his pressure campaign would force Iran to the bargaining table.

He seemed less certain about what to do in response to the drone shootdown. Democrats suggested caution, warning that a military strike could destabilize the region and play into Iran’s hands.

Trump, for once, did not reject their views. Indeed, he seemed concerned about an overreaction. “At the end of the day, the impression I got was that the president was genuinely worried about stumbling into a broader conflict,” said Representative Adam Smith, Democrat of Washington and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

As the hour approached, Trump was again given the estimate that 150 Iranians would be killed in the attack.

Why Trump suddenly latched onto the estimate at this point rather than when casualties were discussed at the earlier meeting remains a mystery to many officials, but when the decision came, Pence, Pompeo, and Bolton were all out of the White House, and the president did not call them for input. Instead, he told the Pentagon to call off the attack.

In the command center of the Abraham Lincoln, Rear Admiral Michael Boyle, the carrier strike group commander, had been waiting for the final order to attack. “All the systems were on, all the lights were green, we were waiting for the order,” Boyle recalled. “And the order didn’t come.”

And the world breathed a sigh of relief.

--more--"

Nothing about Trump increasing troop levels in the region, of course. 

Wouldn't be the first time they have left something out this week (sigh!). 

That anyone could believe anything in their paper anymore boggles my mind.

Related:

"Iran’s president called Sunday on Western powers to leave the security of the Persian Gulf to regional nations led by Tehran, criticizing a new U.S.-led coalition patrolling the region’s waterways as nationwide parades showcased the Islamic Republic’s military arsenal. Hassan Rouhani separately promised to unveil a regional peace plan at this week’s upcoming high-level meetings at the United Nations....."

And for that, the US is pondering a cyberattack to punish Iran.

Also see:

"Syrian authorities captured and dismantled Saturday a drone rigged with cluster bombs near the border with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, state news agency SANA said. SANA gave no further details about the drone but posted several photos of the aerial vehicle. Israel frequently conducts airstrikes and missile attacks inside Syria but rarely confirms them. Israel says it targets mostly bases of Iranian forces and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in Syria. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said it was not clear if Syrian troops or Hezbollah had downed the drone. Hezbollah has members in different parts of Syria where they are fighting on the side of President Bashar Assad’s forces. The incident came two days after another drone was destroyed over Aqraba, a suburb of the capital, Damascus. That’s the same suburb where an Israeli airstrike killed two Hezbollah operatives last month. No one has claimed responsibility for either of the drones."

In all honesty, I don't think the USraelis are up for a region-wide war and if they dare undertake one, they are going to get their asses kicked.

Now for the political war on the home front:

"Ukraine, whistleblower issues emerge as flashpoints in presidential race" by Lisa Lerer and Reid J. Epstein New York Times, September 21, 2019

DES MOINES — President Trump, under growing pressure Saturday over his private conversations with Ukraine’s president, lashed out at former vice president Joe Biden in an attempt to shift the focus of intensifying questions about whether Trump sought help from Ukraine to hurt Biden’s 2020 bid against him.

With Trump seizing on a familiar defense, saying Democrats were undertaking a “witch hunt” against him on Ukraine, Biden called on the House of Representatives to begin a new investigation of whether the president sought the interference of a foreign government to help bolster his reelection campaign.

“This appears to be an overwhelming abuse of power,” Biden said during a campaign swing in Iowa. “We have never seen anything like this from any president.”

OMG!

This is the same guy who served in an administration that used a phony dossier from the opposing political campaign to gain spying powers on the opposition party.

The sharp accusations between Trump and Biden, who leads the field for the Democratic presidential nomination, elevated the president’s dealings with Ukraine — and the secret complaint against Trump by a whistle-blower in the intelligence community— as potentially significant new issues in the presidential race.

Yeah, some Deep State operative's secret complaint is a significant new issue -- unlike the imprisonment and banishment of Assange and Manning. 

The controversy has focused on whether Trump abused his power by trying to get foreign actors to look into a possible political foe at home, but the president is also trying to deflect attention and refocus it on the past financial dealings abroad of Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, at a time when a new brand of anti-Washington populism is ascendant in both political parties.

OMG, that first part is so out of context when you consider the lack of examination regarding the actions of the Clinton campaign and the Obama administration in 2016. The Steele Dossier was created by foreign actors, then funneled up through channels by Brennan and the like.

As reports that Trump sought help from the Ukrainian government shake the country, Biden and other leading Democrats struggled with the realization that next year’s election could be an even more bitter version of their last presidential contest.

Are you shaken by these allegations of politics as usual?

I am not. It's the pre$$ once again making a mountain out of a molehill, and this item will soon disappear since the underlying charges regarding Biden are essentially accurate.

Trump on Saturday dismissed news reports that he urged the Ukrainian president to investigate Biden’s son, and defended his own conduct as “perfectly fine” and routine.

“Now that the Democrats and the Fake News Media have gone ‘bust’ on every other of their Witch Hunt schemes, they are trying to start one just as ridiculous as the others, call it Ukraine Witch Hunt,” Trump wrote on Twitter.

He said that any effort to investigate him would fail, comparing it to the investigation by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, into his ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign.

You remember, right?

The news reports he was referring to have revealed the existence of a secret whistleblower complaint that is believed to have been filed, at least in part, in response to Trump’s dealings with Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. The New York Times reported Friday that Trump, in a July call, pressed the Ukrainian president to investigate Biden’s son, according to a person familiar with the conversation.

He might have mentioned it, but so what?

On Saturday, Trump, intensifying a line of attack he and his allies have stoked for months, said the real problem was Biden and questions about what the president described as “the Joe Biden demand that the Ukrainian Government fire a prosecutor who was investigating his son.”

He then bragged about it. 

Trump, referring to his conversation with Zelenskiy, said: “Nothing was said that was in any way wrong, but Biden’s demand, on the other hand, was a complete and total disaster.”

No evidence has surfaced to bolster Trump’s claim that the former vice president intentionally tried to help his son by pressing for the prosecutor general’s dismissal. 

If it does, the pre$$ will suppress it.

Donna Brazile, the former Democratic National Committee chairwoman who led the party through Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump three years ago, said the exchange “in many ways feels like 2016.”

Just the prominent discussion of the actions of Biden and his son in Ukraine, regardless of the merits of the president’s accusations, has the potential to hurt Biden, Brazile said.

“We’re basically creating a political story which right now is undermining Joe Biden when I do believe the real focus should be getting the substance of the complaint out to the American people as soon as possible,” she said Saturday.

She's the one who leaked the debate questions to Hillary, and maybe the agenda is to push the increasingly erratic Biden aside, 'eh?

--more--"

[At this point I noted a full-page Total Wine ad on page A3, asking Why Drive to New Hampshire?]

"For Biden, whistle-blower complaint could cut two ways" by Lisa Lerer and Reid J. Epstein New York Times, September 21, 2019

That's three for three now.

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Since President Trump defeated them nearly three years ago, Democrats have warned that he would once again benefit from the interference of foreign governments to help bolster his reelection bid.

Now, as reports that he sought help from the Ukrainian government shake the political world, former vice president Joe Biden, the apparent front-runner in the primary race, finds himself grappling with the fallout of a still-secret whistle-blower complaint that is said to be about Trump and his dealings with Ukraine. 

What happens to a cess pool when it is shaken?

For Biden, it is both the contrast he wants and the controversy he would rather avoid.

The revelations offered voters a preview of what is likely to be an extraordinary general election contest if Biden were to win the nomination, one in which attacks by the president and his team could boomerang, transforming Biden into a sympathetic figure under ugly attack with foreign help.

That is the NYT narrative they are promoting.

It could just as easily mark a defining moment for Biden, a 76-year-old politician first elected to the Senate in 1972 and long accustomed to playing by the more genteel political rules of a different era.

While the new report gives Biden the one-on-one showdown with Trump that his campaign has spent months trying to create, it also exposes him and his son, Hunter Biden, to yet another round of probing questions about their money-making activities and personal family struggles.

At a time when some of the candidates had been shifting their strategy from trying to chip away at Biden’s persistent lead to attacking the ascendant candidacy of Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the new reporting once again places Biden at the center of the 2020 campaign.

Biden, whose appearances on the campaign trail can be halting and sprinkled with misstatements, has generally delivered his strongest performances when focused on Trump. Speaking about the president allows Biden to discuss foreign policy and national security, issues that his campaign has said differentiate Biden from the rest of the 2020 Democratic field.

Really? 

What are his positions? 

Stay in Afghanistan and Syria? 

Keep the war in Yemen going?

Attack Iran? 

What?

As for his "misstatements," when Trump makes them the pre$$ calls them lies.

Yet Biden’s initial response was to brush off the new revelations and stick to his campaign schedule in Iowa, offering only a meager retort.

“I have no comment except the president should start to be president,” he told reporters.

Later, he grew irate, insisting that he had never spoken with his son about any overseas work and assailing the president for an “overwhelming abuse of power.”

“You should be looking at Trump,” Biden said. “Trump is doing this because he knows I’ll beat him like a drum.”

What's with the violent metaphors?

Though he has yet to call for impeachment proceedings against Trump to begin, Biden tiptoed closer to embracing the idea that has been steadily gaining support on Capitol Hill despite opposition from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

He really doesn't want to win, does he?

