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Come to Detroit Nov. 4 and Stand Up for Justice!
Please register with your plans to attend the trial. This is also our way to connect both "drivers and riders" from around the country.
Statement of Rasmea Defense Committee
Judge Gershwin Drain handed down a series of outrageous and unjust decisions, Oct. 27 – 28, in the case of revered Palestinian American leader Rasmea Odeh. The government is going all out to railroad Rasmea, to jail and deport her. There was nothing fair about her being indicted on trumped up immigration charges in the first place. The recent rulings by Judge Drain indicate that there will be nothing fair about Rasmea’s trial either.
Determined and collective action by those of us who yearn for justice, and civil and human rights, is imperative. We must fill the streets around the courthouse in Detroit, pack the courtroom during the trial, and organize demonstrations around the country. If there is to be a measure of justice in this case, we are the ones who must provide it.
In the late 1960s, Rasmea Odeh was jailed by the Israeli occupiers of Palestine, where she was tortured and raped. She has spent the past 20 years in the U.S., making huge contributions to not only the Arab community of Chicagoland, but also the immigrant rights, racial justice, women’s rights and many other movements. She is being victimized for a second time in Detroit.
Judge Drain agreed that Rasmea’s assertion that she faced torture and sexual abuse at the hands of her Israeli captors is “credible,” then contradicted himself and ruled it cannot be brought up in the course of her trial - even though this was at the heart of her defense. Her attorneys had planned to call an expert witness to the stand, but now will not be allowed to. Clinical psychologist Dr. Mary Fabri, who has decades of experience working with torture survivors, would have testified that an error Rasmea allegedly made in filling out immigration forms (the basis for the charge against her) was the result of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Instead, Judge Drain will allow the prosecution to use documents provided by the Israelis as evidence in the case, even though these documents are the products of Israeli military courts and a “legal” system that routinely uses torture. He has even gone so far as to rule that when Rasmea testifies, she can only address issues that the prosecution agrees to allow.
No fair minded person can accept any of this. That is why we have to go all out for Tuesday, November 4, in Detroit.
Rasmea Odeh has devoted her entire life to making this world a better place. The U.S. government wants to criminalize those that stand up for Palestine. We cannot allow this to happen. We do not know how long Rasmea’s trial will last, but due to the extreme limits that Judge Drain has placed on the scope of the trial, we are urging supporters to prioritize attending the first week - Tuesday, November 4th, through Friday, November 7th.
Pack the courtroom! Don’t let them win!
Please register your plans to attend the trial. We will work to get you a ride (or to fill your car), or housing.
To register, visit StopFBI.net
Or, fill out this online form.
Or, email info@stopfbi.net
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Copyright © 2014 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights reserved.
Thanks for your ongoing interest in the fight against FBI repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists!
Our mailing address is:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
—Committee to Stop FBI Repression, October 6, 2014
http://www.stopfbi.net/2014/10/6/detroit-us-attorney-threatens-supporters-rasmea-odeh
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Please forward and post widely
- Scroll down for School Board addresses -
Here’s what happened: Under pressure from the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP)—operating through a friendly publicity agent called Fox News—the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) earlier this year shut down an entire website composed of teacher-drafted curriculum material called Urban Dreams. Why? Because this site included course guidelines on the censorship of innocent political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal! The course material compared the censorship of Mumia’s extensive radio commentaries and writings, with that of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s later writings, which focused on class exploitation and his opposition to the US’ imperialist War against Vietnam. Both were effectively silenced by the big media, including in Mumia’s case, by National Public Radio (NPR).
Mumia Is Innocent! But He’s Still a Top Target of FOP
Abu-Jamal has long been a top-row target for the FOP, which tried to get him legally killed for decades. Mumia was framed by the Philadelphia police and falsely convicted of murdering a Philadelphia policeman in 1982, with the extensive collaboration of lying prosecutors, corrupt courts, the US Justice Department, and key political figures.
Mumia’s death sentence was dropped only when a federal appeals court judge set it aside because of blatantly illegal jury instructions by the original highly racist trial judge. (The same federal judge upheld every bogus detail of Mumia’s conviction.) The local Philadelphia prosecutor and politicians chickened out of trying to get Mumia’s original death sentence reinstated due to the fact that all their evidence of his guilt had long been exposed as totally fraudulent!
FOP: Can’t Kill Him? Silence Him!
The FOP had to swallow the fact that the local mucky-mucks had dropped the ball on executing Mumia, but they were rewarded with a substitute sentence of life without the possibility of parole, imposed by a local court acting in secret. Mumia is now serving this new and equally unjust sentence of “slow death.”
