I'd planned to have a whole run of posts for you today; however, the New York Times pot-hollering kettle exhausted me with laughter:
"Spreading of false stories becomes powerful Russian weapon" by Neil MacFarquhar New York Times August 28, 2016
STOCKHOLM — A flood of distorted and outright false information, confusing public perceptions of the issue. All false, but the disinformation had begun spilling into the traditional news media.
I get a Bo$ton Globe every morning. What of it?
Officials were never able to pin down the source of the false reports, but numerous analysts and experts in US and European intelligence point to Russia.
Like I'm going to believe anything U.S. and European intelligence officials have to say in the New York Times.
Where have you been, NYT? Haven't the declining sales and revenues woken you up?
The planting of false stories is nothing new; now, though, disinformation is regarded as an important aspect of military doctrine, and it is being directed at political debates in target countries with far greater sophistication and volume.
No, nothing new at all.
Related: U.S. Planting False Stories Common Cold War Tactic
So what are they calling OSI these days? ISIS™?
The flow of misleading and inaccurate stories is so strong that both NATO and the European Union have established special offices to identify and refute disinformation.
Disinformers setting up an office to debunk disinformation. That means it must be the truth, huh?
The Kremlin’s clandestine methods have surfaced in the United States, too, US officials say. Russian intelligence has been blamed for leaked Democratic National Committee e-mails that embarrassed Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
The NYT sure isn't chai when it comes to regurgitating Clinton campaign garbage.
Turns out it was likely an NSA leak anyway; they had the tools to do it, too.
The Kremlin uses both conventional media — Sputnik, a news agency, and RT, a television outlet — and covert channels that are almost always untraceable.
Not even by the NSA, 'eh?
As for AmeriKa, my entire ma$$ media structure is one big intelligence operation.
The fundamental purpose of dezinformatsiya, or Russian disinformation, experts said, is to undermine the official version of events — even the very idea that there is a true version of events — and foster a kind of policy paralysis.
The pre$$ has done that to me in the sense that I no longer believe anything in them.
What we have come to find throughout history is the official version of events is a pack of lies.
As for today, the reports fall into four basic categories: completely staged and scripted fictions and frauds; false flag events surrounded by lies and obfuscation; an actual event surrounded by distortion or omission; and an event as officials and pre$$ have described (most unlikely).
They have undermined themselves with all their agenda-pushing lies, and the last place you are going to find truth is in the AmeriKan pre$$.
Despite the name, you may not even find it here. My views are constantly evolving based on new evidence, and it's led down some dark corridors indeed.
Moscow adamantly denies using disinformation to influence Western public opinion and tends to label accusations of either overt or covert threats as “Russophobia.”
Actually, it is the Russian government that is being most honest these days in what is a real mind-blower for an American raised during the Cold War.
The NYT then tells me “the fake document becomes the source of a news story distributed on far-left or far-right-wing websites.”
I would also add in the AmeriKan pre$$ and ma$$ media at large.
--more--"
Also see:
Six Jewish Companies Own 96% of the World’s Media
Declassified: Massive Israeli manipulation of US media exposed
Operation Mockingbird
That explains the continuous operation despite the losses.
Why Am I No Longer Reading the Newspaper?
Who wants to be constantly lied to? I'd rather go read blogs.
Monday, August 29, 2016
Macabre Monday
It's the Globe's lead feature:
"N.H. appeal opens painful debate about a victim’s past" by Eric Moskowitz Globe Staff August 29, 2016
Through the anguish of a lurid and highly public three-week trial, he took solace in a judge’s ruling that his daughter’s sexual history had no bearing on the case and could not be used in the murder defense of a man she had just met.
Now, with the New Hampshire Supreme Court considering whether to open up that private life as part of her convicted murderer’s appeal, the case is drawing national attention for the questions it poses about how to balance a set of powerful rights: a victim’s right to privacy, a defendant’s right to an open trial, and the public’s right to access.
National advocates for sexual-assault victims and prosecutors worry that the court could weaken a longstanding privacy protection known as the rape-shield law, established in all 50 states a generation ago to limit defendants’ ability to introduce sexual history. They say it could discourage rape victims from coming forward to police, to avoid public shaming over their personal life.
For Bob Marriott, a Boston-area software sales consultant, the goal of preserving those protections has drawn a host of allies to his side, including New Hampshire’s attorney general and that state’s congressional delegation. But for him and his wife, Melissa, the case is less about legal precedent than something deeply personal.
“All we have left of Lizzi are memories, and we don’t want those memories overshadowed by things that we shouldn’t know about,” Bob Marriott said, in a phone interview. “If Lizzi was alive, I wouldn’t know any of this stuff — and that would be perfect.”
The New Hampshire Supreme Court ordered information on her alleged past unsealed June 10 — what would have been Lizzi Marriott’s 23rd birthday — but soon stayed its own order, agreeing to keep the information sealed while awaiting briefs and oral arguments, scheduled for next month.
Meg Garvin, executive director of the National Crime Victim Law Institute, called the New Hampshire Supreme Court’s initial decision “beyond unusual.”
“The rape shield was put in place to make the whole system of criminal justice less traumatizing to victims, and this really undoes 40-plus years of rape-shield work,” said Garvin, a professor at Lewis & Clark Law School who is co-counsel for the Marriotts.
Christopher M. Johnson, New Hampshire’s chief public appellate defender, acknowledged the importance of the rape shield and the high bar for a defendant trying to introduce a victim’s sexual history into trial.
Johnson is defending Seth Mazzaglia, who was convicted of murdering Marriott, and he acknowledged that releasing the information could cause her family pain. Of his client, he said, “if there’s a more unpopular person in New Hampshire than Seth, I’m not sure who it is.”
Still, Johnson said, it’s impossible for the public to know if a trial-court judge’s decision to exclude evidence was appropriate if those records remain sealed and the hearings are closed even on appeal.
“It’s a fundamental values choice,” he said. “Do we elevate fairness above privacy or privacy above fairness in the appellate process?”
In the first year of grieving, Bob and Melissa Marriott asked each other if they would ever get through this, if all the good memories of their daughter’s life would come to eclipse the visceral pain of her absence.
Lizzi Marriott, who grew up in Westborough, Mass., was just coming into her own, a college student who retained her childhood playfulness while pursuing her dream of becoming a marine biologist, buckling down in science and math classes and volunteering at the New England Aquarium.
She was studying at the University of New Hampshire when a coworker at Target invited her to hang out.
That was just a ploy, prosecutors would prove at trial. The coworker, Kathryn McDonough, was the teenage sex slave of Mazzaglia, a 30-year-old she met in community theater who ordered her to recruit candidates to join them in sexual encounters.
When Marriott rebuffed the overture, Mazzaglia strangled and killed her, then raped her, before enlisting McDonough to help toss her body into the Piscataqua River.
At trial, Mazzaglia’s lawyer argued unsuccessfully that Marriott was a willing partner who died of accidental smothering. In a hearing in the judge’s chambers, the defense wanted to introduce stories about Marriott’s past that might bolster Mazzaglia’s claim. The judge ruled that allegations about her sexual history were irrelevant and protected.
(At this point, blog editor is so disillusioned be it the sickening sexual perversions that lead to tragedy in this case, or threading it throughout the society up to the top with their elite sex rings. It's not even about sex; it's about control of a person's soul while fulfilling sick fantasy. If it's some S&M game playing -- or worse-- here that's just as bad. In any event, it's an area I'm not comprehending at all and one making me sick to my stomach)
When Mazzaglia was convicted, Marriott’s parents mustered the strength to speak at his sentencing. “All the goodness in Lizzi could not save her from you,” Bob Marriott said that day, in August 2014.
A few months later, Mazzaglia petitioned the state Supreme Court to overturn his conviction on just one basis: the omission of Marriott’s sexual history.
Traditionally, according to multiple lawyers interviewed, the appeals court would decide the merits — and whether to uphold or vacate Mazzaglia’s conviction — while preserving the seal placed by the trial court, meaning certain appeals hearings would be closed and documents in the public file would be partly redacted.
But in January, the New Hampshire Supreme Court adopted a rule allowing appellate justices to open records that had been sealed at trial — and applied the rule to this case retroactively, asking lawyers for both sides to argue whether the sealed material should be opened to the public.
Before even hearing arguments, the court on June 10 announced that it would unseal everything the following week — and that those records would remain open pending a court decision on whether to reseal them or to overturn Mazzaglia’s conviction.
Advocates were aghast. Amanda Grady Sexton, public policy director for the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, called it a “big step back for victims.”
“The common sense test on this is saying that the court made a mistake,” she said.
Gilles Bissonnette, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire, said the decision to open the seal as a starting point — instead of after a ruling on the merits — “essentially puts the cart before the horse and really carries the potential to damage the rape-shield statute.”
First they demanded the name, then they denied it, and I'll skip the history class.
Reeling, Bob Marriott braced himself to share with other family members what they might soon hear on TV.
But the state swiftly urged the court to hold off, and the court agreed — preserving the seal and setting oral arguments for Sept. 21.
Bob Marriott said he is hopeful the court will see its June 10 decision as a misstep and keep the information permanently sealed.
“The trial is one of the last things that I could do for Lizzi,” he said. “I’m going to keep on fighting for her, because she’s not able to do it herself.”
--more--"
UPDATE: Details about N.H. murder victim’s sexual history to remain sealed
"N.H. appeal opens painful debate about a victim’s past" by Eric Moskowitz Globe Staff August 29, 2016
Through the anguish of a lurid and highly public three-week trial, he took solace in a judge’s ruling that his daughter’s sexual history had no bearing on the case and could not be used in the murder defense of a man she had just met.
Now, with the New Hampshire Supreme Court considering whether to open up that private life as part of her convicted murderer’s appeal, the case is drawing national attention for the questions it poses about how to balance a set of powerful rights: a victim’s right to privacy, a defendant’s right to an open trial, and the public’s right to access.
National advocates for sexual-assault victims and prosecutors worry that the court could weaken a longstanding privacy protection known as the rape-shield law, established in all 50 states a generation ago to limit defendants’ ability to introduce sexual history. They say it could discourage rape victims from coming forward to police, to avoid public shaming over their personal life.
For Bob Marriott, a Boston-area software sales consultant, the goal of preserving those protections has drawn a host of allies to his side, including New Hampshire’s attorney general and that state’s congressional delegation. But for him and his wife, Melissa, the case is less about legal precedent than something deeply personal.
“All we have left of Lizzi are memories, and we don’t want those memories overshadowed by things that we shouldn’t know about,” Bob Marriott said, in a phone interview. “If Lizzi was alive, I wouldn’t know any of this stuff — and that would be perfect.”
The New Hampshire Supreme Court ordered information on her alleged past unsealed June 10 — what would have been Lizzi Marriott’s 23rd birthday — but soon stayed its own order, agreeing to keep the information sealed while awaiting briefs and oral arguments, scheduled for next month.
Meg Garvin, executive director of the National Crime Victim Law Institute, called the New Hampshire Supreme Court’s initial decision “beyond unusual.”
“The rape shield was put in place to make the whole system of criminal justice less traumatizing to victims, and this really undoes 40-plus years of rape-shield work,” said Garvin, a professor at Lewis & Clark Law School who is co-counsel for the Marriotts.
Christopher M. Johnson, New Hampshire’s chief public appellate defender, acknowledged the importance of the rape shield and the high bar for a defendant trying to introduce a victim’s sexual history into trial.
Johnson is defending Seth Mazzaglia, who was convicted of murdering Marriott, and he acknowledged that releasing the information could cause her family pain. Of his client, he said, “if there’s a more unpopular person in New Hampshire than Seth, I’m not sure who it is.”
Still, Johnson said, it’s impossible for the public to know if a trial-court judge’s decision to exclude evidence was appropriate if those records remain sealed and the hearings are closed even on appeal.
“It’s a fundamental values choice,” he said. “Do we elevate fairness above privacy or privacy above fairness in the appellate process?”
In the first year of grieving, Bob and Melissa Marriott asked each other if they would ever get through this, if all the good memories of their daughter’s life would come to eclipse the visceral pain of her absence.
Lizzi Marriott, who grew up in Westborough, Mass., was just coming into her own, a college student who retained her childhood playfulness while pursuing her dream of becoming a marine biologist, buckling down in science and math classes and volunteering at the New England Aquarium.
She was studying at the University of New Hampshire when a coworker at Target invited her to hang out.
That was just a ploy, prosecutors would prove at trial. The coworker, Kathryn McDonough, was the teenage sex slave of Mazzaglia, a 30-year-old she met in community theater who ordered her to recruit candidates to join them in sexual encounters.
When Marriott rebuffed the overture, Mazzaglia strangled and killed her, then raped her, before enlisting McDonough to help toss her body into the Piscataqua River.
At trial, Mazzaglia’s lawyer argued unsuccessfully that Marriott was a willing partner who died of accidental smothering. In a hearing in the judge’s chambers, the defense wanted to introduce stories about Marriott’s past that might bolster Mazzaglia’s claim. The judge ruled that allegations about her sexual history were irrelevant and protected.
(At this point, blog editor is so disillusioned be it the sickening sexual perversions that lead to tragedy in this case, or threading it throughout the society up to the top with their elite sex rings. It's not even about sex; it's about control of a person's soul while fulfilling sick fantasy. If it's some S&M game playing -- or worse-- here that's just as bad. In any event, it's an area I'm not comprehending at all and one making me sick to my stomach)
When Mazzaglia was convicted, Marriott’s parents mustered the strength to speak at his sentencing. “All the goodness in Lizzi could not save her from you,” Bob Marriott said that day, in August 2014.
A few months later, Mazzaglia petitioned the state Supreme Court to overturn his conviction on just one basis: the omission of Marriott’s sexual history.
Traditionally, according to multiple lawyers interviewed, the appeals court would decide the merits — and whether to uphold or vacate Mazzaglia’s conviction — while preserving the seal placed by the trial court, meaning certain appeals hearings would be closed and documents in the public file would be partly redacted.
But in January, the New Hampshire Supreme Court adopted a rule allowing appellate justices to open records that had been sealed at trial — and applied the rule to this case retroactively, asking lawyers for both sides to argue whether the sealed material should be opened to the public.
Before even hearing arguments, the court on June 10 announced that it would unseal everything the following week — and that those records would remain open pending a court decision on whether to reseal them or to overturn Mazzaglia’s conviction.
Advocates were aghast. Amanda Grady Sexton, public policy director for the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, called it a “big step back for victims.”
“The common sense test on this is saying that the court made a mistake,” she said.
Gilles Bissonnette, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire, said the decision to open the seal as a starting point — instead of after a ruling on the merits — “essentially puts the cart before the horse and really carries the potential to damage the rape-shield statute.”
First they demanded the name, then they denied it, and I'll skip the history class.
Reeling, Bob Marriott braced himself to share with other family members what they might soon hear on TV.
But the state swiftly urged the court to hold off, and the court agreed — preserving the seal and setting oral arguments for Sept. 21.
Bob Marriott said he is hopeful the court will see its June 10 decision as a misstep and keep the information permanently sealed.