At issue are demands from Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, that Ukraine examine Biden’s dealings with the country when he was vice president at the same time that his younger son, Hunter Biden, was doing business there.

Trump and Giuliani have reportedly pressed for an investigation of the Bidens for weeks, after reports this year in The New York Times and elsewhere examined whether a Ukrainian energy company had sought to buy influence in Washington by hiring Hunter Biden. The younger Biden had a lobbying business in Ukraine while his father was vice president.

Why doesn't Bill Barr's DoJ open one up? 

I know he is busy getting to the bottom of the Obama malfeasance and the Epstein debacle, but I'm sure he can walk and chew gum at the same time.

Biden’s team believes the accusations that his son improperly leveraged his family name on behalf of his lobbying clients have already been widely debunked in the media. Still, the reemergence of the younger Biden’s business dealings invites a new round of scrutiny.

Meaning they are most likely true.

On Saturday morning, Trump posted a video mash-up of TV news footage of stories about Biden’s son. “This is the real and only story,” the president wrote.

So far, Biden’s rivals, nearly all of whom descended on Iowa this weekend, have resisted taking the bait. Several of his competitors were quick to assail Trump on Friday, while avoiding commentary about how Trump’s accusations would affect the Democratic contest.

“I’m going to keep the focus on the fact that Donald Trump has broken the law if this report is accurate and he should be impeached,” former housing secretary Julián Castro said Friday in Cedar Rapids. “That’s where the focus belongs right now.”

This is the latest case for impeaching Trump.

Warren, who first called for Trump to be impeached in April after the release of a report by the special counsel Robert Mueller, renewed those demands, but went even further, arguing that by failing to act on impeachment in preceding months, Congress had become “complicit in Trump’s latest attempt to solicit foreign interference to aid him in US elections.”

“Today’s news confirmed he thinks he’s above the law,” she said. “If we do nothing, he’ll be right.”

Even if Biden’s primary competitors don’t take direct aim, the perception of the Biden family leveraging its connections — even if little more than a conspiracy theory — cuts a stark contrast with his two leading rivals, Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders, who have centered their candidacies around a fierce populist message of rooting out corruption in Washington.

There they go, trotting out that old trope once again.

It’s a message that worked in 2016 for Trump.

A few hours after Biden’s non-comment, his campaign decided to go further.

Sensing an opportunity to highlight Trump’s fixation with Biden, his aides released a statement in his name blistering the president for “abhorrent” conduct and demanding Trump release the transcript of his call with the Ukrainian leader and allow the director of national intelligence to release the whistle-blower’s claims to Congress.

“There is only one candidate the president is trying to get foreign governments to dig up bogus dirt on,” said Anita Dunn, a senior adviser to Biden.

--more--"

Related:

Elizabeth Warren overtakes Biden to lead latest Iowa poll

"The senator from Massachusetts has soared to the top of the pack in this early-voting state — she had a two-point lead over Joe Biden in a poll released Saturday — with a barrage of bold policy proposals and a robust grass-roots organization, but many supporters in Iowa cite her compelling personal story....."

She's on the ascent in Iowa, as opposed to Booker, as it is no longer about what female candidates are wearing.

Never was for me, anyway, as we “turn the corner”:

UAW strike puts Trump, GOP in political bind in key states

If he loses Michigan then the Dems win. 

Carmakers nowhere to be seen as Trump begins dismantling mileage rules

Also see:

City to pay Republican National Convention protester $50K

Richard Newburger in July 2016 joined fellow protesters preparing to burn an American flag when Newburger and others were assaulted by police and sprayed with fire retardant.

He's going to struggle to hold South Carolina without more campaign contributions.

Speaking of a sick campaign:

"Bernie Sanders calls for eliminating Americans’ medical debt" by Margot Sanger-Katz and Sydney Ember New York Times, September 21, 2019

Oh, look, another NYT byline.

WASHINGTON — Bernie Sanders has long wanted to remake the health care system so no one will have to pay directly for medical care again. Now, he also wants to go back and cancel all the medical debts of people who have been billed under the current system.

That's a killer combination given the national debt.

In a plan released Saturday, Sanders, the Vermont senator and presidential candidate, proposes wiping out an estimated $81 billion in existing debt and changing rules around debt collection and bankruptcy. He also calls for replacing the giant credit reporting agencies with a “public credit registry” that would ignore medical debt when calculating credit scores.

He's already won that fight.

The proposals reflect Sanders’s concern that the medical system has placed financial hardships on too many Americans, by discouraging them from seeking needed medical care — but also by saddling them with expensive and unfair bills that can harm their financial security, ding their credit, and, in some cases, lead to bankruptcy.

The plan is Sanders’s latest effort to transform the health care system in America, a goal on which he has staked not just his second presidential run, but much of his political legacy. His proposal also separates him from other presidential candidates: While several of them have come to embrace his “Medicare for all” plan to create a government-run health insurance system, he is the first top-tier contender to call for such drastic measures on medical debt.

Now this is Bernie's legacy -- as Obama's ACA comes apart the seams. 

While eliminating every American’s medical debt would probably not come cheap, Sanders’s plan could wind up costing far less than the total amount of debt he is seeking to cancel. Craig Antico, a founder of the charity RIP Medical Debt, which buys and forgives medical debt, estimated that the market price for $81 billion in debt could be as low as $500 million. Most past-due medical debt never gets paid, which is why bill collectors are often willing to sell the debts for pennies on the dollar.

The plan would also create a public credit rating agency to “replace” for-profit companies like Equifax, and it would establish a new legal process, managed by the bankruptcy court system, to help adjudicate medical debts that are not yet in collections.

Medical debts do affect credit somewhat, and they can cause psychological stress, beyond the financial consequences. A survey of people with medical debts conducted by The New York Times and the Kaiser Family Foundation in 2016 found that 44 percent of adults under 65 who had problems paying medical bills said those bills had a “major effect” on their lives.

They can prescribe you a pill for that.

Other research has shown that income losses due to illness are often the bigger financial hit than medical bills. Neither Sanders’s “Medicare for all” plan nor his medical debt program would address that secondary issue, though he has also called for guaranteeing workers paid medical leave.

The plan “is well targeted,” said Neale Mahoney, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, who studies medical debt. “It just may not be that much relief.”

Sanders said that, in conversations with people around the country, he had come to see medical debt as the most consistent and visceral manifestation of a broken health care system.

At an event this month in Carson City, Nev., for instance, he heard from a veteran who said he had $139,000 in medical debt. When Sanders asked the man how he would pay off the debt, the man responded: “I can’t. I can’t. I’m going to kill myself.”

He would be one of the 23 a day who do, an underreported story when it comes to the war pre$$. Many of them were hooked on opioids that were prescribed for their war pains, too.

Oddly enough, it is the very VA that argues against Bernie's cause. It's the clearest example yet of an AmeriKan-administered single-payer plan.

Those kinds of deeply moving moments, he said, drove him to seek a new way to ameliorate that particular pain as part of his overall vision for changing the health care system.....

Bernie's heart is in the right place.

--more--"

Time to fly off to the next campaign rally:

"Charge against airline mechanic highlights ‘insider threat’" by David Koenig Associated Press, September 21, 2019

Finally, someone other than the New York Times.

NEW YORK — The arrest of an airline mechanic suspected of being sympathetic with terrorists and charged with sabotaging a jetliner has renewed fear about the ‘‘insider threat’’ to aviation security.

Despite security upgrades since the hijacking terror attacks of 2001, breaches including a gun-running operation at the nation’s biggest airport illustrate the possibility that a well-placed airline or airport employee could bring down a plane.

‘‘Should people be worried? Hell, yeah,’’ says Doron Pely, a former aviation security consultant in Israel.

Well, then I guess we should be worried since it was Israeli-connected security firms that were responsible for Logan on 9/11 along with a few other alleged terrorist events upon airliners.

So what false flag is in the works, or is this just another mind-manipulating touchstone to dredge up Pavlovian responses amongst the public just after the anniversary of that fateful day?

The inherent problem there is the mixed messages it sends. All this police state apparatus and data collection efforts costing billions have still failed to work, and yet the solution from authority and its mouthpiece is to double down on it. Why when it has apparently failed?

Several experts interviewed for this story said it would be difficult if not impossible to stop every determined criminal or terrorist. They said steps that might beef up defenses against an insider attack — such as requiring aviation workers to go through security checkpoints just like passengers — could add costs and slow down work that goes on at airports.

Then the terminals would become like the DMV scandal that is increasingly smaller in the rear-view mirror of the Globe these days. I guess the planes will be crashing then, and notice the in-your-face quality to now protecting against an "insider threat" when the whole 9/11 operation was carried out by insiders, from Dick Cheney running war games to the dancing Israelis sent to film the event. They are literally laughing to themselves as they roll out this slop.

While there have been several cases in recent years of insiders using their special access to board planes without going through security — in one case, even steal a plane — they haven’t harmed passengers, and there hasn’t been clamoring for tougher security.

That's the clue regarding the false flag quality of what happened that day; there has been nothing near the scale since after 18 long years (now the security has worked, you see?), with nothing but patsy plots busted by FBI instigators. 

