There will be no swearing sermon today:
"As the pandemic again prevented most Jewish and Christian communities from observing Passover and Easter in person, joyful celebrations continued, infused with the sense of hope exemplified by both holidays — and by the progress toward ending the pandemic....."
I stopped reading after the next paragraph started with signs of the coronavirus lingered over weekend rituals.
This blog is literally at a cro$$roads:
"For Kenmore Square, does the end of an era mean a promising future?" by Tim Logan and Janelle Nanos Globe Staff, April 3, 2021
Kenmore Square usually feels most alive in springtime. It’s a place rooted in rituals: The annual return of Red Sox fans spilling over the Brookline Avenue bridge toward Fenway Park. A tightly packed crowd watching Marathon runners stream by. Students basking in the sun, and diners people-watching from the sidewalk patio of Eastern Standard, but this April, the square feels dead. Baseball’s back, but with only a fraction of the fans. The Marathon has been put off until October. Scaffolding for various building projects has turned the sidewalks into an obstacle course, and Eastern Standard’s once-lively patio is dark, occupied by weedy planters and a jumbo-size rat trap.
The recently announced permanent closure of the landmark restaurant and its siblings in the lobby of the Hotel Commonwealth — Island Creek Oyster Bar and The Hawthorne — feels to many like the end of an era for Kenmore Square. The demise of the three restaurants, caused by an acrimonious breakup between owner Garrett Harker and his landlord, in some ways reflects how far Kenmore has come, and where it might go next.
What I will a$k at this point is who will benefit going forward because I would like to think that they are now cursed for going along and advancing the mass genocide project that is quietly going to bring an end to $port$, on which this woman so eloquently elaborates.
Oh, btw, what goes to Vega$, $tays in Vega$.
People of a certain age might remember a Kenmore Square where fights were more likely to take place on the street than in a lawyer’s office. In the 1970s and ‘80s, punk and new wave music filled The Rat, while disco ruled at Narcissus. Guinness floats were hoisted at Deli Haus, and booze-soaked patrons teetered toward IHOP after last call.
“It was more of a music-and-nightlife neighborhood back then,” said Pam Beale, who along with her husband has owned Cornwall’s Pub in Kenmore since the 1970s. “It was edgy, a little offbeat. The kind of place that came alive between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m.”
It wasn’t always pretty.
It used to be called the Combat Zone because there were stabbings and such every night.
“It’s safe to say it wasn’t the glistening jewel of Boston,” said Patrick Lyons, the local hospitality scion who at the time was opening clubs in the derelict warehouses surrounding Fenway Park.
By the mid-’90s — around the time the T station flooded and had to close for two months — Boston University had begun buying up buildings as part of its vision for what would become the Hotel Commonwealth.
The Rat ― its glory days long gone ― closed in late 1997, and was razed in 2000 to clear space for the 148-room hotel, which began welcoming guests in 2003.....
That's when I checked out of this trip down memory lane(?).
I don't want to argue balls and $trikes, but at least there is no wait in line to get into the ballpark:
"From restaurants to salons, business is coming back to life as the vaccinated venture out" by Shirley Leung and Larry Edelman April 3, 2021
The Globe has a $pring $ickness!
Spring has sprung, and the Massachusetts economy is stirring out of COVID-19 hibernation.
Economists have long predicted that vaccinations would jumpstart spending, and early signs are that people who are fully protected — nearly 1.5 million so far in Massachusetts — are eating out, going to salons and gyms, and returning to activities they otherwise avoided during the pandemic.
For the hardest hit sectors of the state’s economy — travel and tourism, restaurants and bars, any business that relies on face-to-face interaction with customers — the combination of jabs in the arm and nearly $3 trillion in federal relief money authorized since December is offering tangible hope that more than a year of layoffs and austerity is finally coming to an end.
As an example, the Globe cites a hair appointment.
To be sure, the recovery has a long way to go, with businesses operating under COVID-19 capacity restrictions and downtowns still ghost towns because of the persistence of remote work; meanwhile, variant strains and rising infection rates, especially among younger people who are not waiting for the vaccine to resume normal life, could deal us another setback.