“The trial is one of the last things that I could do for Lizzi,” he said. “I’m going to keep on fighting for her, because she’s not able to do it herself.”
--more--"
UPDATE: Details about N.H. murder victim’s sexual history to remain sealed
Monday Exhumation: Alabama Aberration
"Suspect’s ex-girlfriend lived at Alabama home where 5 slain" Associated Press August 21, 2016
CITRONELLE, Ala. — The suspect in the killing of five people at a home in Alabama attacked them while they slept and then abducted his estranged girlfriend and an infant — both of whom were found alive, authorities said Sunday.
It could take investigators days to sort out the murder scene in Citronelle, a small town 30 miles northwest of Mobile. Authorities said the victims, including a pregnant woman, were found Saturday inside the home.
The crime was of a magnitude rarely seen in this corner of rural southern Alabama, Mobile County sheriff’s Captain Paul Burch said. ‘‘It’s unprecedented here.”
Mobile County District Attorney Ashley Rich said multiple weapons were used.
Derrick Dearman, 27, of Leakesville, Miss., was taken into custody after he walked into the sheriff’s office in Greene County in Mississippi, about 20 miles west of Citronelle, Burch said. Dearman was accompanied by his father, the Alabama sheriff’s office said in a statement.
Dearman has confessed to the crimes, Burch told the news site Al.com.
--more--"
CITRONELLE, Ala. — The suspect in the killing of five people at a home in Alabama attacked them while they slept and then abducted his estranged girlfriend and an infant — both of whom were found alive, authorities said Sunday.
It could take investigators days to sort out the murder scene in Citronelle, a small town 30 miles northwest of Mobile. Authorities said the victims, including a pregnant woman, were found Saturday inside the home.
The crime was of a magnitude rarely seen in this corner of rural southern Alabama, Mobile County sheriff’s Captain Paul Burch said. ‘‘It’s unprecedented here.”
Mobile County District Attorney Ashley Rich said multiple weapons were used.
Derrick Dearman, 27, of Leakesville, Miss., was taken into custody after he walked into the sheriff’s office in Greene County in Mississippi, about 20 miles west of Citronelle, Burch said. Dearman was accompanied by his father, the Alabama sheriff’s office said in a statement.
Dearman has confessed to the crimes, Burch told the news site Al.com.
--more--"
Monday Exhumation: Malden Melting Pot
"Ping-Pong controversy opens racial wound in Malden" by Vivian Wang Globe Correspondent August 22, 2016
In Malden, a simmering dispute about alleged racism revolves around the most seemingly innocuous of topics: Ping-Pong at the senior center.
Qixia Liang, 72, along with dozens of other elderly patrons, used to play there every day. Liang credited the activity with keeping her physically fit and mentally sharp. And, she said, it was fun.
But she doesn’t play anymore, not since senior center staff last year relocated one Ping-Pong table from the auditorium to a cramped upstairs room and removed another altogether, despite the protests of the players — most of whom were Chinese.
The seemingly minor dispute, which flared up last year, boiled over last fall into two complaints with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination and a series of heated community meetings.
Senior center staff insist the decision was not racially motivated, and the two complaints were closed in February for lack of probable cause, according to the assistant to the commissioners, H. Harrison. But Malden residents say the debate offers a window onto the struggles the city has encountered as its demographics rapidly evolve.
“I think for the old guard, some of them have their noses a little broken: ‘What are you doing, this is my community,’” said Malden City Councilor Debbie DeMaria. “I think that’s natural and it’s normal, but it makes me sad.”
Over the past few decades, as gentrification has sent rent in Chinatown skyrocketing, Malden’s Chinese population has ballooned. Malden’s Asian population grew by 46 percent between 2000 and 2010, according to the state Department of Public Health, although the city’s population only grew by 10 percent. The suburb is a popular destination because of its lower housing prices and easy access to the Orange Line.
Chinese restaurants have cropped up all across town. Malden High School, now almost a quarter Asian, is the most racially diverse public high school in the state, according to data from the federal Department of Education.
These changes have brought the historically Irish, Italian, and Jewish community some “growing pains,” according to Lydia Lowe, codirector of Boston’s Chinese Progressive Association.
“They have to come to terms with who lives in the city now,” she said.
The growing pains aren’t new — a Globe article from 1991 details similar accounts of racism toward immigrants in Malden — but they have surged to the forefront again with the conflict over Ping-Pong.
Tensions first erupted more than a year ago, when longtime senior center patrons complained that the players were excessively noisy and disrespectful, even scratching the floors during their games. A string of community meetings resulted, including one last November where angry Chinese residents held signs demanding respect.
The city attempted to mediate, contracting with a third-party mediator who hosted several group discussions last winter about the issue. City officials said they hope a new police station, slated to open later this year with a room for community use, may ease the demands for space.
But Ping-Pong players, many of whom have stopped playing, say the issue is far from resolved.
“If they respected us and listened to our complaints, they wouldn’t have moved the tables. They just didn’t listen at all,” Liang said.
Senior center director Silvia Banos did not return multiple requests for comment.
The Ping-Pong incident is just one of several disputes in Malden that residents say have racial overtones. An ongoing attempt by a Chinatown-based health center, the South Cove Community Health Center, to expand into Malden has met opposition. A few Chinese restaurants have had their windows broken, although no arrests have been made.
Chinese community advocates acknowledge that, as at the senior center, the opposition to South Cove is not explicitly racial. Councilors opposed to the project cite concerns about gentrification, pointing to the health center’s proposed partnership with an apartment developer.
Still, the conflicts have left the city in the delicate position of trying to unify an increasingly diverse — and at times divided — population.
On July 25, Malden Mayor Gary Christenson attended the latest of several “East Meets West” dialogues hosted by the city’s Chinese Culture Connection, where he discussed the importance of civic engagement. City officials plan to sponsor their own series of conversations about race and diversity, too, Christenson said.
“I think what we’ve learned was that we do need to have better communication and we do need to help each other learn about each other,” said Maria Luise, special assistant to the mayor.
Mei Hung, executive director of Chinese Culture Connection, said the Ping-Pong dispute was likely the result of a lack of understanding by Malden residents who did not know that the sport is a joyful, noisy activity among Chinese, or that Chinese people often communicate more loudly than Americans do.
Likewise, William Regan, 72, a Caucasian volunteer at the senior center who filed one of the August complaints alleging that staff had been discriminatory, said he thinks the conflicts were the product of ignorance, not ill will. He said he hopes further discussions will ease tensions.
Still, some Chinese residents, like Liang, are skeptical of how much the city’s efforts will help, noting that their initial discussions about the Ping-Pong tables did not change the outcome. Some longtime residents, City Councilor DeMaria acknowledged, are set in their ways: she said she knows people who have talked about leaving Malden due to the changing demographics.
“They’re like, ‘Oh my God, I’m moving out of Malden, this is crazy, all these Asian people,’ ” DeMaria said. “So yes, it’s going to take time.”
Hung acknowledged that organizations like Chinese Culture Connection won’t be able to change everyone’s minds. She knows that the people who attend her events are a self-selecting group.
But she remains hopeful.
“Just like anywhere in the world, you have people who are very open-minded and curious, and others who feel a little intimidated or maybe threatened by the new people who may come to share their piece of the pie,” Hung said. “I’m very optimistic to build this bridge and make Malden a very vibrant and fun place to live.”
--more--"
Related: Chinese Are Racist
I'll now leave you to bounce around with your own thoughts.
In Malden, a simmering dispute about alleged racism revolves around the most seemingly innocuous of topics: Ping-Pong at the senior center.
Qixia Liang, 72, along with dozens of other elderly patrons, used to play there every day. Liang credited the activity with keeping her physically fit and mentally sharp. And, she said, it was fun.
But she doesn’t play anymore, not since senior center staff last year relocated one Ping-Pong table from the auditorium to a cramped upstairs room and removed another altogether, despite the protests of the players — most of whom were Chinese.
The seemingly minor dispute, which flared up last year, boiled over last fall into two complaints with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination and a series of heated community meetings.
Senior center staff insist the decision was not racially motivated, and the two complaints were closed in February for lack of probable cause, according to the assistant to the commissioners, H. Harrison. But Malden residents say the debate offers a window onto the struggles the city has encountered as its demographics rapidly evolve.
“I think for the old guard, some of them have their noses a little broken: ‘What are you doing, this is my community,’” said Malden City Councilor Debbie DeMaria. “I think that’s natural and it’s normal, but it makes me sad.”
Over the past few decades, as gentrification has sent rent in Chinatown skyrocketing, Malden’s Chinese population has ballooned. Malden’s Asian population grew by 46 percent between 2000 and 2010, according to the state Department of Public Health, although the city’s population only grew by 10 percent. The suburb is a popular destination because of its lower housing prices and easy access to the Orange Line.
Chinese restaurants have cropped up all across town. Malden High School, now almost a quarter Asian, is the most racially diverse public high school in the state, according to data from the federal Department of Education.
These changes have brought the historically Irish, Italian, and Jewish community some “growing pains,” according to Lydia Lowe, codirector of Boston’s Chinese Progressive Association.
“They have to come to terms with who lives in the city now,” she said.
The growing pains aren’t new — a Globe article from 1991 details similar accounts of racism toward immigrants in Malden — but they have surged to the forefront again with the conflict over Ping-Pong.
Tensions first erupted more than a year ago, when longtime senior center patrons complained that the players were excessively noisy and disrespectful, even scratching the floors during their games. A string of community meetings resulted, including one last November where angry Chinese residents held signs demanding respect.
The city attempted to mediate, contracting with a third-party mediator who hosted several group discussions last winter about the issue. City officials said they hope a new police station, slated to open later this year with a room for community use, may ease the demands for space.
But Ping-Pong players, many of whom have stopped playing, say the issue is far from resolved.
“If they respected us and listened to our complaints, they wouldn’t have moved the tables. They just didn’t listen at all,” Liang said.
Senior center director Silvia Banos did not return multiple requests for comment.
The Ping-Pong incident is just one of several disputes in Malden that residents say have racial overtones. An ongoing attempt by a Chinatown-based health center, the South Cove Community Health Center, to expand into Malden has met opposition. A few Chinese restaurants have had their windows broken, although no arrests have been made.
Chinese community advocates acknowledge that, as at the senior center, the opposition to South Cove is not explicitly racial. Councilors opposed to the project cite concerns about gentrification, pointing to the health center’s proposed partnership with an apartment developer.
Still, the conflicts have left the city in the delicate position of trying to unify an increasingly diverse — and at times divided — population.
On July 25, Malden Mayor Gary Christenson attended the latest of several “East Meets West” dialogues hosted by the city’s Chinese Culture Connection, where he discussed the importance of civic engagement. City officials plan to sponsor their own series of conversations about race and diversity, too, Christenson said.
“I think what we’ve learned was that we do need to have better communication and we do need to help each other learn about each other,” said Maria Luise, special assistant to the mayor.
Mei Hung, executive director of Chinese Culture Connection, said the Ping-Pong dispute was likely the result of a lack of understanding by Malden residents who did not know that the sport is a joyful, noisy activity among Chinese, or that Chinese people often communicate more loudly than Americans do.
Likewise, William Regan, 72, a Caucasian volunteer at the senior center who filed one of the August complaints alleging that staff had been discriminatory, said he thinks the conflicts were the product of ignorance, not ill will. He said he hopes further discussions will ease tensions.
Still, some Chinese residents, like Liang, are skeptical of how much the city’s efforts will help, noting that their initial discussions about the Ping-Pong tables did not change the outcome. Some longtime residents, City Councilor DeMaria acknowledged, are set in their ways: she said she knows people who have talked about leaving Malden due to the changing demographics.
“They’re like, ‘Oh my God, I’m moving out of Malden, this is crazy, all these Asian people,’ ” DeMaria said. “So yes, it’s going to take time.”
Hung acknowledged that organizations like Chinese Culture Connection won’t be able to change everyone’s minds. She knows that the people who attend her events are a self-selecting group.
But she remains hopeful.
“Just like anywhere in the world, you have people who are very open-minded and curious, and others who feel a little intimidated or maybe threatened by the new people who may come to share their piece of the pie,” Hung said. “I’m very optimistic to build this bridge and make Malden a very vibrant and fun place to live.”
--more--"
Related: Chinese Are Racist
I'll now leave you to bounce around with your own thoughts.
Monday Exhumation: Step By Step
"Are insurance policies saving patients money, or keeping them from the treatment they need?" by Bob Tedeschi, August 22, 2016
As science makes once-unthinkable treatments available, patients are increasingly facing a harsh reality: Insurance companies are forcing them to try older, less expensive therapies for months before covering pricier ones.
Insurers have long relied on a cautious approach to control costs and spare patients from expensive medications they might not need. But in more than a dozen interviews with doctors and patients, a picture has emerged of insurers growing more aggressive as they respond to financial pressures.
The result is a reliance on what is known as “step therapy,” whereby patients are forced to try cheaper treatments before they graduate to more expensive ones, even when health care providers are confident the inexpensive treatments will not work.
In one example, a woman with lupus said her vision was severely affected after an insurer forced her to try multiple medications before paying for one that her doctor initially wanted to prescribe. In another, a patient with lung cancer took a break from a successful chemotherapy regimen, then was blocked by her insurer from resuming it until she had tried other drugs.
Spurred by stories like these, state legislators, who regulate Medicaid plans and much of the nation’s private insurance, have begun pushing back. In recent months, at least five states, including California and Indiana, have passed legislation to rein in step therapy approaches, known by critics as “fail first” policies. More than a dozen other states now have such laws on the books.
Insurers argue that, “Step therapy is addressing the problem of making sure patients get the right treatment at the right time, and if there’s an affordable alternative, they have access to it first,” said Clare Krusing, a spokeswoman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade group.
Doctors and ethicists generally do not dispute that theory, but....
There is an “important nuance” when it comes to your health and well-being.
What patient likes hearing that, huh?
--more--"
No nuances when it comes to ca$h:
"Foreign investors eye local lab sites" by Robert Weisman Globe Staff August 21, 2016
After years of snapping up Boston-area office buildings and high-end housing projects, international investors are now going after a new market: laboratory space that is in tight supply as the region’s life sciences industry booms.
In recent months, large funds and wealthy individuals from Europe, Asia, and the Middle East have made first-time bids for biomedical research properties in Kendall Square in Cambridge, Boston’s Longwood Medical Area, and elsewhere, according to commercial real estate brokers. Investors see an opportunity to profit from rising rents and property values.
Some think the trend could be accelerated by the United Kingdom’s surprise vote in June to leave the European Union, creating more volatility across the Atlantic and clouding the outlook for investors traditionally drawn to London and other European markets. Overseas investors also are joining funds pooled by US real estate firms.
“International capital is knocking on the lab door,” said Frank Petz, managing director at JLL Capital Markets, who oversees the real estate firm’s business in New England. “There’s a greater appreciation of that asset class, and the Boston area is considered a safe haven.”
Nearly half of last year’s roughly $46 billion in commercial real estate purchases in the area were made by foreign buyers, driving up prices for competing buyers but boosting profits for sellers.