What this tells me is the article is simply advancing more police state measures, for the visceral imagery of 9/11 will be hard to recapture save a mushroom cloud over Chicago. The psychopaths in charge may become that desperate one day, but by then the project will have already failed.

Under federal law, people applying to work in secure areas of an airport must pass a three-part vetting process run by the Transportation Security Administration — a criminal-records check, a ‘‘security threat assessment’’ that includes checking their names against a terrorism watch list, and proof that they are eligible to work in the United States.

Abdul Alani, who was born in Iraq and became a US citizen in 1992, passed that test and got a job repairing planes for American Airlines. There were setbacks in his career — Alaska Airlines fired him in 2008 for shoddy work, something that American apparently didn’t know — but there was no criminal history, no other outward signs of problems. On Sept. 5, Alani was arrested in Miami and charged with trying to disable or damage an aircraft.

He was denied bail, meaning the government has muzzled him.

Incidents of insiders sabotaging planes are considered extremely rare, although the Federal Aviation Administration does not track them and has no numbers, a spokeswoman said.

??????

They don't keep statistics, huh? 

They frikkin' keep statistics for everything except this, how many citizens are killed by police every year, etc, etc.

In 2013, a technician with access to the tarmac was arrested as he tried to plant what he thought was a bomb at the airport in Wichita, Kan. He had told an FBI undercover agent that he wanted to carry out a jihad for Al Qaeda.

SET UP! 

Al-CIA-Duh indeed!

Yeah, we are not in Kansas anymore.

In 2014, a Delta Air Lines baggage handler was arrested and later convicted for using his security badge to avoid checkpoints and help smuggle guns on flights. In 2018, a Horizon Air employee stole a plane from the Seattle airport and crashed it 25 miles away. Neither of those incidents was believed related to terrorism, but both underscored the threat posed by insiders.

I covered that pungent plane crash in my Monday and Tuesday commutes before the Globe grounded the flight. The psy-op propaganda never ends, no matter how ridiculous it reads.

Investigators have found that TSA reviews sometimes fall short of the mark.

Yup, have to tighten those police state measures, got it. That's the point of this propaganda.

Of course, the solution is simple: avoid airplanes at all costs.

In 2015, the inspector general of the Homeland Security Department, TSA’s parent, found that TSA failed to identify 73 aviation workers with security badges who should have triggered terrorism-related red flags. The reason: TSA wasn’t authorized to get all terror-related information from other federal agencies. After an outcry, TSA got more access.

(Blog editor shakes head)

The watchdog office found that TSA’s checking of applicants’ crime history and legal status to work in the United States was even worse. ‘‘Thousands of records’’ were unreliable because they were missing Social Security numbers or contained an initial instead of a first name. TSA did not check records to see if aviation employees committed crimes after getting their security badges — it counted on the workers reporting that themselves — the inspector general said.

But let's give all the illegals, whoever they are, driver's licenses!

Nearly 1 million people work at the roughly 450 airports under federal control, and many of them avoid the kind of screening that passengers are subject to. Requiring them to go through security checkpoints would mean more spending on TSA and interfere with workers’ ability to go where they are needed.

Well, everything is a trade off, right?

The fact that the "terrorists" haven't pierced such weak defenses after piggy-backing on the 9/11 war games scenario tells you all you need to know regarding who was behind those attacks.

‘‘Just like [with] police officers, there is a certain amount of trust you have to extend to certain people if you want the system to work,’’ said Jeffrey Price, an aviation professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver and author of books on security. Still, he thinks we don’t pay enough attention to the insider threat. ‘‘It’s not easy to prevent, it’s not easy to detect.’’

It's hard to extend trust with so many wrongful imprisonment cases around the country, but I do agree that not enough attention is paid to insider threats.

I mean real insiders running false flags, not framed individuals by the forces that helped cover-up the crimes.

--more--"

Related:

"Terror suspect charged in N.Y. allegedly scouted 3 locations in Boston" by Danny McDonald and Travis Andersen Globe Staff, September 19, 2019

This article preceded the one above, and was from a paper I did not purchase. It made the front page, and my initial alarm was also tempered with a what timing reaction!

A terror suspect arrested in New York City allegedly scouted locations for possible attacks in various cities, including Boston, where he looked at Fenway Park, the Prudential Center, and Quincy Market, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

Alexei Saab, 42, a naturalized US citizen, was charged with offenses related to his support for the Lebanon-based terrorist group Hezbollah, as well as with marriage-fraud offenses, the office of Geoffrey S. Berman, US attorney for New York’s Southern District, said in a statement.

That's when the stench began to hit me. It's the Southern District of New York bringing the charges involving Hezbollah! HA! This blatant, self-serving, agenda-pushing war propaganda is really reaching it's limits! 

So why did they throw the marriage-fraud charges in there? Possible future deportation of Omar in the works?

Saab’s support included taking photos in Boston of the three landmarks, which were among targets of interest to Hezbollah, a complaint filed in the case alleged. Other potential targets in New York and Washington, D.C., were also photographed.

Local officials have said there is no credible threat to Boston.

That is what we are always told before the "terrorists" strike, so grain of salt that. That was the case during the Marathon crisis drill that was piggy-backed upon by private security.

Other detailed allegations about Saab’s work for Hezbollah involved information-gathering and bomb-making training, according to the complaint.

The authorities also alleged that around 2005, at Hezbollah’s direction, Saab tried to murder a person he came to believe was an Israeli spy in Lebanon, but the gun did not fire.

Okay, that is the first date I am being given for his activities. If true, what was he doing here and who was the Israeli spy?

Of course, we know the Zionist-controlled pre$$ will never go near any of that. They help bury it with obfuscation, omission, and the promotion of absurd cover stories.

Federal prosecutors said his close ties to Hezbollah, which the State Department designated as a terrorist organization in 1997 and which wants to create a fundamentalist Islamic state in Lebanon, date back more than two decades.

And yet he was wandering around Boston, New York, and D.C. taking pictures, etc.

WTF?

The FBI interviewed Saab 11 times from mid-March to early July of this year, according to the federal complaint. In it, an FBI special agent assigned to the New York Joint Terrorism Task Force also mentioned a cooperating witness who was a former member of the Islamic Jihad Organization, or IJO, a component of Hezbollah that’s “responsible for the planning and coordination of intelligence, counterintelligence, and terrorist activities . . . outside of Lebanon.”

(Blog editor throws hands up in air! It's another set-up!!)

According to a statement from the FBI Boston Division, the photos acquired during the investigation were taken before 2006 and “are not a result of specific tasking by Hezbollah.”

OMG! 

DING-A-LING-A-LING-A-LING! 

This is PURE PROPAGANDA being FOISTED ON US NOW! 

WOW!

Both the FBI and Boston police said Thursday that there were no known active or credible threats to the city at the time the photos were taken, and the authorities are not aware of any active or credible threats to Boston.

The stench of this garbage has now become overwhelmingly unbearable.

“The Boston Police Department has been working closely with our law enforcement partners at the FBI to ensure the continued safety of the residents of the city of Boston,” said Sergeant Detective John Boyle, a department spokesman. “The Boston Police Department has been briefed by the FBI and we have subsequently notified the properties impacted by the information revealed within this indictment as well as their respective security teams of these findings.”

PFFFT!

State Police, meanwhile, said in a statement that the governor has a task force that is looking to improve public safety “at large venues, such as arenas and stadiums.’’

Oh, more police state measures over what was and is admittedly no threat at all, and in light of the airport insider story above, it underscores even more the falsity of all these spy-op events.

You know the rea$on why, right?

Saab, a Morristown, N.J., resident who entered the United States legally in November 2000, was arrested July 9 in New York City, prosecutors said. His indictment was announced Thursday.

He's been in the country since 2000, 10 months before the 9/11 attacks. Only getting around to charging him now for connections that don't exist according to the paragraphs above.

It wasn’t immediately clear when Saab would appear in court to face the nine counts, which include conspiracy to provide material support to the terror group, providing material support, conspiracy to receive military training from Hezbollah, receipt of military training from Hezbollah, and unlawful procurement of citizenship or naturalization to facilitate an act of international terrorism.

Saab “allegedly was trained by Hizballah’s external terrorist operations component in bomb-making and conducted intelligence-gathering in New York City and Washington, D.C., and elsewhere in support of Hizballah’s attack-planning efforts,” prosecutors said. Hizballah is an alternate spelling of Hezbollah.

Hezbollah, Hezbollah, Hizballah, Hizballah, Hezbollah, get it? 

Thanks for the Jewi$h war propaganda.

Saab allegedly joined the group in 1996, and his first Hezbollah operation occurred in Lebanon, “where he was tasked with observing and reporting on the movements of Israeli and Southern Lebanese Army soldiers in Yaroun, Lebanon,” according to federal authorities.

He finished his Hezbollah training, which focused on the use of firearms, around 1999, and in 2000 he transitioned to membership in the IJO, officials said.

As part of that unit, he received training in tradecraft, weapons, and military tactics, including how to construct and detonate bombs and other explosive devices, prosecutors said.