To be sure is something you use when you are admitting that something is true, although it seems to contradict a more general statement that you are making -- identify this journali$tic new$ report as agenda-pushing propaganda -- and look at the Globe setting up the young people for hatred and blame for this ongoing crime against humanity called COVID!
You can't get any more evil than that as the Brazilian variant has landed on the shores of Cape Cod!
A major threat to the fledging recovery is the hesitancy of many people to get vaccinated, according to Alicia Sasser Modestino, an associate professor of public policy, urban affairs, and economics at Northeastern University.
“We are going to hit a wall at some point where the progress on vaccines is going to stall out,” she said.
For now, at least, the trends are good.
People in Massachusetts are spending more time outside the home than at any point since October, according to Google data that track movement using mobile phone location data.
Consumer spending in the state was 10 percent above pre-pandemic levels in mid-March, fueled by increases in online and in-store retail purchases, data monitored by Opportunity Insights show. Stimulus checks and enhanced jobless benefits have put more money in the hands of lower- and middle-income consumers, economists said, and on Friday, the Labor Department issued a blockbuster employment report, with the US economy creating 916,000 jobs in March, the most in seven months. Also in March, a hiring index of small businesses in Massachusetts posted one of the largest one-month increases among 20 states tracked by Paychex and IHS Markit.....
I'm told Pedro Aguirre, owner of Vanity Loft Salon in Mission Hill, is among those small business owners who are looking to hire as I clip the rest.
Here are the be$t $eats in the hou$e:
"Boston’s hospital chiefs moonlight on corporate boards at rates far beyond the national rate; Hospital chiefs and trustees defend this as boosting public-private partnerships, but critics say these board positions - some paying millions of dollars - raise troubling issues of conflict of interest and hospital priorities" by Liz Kowalczyk, Spotlight fellow Sarah L. Ryley, Mark Arsenault and Spotlight editor Patricia Wen Globe Staff and Globe Staff, April 3, 2021
As chief of Boston Children’s Hospital, one of the most esteemed pediatric hospitals in the world, Sandra Fenwick had outsized influence. After the pandemic struck last spring, she used that clout to lobby Massachusetts legislators for more money for telemedicine, a suddenly essential alternative to in-person visits.
She also spoke glowingly about remote care during an online forum last September, saying that satisfaction among patients and staff was hitting “eight, nine, and 10.’' The hospital, she told a Harvard public health professor, would objectively study the best uses of telemedicine, but she predicted it “is absolutely here to stay.”
That is what Bill Gates wanted and what the WEF dystopia the Globe promotes calls for, and this is one-day blip like so many other things before it goes back to bu$ine$$ as usual and the Great Cull continues to be advanced.
What she did not say on both occasions was that she had a highly paid side job: She has, since 2019, had a seat on the board of directors of a major, for-profit telemedicine company.
Her directorship at Teladoc Health, formerly Livongo, vastly supplemented her $2.7 million yearly compensation at Children’s Hospital before her March 31 retirement. As of the last week in March, her company stock, which was compensation for her board work, was worth $8.8 million, according to an analysis for the Globe conducted by Equilar, a corporate leadership data firm. Like other directors, who are also paid for their work, she is legally bound to act in the company’s best interests.
A Children’s spokesperson said the hospital does not do business with Teladoc, but even without such a direct conflict, these sorts of lucrative directorships have drawn criticism from medical ethicists and some doctors who say they are not always disclosed, and can blur the loyalties of hospital leaders and distract them from their core responsibilities.
Such arrangements were once relatively uncommon among chief executives and presidents of Boston’s academic medical centers. Their prestigious jobs already demanded enough of them, overseeing billion-dollar institutions devoted to patient care, scientific research, and medical training. And they had been alerted to the potential risks: Several scandals during the 2000s had revealed cozy relationships between hospital doctors and pharmaceutical companies, leading to greater scrutiny and more restrictions on these relationships, but outside commitments of this kind are not uncommon here anymore — far from it. While it remains fairly unusual for hospital chiefs across the country to work as directors for publicly traded companies, the practice is now routine in Boston, the Globe Spotlight Team has found, but the practice can have corrosive side effects.
Ok, tell us what we already know as the hopes of humanity finish the job and collect their reward.