This gets us back to the FOP’s main point here, which is to silence Mumia. They can’t stop Mumia from writing and recording his world-renownd commentaries (which are available at Prison Radio, www.prisonradio.org). But they look for any opportunity to smear and discredit Mumia, and keep him out of the public eye; and these snakes have found a morsel on the Urban Dreams web site to go after!
Urban Dreams Was Well Used by Teachers
Urban Dreams was initially set up under a grant from the federal Dept. of Education in 1999-2004 and contains teacher-written material on a wide variety of issues. It is (was) used extensively in California and beyond. The OUSD’s knee-jerk reaction to shut the whole site down because of a complaint from police, broadcast on the all-powerful Fox News network, shows the rapid decline of the US into police-state status. Why should we let a bunch of lying, vicious cops, whose only real job is to protect the wealthy and powerful from all of us, get away with this?
Fresh from defeating Obama’s nominee to head the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department because he served for a period as Mumia’s attorney, the FOP is attacking a school lesson plan that asks students to think outside the box of system propaganda. But the grave-diggers of capitalist oppression are stirring.
Labor Says No To Police Persecution of Mumia!
In 1999, the Oakland teachers union, Oakland Education Association (OEA), held an unauthorized teach-in on Mumia and the death penalty. Later the same year, longshore workers in the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) shut down all West-Coast ports to Free Mumia. Other teacher actions happened around the country and internationally. And now the Alameda County Labor Council, acting on a resolution submitted by an OEA member, has denounced the FOP-inspired shutdown of Urban Dreams, and called for the site’s complete restoration (ie no deletions).
Labor Says No To Censorship of Mumia, and Teachers!
We are asking union members particularly, and everyone else as well, if you abhor police-sponsored censorship of school curricula, and want to see justice and freedom for the wrongfully convicted such as Mumia Abu-Jamal, send your message of protest now to the Oakland School Board, at the three addresses below.
Union members: take the resolution below to your local union or labor council, and get it passed!
Whatever you do, send a copy of your protest letter or resolution, or a report of your actions, to Oakland Teachers for Mumia, at communard2@juno.com.
Here is the Alameda County Labor Council resolution:
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Labor Speaks: Urban Dreams Censorship Resolution
Alameda County Labor Council
Whereas Mumia Abu-Jamal, an award winning journalist, defender of the rights of the working class, people of color, and oppressed people has been imprisoned since 1982 without parole for a crime he didn’t commit after his death sentence was finally overturned;
Whereas the Oakland Unified School District’s censorship of the Urban Dreams website was in reaction to a Fox News and Fraternal Order of Police attack on a lesson plan asking students to consider a parallel between censorship of Martin Luther King’s radical ideas and censorship of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and;
Whereas it is dangerous and unacceptable to allow the police to determine the curriculum of a major school district like Oakland, or any school district;
Whereas removal of the Urban Dreams OUSD website denies educators and student access to invaluable curriculum resources by Oakland teachers with social justice themes promoting critical thinking, and;
Whereas in 1999, the Oakland Education Association led the teach-in on Mumia Abu-Jamal and the death penalty which helped deepen the debate in the U.S. on the death penalty itself, and greatly intensified the spotlight on the widespread issue of wrongful conviction and demanded justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal, and;
Whereas OEA and Alameda Contra Costa County Service Center of CTA cited the Mumia teach-in and the censored unit on Martin Luther King Jr. in its Human Rights WHO AWARD for 2013;
Be it resolved that the Alameda Labor Council condemns OUSD’s censorship of the Urban Dreams website and demands that it immediately restore access to all materials on the website, reaffirms its demand for justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal, and issues a press release to seek the widest possible support from defenders of free speech and those who seek justice for Mumia.
- Submitted by Keith Brown, OEA
- Passed, Alameda County Labor Council, 14 July 2014
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Now It’s your turn!
Join with Ed Asner, and with the Alameda County Labor Council, in protesting the
Oakland School Board’s censorship of the Urban Dreams web site!
• Ask your local union, labor council or other organization to endorse the resolution by the Alameda County Labor Council.
• Demand the School Board reinstate the Urban Dreams website without any deletions!
• Send your union resolutions or letters of protest to the following;
1. Oakland Board of Education: boe@ousd.k12.ca.us
2. Board President Davd Kakishiba: David.Kakishiba@ousd.k12.ca.us
3. Superintendent Antwan Wilson: Antwan.Wilson@ousd.k12.ca.us
Important: Send a copy of your resolution or email to:
Bob Mandel/Teachers for Mumia at: communard2@juno.com.
Thank you for your support!
-This message is from the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal,
and Oakland Teachers for Mumia.
communard2@juno.com.