He entered the United States in 2000 using a Lebanese passport, the US attorney’s office said, and five years later “applied for naturalized citizenship and falsely affirmed, under penalty of perjury, that he had never been ‘a member of or in any way associated with . . . a terrorist organization.’”

In August 2008, he became a naturalized US citizen, according to officials, but remained an IJO operative while he was living stateside. Investigators allege he also continued to receive military training in Lebanon and conducted numerous IJO operations.

Federal authorities said he surveilled dozens of locations in New York City – including the United Nations headquarters, the Statue of Liberty, Rockefeller Center, Times Square, the Empire State Building, and airports, tunnels, and bridges — and provided detailed information on these locations, including photographs, to the IJO.

And for over 13 years they did nothing with it because he was never actually tasked for the assignment.

--more--"

That pos was a one-day wonder, and I think anyone with a semi-functioning brain can see what a load of agenda-pushing BS that was.

Related:

"Greek police said Saturday they have arrested a suspect in the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847 from Athens, which was a multi-day ordeal and included the slaying of an American. A 65-year-old suspect was arrested Thursday on Mykonos in response to a warrant from Germany. The flight was commandeered shortly after taking off from Athens on June 14, 1985. It originated in Cairo and had San Diego set as a final destination, with stops scheduled in Athens, Rome, Boston, and Los Angeles. The hijackers shot and killed US Navy diver Robert Stethem, 23. They released the other 146 passengers and crew members during an ordeal that included stops in Beirut and Algiers. The last hostage was freed after 17 days. The suspect was in custody on the Greek island of Syros but was set to be transferred to a high security prison in Athens for extradition proceedings, a police spokeswoman said. She said the suspect was a Lebanese citizen. Police refused to release the suspect’s name. In Beirut, the Foreign Ministry said the man is a Lebanese journalist called Mohammed Saleh." 

Yeah, we better go get Hezbollah for Israel.

[Interestingly enough, the back page of the first section, page A10, contained a full-page ad for the New Hampshire Liquor & Wine Outlet. I $uppo$e the promotion of alcohol is really no $urpri$e in my pre$$]

That gets us to the second half of the A section beginning on page A11:

"News Analysis: Climate protesters and global leaders: same planet, different worlds" by Somini Sengupta New York Times, September 21, 2019

Speaking of different worlds!

UNITED NATIONS — This is the world we live in: a pantheon of world leaders who have deep ties to the industries that are the biggest sources of planet-warming emissions, are hostile to protests, or use climate science denial to score political points.

That stark contrast comes at a time when governments face a challenge they never have since the beginning of the industrial era, at least. In order to avert the worst effects of climate change, they must rebuild the engine of the global economy — to quickly get out of fossil fuels, the energy source that the system is based upon — because they failed to take steps earlier when scientists warned they should.

Yeah, just don't shut down the war machine for which it mouthpieces!

Of course, the pre$$ $cienti$ts have been warning us forever and a lot of what they have said hasn't happened.

On Monday, at the United Nations Climate Action Summit, comes a glimpse of how far presidents and prime ministers are willing to go. The problem is, the protesters in the streets and some of the diplomats in the General Assembly hall are living in separate worlds. “Our political climate is not friendly to this discussion at this moment,” said Alice Hill, who specializes in climate policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Oh, I'm so glad the CFR is looking after the environment for us! 

We are told its the most important fight in human history and if we lose everything will go dark and the next chapter in long history of plunder will be written. Our hopes and burdens are on the young (why is she still writing a column for the tree-murdering pre$$?)

President Trump, in fact, has rolled back dozens of environmental regulations, most recently reversing rules on auto emissions, saying that they were an unnecessary burden on the economy. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro wants to open the Amazon to new commercial activity. In Russia, Vladimir Putin presides over a vast, powerful petro-state. China’s state-owned companies are pushing for coal projects at home and abroad, even as the country tries in other ways to tamp down emissions. Narendra Modi of India is set on expanding coal too, even as he champions solar power.....

I stopped reading the "news analysis" there because the Amazon fires that burned so brightly weeks ago have petered out entirely; the Russian petro-state is eclipsed by the unmentioned Saudi petro-state that sells only for dollars; and because India's invasion of Kashmir has been memory-holed by my pre$$.

--more--" 

They are going to milk it for all it's worth.

Related:

"President Trump’s speech may be the main event at the United Nations this week, but many envoys will also be closely watching as US Ambassador Kelly Craft makes her debut in the second most prestigious job in American diplomacy. Craft was sworn in on Sept. 12, just days before the annual UN General Assembly gathering began. Her arrival ended an eight-month hiatus created by the departure of Nikki Haley, a lag many say left the US mission adrift. A Kentucky native who has been a major donor to the GOP and to Trump, Craft will be the fourth woman in a row to hold the post. She most recently served as the US ambassador to Canada, her only diplomatic experience besides a largely ceremonial role as an alternate delegate under President George W. Bush. Critics say her lack of experience makes her ill-suited for a job that is second in prominence only to the secretary of state, particularly in such challenging and perilous times. Craft arrives as the world body confronts multiple problems — Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Yemen. This year’s General Assembly will be dominated by growing alarm over climate change....."

Maybe, but the Globe's World lead was dominated by the concerns of war (I'm surprised Ebola or EEE wasn't mentioned), and how did they all get there anyway, fly?

Btw, her confirmation was torture.

Also see:

"Hurricane Lorena spared the resort-studded twin cities of Los Cabos a direct hit, instead heading up the east coast of Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula early Saturday prompting new warnings and watches in that coastal area. The US National Hurricane Center said Lorena was a Category 1 storm with maximum sustained winds of 75 miles per hour and its center was about 55 miles north-northwest of La Paz, Mexico. It was heading to the northwest on a forecast track parallel to the coast through the Sea of Cortez. It was expected to approach the northwestern coast of mainland Mexico Sunday. A hurricane warning was in effect for the east coast of the Baja California peninsula from Santa Rosalia to Los Barriles and on mainland Mexico from Altata to Bahia, the hurricane center said. In the Atlantic, meanwhile, Hurricane Jerry became a tropical storm and was forecast to pass ‘‘well north’’ of the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico on Saturday, but heavy rainfall remained possible on the northern Leeward Islands, the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico."

No mention of Imelda after it moved through Texas, and here comes Karen.

Also see: Marine heat wave dubbed ‘Blob’ resurges in Pacific; mass deaths of sea life feared

I suspect radioactive water from Fukushima; however, the article doesn't mention the plastic garbage patch at all so..... grain of salt.

New rule shifts development in Maine’s prized North Woods

We are told it will be “death by a thousand cuts and a gradual erosion,” but hey, it's their state so.... 

MIT president Rafael Reif is suddenly at the center of a storm

Globe is more worried about him and the $chool's reputation (told you it was nothing but a propaganda outlet) than the female victims.

Battling cancer, a psychiatrist gets personal with his patients

He's Dr. Adam Philip Stern.

Egyptians protest after viral videos allege taxpayer funds stolen for lavish palace, hotel

My initial reaction is what has Egypt done wrong? 

Align with Iran and Turkey? 

Not fall in line for the war? 

Bought Russian weaponry? 

Opened the gates to Gaza? 

Otherwise, article doesn't appear. 

Or is it a one off?

Nope, it's a destabilization campaign by the U.S.

Mixing politics and piety, a conservative priest seeks to shape Poland’s future

When the Jew York Times tackles the influence of Israeli rabbis I will take a look.

UK’s Labour Party in turmoil as vote to oust deputy ditched

It's an ABC strategy, and that means Anybody But Corbyn.

Hong Kong protesters, police face off in renewed clashes

They New York Times says they are arresting 13-year-olds, but at least no one died like in Sudan.

To influence El Salvador, China dangled money. The US made threats.

Maybe Italy will take them, and just don't let trade tensions shut down Springfield subway train factory, 'kay?

Related(?):

4 Chinese tourists killed in Utah bus accident

They have been identified, and here is a shocking death:

Robert Boyd, journalist who shared Pulitzer for uncovering Eagleton’s shock therapy, dies at 91

Adam Bernstein tells us Mr. Boyd had once been in the CIA, meaning he was part of Operation Mockingbird.

Of course, it's been taken over by other forces since, which is why I am really no longer reading the jew$paper -- especially when they are putting out crap like this:

"In the end, Storm Area 51 doesn’t quite materialize" by Jack Healy New York Times, September 21, 2019

They are now officially checkout line copy at the supermarket.

OUTSIDE AREA 51, Nev. — The alien invasion was underway, and David Day wanted no part of it.

Some 3,000 visitors were beaming into his tiny hometown this weekend, snapping selfies outside the secretive Area 51 military test base, running through sagebrush in alien costumes, and dancing to throbbing club beats as part of a viral online joke bewitched to life.

It sure is, and its ubiquitous in the ma$$ media confirms it is crap.

Day pointed to the signs nailed to his front gate in Rachel, Nev., population 40ish (50 on weekends).

GO HOME. NO ALIENSTOCK.