Boston stands out in allowing such potential conflicts, and big money sidelines, to proliferate. The Spotlight team analyzed 120 large teaching hospitals, children’s hospitals, and cancer centers outside of Boston. It found only eight were headed by chiefs who also work as directors for a publicly traded company.
Among 46 of the most prestigious hospitals — those ranked by U.S. News & World Report and the journal Nature as the nation’s top medical and research institutions, not including ones in the Boston area — chiefs at just six hospitals sat on boards of publicly traded company, the analysis found.
Reporters also examined 11 major cities and metropolitan areas with clusters of these hospitals, including New York, Chicago, Houston, and Los Angeles. They found only a handful with one hospital chief who also devoted time to the board of a publicly traded company.....
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The New York Times asks what would you do?
"Would you jump in to stop an assault?" by Andrew Jacobs New York Times, April 3, 2021
Imagine that you’re walking on the street and see a man viciously beating an older woman.
What would you, just a passerby, do?
I'm flattening his ass, next question.
That question — about the ethical responsibility to help a stranger in distress and the dynamics that prevent people from acting — has been the focus of research for decades and helps inform some of the debate this past week around two chilling incidents.
In one, a man pummels and chokes a subway passenger in New York into unconsciousness; in the other, an assailant on a busy Midtown street in Manhattan knocks a Filipino immigrant to the ground and then repeatedly kicks her head.
The videos, which were posted, prompted swift condemnation, with many asking why witnesses had seemingly failed to intervene during the acts of violence. For many, the incidents revived a common complaint about the atomized selfishness of big city residents.
“New York has, once again, cemented its long-standing reputation for apathy,” wrote Alex Lo, a columnist for The South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, but those who study what’s known as the bystander effect say the narrative of callous apathy is an outdated trope that dates to a New York Times account of the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese. She was a bar manager stabbed to death outside her building in Queens while three dozen neighbors supposedly ignored her cries for help. Although many key details of the article have since been debunked — the claim that 38 people witnessed the crime, for one, was greatly exaggerated — the account gained international attention and fueled a largely one-side debate about the perils of urban living.
They made a made-for-TV movie about it, and notice how the New York Times is at the bottom of a lot of stereotypes, outdated tropes, and misinformation?
The crime also gave birth to an entire branch of psychology dedicated to understanding the behavioral dynamics of people confronted by public violence, and in the intervening years, researchers have found that popular beliefs about the cold detachment of urban dwellers is largely a canard, one sustained by headline-grabbing media accounts of people who appear to ignore a crime in progress. Such incidents, experts say, are actually quite rare.
How little things have changed, and they have actually gotten much worse and will get even worse going forward.
In a 2019 study published in the journal American Psychologist, researchers in Britain and the Netherlands reviewed surveillance footage of 200 violent altercations in three countries and found that bystanders had intervened about 90% of the time. In many of the instances, several strangers worked together to calm a fight.
Or filled the streets protesting mass-murdering invasions and wars based on lies blared from the front pages of pre$$ organs like the New York Times.
The authors of the study found little variation in the rates of intervention in the three cities — Amsterdam; Cape Town, South Africa; and Lancaster, England — suggesting that the human impulse to help strangers despite risks to one’s own personal safety is universal.
How much more evidence do you need of the nefarious motives of power-mad, psychopathic politicians and their genocidal globali$t $tring-pullers as Britain, the cradle of the Magna Carte, goes full-blown totalitarian?
Richard Philpot, lead author of the study, said the uniform rate of interventions was especially surprising given the climate of fear in Cape Town, a city with a comparatively higher rate of violent crime.
“Now that we can examine real-life public conflicts on a large scale, we see that people actually help out a lot,” said Philpot, a social psychologist at Lancaster University. “This is certainly reassuring, to know that others around do not exclusively inhibit helping, but are a resource for good.”
Unfortunately, they are invariably Republican and Trump supporters. The other side is full of hate and it's now obvious.
Still, the decision to intervene comes with real risks.
Jackson Katz, co-founder of Mentors in Violence Prevention, an influential program started in 1997 that empowers people to intervene in instances of sexual assault, said fear, not apathy, is the main reason people fail to act when confronted by violence.