B. ARTICLES IN FULL
1) Kansas: Guilty Verdict Upheld in Doctor’s Killing
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2) Protesters march against Renzi labor reforms in Rome
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3) Law Lets I.R.S. Seize Accounts on Suspicion, No Crime Required
ARNOLDS PARK, Iowa — For almost 40 years, Carole Hinders has dished out Mexican specialties at her modest cash-only restaurant. For just as long, she deposited the earnings at a small bank branch a block away — until last year, when two tax agents knocked on her door and informed her that they had seized her checking account, almost $33,000.
The Internal Revenue Service agents did not accuse Ms. Hinders of money laundering or cheating on her taxes — in fact, she has not been charged with any crime. Instead, the money was seized solely because she had deposited less than $10,000 at a time, which they viewed as an attempt to avoid triggering a required government report.
“How can this happen?” Ms. Hinders said in a recent interview. “Who takes your money before they prove that you’ve done anything wrong with it?”
The federal government does.
Using a law designed to catch drug traffickers, racketeers and terrorists by tracking their cash, the government has gone after run-of-the-mill business owners and wage earners without so much as an allegation that they have committed serious crimes. The government can take the money without ever filing a criminal complaint, and the owners are left to prove they are innocent. Many give up.
“They’re going after people who are really not criminals,” said David Smith, a former federal prosecutor who is now a forfeiture expert and lawyer in Virginia. “They’re middle-class citizens who have never had any trouble with the law.”
On Thursday, in response to questions from The New York Times, the I.R.S. announced that it would curtail the practice, focusing instead on cases where the money is believed to have been acquired illegally or seizure is deemed justified by “exceptional circumstances.”
Richard Weber, the chief of Criminal Investigation at the I.R.S., said in a written statement, “This policy update will ensure that C.I. continues to focus our limited investigative resources on identifying and investigating violations within our jurisdiction that closely align with C.I.’s mission and key priorities.” He added that making deposits under $10,000 to evade reporting requirements, called structuring, is still a crime whether the money is from legal or illegal sources. The new policy will not apply to past seizures.
The I.R.S. is one of several federal agencies that pursue such cases and then refer them to the Justice Department. The Justice Department does not track the total number of cases pursued, the amount of money seized or how many of the cases were related to other crimes, said Peter Carr, a spokesman.
But the Institute for Justice, a Washington-based public interest law firm that is seeking to reform civil forfeiture practices, analyzed structuring data from the I.R.S., which made 639 seizures in 2012, up from 114 in 2005. Only one in five was prosecuted as a criminal structuring case.
The practice has swept up dairy farmers in Maryland, an Army sergeant in Virginia saving for his children’s college education and Ms. Hinders, 67, who has borrowed money, strained her credit cards and taken out a second mortgage to keep her restaurant going.
Their money was seized under an increasingly controversial area of law known as civil asset forfeiture, which allows law enforcement agents to take property they suspect of being tied to crime even if no criminal charges are filed. Law enforcement agencies get to keep a share of whatever is forfeited.
Critics say this incentive has led to the creation of a law enforcement dragnet, with more than 100 multiagency task forces combing through bank reports, looking for accounts to seize. Under the Bank Secrecy Act, banks and other financial institutions must report cash deposits greater than $10,000. But since many criminals are aware of that requirement, banks also are supposed to report any suspicious transactions, including deposit patterns below $10,000. Last year, banks filed more than 700,000 suspicious activity reports. Owners who are caught up in structuring cases often cannot afford to fight. The median amount seized by the I.R.S. was $34,000, according to the Institute for Justice analysis, while legal costs can easily mount to $20,000 or more.
There is nothing illegal about depositing less than $10,000cash unless it is done specifically to evade the reporting requirement. But often a mere bank statement is enough for investigators to obtain a seizure warrant. In one Long Island case, the police submitted almost a year’s worth of daily deposits by a business, ranging from $5,550 to $9,910. The officer wrote in his warrant affidavit that based on his training and experience, the pattern “is consistent with structuring.” The government seized $447,000 from the business, a cash-intensive candy and cigarette distributor that has been run by one family for 27 years.
There are often legitimate business reasons for keeping deposits below $10,000, said Larry Salzman, a lawyer with the Institute for Justice who is representing Ms. Hinders and the Long Island family pro bono. For example, he said, a grocery store owner in Fraser, Mich., had an insurance policy that covered only up to $10,000 cash. When he neared the limit, he would make a deposit.
Ms. Hinders said that she did not know about the reporting requirement and that for decades, she thought she had been doing everyone a favor.
“My mom had told me if you keep your deposits under $10,000, the bank avoids paperwork,” she said. “I didn’t actually think it had anything to do with the I.R.S.”