People in this sparsely populated expanse of scrub desert and sun-blasted mountains have gotten used to conspiracy theorists and UFO chasers who make the two-hour drive from Las Vegas hunting for an extraterrestrial truth behind the secrecy and security of Area 51 — and leave with nothing but an alien tote bag or a roll of little-green-man toilet paper from the souvenir shop, but in late June, law enforcement and residents here began bracing for an onslaught, after 2.1 million people said they would rush the base on foot at an event organized on Facebook called Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us. The event creator later said the whole thing had been a joke, but online masses committed to launch anyway.

They can't say that anymore because ABC said UFOs were real!

Beyond that, the pre$$ hype for this event exposes it as garbage and distraction.

Residents worried that even a tiny fraction of that many out-of-towners could lead to chaos, choking the two-lane roads, scarring the desert with trash and camper trailers, and even draining the water table.

“People in Rachel moved out here to be away from all the crap,” Day, 61, said Friday morning. “We don’t know what to expect,” but by Saturday, it appeared the invaders had come in peace. Law enforcement officials said they had made just a handful of arrests, including one man charged with indecent exposure after relieving himself at Area 51’s security gate.

Most people heeded warnings from county sheriffs, state police, and the Air Force not to assault the gates of a heavily guarded military base. At 3 a.m. Friday, about 150 people made the 9-mile drive up a dusty road and surged toward the back gate, but mostly just laughed and pantomimed an invasion.

How much were they paid to show up and do this, and by whom?

Our masters must be laughing at the pantomime and promotion of this.

Related: CIA Admits Alien Conspiracy

Now you know it is not true -- although they are watching you.

Police officers stationed just outside the back gates laid down the ground rules — do not cross that line, watch out for rattlesnakes — and politely deflected selfie requests from hundreds of people who drove up throughout the day.

When a green alien asked if he could get a photo of one of the officers pretending to handcuff him, the officer offered these terms: “Once the handcuffs go on, they don’t come off.” The alien demurred.

“They’re hiding something,” said Noah Nelson, 16, who drove from Alberta, Canada, and took part in the storming-not-storming. “Maybe it’s aliens.”

“Or the moon landing set,” his brother, Austin, 21, said.

Yeah, mix some truth in with the bulls*t to muddy the waters.

Like a lot of people here, they were joking. Sort of. A few visitors in alien goggles said they accepted the reality that Area 51, part of the Nevada Test and Training Range, had been used to develop spy planes, not hide alien spacecraft, but like the “X Files” poster said, they wanted to believe.

So did I, once, when it came to the pre$$. No longer.

“We just wanted to see people like us,” said Mike Main, who drove with his mother from Tampa, Fla.

While some local residents spent the weekend pounding No Trespassing signs into the ground and stringing plastic webbing around their trailer homes, Don Williams said he had been won over by the visitors, who had arrived from as far away as Massachusetts and even Australia.

“I love it,” Williams, 54, said as he and his brothers built a green concession stand — Outpost 51, obviously — on their property.

Cha-ching!

For days, interlopers had been streaming into town in camper vans and RVs, motorcycles, and in some cases cramped two-door sedans that barely made the drive from Fort Worth. Since there are nearly no hotels for 50 miles, they set up tents in the dirt, bargained with residents for a bedroom in a trailer, and rented $80-a-night camper spaces. Some just pulled onto a patch of empty land and slept under the stars.

Retirees who roam the country said they had detoured to Rachel and the nearby Hiko, Nev., home to the Alien Research Center, where another weekend event featured music and speakers steeped in the search for intelligent life and the history and lore of the military base.

Twenty-somethings who had driven from Los Angeles said they were sick of hypercommercial concerts and festivals, and liked being able to pull into a dirt lot where music was blasting from stage and people were lining up for pancakes outside one of the few businesses in town, the Little Al’E’Inn.

“We don’t have a Woodstock,” said Seth Carlson, 32. “I can’t tell my kids I didn’t make it to Area 51. This is history.”

Didn't that get cancelled this year?

--more--"

Related:

"The festivals are over and Earthlings from around the globe headed home Sunday after a weekend of camping and partying in the dusty Nevada desert and trekking to remote gates of Area 51, a formerly top-secret US military base long the focus of UFO and space alien lore. They left in peace, officials and the host of a free ‘‘Alienstock’’ festival said Sunday. Visitors hailed from France, Russia, Germany, Peru, Sweden, Australia, and many US states — many toting YouTube cameras — in answer to an Internet post in June suggesting that if enough people rushed a military base to ‘‘see them aliens’’ at 3 a.m. Sept. 20, authorities couldn’t stop everyone. More than 2 million Facebook users clicked their interest, but in the end only a few thousand made the trip....."

What earth-shattering news, huh?

Looking for them over Bo$ton would be a waste of time unless....

"Years after Mass. made pot legal, Boston Freedom Rally rolls on" by John Hilliard Globe Correspondent, September 21, 2019

Thousands gathered Saturday on Boston Common for the Boston Freedom Rally, a festival and protest that was for decades a focal point in the fight to legalize weed — a goal reached nearly three years ago.

The festival, which celebrated its 30th year, was organized by the Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition and brought together advocates, pot businesses, and customers to an event that mixes a marketplace with a party and demonstration, but as legal weed is now the law of the state, and marijuana businesses are slowly opening in Massachusetts, there was a growing sense of mission accomplished among crowdgoers.

“Now it feels like a celebration because it’s legal,” said Hayley White, 23, of Beverly. “Before, it felt like we were getting away with something.”

Times have also changed for the rally, which began as a call for the legalization of marijuana in Massachusetts, accomplished though a ballot vote in 2016.

Organizers have had to fight for the right to use the Common, and following complaints over litter and damage from last year’s event, Saturday’s festival was cut down to one day from three. Organizers pledged to clean up any trash from this year’s event Sunday.

Bill Downing, an activist who has been involved with the festival for years, helped run a voter registration table Saturday.

Much work remains to be done on the state’s marijuana law, he said, including regulations on payments many companies make to the communities that host them.

“Regardless of whether marijuana is legal or not, the public needs to be educated on an ongoing basis” about the law, he said.

Rusko Boggs, 39, of Worcester, was among the vendors at the festival — his company, Weed Boggs, provides branding and packaging services to local cannabis companies.

Even with legalization, the festival still serves as a demonstration for greater freedom for marijuana users, Boggs said.

“It’s unfortunate that there are places where people can drink and get into their car freely, and there is no place for us to consume cannabis freely,” Boggs said. “And this is what this protest is about.”

As Boggs spoke, crowds milled about Boston Common, either among dozens of tents set up by vendors or seated in the shade of nearby trees.

From a short distance away, a faint haze could be seen above the rally, a manifestation of the public disobedience on the Common.

Boston police did not have any information about arrests Saturday afternoon.

Bridgett Comiskey, 19, a Lesley University student from Long Island, came to the festival to check out the scene and the food. Comiskey doesn’t use pot, but said some do see it as a chance to confront authority.

“It’s a day where people say, ‘We’re going to blow in cops’ faces,’ ” Comiskey said.

Why? 

Why be a jerk and provoke them?

Are boozers throwing drinks in their face?

Kyle Edwards, 18, of Martha’s Vineyard said he attended the festival to meet up with some friends and “just to get really high.”

He was reminded that while pot is legal, public consumption is not.

“Never stopped me before,” Edwards said.

So much for prohibition, huh?

--more--"

Once again, the coverage of the issue is tinged with insult even with money rolling in.

Yeah, something stinks around here as they “remind the public not to use drugs.” 

Related:

‘What the Fluff?’: Your guide to this weekend’s sweet and sticky Somerville Fluff Festival

The photo at the bottom of page A2 in my Sunday Globe showed Nicholas Palermo eating a Fluff-sicle covered with sprinkles. Real healthy!

Also see:

Boston voters could elect most diverse City Council ever

The Globe will introduce them all to you and Pressley will tell you for whom to vote.

Kennedy announces bid for Senate, vowing to fight Trump

After which he headed west to appeal to more than 30 immigrants from the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community who have received assistance from the LGBT Asylum Task Force based at Hadwen Park Congregational Church.

Markey challenges Kennedy, other opponents to November debate on climate change

He's headed north.

BU celebrates raising $1.85b over seven years

State to review Boston Public Schools

Going to take a stab at it.

Harvard Graduate Students Union threatens strike

Me, too!

Either that or retire.

This blog would then be history.

NEXT DAY UPDATES

First some history:

"In 1996, the United States and 70 other countries became the first to sign a treaty at the United Nations to end all testing and development of nuclear weapons. (The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty has yet to enter into force because of the refusal so far of eight nations — including the United States — to ratify it.), and in 2009, with President Obama presiding, the UN Security Council unanimously endorsed a sweeping strategy aimed at halting the spread of nuclear weapons and ultimately eliminating them....."

Nothing about Germany needing breathing room (why cheat then?).

The centerpiece of this year’s UN schedule:

"At UN climate summit, a call for action yields few commitments" by Somini Sengupta and Lisa Friedman New York Times, September 23, 2019

UNITED NATIONS — The UN Climate Action Summit on Monday was meant to highlight concrete promises by presidents, prime ministers, and corporate executives to wean the global economy from fossil fuels to avoid the worst effects of global warming, but despite the protests in the streets, China on Monday made no new promises to take stronger climate action. The United States, having vowed to pull out of the Paris Agreement, the pact among nations to jointly fight climate change, said nothing at all. A host of countries made only incremental promises.