Until recently, overseas buyers have stayed clear of biopharma space, a niche seen as historically risky and dominated by a handful of connected domestic players led by Alexandria Real Estate Equities, BioMed Realty, and MIT.
Established players say new entrants need to understand the roster of potential lab tenants and their financial backers as well as the business of biotech startups. Such companies grow rapidly and need to move to larger laboratories during drug research, even though they are burning through venture capital and won’t generate earnings for a decade or more.
“The asset class has tended to attract investors with a track record and an existing portfolio of space, which gives tenants more options,” said Bill Kane, the Boston-based senior vice president of Biomed, which owns more than 3 million square feet of area office and lab space.
Foreign investors lacking that background “used to want downtown offices and they wouldn’t look at life sciences properties or medical offices,” said Rob Griffin, US head of capital markets at real estate service firm Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, who this month hosted a group of deep-pocketed Asian investors studying Boston area lab buildings. “There’s been a sea change in the parameters of international investors and what they’re looking for.”
Their risk aversion was allayed in part by Ariad Pharmaceutical Inc.’s ease in subleasing large parts of its planned new Alexandria Center headquarters and lab campus on Binney Street in Cambridge to IBM Watson Health and other tenants in the past two years. That move, coming after a regulatory setback forced Ariad to cuts its workforce and scale back on its own space requirements, underscored the robust demand for space in Cambridge, where the vacancy rate is 3.4 percent, according to a report issued last week by brokerage firm Transwestern.
Last year’s $4.8 billion buyout of BioMed by Blackstone Group LP also seemed to validate the strength of the market for lab space — a market concentrated in US biopharma hubs such as Greater Boston, San Diego, and the San Francisco Bay Area. New York-based Blackstone, the world’s biggest private-equity firm, is considered a savvy real estate investor.
David Begelfer, chief executive of NAIOP Massachusetts, a commercial real estate trade group, said, “There’s a learning process that you need to have. I don’t think you can just come in, plunk down a bid, and walk away with these types of [lab] properties.”
But the learning curve isn’t deterring foreign investors. Transwestern partner Bob Richards fielded bids from China, Korea, and the Middle East for part-ownership in a lab building in the Longwood Medical Area, home to Harvard Medical School and a cluster of teaching hospitals.
“We’re seeing a whole lot of [potential] buyers not previously seen here,” he said.
Thus far, only a few biomedical buildings have been successfully purchased by overseas buyers, led by a pair of German-owned firms. An investment arm of Deutsche Bank last year paid $123 million for a building at 50 Staniford St., near Massachusetts General Hospital.
Jamestown LP, which invests funds raised from wealthy Germans in properties that include Newbury Street’s brownstone retail boutiques, bought Boston Design Center — a former military warehouse in the Seaport District renovated for labs and office — for $72.7 million in 2013.
The firm paid $193 million the same year to buy 245 First St., a Kendall Square biotech building. Three years later, it is preparing to sell it for more than $300 million to a group that includes a Norges Bank sovereign wealth fund that invests North Sea oil revenue.
Norges also reportedly bid earlier this year for One Kendall Square, an eight-acre warren of biotech buildings that is one of the area’s best-known startup spaces, but the property was sold to Alexandria for $725 million. Other foreign investors that have eyed lab Boston area biomedical buildings include Chinese fund Evergrande Group, Dubai-based sovereign wealth fund Safanad Ltd., and Samsung SRA Asset Management Co., an arm of the Korean conglomerate, according to real estate insiders.
Overseas institutions, which typically manage pooled funds from multiple investors, are often secretive. Representatives from Jamestown, Norges, Evergrande, Safanad, and Samsung all declined to discuss their interest in lab space or didn’t respond to inquiries.
While the trend is just beginning, buyers and sellers say it’s only a matter of time before more biomedical lab space in the area is snapped up by international investors. This month, Chinese developer Greenland Holdings and two partners disclosed they had put more than $1 billion into a biotech industrial park south of San Francisco.
“It’s part of the maturation of the life sciences buildings as a mainstream asset rather than a niche product,” said Tom Andrews, executive vice president and Greater Boston regional market director for Alexandria.
Riaz Cassum, senior managing director at Boston commercial real estate agency HFF, said he recently visited Asia, where he met with investors seeking to “play across the spectrum” by acquiring lab buildings or even firms that own portfolios of lab buildings.
“They love the Boston market because of the educational and research institutions here,” Cassum said.
--more--"
Also see:
Pfizer nearing deal to acquire Medivation for about $14b
Pfizer to buy cancer drug maker in $14 billion deal
Pfizer to buy antibiotics from AstraZeneca for $725 million
As science makes once-unthinkable treatments available, patients are increasingly facing a harsh reality: Insurance companies are forcing them to try older, less expensive therapies for months before covering pricier ones.
Insurers have long relied on a cautious approach to control costs and spare patients from expensive medications they might not need. But in more than a dozen interviews with doctors and patients, a picture has emerged of insurers growing more aggressive as they respond to financial pressures.
The result is a reliance on what is known as “step therapy,” whereby patients are forced to try cheaper treatments before they graduate to more expensive ones, even when health care providers are confident the inexpensive treatments will not work.
In one example, a woman with lupus said her vision was severely affected after an insurer forced her to try multiple medications before paying for one that her doctor initially wanted to prescribe. In another, a patient with lung cancer took a break from a successful chemotherapy regimen, then was blocked by her insurer from resuming it until she had tried other drugs.
Spurred by stories like these, state legislators, who regulate Medicaid plans and much of the nation’s private insurance, have begun pushing back. In recent months, at least five states, including California and Indiana, have passed legislation to rein in step therapy approaches, known by critics as “fail first” policies. More than a dozen other states now have such laws on the books.
Insurers argue that, “Step therapy is addressing the problem of making sure patients get the right treatment at the right time, and if there’s an affordable alternative, they have access to it first,” said Clare Krusing, a spokeswoman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade group.
Doctors and ethicists generally do not dispute that theory, but....
There is an “important nuance” when it comes to your health and well-being.
What patient likes hearing that, huh?
--more--"
No nuances when it comes to ca$h:
"Foreign investors eye local lab sites" by Robert Weisman Globe Staff August 21, 2016
After years of snapping up Boston-area office buildings and high-end housing projects, international investors are now going after a new market: laboratory space that is in tight supply as the region’s life sciences industry booms.
In recent months, large funds and wealthy individuals from Europe, Asia, and the Middle East have made first-time bids for biomedical research properties in Kendall Square in Cambridge, Boston’s Longwood Medical Area, and elsewhere, according to commercial real estate brokers. Investors see an opportunity to profit from rising rents and property values.
Some think the trend could be accelerated by the United Kingdom’s surprise vote in June to leave the European Union, creating more volatility across the Atlantic and clouding the outlook for investors traditionally drawn to London and other European markets. Overseas investors also are joining funds pooled by US real estate firms.
“International capital is knocking on the lab door,” said Frank Petz, managing director at JLL Capital Markets, who oversees the real estate firm’s business in New England. “There’s a greater appreciation of that asset class, and the Boston area is considered a safe haven.”
Nearly half of last year’s roughly $46 billion in commercial real estate purchases in the area were made by foreign buyers, driving up prices for competing buyers but boosting profits for sellers.
Until recently, overseas buyers have stayed clear of biopharma space, a niche seen as historically risky and dominated by a handful of connected domestic players led by Alexandria Real Estate Equities, BioMed Realty, and MIT.
Established players say new entrants need to understand the roster of potential lab tenants and their financial backers as well as the business of biotech startups. Such companies grow rapidly and need to move to larger laboratories during drug research, even though they are burning through venture capital and won’t generate earnings for a decade or more.
“The asset class has tended to attract investors with a track record and an existing portfolio of space, which gives tenants more options,” said Bill Kane, the Boston-based senior vice president of Biomed, which owns more than 3 million square feet of area office and lab space.
Foreign investors lacking that background “used to want downtown offices and they wouldn’t look at life sciences properties or medical offices,” said Rob Griffin, US head of capital markets at real estate service firm Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, who this month hosted a group of deep-pocketed Asian investors studying Boston area lab buildings. “There’s been a sea change in the parameters of international investors and what they’re looking for.”
Their risk aversion was allayed in part by Ariad Pharmaceutical Inc.’s ease in subleasing large parts of its planned new Alexandria Center headquarters and lab campus on Binney Street in Cambridge to IBM Watson Health and other tenants in the past two years. That move, coming after a regulatory setback forced Ariad to cuts its workforce and scale back on its own space requirements, underscored the robust demand for space in Cambridge, where the vacancy rate is 3.4 percent, according to a report issued last week by brokerage firm Transwestern.
Last year’s $4.8 billion buyout of BioMed by Blackstone Group LP also seemed to validate the strength of the market for lab space — a market concentrated in US biopharma hubs such as Greater Boston, San Diego, and the San Francisco Bay Area. New York-based Blackstone, the world’s biggest private-equity firm, is considered a savvy real estate investor.
David Begelfer, chief executive of NAIOP Massachusetts, a commercial real estate trade group, said, “There’s a learning process that you need to have. I don’t think you can just come in, plunk down a bid, and walk away with these types of [lab] properties.”
But the learning curve isn’t deterring foreign investors. Transwestern partner Bob Richards fielded bids from China, Korea, and the Middle East for part-ownership in a lab building in the Longwood Medical Area, home to Harvard Medical School and a cluster of teaching hospitals.
“We’re seeing a whole lot of [potential] buyers not previously seen here,” he said.
Thus far, only a few biomedical buildings have been successfully purchased by overseas buyers, led by a pair of German-owned firms. An investment arm of Deutsche Bank last year paid $123 million for a building at 50 Staniford St., near Massachusetts General Hospital.
Jamestown LP, which invests funds raised from wealthy Germans in properties that include Newbury Street’s brownstone retail boutiques, bought Boston Design Center — a former military warehouse in the Seaport District renovated for labs and office — for $72.7 million in 2013.
The firm paid $193 million the same year to buy 245 First St., a Kendall Square biotech building. Three years later, it is preparing to sell it for more than $300 million to a group that includes a Norges Bank sovereign wealth fund that invests North Sea oil revenue.
Norges also reportedly bid earlier this year for One Kendall Square, an eight-acre warren of biotech buildings that is one of the area’s best-known startup spaces, but the property was sold to Alexandria for $725 million. Other foreign investors that have eyed lab Boston area biomedical buildings include Chinese fund Evergrande Group, Dubai-based sovereign wealth fund Safanad Ltd., and Samsung SRA Asset Management Co., an arm of the Korean conglomerate, according to real estate insiders.
Overseas institutions, which typically manage pooled funds from multiple investors, are often secretive. Representatives from Jamestown, Norges, Evergrande, Safanad, and Samsung all declined to discuss their interest in lab space or didn’t respond to inquiries.
While the trend is just beginning, buyers and sellers say it’s only a matter of time before more biomedical lab space in the area is snapped up by international investors. This month, Chinese developer Greenland Holdings and two partners disclosed they had put more than $1 billion into a biotech industrial park south of San Francisco.
“It’s part of the maturation of the life sciences buildings as a mainstream asset rather than a niche product,” said Tom Andrews, executive vice president and Greater Boston regional market director for Alexandria.
Riaz Cassum, senior managing director at Boston commercial real estate agency HFF, said he recently visited Asia, where he met with investors seeking to “play across the spectrum” by acquiring lab buildings or even firms that own portfolios of lab buildings.
“They love the Boston market because of the educational and research institutions here,” Cassum said.
--more--"
Also see:
Pfizer nearing deal to acquire Medivation for about $14b
Pfizer to buy cancer drug maker in $14 billion deal
Pfizer to buy antibiotics from AstraZeneca for $725 million
Sunday, August 28, 2016
Sunday Globe Burial
May they R.I.P.
Sunday Globe Autopsy
The second opinion said more centralization is the answer.
As for the arid coverage lately, you can crawl through the links if you like. I no longer do, and have decided that I can be more productive were I to do anything but buy, read, or blog about the Bo$ton Globe. I simply no longer believe anything they say, period (think Gulf of Tonkin, readers) and never felt lower about them.
Take for starters the mixed messages I am receiving (and it doesn't end there. One day I'm told Biden is all for the Turkish operation to clean out US.-supported ISIS and stop the U.S.-supported Kurds from establishing a state that would herald the break-up of four nations and supply U.S. and western intelligence a base to raise hell in the region; the next, AP is wringing its hands over the issue, and all the time the Turks are supposed to help with forced migration of Obama's wars after the U.S.-sponsored coup attempt. But I digress).
Sorry for breaking the covenant with you, readers, but continuing to do this is crazy. I know it is not a crime, but it is a good idea to stay out of the city. Of course, you will find only certain crimes mentioned there before you head off to school.
Upon the turn in I took a brief look at page A2 and saw New York Times, New York Times, New York Times, and my fire went out. I'm holding it on page A3 before flipping the finger again on page A4.
By the time I arrive on page A10 I'm told Trump could take Nevada (despite all the immigrants) and might even win Iowa. No talk of Clinton's health (his cited sources have been outed, btw), and that would just be "conspiracy" talk. All they have now is insults, and it is quite laughable at this point. The screeching by the pre$$ and campaign is confirmation of it.
Cat must have had the printed paper's tongue, and there was a time when such a Globe story brought me joy. No longer. It's time to start shrinking my time spent here. Two more dead to crime, and I'm sure race had something to do with it. Don't let it spoil the party and parade like last year, though, and be sure to clean up after yourselves, too.
Well, it's getting close to lunch so I'm going to light a fire and go Hyde. May God (or whoever) help them.
I've done my job for the day and just happened to dig up these:
"... the entire history of the US...from finding an "empty land" onward, was a lie. The Assassination of Lincoln, the Attack on Pearl Harbour and the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the Kennedy assassinations were just a few of the ones that went before the Lunar Hoax. Every time they got away with a hoax/false flag, they perpetrated an even bigger one to celebrate. Culminating in the 9/11 atrocity. That was a hoax/false flag too far.
Sometimes I wonder if the perps ever regret 9/11 just because after it, there arose a pesky 37% minority who don't believe anything they do. These "truthers" as we call ourselves...woke up and began to fight back against the lies. So what if we couldn't rouse the other 63%. We've learned to accept that they "can't" wake up. They can't wake up because they can't handle the truth. It's like a congenital disability. It's why humanity has been kept down in slavery for most of our existence....
--MORE--"
The comments are also worth a read, and there is more ranting here. I suppose I am now one of the kook wing according to some people, and that is fine with me. The certainty is being seen in a different light these days.
".... What is extraordinary about these events is that as the OPERATION GLADIO hoaxing is now not just in the United States but is taking place globally in virtually all countries that are part of what I call "the Rothschild Central Bank Consortium", is that now, these same Psychological Operations techniques are being used across the globe to instill panic and fear in the populations of the affected nations who are coordinating these GLADIO events with the probable intent of instituting some form of GLOBAL MARTIAL LAW enactment and policy.