Fear is eventually overcome by the fight-or-flight instinct.
That is when I stopped reading another pre$$ trip down memory lane, and you see what is left out of the debate here, right?
The article isn't asking what you would do in a case like George Floyd and police state violence; it's pushing the raci$m is everywhere angle with the focus on anti-Asian bias (cozying up to China in anticipation of UN troops on American soil?) being done mostly by what I perceive to be paid agent provocateurs.
Of course, I'm crying out for help every day as I am assaulted by the agenda-pushing piece of propaganda called the pre$$ and those cries are going unanswered by them so....
Alan Berkowitz, an expert on the bystander effect and author of “Response-Ability: A Complete Guide to Bystander Intervention,” said other factors, including the race of the perpetrator or victim, could play an unconscious role in determining whether people help a stranger in need.
“Research suggests that bystanders who, for instance, are white might not feel it’s worth their while getting involved in an incident involving two people of color, but they might feel more comfortable intervening in a fight between two white male executives,” said Berkowitz, a psychologist who runs workshops for college students, community groups and members of the military about ways to effectively intervene to prevent acts of violence and sexual assault. “Once you train yourself to become aware of these things, and you are trained to do interventions that are safe and effective, you become more comfortable acting on your desire to help.”
Some of those tactics include distracting the perpetrator, calling for help or finding a way to enlist other bystanders to intervene more collaboratively.
“Talking to other bystanders is really important, because often we don’t know that others are also concerned,” he said, but as in the Genovese case, the initial accounts of a crime — and the responses of bystanders — are often incomplete, and video footage, it turns out, may not always tell the full story. In the case of the recent beating on the subway, the victim, the police later said, was Hispanic, not Asian, and they said he might have instigated the violence with a racial slur. Experts say that filming an attack is also an act of courage that can deter the assailant from inflicting even more grievous harm. It can also serve as an invaluable tool for bringing an assailant to justice.
I can not begin to tell you how insulting that is, especially coming from the tribal $upremacy you can not name that lords above us all.
Filming rather than acting to prevent it is now courageous, God help us all, and in some cases the victim "might have" called it down on themselves as the "initial accounts" -- i.e. ma$$ media pre$$ -- don't always tell the full story (nor do they later).
I tell you what: when the bystander jew$paper here calls out Israel for its treatment of Palestinians (and a significant segment of its own now-outcast population due to their stance on the GMO vaxxeen) rather than, say, Myanmar, maybe I will sit up and take notice.
For now, (expletive deleted).
In the case of the attack on the woman outside the apartment building in Manhattan, the victim’s daughter said someone had tried to help: A passerby yelled at the perpetrator in an attempt to distract him. There were no calls to 911, but the union representing the doormen who were seen watching the attack from inside a lobby — and who then closed the front door once the assailant fled — defended the men, saying the brief clip from the surveillance footage did not show what had come afterward. The men, the union said, went outside to help the woman and flagged down a passing police car.....
You sure you want to call them?
Turns out it was all a dream in 1968.
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Flopping, 'er, flipping the page one finds this:
No kidding?
That stuff is never intended to come down because the junta in D.C. is hated beyond belief.
They aren't in any danger from a staged and scripted, false-flag "insurrection,"only because no one wants to waste time on parasites. They just want the tyrant politicians to go away and leave them alone.
"The deadly breach of the Capitol’s perimeter could delay the gradual reopening of the building’s grounds to the public just as lawmakers were eyeing a return to more normal security measures following the Jan. 6 insurrection. Capitol Police officer William “Billy” Evans, an 18-year veteran of the force, was killed Friday when a man rammed his car into a barrier outside the Senate side of the building. The driver, identified as 25-year-old Noah Green, was shot and killed after he got out of his car and lunged at police with a knife. Their deaths came less than two weeks after the Capitol Police removed an outer fence that had cut off a wide swath of the area to cars and pedestrians, in an effort to secure the complex after thousands of then-President Donald Trump’s supporters had marched on the building Jan. 6...."
It's an “eyesore, it sucks, but the scab got ripped off again and maybe that fence can prevent some of these things from happening,” and it was a reminder that there is always a target on one of the country's most visible public buildings and “may just cause everybody to pump the brakes a bit on taking the fence down entirely because of the sense of security that it provides.”