The contrast between the slow pace of action and the urgency of the problem was underscored by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, 16, who excoriated world leaders for their “business as usual” approach. “The eyes of all future generations are upon you,” she said, her voice quavering with rage. “If you choose to fail us, I say we will never forgive you.”

I saw the frightening display by the brainwashed little girl (they stole her childhood, same as the pedophiles) and all I could think of was where are her parents?

At least Kraft wasn't included in the diatribe (maybe Rollins can be a sport and rationalize the cla$$ bias, and at least he won't end up like Epstein).

A bit later in the day, Thunberg glared at Trump as he passed through a hall, a video clip posted on Twitter showed.

There were some concrete measures. Roughly 60 countries announced efforts to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, several asset fund managers said they would aim to get to a net-zero portfolio of investments by the same year, and dozens of businesses said they would aim to abide by the Paris Agreement targets.

See: Maine governor tells UN state will go carbon neutral by 2045

Meanwhile, the town of Seabrook is going to hike its seawalls a la the Dutch.

The summit comes at a time when the latest science shows that the world is getting hotter faster and the dangers of global warming are increasingly clear, with more intense hurricanes, longer droughts, and heat records being broken. It was an opportunity to show that the world’s most powerful countries could step up.

This Chicken Little horse$hit has become tiresome.

Advocates and diplomats who have been following climate talks for years said they were disappointed. Andrew Steer, head of World Resources Institute and a former World Bank official, said most of the major economies fell “woefully short” of expectations. “Their lack of ambition stands in sharp contrast with the growing demand for action around the world,” he said.

Oh, first the CFR and now the World Bank looking out for the environment!

All because they love you, of course.

The United States did not request a speaking slot at the summit, but President Trump unexpectedly dropped into the General Assembly hall with Vice President Mike Pence in the late morning. Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor who is now a UN special envoy for climate, welcomed Trump’s presence and addressed the president directly by saying, “Hopefully our discussions here will be useful for you when you formulate climate policy.”

He's hoping they will convert to other sources.

That was followed by laughter and applause. It signaled a sharp contrast from just a few years ago, when the United States was credited with pushing other countries, including China, to take climate change seriously. As for China, it did not signal its readiness to issue stronger, swifter targets to transition from fossil fuels, as many had hoped. Wang Yi, a special representative for President Xi Jinping, noted his country was keeping the promises it made under the 2015 Paris Agreement and that “certain countries” — a clear reference to the United States — were not. “China will faithfully fulfill its obligations,” Wang said.

China’s decision to not signal higher ambition reflects, in part, concerns about its own slowing economy against the backdrop of conflicts with the United States on trade. It also reflected Beijing’s reluctance to take stronger climate action in the absence of similar moves from richer countries.

The European Union has not signaled its intention to cut emissions faster either. President Emmanuel Macron of France also had a message on trade for the United States, telling the assembly: “I don’t want to see new trade negotiations with countries who are running counter to the Paris Agreement.”

Related:

"Britain, France, and Germany joined the United States on Monday in blaming Iran for attacks on key oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, but the fallout from the Sept. 14 attacks is still reverberating as world leaders gather for their annual meeting at the UN General Assembly....."

Never mind that it would be ‘‘stupid for Iran to engage in such activity,’’ as French President Emmanuel Macron said at a news conference at the UN that the Sept. 14 strikes were ‘a game-changer’’ and reiterated France’s willingness to mediate as Trump seeks a coalition to confront Iran.

The statement could create a new stumbling block in talks between the United States and the EU for a free-trade agreement. Those negotiations are already complicated by deep differences over agricultural policy and threats by Trump to impose tariffs on automobile parts from Europe if the talks fail to make progress.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India said his country would increase its share of renewable energy by 2022, without making any promises to reduce its dependence on coal. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany promoted a new plan worth $60 billion over 10 years to speed a transition to clean power. Russia announced that it would ratify the Paris agreement, but nothing more about how to cut emissions from its sprawling state-owned petroleum industry.

The summit unfolded against the backdrop of new data that showed the quickening pace of global warming.....

I no longer believe "data" that is being promoted in an agenda-pu$hing liar, sorry.

--more--"

Related:

"Climate change protesters shut down some intersections from Capitol Hill to downtown Washington Monday morning in the latest of rallies around the world designed to force policy makers to respond to Earth’s rising temperatures. Organizers of Shut Down DC urged ‘‘climate rebels’’ to flood the District of Columbia’s streets Monday to bring ‘‘the whole city to a gridlocked standstill,’’ according to the group’s website. The website included a map of so-called ‘‘climate criminals’’ that includes ‘‘corporations, lobbyists, trade cartels, and government institutions that are most responsible for creating the climate crisis.’’

How does creating a traffic jam that spews even more carbon into the air the answer? 

Btw, the spokeswoman for the Coalition to Shut Down D.C. is Kaela Bamberger.

Tropical storm warning issued for Puerto Rico as Karen nears

Surfer recalls encounter with shark off Cape Cod

He is Devon Zimmerman.

Anybody seeing a pattern?

Also see:

Israeli president summons Netanyahu and his rival Gantz to work out a deal

It's the worst of both worlds, a unity government.

20 killed, 70 hurt in protests in Indonesia’s Papua province

The protests were sparked by rumors that a teacher insulted an indigenous student as an angry mob torched local government buildings, shops, and homes and set fire to cars and motorbikes (another U.S. destabilization campaign?).

I wouldn't worry; your vacation has been cancelled:

"Tour operator Thomas Cook collapses, stranding vacationers' by Ceylan Yeginsu and Michael Wolgelenter New York Times, September 23, 2019

LONDON — Hundreds of thousands of vacationers were left stranded when one of the world’s oldest tour companies, Thomas Cook, abruptly announced Monday, with some of its flights still in the air, that it was going out of business.

At least it will help the environment!

Amid scenes of confusion at airports in European vacation spots, British aviation officials scrambled to stitch together a plan to bring home 150,000 travelers — the largest peacetime repatriation in the country’s history.

The company, which opened for business in 1841, said that all its bookings, including flights operated directly by the company, had been canceled.

“We are sorry to announce that Thomas Cook has ceased trading with immediate effect,” the company said.

The jarring news snarled travel plans for hundreds of thousands as tourism officials braced for a potentially devastating hit to their economies.

Many of the travelers were abroad and wondering how they would get home. Others found their vacation plans dashed.

Tremors from the collapse radiated across the world, to Malaysia and San Francisco, but were felt most acutely in Europe.

Mostly in Greece, Spain, and Crete.

In a sense, the collapse of Thomas Cook signaled the end of an era, in which the company’s low-cost package holidays put beach vacations in exotic locales within the budgets of middle-income Britons.

Analysts said Thomas Cook, struggling with a debt pile approaching 2 billion pounds — nearly $2.5 billion — had failed to adjust to the changing times. While other travel companies went totally online, for instance, Thomas Cook held onto its extensive chain of storefronts.

“What everybody is not lending their thoughts to is that this has been a thoroughly badly run company,” David Buik, a financial analyst, said in an interview with LBC radio Monday, but the company also suffered from a number of factors beyond its control, particularly Brexit, the planned British withdrawal from the European Union, which has cut the value of the pound. That has discouraged travel and squeezed profits.

“If the majority of your business is in destinations which are in euros and you are against the backdrop where there is a lot of capacity and you cannot raise prices, then there is a cost squeeze,” Chris Tarry, an independent airline analyst, told the BBC.

Peter Fankhauser, chief executive of Thomas Cook, cited a prolonged heat wave in the summer of 2018 that brought high prices in the Canary Islands, a popular destination for the tour operator.

Terrorism and political unrest in North Africa, Turkey and Egypt have also hit the operator particularly hard in recent years, analysts said.....

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I would also avoid Kenya and Italy if I were you.

Related(?):

"Britain’s opposition Labour Party voted Monday in support of leader Jeremy Corbyn’s bid to remain neutral on the question of whether Britain should proceed with plans to leave the European Union or change course. Despite deep splits between Corbyn and many party members on the key Brexit question, members at a party conference in Brighton backed his approach. Members voted down a plan that would have required the party to ‘‘campaign energetically’’ for a second referendum on Brexit and to argue that Britain should decide to remain part of the EU, not leave. There was some confusion about the vote results, and some calls for a recount. The series of three votes leaves the party’s position somewhat ambiguous, reflecting the fact that the membership in general prefers to stay in the EU while Corbyn and some in his inner circle prefer not to take a clear stance. Corbyn’s focus is on winning a general election — expected within months — and bringing his left-wing party to power. Corbyn is taking a cautious stance in part out of concerns that he could alienate Labour voters in districts that in the 2016 Brexit referendum voted to leave the EU. He has always been lukewarm about the benefits of staying in the EU and prefers in his speeches to focus instead on growing economic inequality, workers’ rights, and other social issues, including a shorter working week....."

It's a war that never ends.

Like this one:

"Dozens of civilians reported killed in Afghan commando strike" by David Zucchino and Taimoor Shah New York Times, September 23, 2019

KABUL — Government officials in the southern Afghan province of Helmand said Monday that as many as 40 civilians, including children, may have been killed during a government commando raid on an insurgent stronghold the night before.