Is it not unreasonable to presume that the broad spectrum Psychological Operations will incorporate more and more intentional leakage of events to be staged with the aim to causing the populations in the affected countries to induce them to become skeptical of attempts by alternative media journalists to warn the citizenry, for example, of a pending global financial collapse. They need to control the world population in the fore of the collapse rather than try to gain control in the aftermath.
Operation GLADIO
One of the most potent and effective tactics of GLADIO fear mongering is to have a significant amount of doubt and uncertainty in the public psyche about the veracity of staged events vs. whether or not they may have in fact been real or not, where this gulf of ‘doubt’ ultimately leads to both a form of inaction and or paralysis in the global populations much in the same way as would someone screaming; “FIRE! FIRE!” in a crowded venue.
Over time, it causes people to be unsure of the imperative to take action to evacuate and get away from an incipient hazard or threat that apparently is over used and warned about too often. As a growing pattern of coordination between the Rothschild-dominated nations, the intent is to control by lack of certainty more so than the brute force application of force alone. This is a very powerful method of population management, by the way....
--MORE--"
Gotta give a tip-o-cap for that one, and Fetzer gains more credibility with me these days, if for no other reason than the lead thermite proponent (in addition to Rivero) was a Mormon professor. That cult is involved not only part of the ruling elite, but a sanctuary of mind control experimentation.
".... In summary, the point is that with the Olympics now done and with the 15th anniversary of 9/11 right around the corner, on cue the ruling elite are ratcheting up the fear and anticipation of ISIS likely for an upcoming big event for which they will blame “ISIS.” Or perhaps it will be a big event that they will use to blame Russia, Syria, Iran or one of the other nation states that have said no to the Western central bankers so they can justify the start of WW3. Either way ISIS will be at the center of this as the propaganda is now building up suggesting that Syria and Russia are attacking the “rebels” who are trying to supposedly attack ISIS.
Let’s face it, we’re coming up on ISIS season (just like they are stirring up the pot for a big Zika virus psyop likely coming this fall) and the recent bizarre stories are just the tip of the iceberg for what they are planning.
It’s time to get familiar with the script:
A. They float out many smaller stories; then they
B. psychologically build you up to the big event.
Let’s prepare for this psyop script and find ways to expose their agenda and their fake and sponsored terrorism without which there is no hope for the new global order they want so desperately.
Thankfully, there’s nothing the ruling elite can do to obscure the revealed knowledge we have about who created, armed and trained ISIS. We can also see for two solid years that the US is not interested in finishing off ISIS. We’ve also observed for two full years that their mainstream media just wants to glorify ISIS and make you think that ISIS is always getting bigger, stronger and scarier. This apparently is the latest memo they (the MSM) has received. The propaganda ammo is flying and the American people’s minds are the targets. Build up ISIS 2014-style and prepare the masses for what is coming....
--MORE--"
Also see: Suarez on ISIS (and More)
NSA Whistleblowers: NSA Hack Was Likely An Inside Job
No wonder the Globe minimized it.
".... The slow and less than newsworthy pacing of the day to day over this summer has a lulling effect on what awaits. Much of what could have come to pass has not done so. There was no real Summer of Rage and no signal event of major change. It has all just limped along on its way to Haphazardville. Where it will no longer be 'scuttling across the floors of silent seas' is when The Fall comes in. It has become a dependable trend in recent decades that all kinds of strange events can come to pass in a major election cycle. We are in one of the most dramatic of its kind since the election of 2000.
I am done with all inclination to attempt to predict anything. I get little things right but miss the really important ones, though... often enough the important ones doesn't even happen. What we do notice here is a long range geo-politick strategizing and endless and interminable shifting of game board pieces. The games of 'Go' and 'Risk' come to mind. The big horses trample in whatever direction, lacking both respect and compassion for one and all and the smaller horses herd together and stampede in the direction of whatever temporary openings may appear. They are all playing the roles embraced by any of them and the roles are an expression of whatever compounded force is generated by the elemental, archetypal, planetary powers as a synthesis of their interplay with or against one another and it continues to change by the day, or the week or the months, as the strength of the force increases, diminishes or changes completely because of a change in the planetary aspects brought about in the natural progression of their courses.
We like to think that we are more important than we are. We like to think we have a great deal of free will and that is why judgment is such a big thing down here....
--MORE--"
Think of him what you want, but he always fills me with hope -- and that's how I want to end today.
NDU:
Globe gave a third opinion, and so did readers.
Sunday Globe Autopsy
The second opinion said more centralization is the answer.
As for the arid coverage lately, you can crawl through the links if you like. I no longer do, and have decided that I can be more productive were I to do anything but buy, read, or blog about the Bo$ton Globe. I simply no longer believe anything they say, period (think Gulf of Tonkin, readers) and never felt lower about them.
Take for starters the mixed messages I am receiving (and it doesn't end there. One day I'm told Biden is all for the Turkish operation to clean out US.-supported ISIS and stop the U.S.-supported Kurds from establishing a state that would herald the break-up of four nations and supply U.S. and western intelligence a base to raise hell in the region; the next, AP is wringing its hands over the issue, and all the time the Turks are supposed to help with forced migration of Obama's wars after the U.S.-sponsored coup attempt. But I digress).
Sorry for breaking the covenant with you, readers, but continuing to do this is crazy. I know it is not a crime, but it is a good idea to stay out of the city. Of course, you will find only certain crimes mentioned there before you head off to school.
Upon the turn in I took a brief look at page A2 and saw New York Times, New York Times, New York Times, and my fire went out. I'm holding it on page A3 before flipping the finger again on page A4.
By the time I arrive on page A10 I'm told Trump could take Nevada (despite all the immigrants) and might even win Iowa. No talk of Clinton's health (his cited sources have been outed, btw), and that would just be "conspiracy" talk. All they have now is insults, and it is quite laughable at this point. The screeching by the pre$$ and campaign is confirmation of it.
Cat must have had the printed paper's tongue, and there was a time when such a Globe story brought me joy. No longer. It's time to start shrinking my time spent here. Two more dead to crime, and I'm sure race had something to do with it. Don't let it spoil the party and parade like last year, though, and be sure to clean up after yourselves, too.
Well, it's getting close to lunch so I'm going to light a fire and go Hyde. May God (or whoever) help them.
I've done my job for the day and just happened to dig up these:
"... the entire history of the US...from finding an "empty land" onward, was a lie. The Assassination of Lincoln, the Attack on Pearl Harbour and the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the Kennedy assassinations were just a few of the ones that went before the Lunar Hoax. Every time they got away with a hoax/false flag, they perpetrated an even bigger one to celebrate. Culminating in the 9/11 atrocity. That was a hoax/false flag too far.
Sometimes I wonder if the perps ever regret 9/11 just because after it, there arose a pesky 37% minority who don't believe anything they do. These "truthers" as we call ourselves...woke up and began to fight back against the lies. So what if we couldn't rouse the other 63%. We've learned to accept that they "can't" wake up. They can't wake up because they can't handle the truth. It's like a congenital disability. It's why humanity has been kept down in slavery for most of our existence....
--MORE--"
The comments are also worth a read, and there is more ranting here. I suppose I am now one of the kook wing according to some people, and that is fine with me. The certainty is being seen in a different light these days.
".... What is extraordinary about these events is that as the OPERATION GLADIO hoaxing is now not just in the United States but is taking place globally in virtually all countries that are part of what I call "the Rothschild Central Bank Consortium", is that now, these same Psychological Operations techniques are being used across the globe to instill panic and fear in the populations of the affected nations who are coordinating these GLADIO events with the probable intent of instituting some form of GLOBAL MARTIAL LAW enactment and policy.
Is it not unreasonable to presume that the broad spectrum Psychological Operations will incorporate more and more intentional leakage of events to be staged with the aim to causing the populations in the affected countries to induce them to become skeptical of attempts by alternative media journalists to warn the citizenry, for example, of a pending global financial collapse. They need to control the world population in the fore of the collapse rather than try to gain control in the aftermath.
Operation GLADIO
One of the most potent and effective tactics of GLADIO fear mongering is to have a significant amount of doubt and uncertainty in the public psyche about the veracity of staged events vs. whether or not they may have in fact been real or not, where this gulf of ‘doubt’ ultimately leads to both a form of inaction and or paralysis in the global populations much in the same way as would someone screaming; “FIRE! FIRE!” in a crowded venue.
Over time, it causes people to be unsure of the imperative to take action to evacuate and get away from an incipient hazard or threat that apparently is over used and warned about too often. As a growing pattern of coordination between the Rothschild-dominated nations, the intent is to control by lack of certainty more so than the brute force application of force alone. This is a very powerful method of population management, by the way....
--MORE--"
Gotta give a tip-o-cap for that one, and Fetzer gains more credibility with me these days, if for no other reason than the lead thermite proponent (in addition to Rivero) was a Mormon professor. That cult is involved not only part of the ruling elite, but a sanctuary of mind control experimentation.
".... In summary, the point is that with the Olympics now done and with the 15th anniversary of 9/11 right around the corner, on cue the ruling elite are ratcheting up the fear and anticipation of ISIS likely for an upcoming big event for which they will blame “ISIS.” Or perhaps it will be a big event that they will use to blame Russia, Syria, Iran or one of the other nation states that have said no to the Western central bankers so they can justify the start of WW3. Either way ISIS will be at the center of this as the propaganda is now building up suggesting that Syria and Russia are attacking the “rebels” who are trying to supposedly attack ISIS.
Let’s face it, we’re coming up on ISIS season (just like they are stirring up the pot for a big Zika virus psyop likely coming this fall) and the recent bizarre stories are just the tip of the iceberg for what they are planning.
It’s time to get familiar with the script:
A. They float out many smaller stories; then they
B. psychologically build you up to the big event.
Let’s prepare for this psyop script and find ways to expose their agenda and their fake and sponsored terrorism without which there is no hope for the new global order they want so desperately.
Thankfully, there’s nothing the ruling elite can do to obscure the revealed knowledge we have about who created, armed and trained ISIS. We can also see for two solid years that the US is not interested in finishing off ISIS. We’ve also observed for two full years that their mainstream media just wants to glorify ISIS and make you think that ISIS is always getting bigger, stronger and scarier. This apparently is the latest memo they (the MSM) has received. The propaganda ammo is flying and the American people’s minds are the targets. Build up ISIS 2014-style and prepare the masses for what is coming....
--MORE--"
Also see: Suarez on ISIS (and More)
NSA Whistleblowers: NSA Hack Was Likely An Inside Job
No wonder the Globe minimized it.
".... The slow and less than newsworthy pacing of the day to day over this summer has a lulling effect on what awaits. Much of what could have come to pass has not done so. There was no real Summer of Rage and no signal event of major change. It has all just limped along on its way to Haphazardville. Where it will no longer be 'scuttling across the floors of silent seas' is when The Fall comes in. It has become a dependable trend in recent decades that all kinds of strange events can come to pass in a major election cycle. We are in one of the most dramatic of its kind since the election of 2000.
I am done with all inclination to attempt to predict anything. I get little things right but miss the really important ones, though... often enough the important ones doesn't even happen. What we do notice here is a long range geo-politick strategizing and endless and interminable shifting of game board pieces. The games of 'Go' and 'Risk' come to mind. The big horses trample in whatever direction, lacking both respect and compassion for one and all and the smaller horses herd together and stampede in the direction of whatever temporary openings may appear. They are all playing the roles embraced by any of them and the roles are an expression of whatever compounded force is generated by the elemental, archetypal, planetary powers as a synthesis of their interplay with or against one another and it continues to change by the day, or the week or the months, as the strength of the force increases, diminishes or changes completely because of a change in the planetary aspects brought about in the natural progression of their courses.
We like to think that we are more important than we are. We like to think we have a great deal of free will and that is why judgment is such a big thing down here....
--MORE--"
Think of him what you want, but he always fills me with hope -- and that's how I want to end today.
NDU:
Globe gave a third opinion, and so did readers.
Wednesday, August 24, 2016
Busy Schedule
The Globe tells me how I can be more productive.
"When Christina Fagan found herself perilously close to flunking out of Skidmore College a few years back, her struggles stemmed not from the typical collegiate pitfalls. She wasn’t balancing an unmanageable course load, for instance, or spending too many nights stationed in a barroom booth.
The issue?
Laugh if you want to, but...."
I had intended to knit together several posts for you today; however, my pens have run out of ink and mealtime approaches so I will be taking the rest of the day off to ponder how to improve this blog's performance.
"When Christina Fagan found herself perilously close to flunking out of Skidmore College a few years back, her struggles stemmed not from the typical collegiate pitfalls. She wasn’t balancing an unmanageable course load, for instance, or spending too many nights stationed in a barroom booth.
The issue?
Laugh if you want to, but...."
I had intended to knit together several posts for you today; however, my pens have run out of ink and mealtime approaches so I will be taking the rest of the day off to ponder how to improve this blog's performance.
Tuesday, August 23, 2016
Ants at a Picnic
That's where I'm headed and what I'll be doing the rest of the day....
"Two-by-two-million, the ants are marching in" by Nestor Ramos Globe Staff August 18, 2016
The ants invaded Courtenay Sanchez’s bedroom under cover of darkness, pouring through an open window and feasting on a cookie she’d left on the bed, crawling over her sheets and scaling her walls.
Armed with a bottle of Lysol, she tried to beat back the miniature army.
Yeah, chemicals will kill anything!
“I was just like, DIE DIE DIE!” said Sanchez, 20 — but by morning they were still coming. “These suckers are pretty resilient.”
The attitude disturbs me. It doesn't mean I want to live with pestilence, but I'm not fanatic about killing any life form that has just as much a right to exist as you or I.
All over drought-plagued New England, ants are marching into houses and apartments, congregating in kitchen sinks and staging tiny town hall meetings in toilets. The hot, dry weather has driven down their numbers, entomologists say, but it’s also driven those that remain indoors as they search for water.
“It’s stressing them out,” said Jonathan Boyar, owner of Ecologic Entomology, a Boston pest control company. And just like the rest of us, he said, ants need water — a need met by scouring your kitchen for moisture.
Not out here, but then again, I'm not leaving food lying around.
But as any horrified homeowner who has reached for a can of Raid discovers, these ants can’t really be sprayed away. In the long game that ants play, blasting them with insecticide can actually make them stronger. Instead, ant bait products — poison disguised as food, that foot soldiers take back to their colonies — can be much more effective than sprays.
The war against ants is the way my war-promoting paper frames all issues.
Many of the calls firms usually get are for carpenter ants, which seek out moisture in wood, and then set about destroying trees and houses. But given that homes all over New England are drier than kindling right now, the carpenter ants are mostly minding their own business.
Instead, harmless survivors — pharaoh ants, pavement ants, little black ants — crawl inside, in search of water that they store up and bring back to their colonies. From that perspective, “ants are just trying to make a living,” said Stefan Cover, a curatorial assistant at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology.
Aren't we all?
Cover curates the ant collection, which the museum calls “the largest and most important ant collection in the world,” and has traveled the country collecting specimens and doing field work. He said nobody has ever undertaken a count of all the ants in the museum’s collection — it would take forever and at the end all you’d have is a really big number of ants — but he said it’s surely somewhere between 500,000 and a million.
