Also on today’s menu:
Al Qaeda Leader Assassinated
Insurrectionist Sentenced In Washington, D.C.
Parakeets And Peace
Gunstock supporters breathed a sigh of relief during their celebration of the senior management staff’s return to the mountain on Monday. With Dr. Strang now off the Gunstock Area Commission, the last condition has been met for the resigned management team to get back to work. But not so fast.
Michael Sylvia, Barbara Comtois, Glen Aldrich, Norm Silber, Dawn Johnson, Paul Terry, and Peter Varney did not attend the meeting, which Sylvia, chair of the Belknap County Delegation, declared to be improper. The rules governing delegation meetings require a week’s notice, and only the chair can schedule a meeting, Sylvia told reporters. Monday’s emergency meeting was called with 24 hours’ notice, as provided in RSA 91-A, the so-called Right-To-Know law, on the call of 10 other Belknap representatives.
Belknap County Attorney Andrew Livernois said he believed the meeting was legal, even if there is a legal gray area in the statutes. That gray area may provide the basis for Sylvia and his supporters to contest the meeting and the actions taken during that emergency session. Given their comments prior to the meeting, there is a distinct possibility that they will prolong Gunstock’s problems, and something that appeared to be settled by a majority of the delegation will continue to fester for some time to come.
Al Qaeda Leader Assassinated
A precise drone strike has killed Ayman al-Zawahiri, a trained surgeon who succeeded Osama bin Laden after the Al Qaeda leader’s assassination in a U.S. raid in 2011. Al-Zawahiri was credited as being the mastermind behind the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Al-Zawahiri was born to a politically connected family in Cairo and earned degrees in medicine and surgery before joining the Egyptian Islamic Jihad in 1979. NBC News reports that he came to international attention in 1981 when he was charged in a plot to assassinate Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, for which he was sentenced to three years in prison. He became acquainted with bin Laden during Russia’s war in Afghanistan.
President Joe Biden Jr. authorized the CIA-led drone strike in downtown Kabul, Afghanistan, killing al-Zawahiri while he was on the balcony of a safe house. No civilians and none of al-Zawahiri’s family members were hurt, Biden said.
Al-Zawahiri had survived four earlier attempts to kill or capture him between 2001 and 2007.
Insurrectionist Sentenced In Washington, D.C.
Guy Reffitt, one of the January 6 rioters to be sentenced in the attack on the U.S. Capitol, is to serve more than seven years in prison, followed by three years’ probation, $2,000 in fines, and mental health treatment.
Reffitt’s convictions on five charges relating to the insurrection were based on his bringing a gun to the riot, threats against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and leading a charge on the Capitol.
Prosecutors wanted to attach penalties for terrorism, but Judge Dabney Fredrich said that doing so would create an “unwarranted disparity” between his sentence and those of other rioters.
Parakeets And Peace
Services will take place on Sunday for long-time Bristol resident Ernie Duncan, who was struck and killed while attempting to remove an obstruction from Interstate-93 on July 27.
A long-time engineer at IPC/Freudenberg-NOK, Ernie had a range of interests, from travel to motorcycles to rescue animals. He was multi-lingual and got involved in community and school affairs, hiding the fact that he had a severe hearing problem and relied on lip-reading much of the time.
My earliest acquaintance with Ernie was through a letter to the editor of the Bristol Enterprise in which he labeled my column “sophomoric” and fit only for the bottom of a parakeet’s cage. I later became friends with him and his wife, Susan, as members of the Newfound Peace Committee, formed during Ronald Reagan’s presidency when we were worried that the rhetoric he used would lead to nuclear annihilation.
For those who, like myself, will be unable to attend the celebration of Ernie’s life on August 7 at 2 p.m., a recording of the event will be linked to www.EmmonsFuneralHome.com.
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Peace, Tom -- and thank you for the dear tribute to Ernie. It's a testimonial to the fact that the person we're "against" today may very well be our best friend tomorrow. Thank you. Susan