That isn't going to win over the population.

Accounts from the scene were fragmentary and contradictory, typical of violent clashes in which civilians are reported killed in remote areas late at night. Scores of civilians have died in recent weeks in Taliban suicide attacks in civilian areas and in US and Afghan airstrikes targeting insurgents.

The fighting Sunday took place in an area controlled by the Taliban, making it difficult to reach witnesses.

Violence has surged in Afghanistan since months of peace negotiations between the United States and the Taliban were aborted Sept. 7, just after the US envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, said an agreement “in principle” had been reached.

Omar Zwak, a spokesman for the Helmand governor, said an undetermined number of civilians were killed after an explosion at an insurgent weapons depot that had been targeted by government forces late Sunday, but Haji Attaullah Afghan, head of the provincial council in Helmand, said a two-vehicle wedding convoy was fired upon by military helicopters, and that civilians were killed in both vehicles.

The Afghan Defense Ministry confirmed a commando operation Sunday night that officials said killed 22 Taliban fighters from Pakistan and Bangladesh and captured 14 others in Musa Qala district, a Taliban stronghold in Helmand. Such operations are typically supported by US commandos and intelligence specialists.

In a statement, the Defense Ministry said officials would investigate reports of civilian casualties and “share the findings with media and the people.”

Don't hold your breath waiting.

The Afghan National Army’s 215th Maiwand Corps in Helmand said that Afghan forces had attacked a joint Taliban-al Qaeda compound and captured five al Qaeda members. In a statement, the corps said that an insurgent suicide bomber had killed two women, and that a third woman had died when the weapons depot exploded.

Oh, now CIA-Duh is back just as we were preparing to leave.

The statement said government forces ordered the militants to surrender, but they responded by opening fire. It accused the Taliban and al Qaeda of using civilians as shields.

Therefore the mass-murdering slaughter was justified.

The Helmand governor’s office said that four top Taliban commanders and the Taliban shadow governor of Musa Qala were killed. Intelligence reports led the commandos to a compound that held weapons and suicide vests, the governor said in a statement.

The US military issued a statement Monday confirming its role in the operation and the presence of foreign fighters. “US forces partnered with Afghan security forces in an operation against al Qaeda terrorists in Musa Qala in Helmand last night,” the military said, adding that “several foreigners associated with al Qaeda were detained, including multiple persons from Pakistan and one from Bangladesh.”

Maybe Trump can ask Khan about that at the U.N.

It said that US forces conducted “precision strikes against barricaded terrorists firing on Afghan and US forces,” and that most of those killed were believed to have “died from al Qaeda weapons” or insurgents’ suicide vests and other explosives. “The incident is under investigation with our Afghan partners,” the military said.

More "precision" strikes, okay.

In a separate incident Monday, three coalition service members were wounded when a member of the Afghan Civil Order Police opened fire on their convoy in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan, a US military spokesman said.

The spokesman, Colonel Sonny Leggett, said troops in the convoy returned fire and killed the police officer, and that the incident was under review. A defense official in Washington said the three wounded soldiers were Americans.

That's where the print copy ended.

Abdul Motalib, a villager in Helmand, said Monday that he was traveling in a two-vehicle wedding party convoy in Musa Qala the night before when military helicopters opened fire. He said the party was on its way to the bride’s home.

The attack killed 15 women and children in one vehicle and five men in another just after the vehicles had stopped and turned on their flashers as the helicopters dropped flares, Motalib said. “First they targeted the vehicle carrying women and children, then the vehicle with the men,” he said. He survived because he had exited one of the stopped vehicles to seek cover in a corn field, he said.

Afghan, the provincial council leader, said up to 40 civilians died in the vehicle attacks and in a separate incident nearby. He said 12 civilians were wounded. “This is inhumane, whoever carried out this airstrike,” Afghan said. He said the wedding party vehicles were fired upon even though they had shown security forces that they were civilians.

We should have left ten years ago.

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Related:

"The historic records are porthole into a time when there were marches in the streets and the United States seemed on the verge of a national nervous breakdown, and now....."

It still is, but what is noticeable is the pre$$ has to go back over 50 years to pat themselves on the back regarding the reporting on a war.

What we now get is a swirling, steaming pile of sh!t like this:

"Trump denies he tied Ukraine aid to corruption investigation of Biden" by Michael Crowley New York Times, September 23, 2019

President Trump denied Monday that he had withheld security aid from Ukraine in an effort to pressure its president to investigate a political rival, even as he defended his attempt to enlist a foreign leader to dig up dirt on an adversary.

As he began several days of international diplomacy at the United Nations, Trump was defiant in the face of allegations that his conversation with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in which he leveled unsubstantiated corruption charges against former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, amounted to a grave abuse of presidential power.

Now the phone call is a GRAVE ABUSE of POWER -- unlike the Obama spying on an opposing campaign or the Bush spying that the NYT sat on until after 2004 election.

The conversation, which is said to be part of a whistleblower complaint that his administration refuses to share with Congress, occurred as the administration was delaying the release of a $391 million security aid package to Ukraine, raising questions about whether the president used the money as leverage to settle a political score.

“No, I didn’t — I didn’t do it,” Trump told reporters, when asked whether he had conditioned the aid on the promise of an investigation of Biden. He said he hoped that the transcript of a July 25 phone call he had with Zelenskiy would be released, claiming that it would exonerate him. “And I hope you get to see it soon,” he said, but then the president angrily denied that he had committed to releasing the document, arguing that making the transcript public would set a bad precedent, and he waffled repeatedly over whether he would authorize its disclosure.

Now the NYT sees an "angry" president, and making the transcript public would set a bad precedent. It would mean anytime the pre$$ distorts a story or forms a narrative, the White House would have to release documents. 

I wouldn't worry anyway. I'm sure some Deep State operative will leak it to the pre$$.

Earlier, Trump appeared to argue that there would be nothing wrong with linking military aid for Ukraine, a former Soviet republic that is fighting Russian-backed separatists, to a corruption inquiry of Biden and his family.

During a meeting with President Andrzej Duda of Poland on Monday, Trump suggested that his main complaint about the US aid to Ukraine — which he temporarily suspended this summer before releasing it last month amid bipartisan pressure from Congress — involved a lack of European assistance to the country. “Why isn’t Europe helping Ukraine more?” Trump said. “Why is it always the United States?”

Members of Congress have called on the White House to release the transcript of Trump’s call with Zelenskiy, and Democrats were moving aggressively Monday to use their oversight powers to compel the administration to comply with their requests.

It's going to be fun seeing them hoisted on their own petard by the end of this.

Between events at the UN complex, Trump also tweeted an attack against his accusers as “stone cold Crooked,” and he implied that an unnamed intelligence community whistleblower who filed a secret complaint about his behavior, based in part on his dealings with Ukraine, might be a traitor: “Is he on our Country’s side,” Trump wrote. “Where does he come from.”

The identity of that whistleblower, whom Trump last week accused of being “partisan,” is not publicly known. The acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, is refusing to share the person’s complaint with Congress, as required by law, prompting a growing number of Democrats to consider calling for Trump’s impeachment.

As with the Kavanaugh article, the New York Times is leaving out the fact that the secret whistleblower's complaint is based on a SECOND-HAND account -- something we call HEARSAY -- and yet the Globe is hoping this is finally going to matter.

Trump also alleged to reporters here, without offering proof, that Hunter Biden, an international business consultant during his father’s time in office, “took money” from China and suggested that the former vice president would strike a softer line toward Beijing as a result.

Look at the pot-hollering-kettle pre$$ complains about proof!

There is no evidence that the younger Biden’s business dealings have had any effect on his father’s public policy positions. Trump has seized on the elder Biden’s insistence in 2016 that Ukraine fire its top prosecutor at a time when a Ukrainian company on whose board Hunter Biden sat was suspected of criminal activity, but that prosecutor was widely seen as corrupt and was not aggressively pursuing a case against the company, Burisma Holdings.

Trump kicked off his diplomacy here in the morning with a brief visit to a special session on climate change attended by several major world leaders, including Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India. Trump, who had not been expected to attend, stayed for less than 15 minutes.

He was glared at when he left.

Trump then led another special session, on international religious freedom, at which he called upon “nations of the world to end religious persecution.”

Trump met in the afternoon with the prime minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, and pledged to increase trade between the countries. After Khan denounced India for revoking the autonomy of the disputed border territory of Kashmir, Trump said he was willing to help mediate the dispute if both Pakistan and India were open to the idea.

That could win him the Nobel Prize.

Trump also drew a contrast between Pakistani reporters who asked him several questions with an upbeat tone about their country’s dispute with India over Kashmir.

In his session with Duda, Trump signed a defense cooperation agreement between the United States and Poland but did not explain its contents, saying, “We are going to be cooperating in so many different ways.”

The meetings were the first of more than a dozen sit-downs Trump had scheduled with world leaders here — including with Zelenskiy of Ukraine, whom he will see Wednesday.....


President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine will meet with President Trump Wednesday.JANEK SKARZYNSKI/AFP/Getty Image/AFP/Getty Images

So is it Zelenskiy or Zelensky?