They cleaned the patsy perp up quite nicely, too:
"The suspect was subsequently identified by a senior law enforcement official as Noah R. Green, 25, who described himself as a supporter of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and said he had been struggling through the last few months of the pandemic. He said he had recently left his job and been “faced with fear, hunger, loss of wealth and diminution of fruit,” but the motivation of the suspect remained a mystery. On Facebook, Green had posted speeches and articles written by Farrakhan and Elijah Muhammad, who led the Nation of Islam from 1934 to 1975, that discussed the decline of the United States. Two law enforcement officials confirmed that the Facebook page, which was taken down Friday, had belonged to Green. He had posted on Facebook about his personal struggles, especially during the pandemic and the attack was a worrisome sign that since Jan. 6, the Capitol has become a magnet for angry or disturbed people. Investigators said they did not know a motive but did not believe it was “terrorism related,” Robert J. Contee, acting chief of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department, told reporters, and Congress was not in session Friday, as lawmakers were scattered around the country for the holiday weekend.
The incongruity of a militant black muslim and not a white insurrectionist(??) was lost on me until I say a post somewhere noting that Farrakhan is vociferously against the vaccines, thus the framing of this patsy. I'm surprised he didn't leave a rifle lying around somewhere, if you know what I mean.
More memory lane, from the "Wa$hington Compo$t this time.
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That was followed by a 50-year-old photograph from the New York Times photo album.
Now PLAY BALL!
"Georgia governor vows a fight after MLB yanks All-Star Game" by MAE ANDERSON The Associated Press, April 3, 2021
News of Major League Baseball’s decision to pull this summer’s All-Star Game from Georgia over its sweeping new voting law reverberated among fans Saturday, while Gov. Brian Kemp vowed to defend the measure, saying “free and fair elections” are worth any threats, boycotts or lawsuits.
The Republican governor said at a news conference that MLB “caved to fear and lies from liberal activists” when it yanked the July 13 game from Atlanta’s Truist Park. He added the decision will hurt working people in the state and have long-term consequences on the economy.
“I want to be clear: I will not be backing down from this fight. We will not be intimidated, and we will also not be silenced,” Kemp said.
“Major League Baseball, Coca-Cola and Delta may be scared of Stacey Abrams, Joe Biden and the left, but I am not,” he said, referring to companies that have also criticized the new law.
Too late for Trump, and I guess the murder of the political aide and daughter's boyfriend deterred him on that.
Maybe they are finally waking up, but as far as elections go it is likely too late.
Three groups already have filed a lawsuit over the measure, which adds greater legislative control over how elections are run and includes strict identification requirements for voting absentee by mail. It also limits the use of ballot drop boxes and makes it a crime to hand out food or water to voters waiting in line, among other provisions.
Critics say the law will disproportionately affect communities of color.
Georgia Republicans say the changes were needed to maintain voter confidence in the election system, and the governor insists opponents have mischaracterized what the law does, yet GOP lawmakers made the revisions largely in response to false claims of fraud in the 2020 elections made by former President Donald Trump and his supporters.
Abrams, who has championed voting rights since narrowly losing to Kemp in the 2018 election, is among those who have spoken out against the law. The Democrat is being closely watched to see if she seeks a 2022 rematch.
Baseball fans, meanwhile, appeared divided on pulling the game from Georgia.
Patrick Smith, a lifelong Braves fan in Ellisville, Mississippi, said he thinks the league made the right decision and noted that not taking a stand would have polarized some supporters.
“When governments restrict access to the ballot box, someone has to step in to encourage these entities to roll back those measures,” he said.
Ball
Lorre Sweetman, in Kahului, Hawaii, said it was a poor move by MLB because it wasn’t based on the actual new voting laws but on “political pandering” and misinformation.
Steeeeeeee-riiiiike!
Still, while some fans upset about the decision have called for a boycott of professional baseball, she said she will not stop watching games and her three grandsons are still learning the sport.
“They caved to pressure without considering the message this sends to fans who just want to enjoy the game and support their team,” she said. “We need to take politics out of sports,” but Dick Pagano, a baseball fan in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, said he will not watch or attend any games this year.