His fascination with ants has spanned decades, and the occasional ant ambling across his countertop is no cause for alarm. “They’re not disgusting or dirty,” said Cover. “They spend an enormous amount of time cleaning themselves. More than humans.”
Speak for yourself, you misanthropic sob.
Cover called “the traditional model of how people interact with nature” — it’s fine outside but keep it out of my house — absurd.
“There are hundreds of different invertebrates that live inside your house,” Cover said. “They’re your neighbors. Just because you’re not aware of them, doesn’t mean they’re not there.”
Well, I won't bother them if they don't bother me.
--more--"
Related:
Intense wildfires in Mass. limit ability to help out west
That mean no vacation?
Extreme drought extended across Northeastern Mass.
Look who is calling for rationing.
25 years ago, New England felt the fury of Bob
And 25 years later a tornado hits Concord.
Then the rainbow came out.
"Hydroponics operation takes root in Devens" by Hattie Bernstein Globe Correspondent August 21, 2016
Americans have taken for granted a seemingly endless supply of natural resources — land, water, fossil fuel — that now, in the wake of droughts, freezes, and other changes wrought by climate change, are giving farmers pause.
Who has taken things for granted, you pos elitist pre$$?
No wonder my enthusiasm for them is wilting.
So although hydroponic farming methods have been available in the United States for more than 30 years, they have only recently begun to catch on.
“It’s taken off now because the market finally caught up with the technology,” said Gene Giacomelli, a professor of agriculture and biosystems engineering at the University of Arizona who helped design the food growth chamber, a hydroponic growing system at the US research station at the South Pole.
And because some corporate concern can now make a buck. That's our $y$tem.
At the same time, consumer demand for packaged salads is growing....
--more--"
They have developed a CRISPR lettuce and called it Casebia.
Related: Indian Drought Over
"Indian forces fire at Kashmir protesters, killing 1" Associated Press August 22, 2016
SRINAGAR, India — One young man was killed and dozens wounded in Indian-controlled Kashmir on Sunday as government forces fired shotguns and tear gas at protesters demanding an end to Indian rule in the disputed Himalayan region.
The man was hit by a tear gas shell in his chest during clashes between rock-throwing protesters and government troops in Srinagar, the region’s main city, said a police officer who spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with department policy. The man died later at a hospital.
At least 70 civilians were injured during several other clashes in the northern areas of Sopore, Baramulla, and Ganderbal.
A security lockdown and protest strikes continued for the 44th straight day Sunday. The killing of a popular rebel commander on July 8 sparked some of Kashmir’s largest protests against Indian rule in recent years."
That was the end of the Globe's brief downpour of coverage.
NDUs:
"Walmart Stores said it’s reviewing Welspun India’s cotton certification records, joining Target to scrutinize the supplier over cheaper bedsheets being passed off as premium Egyptian cotton and sending the Indian company’s stock down. Walmart is Welspun’s third-largest customer, behind Target, which said late last week it had pulled sheets and pillowcases off its shelves after discovering they were mislabeled as Egyptian cotton. It also terminated all business with the supplier. Welspun said it manufactures every fifth towel sold in the United States and counts J.C. Penney Co. and Macy’s Inc. among its customers."
"Two-by-two-million, the ants are marching in" by Nestor Ramos Globe Staff August 18, 2016
The ants invaded Courtenay Sanchez’s bedroom under cover of darkness, pouring through an open window and feasting on a cookie she’d left on the bed, crawling over her sheets and scaling her walls.
Armed with a bottle of Lysol, she tried to beat back the miniature army.
Yeah, chemicals will kill anything!
“I was just like, DIE DIE DIE!” said Sanchez, 20 — but by morning they were still coming. “These suckers are pretty resilient.”
The attitude disturbs me. It doesn't mean I want to live with pestilence, but I'm not fanatic about killing any life form that has just as much a right to exist as you or I.
All over drought-plagued New England, ants are marching into houses and apartments, congregating in kitchen sinks and staging tiny town hall meetings in toilets. The hot, dry weather has driven down their numbers, entomologists say, but it’s also driven those that remain indoors as they search for water.
“It’s stressing them out,” said Jonathan Boyar, owner of Ecologic Entomology, a Boston pest control company. And just like the rest of us, he said, ants need water — a need met by scouring your kitchen for moisture.
Not out here, but then again, I'm not leaving food lying around.
But as any horrified homeowner who has reached for a can of Raid discovers, these ants can’t really be sprayed away. In the long game that ants play, blasting them with insecticide can actually make them stronger. Instead, ant bait products — poison disguised as food, that foot soldiers take back to their colonies — can be much more effective than sprays.
The war against ants is the way my war-promoting paper frames all issues.
Many of the calls firms usually get are for carpenter ants, which seek out moisture in wood, and then set about destroying trees and houses. But given that homes all over New England are drier than kindling right now, the carpenter ants are mostly minding their own business.
Instead, harmless survivors — pharaoh ants, pavement ants, little black ants — crawl inside, in search of water that they store up and bring back to their colonies. From that perspective, “ants are just trying to make a living,” said Stefan Cover, a curatorial assistant at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology.
Aren't we all?
Cover curates the ant collection, which the museum calls “the largest and most important ant collection in the world,” and has traveled the country collecting specimens and doing field work. He said nobody has ever undertaken a count of all the ants in the museum’s collection — it would take forever and at the end all you’d have is a really big number of ants — but he said it’s surely somewhere between 500,000 and a million.
His fascination with ants has spanned decades, and the occasional ant ambling across his countertop is no cause for alarm. “They’re not disgusting or dirty,” said Cover. “They spend an enormous amount of time cleaning themselves. More than humans.”
Speak for yourself, you misanthropic sob.
Cover called “the traditional model of how people interact with nature” — it’s fine outside but keep it out of my house — absurd.
“There are hundreds of different invertebrates that live inside your house,” Cover said. “They’re your neighbors. Just because you’re not aware of them, doesn’t mean they’re not there.”
Well, I won't bother them if they don't bother me.
--more--"
Related:
Intense wildfires in Mass. limit ability to help out west
That mean no vacation?
Extreme drought extended across Northeastern Mass.
Look who is calling for rationing.
25 years ago, New England felt the fury of Bob
And 25 years later a tornado hits Concord.
Then the rainbow came out.
"Hydroponics operation takes root in Devens" by Hattie Bernstein Globe Correspondent August 21, 2016
Americans have taken for granted a seemingly endless supply of natural resources — land, water, fossil fuel — that now, in the wake of droughts, freezes, and other changes wrought by climate change, are giving farmers pause.
Who has taken things for granted, you pos elitist pre$$?
No wonder my enthusiasm for them is wilting.
So although hydroponic farming methods have been available in the United States for more than 30 years, they have only recently begun to catch on.
“It’s taken off now because the market finally caught up with the technology,” said Gene Giacomelli, a professor of agriculture and biosystems engineering at the University of Arizona who helped design the food growth chamber, a hydroponic growing system at the US research station at the South Pole.
And because some corporate concern can now make a buck. That's our $y$tem.
At the same time, consumer demand for packaged salads is growing....
--more--"
They have developed a CRISPR lettuce and called it Casebia.
"Indian forces fire at Kashmir protesters, killing 1" Associated Press August 22, 2016
SRINAGAR, India — One young man was killed and dozens wounded in Indian-controlled Kashmir on Sunday as government forces fired shotguns and tear gas at protesters demanding an end to Indian rule in the disputed Himalayan region.
The man was hit by a tear gas shell in his chest during clashes between rock-throwing protesters and government troops in Srinagar, the region’s main city, said a police officer who spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with department policy. The man died later at a hospital.
At least 70 civilians were injured during several other clashes in the northern areas of Sopore, Baramulla, and Ganderbal.
A security lockdown and protest strikes continued for the 44th straight day Sunday. The killing of a popular rebel commander on July 8 sparked some of Kashmir’s largest protests against Indian rule in recent years."
That was the end of the Globe's brief downpour of coverage.
NDUs:
"Walmart Stores said it’s reviewing Welspun India’s cotton certification records, joining Target to scrutinize the supplier over cheaper bedsheets being passed off as premium Egyptian cotton and sending the Indian company’s stock down. Walmart is Welspun’s third-largest customer, behind Target, which said late last week it had pulled sheets and pillowcases off its shelves after discovering they were mislabeled as Egyptian cotton. It also terminated all business with the supplier. Welspun said it manufactures every fifth towel sold in the United States and counts J.C. Penney Co. and Macy’s Inc. among its customers."
Spaced Out
What was the call?
"A new pitch from Bill ‘Spaceman’ Lee" by Jim O’Sullivan Globe Staff August 18, 2016
GREENSBORO, Vt. — Bill Lee — whose talent as a left-handed pitcher for the Red Sox and Expos is remembered less than the eccentricity that earned him the nickname “Spaceman” — has not yet embarked on a traditional gubernatorial campaign. It seems unlikely he will.
Which is not to say he’s not running. Ask the Liberty Union 2016 gubernatorial nominee — the self-described “left wing of the left wing” — if he is not only really running, but truly wants the job, and he responds with profane enthusiasm for both.
Candidate Lee is also about to benefit from the type of publicity most third-party candidates never enjoy. For now, the foreign substance is politics. The Liberty Union Party bills itself as “nonviolent socialist,” and Lee is a committed environmentalist and resolutely pro-labor. Since, Lee has traveled a characteristically eclectic road.
He has made and sold bats from a sawmill near his home. He has his own wine label. He barnstorms Cuban boys to the United States and Canada on baseball tours, and American kids to Cuba, a cross-cultural mission that blends perfectly with his post-borders worldview. He still plays ball regularly.
Time to bring in the closer.
“He’s just an unbelievable competitor. He’s 69 and he loves the game and he wants to win,” said Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger, Lee’s batterymate on the Burlington Cardinals. Lee threw a complete-game win last Sunday, with temperatures in the high 80s and “incredible humidity.”
On a recent weekday, Lee awakened from a nap, after an earlier lake swim and a beer. The phone rang, his friend the sports radio host Mikey Adams calling with news of a former teammate’s death (“I didn’t think he’d make it past 59 the way he drank”) and, then, a radio station dialing for his weekly spot (“I’ll get a beer,” he said, waiting to go on air).
To spend a day with Lee is to swim educationally through the culture of the last half century.
Lee’s current platform is in favor of clean water.
Who isn't?
He’s for fewer borders, hoping to erase the one between Quebec and Vermont (“We stole 300 yards from Canada. . . . People don’t know that”).
His ideology runs toward hippie-populism, with a strain of engaging irony. “I am not a capitalist, no. I’m a poor black farmboy,” says Lee, who is white.
The Green Mountain State sets low ballot-access thresholds, and voters do not register in political parties. A 2014 gubernatorial debate became an Internet sensation with its contrast between more traditional, well-coiffed candidates and those in thick beards, overalls, and gaudy hats.
“In most states, the electoral mechanism is much more controlled and restrained,” said University of Vermont political scientist Garrison Nelson. “Not so in Vermont.”
The state’s omnivorous electoral palate notwithstanding, political watchers are not optimistic about Lee’s chances.
“Let me put it this way, his earned run average was higher than his electoral percentage is going to be,” said Nelson, referring to Lee’s career ERA of 3.62.
The major-party candidates are Democratic former transportation secretary Sue Minter and Republican Lieutenant Governor Phil Scott.
Weinberger, a Democrat, noted that his teammate has not undertaken traditional campaigning and called it “extraordinarily difficult for any candidate in this modern era without the backing of the major parties to become governor.”
Lee appears content with his lot. He is fascinated by a hummingbird in the backyard, where, later, Diana will serve locally sourced tacos carnitas with Spaceman wine. He taps maple trees in the surrounding woods, recounts failed marriages, cheerfully diagnoses the presidential campaign as “trying to pick the lesser of two evils, and you’re going to pick evil.”
For the Spaceman, who said he decided to lead the Liberty Union ticket only after returning home from a party confab and consulting Plato, politics is less an obsession than the latest pursuit in life....
--more--"
Time to go into orbit....
See: Chasing a Dream
Just keeping it alive....
"Bernie Sanders, with an eye toward energizing working-class and young voters to support his former rival, Hillary Clinton, said Friday, ‘‘I feel very strongly that Donald Trump would be a disaster for the country. I want to do everything I can to see that Secretary Clinton wins.’’ Sanders said that during some of those visits he will also campaign on behalf of Democratic Senate candidates, including Katie McGinty in Pennsylvania, Ted Strickland in Ohio, and Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire. He is also planning to campaign for other liberal down-ballot candidates, he said. Sanders said he plans to hold large-scale rallies, which were a staple of his campaign, drawing from both his and Clinton’s lists of supporters. ‘‘I think we can create large turnouts,’’ he said."
The question is for whom?
"In Vt., Bernie Sanders backers still deal with agony of defeat" by Akilah Johnson Globe Staff August 15, 2016
BURLINGTON, Vt. — The Democratic National Convention is over. Hillary Clinton is the party’s nominee and Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign has officially come to an end.
Still, some of Sanders’ supporters from the insurgent campaign are holding on, not yet ready to fully embrace Clinton. Instead, many Sanders supporters in his home state, a liberal bastion, are considering their options.
One says “Jill Stein, but if close would vote for Hillary,” while another pwogwessive says “Clinton.”
Despite this, political analysts in Vermont say there’s little reason to think that Clinton won’t carry the state, which the Democrat in every presidential election has won since 1988.
A poll last month from Vermont Public Radio and the Castleton Polling Institute showed 39 percent of Vermonters plan to vote for Clinton, 17 percent for Trump, and 26 percent for “someone else.” It’s unclear who that someone else would be: Stein, the Green Party’s presidential nominee, didn’t register in the poll, receiving 0 percent, and the Libertarian Party’s nominee, Gary Johnson, received 5 percent.
Eric Davis, professor emeritus of political science at Middlebury College, said he thinks there’s a chance for third-party candidates to make headway in Vermont, though not enough to keep Clinton from winning the state.
“I truly believe that Hillary should be in jail,” said Gwen Heaghney, 23, of Burlington. “I would much rather vote for Jill Stein.”
Me, too, only because I've come to believe that we need a Jewish president to confront the Zionist Lobby. It's sort of a least of the evils way of thinking.
And then there are those like Brett Powers, who are still deciding. Standing behind the counter of Computers for Change, a technology store that donates computers to local organizations, Powers, 34, said choosing between Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump feels like “voting for the lesser of two evils.”
Powers said he will probably make a “snap decision” in the voting booth or simply won’t vote.
Vanessa Berman said she certainly understands why Sanders’ supporters, of which she counts herself one, are “very antiestablishment and anti-Hillary.” But the 36-year-old Burlington resident said electing Clinton president is “an incredible opportunity for this country. She done a lot for children, for poverty, for health care, for education — all of the things that are important to me.”
“The alternative,” she said, “is not even something that I can even think about.”
That was the general theme Wednesday morning at the state party’s Unity Rally, held the day after the statewide primary. The focus was on unifying state and local politicians but calls for national party unification to keep Trump out of the White House crept into speech after speech.
That's the general theme of the Globe on a daily basis.
