Also on today’s menu:
Rage Or Insanity?
Killed In Automobile Crash
Concerns About Election Security
Backing Independent Journalism
Dr. David Strang, who was vice-chair of the Gunstock Area Commission, said he would resign once the Belknap County Delegation had appointed a new member, so there would be a sufficient number of commissioners to conduct business. At an emergency meeting on August 1, the delegation named Denise Conroy to the commission to fill out the term of Gary Kiedaisch, who had resigned in solidarity with Gunstock’s management team. Her appointment brought the commission to four members, allowing Strang to resign while maintaining the necessary number to meet the required quorum. Representative Gregg Hough (R-Laconia) stated, “[W]e should accept his word and his integrity and vote to accept his resignation.”
The problem is that Strang had not formally resigned from the commission at that time, and he was not present to do so at the August 1 meeting. Representative Michael Sylvia (R-Belmont) made that point at the start of the August 15 Gunstock Area Commission meeting: “I’d like you to know that Vice-Chair Strang has not been invited to this little assembly; Vice-Chair Strang has not resigned,” Sylvia said. He called the delegation’s special session “a questionable meeting” and said, “all actions will be challenged, and anything you do today and in the future is going to be before the court.”
The delegation has the authority to appoint and remove Gunstock commissioners, but by taking Strang at his word, rather than simply removing him from his position, the representatives left the door open for a legal challenge. Of course, had they removed Strang without cause, he could have challenged the decision as well, but because the management team that had resigned was willing to return to work and reopen Gunstock once he was gone, the delegation would have been in a better position to defend its decision.
Now, while the Gunstock commissioners are trying to move forward and leave the past behind, they are faced with a new legal challenge that can make it difficult to address the master plan and other initiatives to make Gunstock Mountain Resort even more successful that it has been under President and General Manager Tom Day.
Rage Or Insanity?
When Hassan Sapry, 24, killed Wilfred Guzman Sr. on April 18, 2019, he was acting on pent-up rage, fueled by racial slurs and comments Guzman had made about Sapry’s Islamic faith, according to Senior Assistant Attorney General Danielle Sakowski during opening arguments of the trial in Belknap County Superior Court. She said Sapry “cut, stabbed, chopped, and stabbed” Guzman in the kitchen of his Blueberry Lane apartment for between 10 and 12 minutes. There were more than 140 wounds on 57-year-old Guzman.
Defense attorney Mark Sisti said the attack was not rage or premeditated murder; it was a break with reality following years of mental illness after a childhood in Baghdad, Iraq, where Sapry saw children in his school killed by suicide bombers, where he saw people in a car incinerated when another car was blown up by a roadside bomb, and from the trauma of his father being kidnapped and beaten so badly he was disfigured and Sapry did not recognize him when he was finally released.
Sapry’s trial will focus on those two competing explanations for the brutality of the Laconia murder in which the defendant used a sword blade, forks, tongs, and a butter knife to do the job.
Killed In Automobile Crash
Jacquelyn Decareau, 30, died in an automobile crash following a reported disturbance at Glencliff on August 14.
New Hampshire State Police officers from the Troop F Barracks responding to the disturbance call learned that Decareau had left the area and was heading toward Haverhill on Route 25. A short time later, the Haverhill Police Department was called to a crash on Route 25 in Pike, on the Haverhill-Benton town line. Responders found Decareau dead in a 2017 Toyota Tacoma that had crashed into a field. She was not wearing a seatbelt and apparently died from injuries sustained in the crash.
Investigating troopers believe that speed and impairment led to the fatal crash.
Concerns About Election Security
There is growing concern among experts that officials sympathetic to former president Donald Trump’s claims of vote-rigging could undermine future election security in the name of protecting it. Emails and other records obtained by The Washington Post reveal that a team of computer experts directed by lawyers allied with Trump had copied sensitive data from election systems in Georgia as part of a multi-state effort to gain access to voting equipment.
Trump and his advisers had alleged that there were plots involving foreign forces and the makers of voting machines in 2020. Both Dominion and independent experts have said that, even with the release of data copied from election equipment, there are many safeguards in place to prevent attempts to alter results. Accuracy testing ahead of an election and post-election audits that include the hand-counting of ballots are among the measures intended to detect any such activity.
According to the documents, lawyers allied with Trump asked a forensic data firm to access county election systems in at least three battleground states. Attorney Sidney Powell sent the team to Michigan to copy election data, and a Trump campaign attorney engaged the team to travel to Nevada. The day after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, the team was in southern Georgia, copying data from a Dominion voting system in rural Coffee County.
The emails and other records were collected through a subpoena issued to the forensics firm, Atlanta-based SullivanStrickler, by plaintiffs in a long-running lawsuit in federal court over the security of Georgia’s voting systems. The documents provide the first confirmation that data from Georgia’s election system was copied.
Backing Independent Journalism
The Liberty Independent Media Project relies upon subscriptions and donations to cover the cost of maintaining its website and distributing the news. Writers are not compensated for their work unless a news entity purchases the stories produced.
That presents a problem when a major story emerges out of the day-to-day reporting. When something like the Gunstock controversy becomes a story of statewide interest, the news outlets put their own writers on the coverage, leaving the freelancers and content-providers behind.
It also is a problem for local news coverage. Media outlets have little interest in the municipal coverage that focuses on selectmen’s meetings and school board issues that are so important to the community. If those stories are covered, there is no income to cover the time spent reporting on those subjects.
That is why there is a Supporting Membership level, at $180 per year (with an option to contribute any other amount) that would support the pursuit of those important stories that tend to get ignored. If you would like to see more local coverage, please consider making such a donation. The Liberty Independent Media Project is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, so donations are tax-deductible.
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