$ports have always been involved in politics, especially when promoting war, and I have no interest in $port$ anymore. They never even occur to me during the day, and the Globe $ports section is now a forgotten afterthought.
“They shot themselves in the foot,” said Pagano, who added he will be disappointed to miss the planned Hank Aaron celebration during the All-Star Game, because he once saw him play in the 1957 World Series. Aaron, who played for the Braves in Atlanta and Milwaukee for most of his career, faced extensive hate mail and racism as he closed in on breaking Babe Ruth’s home run record.
So will Hank, who took the vaccine to show it was safe and died soon after.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred previously said he made the call to move the All-Star events and the amateur draft from Atlanta after discussions with individual players and the Players Alliance, an organization of Black players formed after the death of George Floyd last year. A new ballpark for the events wasn’t immediately revealed.
Someone did point out that the MLB looks like a hypocritical switch hitter when it comes to the human rights records of Cuba and China, as the AP swings and misses.
Kemp also criticized the league for not trying to improve voter access in its home state of New York, where he said voters need an excuse to vote by mail and have fewer days of early voting than in Georgia. He said its decision means “cancel culture” is coming for American businesses and jobs.
It's called COMMUNISM!
Trump also blasted the league’s move, while former President Barack Obama congratulated MLB for its decision, saying there was no better way for baseball to honor Aaron, “who always led by example.”
He sure did!
Don't take the vaccine!
Of course, then you can't get into the ballpark (boo-hoo), and "with some destinations, cruise lines and venues already requiring travelers to provide proof of vaccination against COVID-19, keeping that record is key. In New York, for example, proof of vaccination or a recent negative test will be required for entry into large venues or catered events when they are allowed to reopen at reduced capacity Friday. Proof will be required at events with more than 100 people, so anyone having a wedding or Sweet 16 with more attendees will have to ask guests for evidence that they are complying with the rules" as Concepción de León of the New York Times tells you what’s on a vaccine card; what happens if you lose your card; how you should safeguard your card; if you need your card to travel; if New York will require a vaccine passport; if the Biden administration will require a vaccine passport, and the benefits are that businesses across the country, from bars to marijuana dispensaries, have been offering perks to those with a COVID-19 vaccination card. Krispy Kreme, for instance, said last week that for the rest of the year, it would give one free glazed doughnut per day to anyone who presents proof of a COVID-19 vaccination. Michael Tattersfield, the company’s chief executive, told Fox News that as vaccinations have accelerated across the country, “We made the decision that, ‘hey, we can support the next act of joy,’ which is, if you come by, show us a vaccine card, get a doughnut any time, any day, every day if you choose to.”
Bribing you to take their toxic GMO concoction with a doughnut!
How healthy, especially when obesity puts you at risk of CVD and have you noticed that the mass-murder of trees for new$papers and ba$eball bats never enters the climate change equation?
I guess that would qualify as a foul ball or hit batsman, so take your base:
Shane Goldmacher of the New York Times is reporting that Trump scammed a 63-year-old battling cancer and living in Kansas City on less than $1,000 per month as they throw at his head!
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Speaking of coups and dictators:
"President Recep Tayyip Erdogan faced down the coup attempt and cracked down hard in the aftermath, imposing a state of emergency for two years, detaining 100,000 people and purging 150,000 public employees from their jobs. More than 8,000 military personnel were prosecuted for their part in the insurrection, including more than 600 trainees, cadets and conscripts — most in their early 20s — whose misfortune was to have been given orders that night. Their fate has been largely overlooked in Turkey, where government rhetoric against the coup perpetrators is strident and families and lawyers of the defendants have been scared to speak out, but....."
Well, there are insurrections and then there are regime changes, 'er, insurrections, according to Carlotta Gall (sure is) of the New York Times, and what we have here is the failed Obama coup in 2016 that was to set the stage for Hillary.
Now Turkey is part of an unbreakable alliance with Russia, Iran, and China so we are sunk when the world war breaks out.