Readers, they can't even get the spelling of his name right!

--more--"

One Globe columnist says it is fair to question Hunter Biden’s business dealings even if it imperils Biden's campaign for president.

Related:

November debate thresholds will imperil more campaigns

Democrats will be left only with Biden, Sanders, Warren, Harris, Buttegieg, and Beto come November as they try to put Trump out of a job.

Weld: president committed ‘treason, pure and simple’

Go back to the pot firm, Bill. 

At least Correia has finally seen the light and will be temporarily banished for two more years at least -- although it takes some off the spice out of politics.

Also see:

"Two residents of Trump Tower in Manhattan reported the thefts of jewelry encrusted with diamonds, emeralds, and sapphires from their apartments in the building where President Trump also lives when in New York, the police said. Reports of the thefts, first disclosed by the New York Post, come as Trump was expected to return to his namesake Fifth Avenue skyscraper Sunday night for the United Nations General Assembly......"

He won't be taking the subway over.

Good thing, too:

"US soldier arrested on charge of sharing bomb instructions" by Michael Balsamo and Roxana Hegeman Associated Press, September 23, 2019

WASHINGTON — Federal authorities said Monday they arrested an Army soldier who they accused of discussing with an FBI informant a possible bomb attack within the United States as well as the targeting of left-leaning activists and a media organization.

Oh, more domestic terror psyop sh!t.

Jarrett William Smith, a 24-year-old private first class infantry soldier from South Carolina stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, was arrested Saturday and later charged with one count of sharing bomb-making instructions online. During his first court appearance on Monday, the magistrate ordered that he remain in custody pending a detention hearing on Thursday.

His defense attorney, Thomas Bartee, did not immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment.

A criminal complaint alleges that Smith discussed his plan to kill far-left-leaning ‘‘antifa’’ activists and described how to build a bomb that could be triggered by calling a cellphone. They accuse him of posting on Facebook that he was interested in traveling to Ukraine to fight with a paramilitary group known as Azov Batallion.

Court papers say Smith also suggested targeting a major news network with a car bomb. The news network was not identified.

I read these things and I wonder why anyone would waste their time on them.

In an online chat group, Smith allegedly discussed with a confidential source in August a plan to conduct an attack within the United States and said he was looking for more ‘‘radicals’’ like himself, the complaint alleges. He talked about destroying nearby cell towers or a local news station.

This is looking like a set-up at the very least.

In an interview before his arrest, Smith told investigators he knows how to make improvised explosives devices and that he routinely provides instruction on building them. He stated he did this to cause ‘‘chaos.’’ He said if chaos results in the death of people as a result of information he provided, it would not affect him, according to the complaint.

Lieutenant Colonel Terry Kelley, with the 1st Infantry Division Public Affairs at Fort Riley, said in a statement that Smith has been assigned to Fort Riley since June 2019. He previously served at Fort Bliss, Texas, from November 2017 to June 2019. He entered the Army from Conway, S.C., as an infantryman and completed training at Fort Benning, Ga. He has not deployed.

Actually, it looks like he was deployed after all -- with his mission being this bit of Gladio tension and psyop propaganda.

In one exchange Friday with an FBI undercover agent on the encrypted messaging service Telegram, Smith discussed using various household chemicals and commonly available equipment to make a bomb.

‘‘That’s the best way to fight people,’’ Smith is quoted in the complaint as writing. ‘‘Making AK-47s out of expensive parts is cool, but imagine of you will if you were going to Walmart instead of gun store to buy weapons.’’

Yeah, you can't do both anymore after the shooting in El Paso as they hope to bury Trump.

During that same exchange, Smith allegedly sent the agent instructions for building a ‘‘Middle East style bomb’’ that if big enough could destroy US military vehicles. An FBI bomb technician later determined the specific instructions could have constructed a viable device.

When the undercover agent asked Smith if there was anyone in Texas who would be a good fit for ‘‘fire, destruction, and death,’’ Smith reportedly replied, ‘‘Outside of Beto? I don’t know enough people that would be relevant enough to cause a change if they died’’ — an apparent reference to former Texas representative Beto O’Rourke, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination.

If convicted of the charge, Smith could face up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000, according to the US attorney’s office.

Smith is the latest of a string of people charged with activity that federal authorities said could lead to domestic terrorism, including several current or former members of the military.

So what false flag is in the works?

In April, an Army combat veteran in Southern California was arrested after receiving what he thought was an improvised explosive device from an undercover law enforcement agent. Authorities say Mark Steven Domingo plotted to bomb a white supremacist rally that didn’t take place but also discussed other attacks on Jews, churches, and police.

See: California terror plot by Army veteran stopped, U.S. officials say

Authorities in February arrested a Maryland man, Coast Guard Lieutenant Christopher Paul Hasson, on gun and drug charges, with prosecutors describing him as a domestic terrorist and white nationalist seeking to use ‘‘focused violence’’ to establish a ‘‘white homeland.’’ They also said he compiled a list of targets that included prominent Democratic politicians and media figures.

They are marching backward with this sh!t.

In 2015, authorities arrested John T. Booker Jr., a 20-year-old Topeka, Kan., resident as he tried to arm what he thought was a bomb outside Fort Riley. Booker had expressed support for the terrorist group Al Qaeda and said on Facebook that he wanted to die in a jihad. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison after pleading guilty in federal court to attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to destroy government property with an explosive.

That happened while I was on vacation.

The most notorious domestic terrorist in US history, Timothy McVeigh, was stationed at Fort Riley for a time before he left the Army and eventually staged the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people in 1995.

The security tapes cut out like they did with Epstein.

--more--"

Related: 

Body, detonated IEDs found in Fitchburg fire wreckage

Just don't ask Amazon to deliver the package.

Multiple juveniles charged with spray-painting anti-Semitic, racist graffiti at Fort Revere

Police would not identify the juveniles or provide further details about the case, and I suspect the kids were Jewish.

"They’re off! Grossman is first new candidate to declare for Kennedy seat" by Matt Stout Globe Staff, September 23, 2019

Becky Walker Grossman — a Newton city councilor and former prosecutor whose father-in-law once chaired the Democratic National Committee — is running for the seat held by Representative Joseph P. Kennedy III, she said Monday, making her the first candidate to enter what’s expected to be a crowded Democratic primary since Kennedy pivoted to a Senate run.

Grossman, 39, plans to formally announce her campaign Tuesday, with a focus on prescription drug prices, gun control, and climate change. Those are core Democratic Party issues that, she said, are driven by her experience as a mother of two school-age children.

Kennedy, 38, the Newton Democrat who has held the seat since 2013, is a graduate of both Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School and a former Middlesex assistant district attorney, pointed to the experience of her 69-year-old mother, whose battle with a rare autoimmune disease has helped shape her views on health care policy. “It’s been a tough journey for our family,” she said.

Poor Jews and their tough journeys, and just be glad she didn't need surgery.

Grossman is the daughter-in-law of Steve Grossman, the former state treasurer and national Democratic Party chairman, who could help boost her profile among donors in what could be an expensive race.

He was also the head of AIPAC at one point, something the Globe conveniently omits.

Her foray into the race is unlikely to be the last in the coming weeks. State Treasurer Deborah B. Goldberg has filed paperwork with federal elections officials, but advisers have said she remains undecided on running. Jesse Mermell, a former Brookline selectwoman, stepped down as president of the Alliance for Business Leadership and has begun assembling a team of advisers in preparation for a campaign, according to a source close to her.

So which Jew would you like to replace Kennedy?

They’re two of several with Brookline ties weighing a decision, including state Representative Tommy Vitolo, who was elected last November, and Dave Cavell, a former speechwriter to President Obama.

State Senator Paul R. Feeney, of Foxborough; Newton City Councilor Jake Auchincloss; and state Representative Patricia A. Haddad, a Somerset resident and the House’s third-ranking Democrat, have said they’re also considering running.

It’s unclear what the Republican field could look like..... 

Will there even be a challenger in our "democracy?"

--more--"

The victory party will be at Doyle's.

Meanwhile, the The Globe tells you everything you need to know about Tuesday’s election and for whom to vote and why (can't tell you how glad I am that I live out here).

GM strike enters 2nd week with no clear end in sight

No movement at all?

I hope it doesn't affect their pensions; otherwise, it is back to work:

"Pension liabilities leave a Bay State brickyard and its workers in ‘survival mode’" by Robert Weisman Globe Staff, September 23, 2019

BRIDGEWATER — For more than a century, workers at the Stiles and Hart Brick Co. have been mining clay and firing it in kilns at temperatures of up to 1,950 degrees to make the classic Boston paver bricks used at far-flung construction sites.

The state’s last brickyard has survived wars, economic downturns, and changing architectural styles, but now it’s buckling under the weight of an arcane pension plan that has left the brickyard’s fourth-generation owner responsible for not only his own retired workers, but for those from defunct companies that were once part of the plan.

“We’re in survival mode,” said Lincoln Andrews, 56, whose great-grandfather bought the brick company in the 1940s. “This will eventually put me out of business. The math is inescapable. I’m frantically trying to find a way to save my employees’ jobs.”

--more--"

There really is nothing left to talk about, sorry.