“It’s going to be a unified party,” US Senator Patrick Leahy said to rousing applause. “Together we can win.”
And while Sanders wasn’t present, his presence was with party officials and candidates — and even Carter, who addressed the crowd at the lobby of a waterfront office building — invoking his name and his candidacy.
David Zuckerman, who won the lieutenant governor primary on Tuesday, was endorsed by Sanders, a man he considers a role model. When asked after the rally if he was following Sanders’ lead and voting for Clinton, Zuckerman said: “I really respect Senator Sanders, and I feel the same way: None of us are going to tell other people how they are supposed to vote.”
But about Clinton?
“I do intend to vote for her,” he said, after being asked two more times....
--more--"
I guess Vermont goes blue on the electoral map.
"A new pitch from Bill ‘Spaceman’ Lee" by Jim O’Sullivan Globe Staff August 18, 2016
GREENSBORO, Vt. — Bill Lee — whose talent as a left-handed pitcher for the Red Sox and Expos is remembered less than the eccentricity that earned him the nickname “Spaceman” — has not yet embarked on a traditional gubernatorial campaign. It seems unlikely he will.
Which is not to say he’s not running. Ask the Liberty Union 2016 gubernatorial nominee — the self-described “left wing of the left wing” — if he is not only really running, but truly wants the job, and he responds with profane enthusiasm for both.
Candidate Lee is also about to benefit from the type of publicity most third-party candidates never enjoy. For now, the foreign substance is politics. The Liberty Union Party bills itself as “nonviolent socialist,” and Lee is a committed environmentalist and resolutely pro-labor. Since, Lee has traveled a characteristically eclectic road.
He has made and sold bats from a sawmill near his home. He has his own wine label. He barnstorms Cuban boys to the United States and Canada on baseball tours, and American kids to Cuba, a cross-cultural mission that blends perfectly with his post-borders worldview. He still plays ball regularly.
Time to bring in the closer.
“He’s just an unbelievable competitor. He’s 69 and he loves the game and he wants to win,” said Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger, Lee’s batterymate on the Burlington Cardinals. Lee threw a complete-game win last Sunday, with temperatures in the high 80s and “incredible humidity.”
On a recent weekday, Lee awakened from a nap, after an earlier lake swim and a beer. The phone rang, his friend the sports radio host Mikey Adams calling with news of a former teammate’s death (“I didn’t think he’d make it past 59 the way he drank”) and, then, a radio station dialing for his weekly spot (“I’ll get a beer,” he said, waiting to go on air).
To spend a day with Lee is to swim educationally through the culture of the last half century.
Lee’s current platform is in favor of clean water.
Who isn't?
He’s for fewer borders, hoping to erase the one between Quebec and Vermont (“We stole 300 yards from Canada. . . . People don’t know that”).
His ideology runs toward hippie-populism, with a strain of engaging irony. “I am not a capitalist, no. I’m a poor black farmboy,” says Lee, who is white.
The Green Mountain State sets low ballot-access thresholds, and voters do not register in political parties. A 2014 gubernatorial debate became an Internet sensation with its contrast between more traditional, well-coiffed candidates and those in thick beards, overalls, and gaudy hats.
“In most states, the electoral mechanism is much more controlled and restrained,” said University of Vermont political scientist Garrison Nelson. “Not so in Vermont.”
The state’s omnivorous electoral palate notwithstanding, political watchers are not optimistic about Lee’s chances.
“Let me put it this way, his earned run average was higher than his electoral percentage is going to be,” said Nelson, referring to Lee’s career ERA of 3.62.
The major-party candidates are Democratic former transportation secretary Sue Minter and Republican Lieutenant Governor Phil Scott.
Weinberger, a Democrat, noted that his teammate has not undertaken traditional campaigning and called it “extraordinarily difficult for any candidate in this modern era without the backing of the major parties to become governor.”
Lee appears content with his lot. He is fascinated by a hummingbird in the backyard, where, later, Diana will serve locally sourced tacos carnitas with Spaceman wine. He taps maple trees in the surrounding woods, recounts failed marriages, cheerfully diagnoses the presidential campaign as “trying to pick the lesser of two evils, and you’re going to pick evil.”
For the Spaceman, who said he decided to lead the Liberty Union ticket only after returning home from a party confab and consulting Plato, politics is less an obsession than the latest pursuit in life....
--more--"
Time to go into orbit....
See: Chasing a Dream
Just keeping it alive....
"Bernie Sanders, with an eye toward energizing working-class and young voters to support his former rival, Hillary Clinton, said Friday, ‘‘I feel very strongly that Donald Trump would be a disaster for the country. I want to do everything I can to see that Secretary Clinton wins.’’ Sanders said that during some of those visits he will also campaign on behalf of Democratic Senate candidates, including Katie McGinty in Pennsylvania, Ted Strickland in Ohio, and Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire. He is also planning to campaign for other liberal down-ballot candidates, he said. Sanders said he plans to hold large-scale rallies, which were a staple of his campaign, drawing from both his and Clinton’s lists of supporters. ‘‘I think we can create large turnouts,’’ he said."
The question is for whom?
"In Vt., Bernie Sanders backers still deal with agony of defeat" by Akilah Johnson Globe Staff August 15, 2016
BURLINGTON, Vt. — The Democratic National Convention is over. Hillary Clinton is the party’s nominee and Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign has officially come to an end.
Still, some of Sanders’ supporters from the insurgent campaign are holding on, not yet ready to fully embrace Clinton. Instead, many Sanders supporters in his home state, a liberal bastion, are considering their options.
One says “Jill Stein, but if close would vote for Hillary,” while another pwogwessive says “Clinton.”
Despite this, political analysts in Vermont say there’s little reason to think that Clinton won’t carry the state, which the Democrat in every presidential election has won since 1988.
A poll last month from Vermont Public Radio and the Castleton Polling Institute showed 39 percent of Vermonters plan to vote for Clinton, 17 percent for Trump, and 26 percent for “someone else.” It’s unclear who that someone else would be: Stein, the Green Party’s presidential nominee, didn’t register in the poll, receiving 0 percent, and the Libertarian Party’s nominee, Gary Johnson, received 5 percent.
Eric Davis, professor emeritus of political science at Middlebury College, said he thinks there’s a chance for third-party candidates to make headway in Vermont, though not enough to keep Clinton from winning the state.
“I truly believe that Hillary should be in jail,” said Gwen Heaghney, 23, of Burlington. “I would much rather vote for Jill Stein.”
Me, too, only because I've come to believe that we need a Jewish president to confront the Zionist Lobby. It's sort of a least of the evils way of thinking.
And then there are those like Brett Powers, who are still deciding. Standing behind the counter of Computers for Change, a technology store that donates computers to local organizations, Powers, 34, said choosing between Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump feels like “voting for the lesser of two evils.”
Powers said he will probably make a “snap decision” in the voting booth or simply won’t vote.
Vanessa Berman said she certainly understands why Sanders’ supporters, of which she counts herself one, are “very antiestablishment and anti-Hillary.” But the 36-year-old Burlington resident said electing Clinton president is “an incredible opportunity for this country. She done a lot for children, for poverty, for health care, for education — all of the things that are important to me.”
“The alternative,” she said, “is not even something that I can even think about.”
That was the general theme Wednesday morning at the state party’s Unity Rally, held the day after the statewide primary. The focus was on unifying state and local politicians but calls for national party unification to keep Trump out of the White House crept into speech after speech.
That's the general theme of the Globe on a daily basis.
“It’s going to be a unified party,” US Senator Patrick Leahy said to rousing applause. “Together we can win.”
And while Sanders wasn’t present, his presence was with party officials and candidates — and even Carter, who addressed the crowd at the lobby of a waterfront office building — invoking his name and his candidacy.
David Zuckerman, who won the lieutenant governor primary on Tuesday, was endorsed by Sanders, a man he considers a role model. When asked after the rally if he was following Sanders’ lead and voting for Clinton, Zuckerman said: “I really respect Senator Sanders, and I feel the same way: None of us are going to tell other people how they are supposed to vote.”
But about Clinton?
“I do intend to vote for her,” he said, after being asked two more times....
--more--"
I guess Vermont goes blue on the electoral map.
Past Due Date
Sorry I'm late:
Why American women are having fewer babies than ever
They claim it's worries about money, which population growth in much of the poverty-stricken world would seem to contradict.
So what's the real reason? Subtle sterilization of men and women via chemicals?
Maybe you should call a nurse:
"Hospital CEO pay rises faster than overall health care spending" by Robert Weisman Globe Staff August 16, 2016
Pay increases for many top Massachusetts hospital executives outpaced the growth of state health spending in 2014, according to new filings with the Internal Revenue Service.
Leading the pack was Elizabeth G. Nabel, president of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, who drew total compensation of $5.4 million that year, up 119 percent from her $2.5 million pay package in 2013. Most of the increase was attributed to a jump in deferred compensation in 2014, the year she vested in a retirement plan managed by Brigham and Women’s corporate parent, Partners HealthCare.
Does the excu$e for greed in this are really matter?
The compensation data from the Brigham and other hospitals are contained in IRS filings by nonprofit organizations that are made with a nearly two-year lag.
Partners, the state’s largest hospital and physicians network, reported a 19 percent increase in total compensation, to $3.1 million, for chief executive Gary L. Gottlieb in 2014. Gottlieb left Partners early last year to lead Partners in Health, a separate organization.
That's after the nurses hit 'em up for $24 million.
Overall health care spending in Massachusetts climbed about 4.8 percent in 2014, according to the state Center for Health Information and Analysis. That was above a 3.6 percent target ceiling established in a law passed by the Legislature in 2012.
They always talk about controlling costs but never do.
In a statement released by Partners, its board chairman, Edward P. Lawrence, said: “We must provide competitive wages and benefits in order to attract and retain the best individuals at a time when health care is undergoing sweeping change. The competition for excellent managers and leaders is especially strong at this time.”
I'm $ick of that $elf-$erving $hit, $orry!!!!
Partners reported cuts in the pay packages of two other top executives in 2014.
Peter L. Slavin, president of Partners-owned Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, drew total compensation of $2.1 million, down 6 percent from a year earlier.
And David Torchiana, who headed the Mass. General physicians organization, had total compensation of $1.4 million, down 48 percent.
Changes in retirement vesting amounts reduced both pay packages.
Torchiana last year succeeded Gottlieb as chief executive of Partners HealthCare.
Other hospital systems also reported 2014 pay increases.
Total compensation rose 29 percent to $2.2 million for Howard R. Grant, president of Lahey Health System in Burlington; 7.1 percent to $1.5 million for Kevin Tabb, president of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston; 7.6 percent to $1.4 million for Kathleen E. Walsh, president of Boston Medical Center; and 70 percent to $1 million for Michael Wagner, president of Tufts Medical Center in Boston. Wagner spent much of 2013 heading the Tufts physician organization.
Boston Children’s Hospital reported total pay of $1.7 million for president Sandra Fenwick in 2014, up 41 percent. Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston paid its president Edward J. Benz Jr., who will retire early next year, $1.5 million, up 7.1 percent.
The largest health system in Central Massachusetts, UMass Memorial Health Care in Worcester, reported paying 2014 compensation of $1.6 million to chief executive Eric Dickson, a 41 percent increase from the previous year, and $1.1 million to Patrick Muldoon, president of UMass Memorial Medical Center, the system’s flagship hospital, up 58 percent.
Baystate Health in Springfield reported that its president emeritus, Mark R. Tolosky, had total pay of $1.4 million in 2014, when he retired midyear, down 23 percent from 2013. The current Baystate president, Mark A. Keroack, had total pay of $1.2 million in 2014.
They just cut 300 jobs!
--more--"
I can see why the nurses might have a bone to pick with administration.
Oh, yeah, btw, costs up are up for all you elderly and small business because Aetna is getting out of Obummercare.
"Body donations on the rise at US medical schools" by Collin Binkley Associated Press August 18, 2016
Many US medical schools are seeing a surge in the number of people leaving their bodies to science, a trend attributed to rising funeral costs and growing acceptance of a practice long seen by some as ghoulish.
I can see money being a factor here, and what will you or I care?
The increase has been a boon to medical students and researchers, who dissect cadavers in anatomy class or use them to practice surgical techniques or test new devices and procedures.
‘‘Not too long ago, it was taboo. Now we have thousands of registered donors,’’ said Mark Zavoyna, operations manager for Georgetown University’s body donation program.
One reason is that religious objections to dissection and cremation hold less sway today than in the past, said Ronn Wade, director of Maryland’s State Anatomy Board.
Also, bodies donated to medical schools are cremated once they are no longer needed, and the remains are often returned to their families at no expense.
As of 2014, a traditional burial cost around $7,200, an increase of 29 percent from a decade earlier, according to the National Funeral Directors Association.
‘‘Funerals are expensive. That certainly has something to do with it,’’ Zavoyna said. ‘‘Of course, it almost has this snowball effect, where you get five people to donate, and then their families tell another 25 people.’’
The call it the blog effect.
--more--"
Bye-bye!
NDU:
"Preventable medical errors reported by full-service hospitals in Massachusetts grew 60 percent last year, a rise partly attributed to problems detected in a single hospital’s dialysis unit....."
That would be Baystate Medical Center in Springfield.
Also see:
"Mass. hospitals in decent fiscal health" by Priyanka Dayal McCluskey Globe Staff August 25, 2016
Most Massachusetts hospitals were profitable last year, even as they faced pressures to control expenses and become more efficient in a fast-changing health care market.
CHIA reports on hospitals’ financial performance annually as part of its role to study the health of the state’s health care industry. Most Massachusetts hospitals are structured as nonprofits but still must produce some income to sustain their operations.
Among the most profitable hospitals were Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s, which are the state’s largest academic medical centers and are both owned by Partners HealthCare. Mass. General ended the year with $201.1 million in net income, while Brigham had net income of $60.8 million.
I'm sure the nurses will love $eeing that!
Net income was $76.8 million at Baystate Medical Center of Springfield, $60.1 million at Worcester’s UMass Memorial Medical Center, and $87.2 million at Southcoast Hospitals Group of New Bedford.
But some hospitals had significant net losses.
Overall, the figures show that most hospitals were able to stay in the black despite challenges. State and federal laws require them to control rising costs. At the same time, hospitals are seeing smaller increases in payments from private insurers as well as the government insurance programs Medicare and Medicaid.
The market has been especially tough for some community hospitals, which face strong competition from bigger and better known medical centers.
It's a “period of transition.”
Timothy F. Gens, executive vice president of the Massachusetts Hospital Association, a trade group, said the CHIA report includes some useful information but does not fully reflect what hospitals are experiencing. For example, hospitals often have to use their profits to subsidize related businesses, such as physician practices, he said.
This year alone, he added, hospitals are bracing for a $110 million cut in Medicare payments, largely because of a math error in paperwork submitted by Partners that federal officials declined to correct. And state officials are proposing rule changes that could result in more than $100 million in cuts to Medicaid payments, Gens said.
The CHIA report does not account for the financial performance of hospitals’ parent companies, which can lose money even if the hospitals they own are profitable....
--more--"
Related: CHAI Clintons
Looking more like born liars by the day.