"Philippine defense chief in verbal tussle with China on reef" by Jim Gomez The Associated Press, April 3, 2021
MANILA, Philippines — An annoyed Philippine defense chief renewed a demand on Saturday for dozens of Chinese vessels to leave a Manila-claimed reef in the South China Sea, and said he would not be fooled by Chinese assertions that the vessels were taking shelter from bad weather.
The Chinese Embassy shot back at what it called a “perplexing statement” by Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana and insisted that the vessels had the right to take shelter in what it said was Chinese territory.
The unusually hostile public exchange stemmed from the sighting early last month by the Philippine coast guard of more than 200 Chinese vessels, which Lorenzana called “militias,” at the Whitsun Reef. The Philippines filed a diplomatic protest, saying the reef, which it calls Julian Felipe, lies within an internationally recognized offshore zone, where it has the exclusive right to exploit fisheries, oil, gas and other resources.
China ignored Manila’s demand for the Chinese vessels to leave the area, which it calls Niu’e Jiao and claims as Chinese territory. The Chinese Embassy in Manila said the vessels were taking shelter at the reef from rough sea conditions.
“The Chinese ambassador has a lot of explaining to do,” Lorenzana said in a statement Saturday, adding that the latest Philippine military surveillance showed 44 Chinese vessels were still moored at the reef.
LUCY!
“I am no fool. The weather has been good so far, so they have no other reason to stay there. These vessels should be on their way out. You should get out of there,” Lorenzana said Saturday.
The Chinese Embassy responded anew by repeating that the vessels were taking cover in what it called Chinese waters.
“It is completely normal for Chinese fishing vessels to fish in the waters and take shelter near the reef during rough sea conditions,” the embassy said.
“We hope that authorities concerned would make constructive efforts and avoid any unprofessional remarks which may further fan irrational emotions,” the embassy said. It added that “China is committed to safeguarding peace and stability in the waters.”
Whitsun Reef lies in the Spratlys, the most hotly contested region in the South China Sea. The Philippines regards the resource-rich chain of islands, islets and atolls as part of its western province of Palawan, but the offshore region is also claimed entirely or partly by China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei. China has turned seven disputed reefs into missile-protected island bases in recent years, ratcheting up tensions.
The United States has expressed support for the Philippines, its long-time treaty ally, and accused China of using “maritime militia to intimidate, provoke and threaten other nations, which undermines peace and security in the region.”
Anything this war criminal government accuses others of is something it is guilty of itself.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has nurtured friendly ties with Beijing since taking office in 2016 and has been criticized for not immediately demanding Chinese compliance with an international arbitration ruling that invalidated Beijing’s historic claims to virtually the entire South China Sea. China has refused to recognize the 2016 ruling, which it called “a sham,” and continues to defy it.....
Meaning he is a target for removal and regime change.
Related:
What is with the instability in ostensible U.S. allies?
Also see:
"Simultaneous large explosions were heard in and around two Somali army bases on Saturday, with the military confirming that at least nine staffers were killed but asserting the attackers had “heavy losses” of dozens of dead. The al-Shabab extremist group claimed responsibility. In a separate attack Saturday evening, a suicide bomber detonated an explosive at a tea shop in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, killing at least six people, police spokesman Sadiq Ali Adan told The Associated Press. Four other people were wounded. No one immediately claimed responsibility. Residents said the attacks at the army bases occurred in Bariirre and Awdhegleh villages of Lower Shabelle region, 46 miles south of Mogadishu. Speaking to the local media, Gen. Odawa Yusuf Ragheh, the commander of the Somali National Army, confirmed the twin attacks but said al-Shabab had been repulsed with “heavy losses” among the extremists. “They even left some of the bodies of their slain commanders,” he added, saying his forces were still chasing fleeing fighters....."
They spelled it wrong, it is Al-CIA-Bob.
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That about does it for today's spew of hate.
I will leave a candle in the window for you as Massachusetts is in the midst of a high-stakes campaign to vaccinate 4.1 million adults in an effort to bring an end to a pandemic that has sickened hundreds of thousands and caused more than 16,000 deaths in the state and as family and friends can start to venture out on private ‘vaxications’ in the ‘immunity pods’ of which the travel industry has taken note, adding "pod concierges" and arranging private excursions.
Time to get out of the Bo$ton Globe bubble.
Happy Easter!