Why American women are having fewer babies than ever
They claim it's worries about money, which population growth in much of the poverty-stricken world would seem to contradict.
So what's the real reason? Subtle sterilization of men and women via chemicals?
Maybe you should call a nurse:
"Hospital CEO pay rises faster than overall health care spending" by Robert Weisman Globe Staff August 16, 2016
Pay increases for many top Massachusetts hospital executives outpaced the growth of state health spending in 2014, according to new filings with the Internal Revenue Service.
Leading the pack was Elizabeth G. Nabel, president of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, who drew total compensation of $5.4 million that year, up 119 percent from her $2.5 million pay package in 2013. Most of the increase was attributed to a jump in deferred compensation in 2014, the year she vested in a retirement plan managed by Brigham and Women’s corporate parent, Partners HealthCare.
Does the excu$e for greed in this are really matter?
The compensation data from the Brigham and other hospitals are contained in IRS filings by nonprofit organizations that are made with a nearly two-year lag.
Partners, the state’s largest hospital and physicians network, reported a 19 percent increase in total compensation, to $3.1 million, for chief executive Gary L. Gottlieb in 2014. Gottlieb left Partners early last year to lead Partners in Health, a separate organization.
That's after the nurses hit 'em up for $24 million.
Overall health care spending in Massachusetts climbed about 4.8 percent in 2014, according to the state Center for Health Information and Analysis. That was above a 3.6 percent target ceiling established in a law passed by the Legislature in 2012.
They always talk about controlling costs but never do.
In a statement released by Partners, its board chairman, Edward P. Lawrence, said: “We must provide competitive wages and benefits in order to attract and retain the best individuals at a time when health care is undergoing sweeping change. The competition for excellent managers and leaders is especially strong at this time.”
I'm $ick of that $elf-$erving $hit, $orry!!!!
Partners reported cuts in the pay packages of two other top executives in 2014.
Peter L. Slavin, president of Partners-owned Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, drew total compensation of $2.1 million, down 6 percent from a year earlier.
And David Torchiana, who headed the Mass. General physicians organization, had total compensation of $1.4 million, down 48 percent.
Changes in retirement vesting amounts reduced both pay packages.
Torchiana last year succeeded Gottlieb as chief executive of Partners HealthCare.
Other hospital systems also reported 2014 pay increases.
Total compensation rose 29 percent to $2.2 million for Howard R. Grant, president of Lahey Health System in Burlington; 7.1 percent to $1.5 million for Kevin Tabb, president of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston; 7.6 percent to $1.4 million for Kathleen E. Walsh, president of Boston Medical Center; and 70 percent to $1 million for Michael Wagner, president of Tufts Medical Center in Boston. Wagner spent much of 2013 heading the Tufts physician organization.
Boston Children’s Hospital reported total pay of $1.7 million for president Sandra Fenwick in 2014, up 41 percent. Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston paid its president Edward J. Benz Jr., who will retire early next year, $1.5 million, up 7.1 percent.
The largest health system in Central Massachusetts, UMass Memorial Health Care in Worcester, reported paying 2014 compensation of $1.6 million to chief executive Eric Dickson, a 41 percent increase from the previous year, and $1.1 million to Patrick Muldoon, president of UMass Memorial Medical Center, the system’s flagship hospital, up 58 percent.
Baystate Health in Springfield reported that its president emeritus, Mark R. Tolosky, had total pay of $1.4 million in 2014, when he retired midyear, down 23 percent from 2013. The current Baystate president, Mark A. Keroack, had total pay of $1.2 million in 2014.
They just cut 300 jobs!
--more--"
I can see why the nurses might have a bone to pick with administration.
Oh, yeah, btw, costs up are up for all you elderly and small business because Aetna is getting out of Obummercare.
"Body donations on the rise at US medical schools" by Collin Binkley Associated Press August 18, 2016
Many US medical schools are seeing a surge in the number of people leaving their bodies to science, a trend attributed to rising funeral costs and growing acceptance of a practice long seen by some as ghoulish.
I can see money being a factor here, and what will you or I care?
The increase has been a boon to medical students and researchers, who dissect cadavers in anatomy class or use them to practice surgical techniques or test new devices and procedures.
‘‘Not too long ago, it was taboo. Now we have thousands of registered donors,’’ said Mark Zavoyna, operations manager for Georgetown University’s body donation program.
One reason is that religious objections to dissection and cremation hold less sway today than in the past, said Ronn Wade, director of Maryland’s State Anatomy Board.
Also, bodies donated to medical schools are cremated once they are no longer needed, and the remains are often returned to their families at no expense.
As of 2014, a traditional burial cost around $7,200, an increase of 29 percent from a decade earlier, according to the National Funeral Directors Association.
‘‘Funerals are expensive. That certainly has something to do with it,’’ Zavoyna said. ‘‘Of course, it almost has this snowball effect, where you get five people to donate, and then their families tell another 25 people.’’
The call it the blog effect.
--more--"
Bye-bye!
NDU:
"Preventable medical errors reported by full-service hospitals in Massachusetts grew 60 percent last year, a rise partly attributed to problems detected in a single hospital’s dialysis unit....."
That would be Baystate Medical Center in Springfield.
Also see:
"Mass. hospitals in decent fiscal health" by Priyanka Dayal McCluskey Globe Staff August 25, 2016
Most Massachusetts hospitals were profitable last year, even as they faced pressures to control expenses and become more efficient in a fast-changing health care market.
CHIA reports on hospitals’ financial performance annually as part of its role to study the health of the state’s health care industry. Most Massachusetts hospitals are structured as nonprofits but still must produce some income to sustain their operations.
Among the most profitable hospitals were Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s, which are the state’s largest academic medical centers and are both owned by Partners HealthCare. Mass. General ended the year with $201.1 million in net income, while Brigham had net income of $60.8 million.
I'm sure the nurses will love $eeing that!
Net income was $76.8 million at Baystate Medical Center of Springfield, $60.1 million at Worcester’s UMass Memorial Medical Center, and $87.2 million at Southcoast Hospitals Group of New Bedford.
But some hospitals had significant net losses.
Overall, the figures show that most hospitals were able to stay in the black despite challenges. State and federal laws require them to control rising costs. At the same time, hospitals are seeing smaller increases in payments from private insurers as well as the government insurance programs Medicare and Medicaid.
The market has been especially tough for some community hospitals, which face strong competition from bigger and better known medical centers.
It's a “period of transition.”
Timothy F. Gens, executive vice president of the Massachusetts Hospital Association, a trade group, said the CHIA report includes some useful information but does not fully reflect what hospitals are experiencing. For example, hospitals often have to use their profits to subsidize related businesses, such as physician practices, he said.
This year alone, he added, hospitals are bracing for a $110 million cut in Medicare payments, largely because of a math error in paperwork submitted by Partners that federal officials declined to correct. And state officials are proposing rule changes that could result in more than $100 million in cuts to Medicaid payments, Gens said.
The CHIA report does not account for the financial performance of hospitals’ parent companies, which can lose money even if the hospitals they own are profitable....
--more--"
Related: CHAI Clintons
Looking more like born liars by the day.
Monday, August 22, 2016
Erdogan Rejects U.S. Proposal
Related: Erdogan's Choice
Made the wrong one:
"Bombing at wedding in Turkey kills 51" by Tim Arango and Ceylan Yeginsu New York Times August 21, 2016
ISTANBUL — The attack was the deadliest in a string of terrorist bombings that have struck Turkey this year, as it grapples with the spiraling chaos of spillover from the war in Syria. Bombings this year that Turkish officials have blamed the Islamic State for have struck Istanbul’s old city, near the Blue Mosque; its most famous shopping boulevard, Istiklal Avenue; and, in June, Istanbul’s main airport, among the busiest in Europe.
That last one was dropped rather quickly.
For years, critics have said that Turkey contributed to the chaos — allowing extremist rebels to cross its territory on their way to fight in Syria — to advance its goal of toppling the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad. At the outset of the war in 2011, Erdogan was confident that Assad would quickly fall, as the dictators of Egypt and Tunisia had. But as the war ground on, Turkey increasingly found itself drawn in, with millions of refugees fleeing across the border and, over the last year, a spate of attacks within Turkey.
At the same time, Kurdish militants in the southeast resumed a stalled war against the Turkish government, emboldened by the success of their brethren in Syria, where Kurds have carved out a region of autonomy in the country’s east.
Now, Turkey finds itself with three enemies in the Syrian civil war — Assad, the Islamic State, and Kurdish rebels — and escalating chaos within its own borders. The attack on Saturday in Gaziantep demonstrated how those conflicts sometimes overlap.
Turkey is also reeling from a failed military coup last month that aimed to topple the government of Erdogan and left at least 240 people dead.
In normal times, Gaziantep is famous for its cuisine, especially baklava, the sweet pastry made with pistachios grown nearby. Before war broke out, busloads of Syrians crossed the border almost daily to shop in Gaziantep, as Erdogan pushed stronger economic ties with Syria.
Yet in recent years the city became a hub for lives upended — and preoccupied — by the civil war in Syria. Spies, foreign fighters, diplomats, journalists, relief workers, and refugees passed through the city, sometimes all gathering at the same Starbucks.
Gaziantep became more sinister and violent. The police found an Islamic State bomb-making facility in the city, which they said was used in an attack in Ankara last year that killed more than 100 people. The bomber who struck Istanbul’s Istiklal Avenue came from there, officials said. The Islamic State also carried out murders of Syrian journalists in the city.
On Saturday, the city’s place as not just a remote transit hub for the war but a battleground itself came into focus again.
That the perpetrator of the attack and so many of its victims were so young was a potent illustration of the degradation of the Syrian war as it has inflamed the region. Children have suffered immensely — one devastating image of a Syrian boy injured in an airstrike in Aleppo last week appeared on the front of newspapers around the world, a jarring reminder of the human cost of the war.
The Zionist War Pre$$ waved him at me, and he soon died.
The Islamic State, meanwhile, recruits boys as suicide bombers across Iraq and Syria. In Kirkuk, Iraq, security officials pulled a suicide vest off a boy, according to Reuters.
The bride and groom on Saturday survived without serious injuries. After being released from the hospital, the bride said, “They turned our wedding into a blood bath,” according to the state-run Anadolu News Agency....
--more--"
The terrorism come hand-in-hand with controlled opposition protests.
Also see: Iron Veil of Germany
The Globe lifted it on Italy today:
"Italy seeks to relaunch EU ideal with symbolic summit" Associated Press August 22, 2016
ROME — Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has invited his German and French counterparts to pay their respects at the tomb of one of the founding fathers of European unity in a symbolic bid to relaunch the European project after Britain’s clamorous decision to leave the European Union.
The location for Monday’s summit carries particular resonance as Europe confronts Islamic extremist violence, slow economic growth, and continued anxiety over the implications of the vote by Great Britain. Italy has a lot to gain from a reinvigorated European Union as it copes with flat GDP, the migrant crisis, and political uncertainties over a constitutional referendum this fall.
The island of Ventotene off Naples was where detained anti-fascist Altiero Spinelli in 1941 began co-writing the ‘‘Ventotene Manifesto,’’ which called for a federation of European states to counter the nationalism that had led Europe to war. The document is considered the inspiration of European federalism.
In an interview this weekend with La Repubblica, Renata Colorni, whose father helped spread the ‘‘Ventotene Manifesto’’ through Italy’s resistance movement and whose mother married Spinelli, said she had little hope that today’s Europe could ever meet the Ventotene founders’ original ideals.
‘‘Honestly, today I don’t see first-rate politicians, I only see statesmen who move through the European scene worried about losing the next national elections,’’ she was quoted as saying. ‘‘What’s missing is the will to risk it all for an ideal.’’
--more--"
NDUs:
"Italy, Germany, France tackle post-Brexit EU concerns" Associated Press August 22, 2016
VENTOTENE, Italy — The leaders of Italy, France, and Germany vowed Monday to improve Europe’s defense and economic prospects as they paid tribute to one of the founding fathers of European unity in a symbolic bid to relaunch the European Union after Britain’s vote to leave.
Standing silently together, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, and President Francois Holland of France placed three bouquets of blue and yellow flowers — the colors of the European Union — on the white marble tombstone of Altiero Spinelli on the island of Ventotene.
Spinelli, along with another intellectual confined to Ventotene in the 1940s by Italy’s fascist rulers, co-wrote the ‘‘Ventotene Manifesto’’ calling for a federation of European states to counter the nationalism that had led Europe to war.
The document is considered the inspiration for European federalism.
Renzi invited his French and German counterparts to the sun-soaked island off Naples to remind Europe of its founding ideals as the European Union forges ahead amid a spate of challenges, from slow economic growth to Islamic extremist violence, after Britain’s vote to leave the bloc.
‘‘Many people thought that after Brexit, that Europe was finished. It’s not like that,’’ Renzi said after the hour-long summit. ‘‘We respect the choice of Britain’s citizens, but we want to write a page for the future.’’
Related: Sarkozy to run for French presidency next year
Hollande's future in doubt, as is the rest of the project:
"From the destruction of Greece to democracy in Europe" by James K. Galbraith August 22, 2016
Last year’s third bailout of Greece, imposed by Europe and the International Monetrary Fund, does to Greece what Versailles did to Germany: It strips assets to satisfy debts. Germany lost its merchant marine, its rolling stock, its colonies, and its coal; Greece has lost its seaports, its airports — the profitable ones — and is set to sell off its beaches, the public asset that is a uniquely Greek glory. Private businesses are being forced into bankruptcy to make way for European chains; private citizens are being forced into foreclosure on their homes. It’s a land grab.
Welcome to the New World Order.
And for what? To satisfy old public debts, incurred for tanks, submarines, the Olympics, big construction projects outsourced to German firms, and to hide deficits in health care, with creditor connivance — a quagmire of graft to support an illusion, that Greece could “compete” as part of the euro. Already in 2010 the IMF knew it was breaking its own rules by pretending that Greece could recover quickly, sustain a huge primary surplus, and repay its debts. Why? To help save French and German banks, which the IMF’s sainted managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, wanted to do, because he wanted to be president of France.
Europe crushed the Greek resistance in 2015. Not because Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, thought his economic plan would work; he candidly told the Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, that “as a patriot” he would not sign it himself. But Germany wants to impose its order on Italy and on France, where civil society continues to fight back. And Chancellor Angela Merkel could not admit to her voters, or to fellow Europeans from Slovakia to Portugal, that back in 2010 she’d saved Germany’s banks by saddling them with Greek debts that could never be paid.
Greece was given collective punishment as a lesson. It was done to show that “there is no alternative.” It was done to stop any other attempt to develop, articulate, and defend a more rational policy. It was done to protect the power of the European Central Bank, the German government in Europe, and the policy-making authority, in face of a long record of failure, of the IMF.
Greece is now a colony — the polite say “protectorate.”
Kind of like Hebron, huh?
Elsewhere in Europe the left — Podemos in Spain, the Left Bloc in Portugal, Die Linke in Germany — has stalled out, for now. In France the Socialists are destroying themselves. Italy alone is interesting: It is in the midst of a banking crisis whose only solution is stronger growth; this requires the government to defy Eurozone doctrine or it may lose power to the radical Five Star movement soon. But, apart from that one case, progressive Europe is blocked.
Next up will be the far right, especially the National Front in France, which if it came to power would blow the European Union apart. Similar pressures are building in Poland and Hungary, which have governments already outside of European democratic norms. In Britain, right-wing Tories and the UK Independence Party have combined to vote the UK out of the European Union — although with surprisingly moderate political results so far.
That is why Europe needs the Democracy in Europe Movement. It is just getting underway, and it may go nowhere. But it presents a last, slim hope of holding the European Union together.
Sure is at odds with the above brief.
Democracy would come by small steps at first. Transparency and accountability for Europe’s opaque governing institutions would come first. After that, an economic policy focused on jobs, investment, and sustainability. Ultimately there would have to be big changes, as revolutionary as the 2015 Athens Spring. The old oligarchies, the Brussels cabals, the self-serving technocrats, and the economic ideologues who now dominate European economic policy would have to yield.
Bring it on....
Yikes! That's the kind of thing that will get bad things happening to you!
--more--"
The latest exhibit of such:
"Turkey vows to vanquish ISIS from its borders" by Suzan Fraser Associated Press August 22, 2016
ANKARA, Turkey — Officials vowed Monday to fight Islamic State militants at home and to cleanse the group from Turkey’s borders after a weekend suicide bombing at a Kurdish wedding, an attack that occurred amid recent gains by Syrian Kurdish militia forces against the extremists in neighboring Syria.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but officials said it appeared to be the work of the Islamic State. The attack came after the Syria Democratic Forces, a coalition led by the main Kurdish militia groups in Syria, captured the former ISIS stronghold of Manbij in northern Syria under the cover of airstrikes by the US-led coalition.
‘‘It appears to be an act to punish” the Democratic Union Party, said Nihat Ali Ozcan a security and terrorism expert at the Ankara-based Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey, referring to a Syrian Kurdish group whose militia is fighting ISIS. ‘‘It’s the cross-border settlement of scores by two actors fighting in Syria.’’
Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters Monday that Turkey would press ahead with its fight against the Islamic State inside Turkey and support efforts to remove ISIS fighters from its borders. Cavusoglu said Turkey had become a main ISIS target because of measures it has implemented to stop recruits from crossing into Syria to join the fighting, as well as hundreds of arrests of ISIS suspects in Turkey.
That's part of it, as is the pivot towards Russia.
‘‘Turkey has always been Daesh’s primary target, because Turkey has dried out the source of Daesh’s supply of foreign fighters. . . . It has stopped them from crossing into Syria,’’ he said.
The deadly attack also came amid ongoing struggles between the government and Kurdish militants linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the PKK, and as the country was still reeling from the aftermath of last month’s failed coup attempt, which the government has blamed on a US-based Muslim cleric, Fethullah Gulen, and his followers.
This is where it all gets complicated. Kurds are with U.S., as is ISIS. Then there are always the remnants of Operation Gladio.
The bombing follows a suspected ISIS attack in June on Istanbul’s main airport that killed 44 people, and a double suicide bombing blamed on ISIS at a peace rally in Turkey’s capital, Ankara, in October killed 103 people.
Ozcan, the security expert, said Saturday’s attack was likely carried out by a local ISIS cell whose members would have known the wedding was a Kurdish one and targeted the wedding party for the shock value.
The bride and groom, who survived the bombing, urged authorities to act to prevent future bloodshed.
‘‘They turned our best day to hell. We have no relatives left. They all died,’’ said the groom, Nurettin Akdogan....
--more--"
I think I missed the call from France.
Made the wrong one:
"Bombing at wedding in Turkey kills 51" by Tim Arango and Ceylan Yeginsu New York Times August 21, 2016
ISTANBUL — The attack was the deadliest in a string of terrorist bombings that have struck Turkey this year, as it grapples with the spiraling chaos of spillover from the war in Syria. Bombings this year that Turkish officials have blamed the Islamic State for have struck Istanbul’s old city, near the Blue Mosque; its most famous shopping boulevard, Istiklal Avenue; and, in June, Istanbul’s main airport, among the busiest in Europe.
That last one was dropped rather quickly.
For years, critics have said that Turkey contributed to the chaos — allowing extremist rebels to cross its territory on their way to fight in Syria — to advance its goal of toppling the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad. At the outset of the war in 2011, Erdogan was confident that Assad would quickly fall, as the dictators of Egypt and Tunisia had. But as the war ground on, Turkey increasingly found itself drawn in, with millions of refugees fleeing across the border and, over the last year, a spate of attacks within Turkey.
At the same time, Kurdish militants in the southeast resumed a stalled war against the Turkish government, emboldened by the success of their brethren in Syria, where Kurds have carved out a region of autonomy in the country’s east.
Now, Turkey finds itself with three enemies in the Syrian civil war — Assad, the Islamic State, and Kurdish rebels — and escalating chaos within its own borders. The attack on Saturday in Gaziantep demonstrated how those conflicts sometimes overlap.
Turkey is also reeling from a failed military coup last month that aimed to topple the government of Erdogan and left at least 240 people dead.
In normal times, Gaziantep is famous for its cuisine, especially baklava, the sweet pastry made with pistachios grown nearby. Before war broke out, busloads of Syrians crossed the border almost daily to shop in Gaziantep, as Erdogan pushed stronger economic ties with Syria.
Yet in recent years the city became a hub for lives upended — and preoccupied — by the civil war in Syria. Spies, foreign fighters, diplomats, journalists, relief workers, and refugees passed through the city, sometimes all gathering at the same Starbucks.
Gaziantep became more sinister and violent. The police found an Islamic State bomb-making facility in the city, which they said was used in an attack in Ankara last year that killed more than 100 people. The bomber who struck Istanbul’s Istiklal Avenue came from there, officials said. The Islamic State also carried out murders of Syrian journalists in the city.
On Saturday, the city’s place as not just a remote transit hub for the war but a battleground itself came into focus again.
That the perpetrator of the attack and so many of its victims were so young was a potent illustration of the degradation of the Syrian war as it has inflamed the region. Children have suffered immensely — one devastating image of a Syrian boy injured in an airstrike in Aleppo last week appeared on the front of newspapers around the world, a jarring reminder of the human cost of the war.
The Zionist War Pre$$ waved him at me, and he soon died.
The Islamic State, meanwhile, recruits boys as suicide bombers across Iraq and Syria. In Kirkuk, Iraq, security officials pulled a suicide vest off a boy, according to Reuters.
The bride and groom on Saturday survived without serious injuries. After being released from the hospital, the bride said, “They turned our wedding into a blood bath,” according to the state-run Anadolu News Agency....
--more--"
The terrorism come hand-in-hand with controlled opposition protests.
Also see: Iron Veil of Germany
The Globe lifted it on Italy today:
"Italy seeks to relaunch EU ideal with symbolic summit" Associated Press August 22, 2016
ROME — Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has invited his German and French counterparts to pay their respects at the tomb of one of the founding fathers of European unity in a symbolic bid to relaunch the European project after Britain’s clamorous decision to leave the European Union.
The location for Monday’s summit carries particular resonance as Europe confronts Islamic extremist violence, slow economic growth, and continued anxiety over the implications of the vote by Great Britain. Italy has a lot to gain from a reinvigorated European Union as it copes with flat GDP, the migrant crisis, and political uncertainties over a constitutional referendum this fall.
The island of Ventotene off Naples was where detained anti-fascist Altiero Spinelli in 1941 began co-writing the ‘‘Ventotene Manifesto,’’ which called for a federation of European states to counter the nationalism that had led Europe to war. The document is considered the inspiration of European federalism.
In an interview this weekend with La Repubblica, Renata Colorni, whose father helped spread the ‘‘Ventotene Manifesto’’ through Italy’s resistance movement and whose mother married Spinelli, said she had little hope that today’s Europe could ever meet the Ventotene founders’ original ideals.
‘‘Honestly, today I don’t see first-rate politicians, I only see statesmen who move through the European scene worried about losing the next national elections,’’ she was quoted as saying. ‘‘What’s missing is the will to risk it all for an ideal.’’
--more--"
NDUs:
"Italy, Germany, France tackle post-Brexit EU concerns" Associated Press August 22, 2016
VENTOTENE, Italy — The leaders of Italy, France, and Germany vowed Monday to improve Europe’s defense and economic prospects as they paid tribute to one of the founding fathers of European unity in a symbolic bid to relaunch the European Union after Britain’s vote to leave.
Standing silently together, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, and President Francois Holland of France placed three bouquets of blue and yellow flowers — the colors of the European Union — on the white marble tombstone of Altiero Spinelli on the island of Ventotene.
Spinelli, along with another intellectual confined to Ventotene in the 1940s by Italy’s fascist rulers, co-wrote the ‘‘Ventotene Manifesto’’ calling for a federation of European states to counter the nationalism that had led Europe to war.
The document is considered the inspiration for European federalism.
Renzi invited his French and German counterparts to the sun-soaked island off Naples to remind Europe of its founding ideals as the European Union forges ahead amid a spate of challenges, from slow economic growth to Islamic extremist violence, after Britain’s vote to leave the bloc.
‘‘Many people thought that after Brexit, that Europe was finished. It’s not like that,’’ Renzi said after the hour-long summit. ‘‘We respect the choice of Britain’s citizens, but we want to write a page for the future.’’
Related: Sarkozy to run for French presidency next year
Hollande's future in doubt, as is the rest of the project:
"From the destruction of Greece to democracy in Europe" by James K. Galbraith August 22, 2016
Last year’s third bailout of Greece, imposed by Europe and the International Monetrary Fund, does to Greece what Versailles did to Germany: It strips assets to satisfy debts. Germany lost its merchant marine, its rolling stock, its colonies, and its coal; Greece has lost its seaports, its airports — the profitable ones — and is set to sell off its beaches, the public asset that is a uniquely Greek glory. Private businesses are being forced into bankruptcy to make way for European chains; private citizens are being forced into foreclosure on their homes. It’s a land grab.
Welcome to the New World Order.
And for what? To satisfy old public debts, incurred for tanks, submarines, the Olympics, big construction projects outsourced to German firms, and to hide deficits in health care, with creditor connivance — a quagmire of graft to support an illusion, that Greece could “compete” as part of the euro. Already in 2010 the IMF knew it was breaking its own rules by pretending that Greece could recover quickly, sustain a huge primary surplus, and repay its debts. Why? To help save French and German banks, which the IMF’s sainted managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, wanted to do, because he wanted to be president of France.
Europe crushed the Greek resistance in 2015. Not because Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, thought his economic plan would work; he candidly told the Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, that “as a patriot” he would not sign it himself. But Germany wants to impose its order on Italy and on France, where civil society continues to fight back. And Chancellor Angela Merkel could not admit to her voters, or to fellow Europeans from Slovakia to Portugal, that back in 2010 she’d saved Germany’s banks by saddling them with Greek debts that could never be paid.
Greece was given collective punishment as a lesson. It was done to show that “there is no alternative.” It was done to stop any other attempt to develop, articulate, and defend a more rational policy. It was done to protect the power of the European Central Bank, the German government in Europe, and the policy-making authority, in face of a long record of failure, of the IMF.
Greece is now a colony — the polite say “protectorate.”
Kind of like Hebron, huh?
Elsewhere in Europe the left — Podemos in Spain, the Left Bloc in Portugal, Die Linke in Germany — has stalled out, for now. In France the Socialists are destroying themselves. Italy alone is interesting: It is in the midst of a banking crisis whose only solution is stronger growth; this requires the government to defy Eurozone doctrine or it may lose power to the radical Five Star movement soon. But, apart from that one case, progressive Europe is blocked.
Next up will be the far right, especially the National Front in France, which if it came to power would blow the European Union apart. Similar pressures are building in Poland and Hungary, which have governments already outside of European democratic norms. In Britain, right-wing Tories and the UK Independence Party have combined to vote the UK out of the European Union — although with surprisingly moderate political results so far.
That is why Europe needs the Democracy in Europe Movement. It is just getting underway, and it may go nowhere. But it presents a last, slim hope of holding the European Union together.
Sure is at odds with the above brief.
Democracy would come by small steps at first. Transparency and accountability for Europe’s opaque governing institutions would come first. After that, an economic policy focused on jobs, investment, and sustainability. Ultimately there would have to be big changes, as revolutionary as the 2015 Athens Spring. The old oligarchies, the Brussels cabals, the self-serving technocrats, and the economic ideologues who now dominate European economic policy would have to yield.
Bring it on....
Yikes! That's the kind of thing that will get bad things happening to you!
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The latest exhibit of such:
"Turkey vows to vanquish ISIS from its borders" by Suzan Fraser Associated Press August 22, 2016
ANKARA, Turkey — Officials vowed Monday to fight Islamic State militants at home and to cleanse the group from Turkey’s borders after a weekend suicide bombing at a Kurdish wedding, an attack that occurred amid recent gains by Syrian Kurdish militia forces against the extremists in neighboring Syria.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but officials said it appeared to be the work of the Islamic State. The attack came after the Syria Democratic Forces, a coalition led by the main Kurdish militia groups in Syria, captured the former ISIS stronghold of Manbij in northern Syria under the cover of airstrikes by the US-led coalition.
‘‘It appears to be an act to punish” the Democratic Union Party, said Nihat Ali Ozcan a security and terrorism expert at the Ankara-based Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey, referring to a Syrian Kurdish group whose militia is fighting ISIS. ‘‘It’s the cross-border settlement of scores by two actors fighting in Syria.’’
Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters Monday that Turkey would press ahead with its fight against the Islamic State inside Turkey and support efforts to remove ISIS fighters from its borders. Cavusoglu said Turkey had become a main ISIS target because of measures it has implemented to stop recruits from crossing into Syria to join the fighting, as well as hundreds of arrests of ISIS suspects in Turkey.
That's part of it, as is the pivot towards Russia.
‘‘Turkey has always been Daesh’s primary target, because Turkey has dried out the source of Daesh’s supply of foreign fighters. . . . It has stopped them from crossing into Syria,’’ he said.
The deadly attack also came amid ongoing struggles between the government and Kurdish militants linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the PKK, and as the country was still reeling from the aftermath of last month’s failed coup attempt, which the government has blamed on a US-based Muslim cleric, Fethullah Gulen, and his followers.
This is where it all gets complicated. Kurds are with U.S., as is ISIS. Then there are always the remnants of Operation Gladio.
The bombing follows a suspected ISIS attack in June on Istanbul’s main airport that killed 44 people, and a double suicide bombing blamed on ISIS at a peace rally in Turkey’s capital, Ankara, in October killed 103 people.
Ozcan, the security expert, said Saturday’s attack was likely carried out by a local ISIS cell whose members would have known the wedding was a Kurdish one and targeted the wedding party for the shock value.
The bride and groom, who survived the bombing, urged authorities to act to prevent future bloodshed.
‘‘They turned our best day to hell. We have no relatives left. They all died,’’ said the groom, Nurettin Akdogan....
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I think I missed the call from France.
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