In May 2012, the bank branch Ms. Hinders used was acquired by Northwest Banker. JoLynn Van Steenwyk, the fraud and security manager for Northwest, said she could not discuss individual clients, but explained that the bank did not have access to past account histories after it acquired Ms. Hinders’s branch.
Banks are not permitted to advise customers that their deposit habits may be illegal or educate them about structuring unless they ask, in which case they are given a federal pamphlet, Ms. Van Steenwyk said. “We’re not allowed to tell them anything,” she said.
Still lawyers say it is not unusual for depositors to be advised by financial professionals, or even bank tellers, to keep their deposits below the reporting threshold. In the Long Island case, the company, Bi-County Distributors, had three bank accounts closed because of the paperwork burden of its frequent cash deposits, said Jeff Hirsch, the eldest of three brothers who own the company. Their accountant then recommended staying below the limit, so for more than a decade the company had been using its excess cash to pay vendors.
More than two years ago, the government seized $447,000, and the brothers have been unable to retrieve it. Mr. Salzman, who has taken over legal representation of the brothers, has argued that prosecutors violated a strict timeline laid out in the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act, passed in 2000 to curb abuses. The office of the federal attorney for the Eastern District of New York said the law’s timeline did not apply in this case. Still, prosecutors asked the Hirsch’s first lawyer, Joseph Potashnik, to waive the CARFA timeline. The waiver he signed expired almost two years ago.
The federal attorney’s office said that parties often voluntarily negotiated to avoid going to court, and that Mr. Potashnik had been engaged in talks until just a few months ago. But Mr. Potashnik said he had spent that time trying, to no avail, to show that the brothers were innocent. They even paid a forensic accounting firm $25,000 to check the books.
“I don’t think they’re really interested in anything,” Mr. Potashnik said of the prosecutors. “They just want the money.”
Bi-County has survived only because longtime vendors have extended credit — one is owed almost $300,000, Mr. Hirsch said. Twice, the government has made settlement offers that would require the brothers to give up an “excessive” portion of the money, according to a new court filing.
“We’re just hanging on as a family here,” Mr. Hirsch said. “We weren’t going to take a settlement, because I was not guilty.”
Army Sgt. Jeff Cortazzo of Arlington, Va., began saving for his daughters’ college costs during the financial crisis, when many banks were failing. He stored cash first in his basement and then in a safe-deposit box. All of the money came from paychecks, he said, but he worried that when he deposited it in a bank, he would be forced to pay taxes on the money again. So he asked the bank teller what to do.
“She said: ‘Oh, that’s easy. You just have to deposit less than $10,000.’”
The government seized $66,000; settling cost Sergeant Cortazzo $21,000. As a result, the eldest of his three daughters had to delay college by a year.
“Why didn’t the teller tell me that was illegal?” he said. “I would have just plopped the whole thing in the account and been done with it.”
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4) Aid for Gazans Arrives, but Remains Untouched
GAZA CITY — Truckloads of cement, steel and gravel that Israel allowed into Gaza on Oct. 14 with great fanfare remain locked in warehouses, unavailable to thousands of families desperate to fix homes damaged by Israeli attacks as wintry winds and rain begin.
About $150,000 of construction material sits behind two link chains at Hatem Shammaly’s place in the Shejaiya neighborhood. Every day, a half-dozen United Nations and Palestinian Authority workers stop by to look at the supplies, said Mr. Shammaly, and at the eight security cameras trained on the site. Every day, too, Gazans show up begging to buy the stuff, but Mr. Shammaly is not allowed to sell.
“It’s like a mourning house outside, crying and weeping — nobody believes that we can’t control or handle a single bag,” he said. “Yesterday a woman came here. She wanted just two bags of cement, she wanted to repair her home. She was cursing God against us.”
Two months after a cease-fire ended this summer’s battle between Israel and Hamas, reconstruction of more than 100,000 damaged or destroyed buildings remains a distant dream.
The Palestinian housing ministry’s damage assessment is only 60 percent complete. Officials say they have yet to collect a dime of the $5.4 billion that international donors have pledged to the effort. A promised monitoring mechanism to ensure materials are not diverted to military purposes is not in place. Rubble removal has barely begun.
But the landscape is not completely stagnant: Outside the approved system, a dozen men were at work this week rebuilding the headquarters of Al Aqsa satellite channel, one of the Hamas-affiliated media network’s four sites struck by Israel this summer.
One worker was busy coating silver support beams to ward off rust. Others passed recycled rebar up several stories. They had already erected two cinder block walls and wood-framed a sloped roof in a project that began Oct. 8 and was expected to take three months.
“The Zionist enemy destroys, and we rebuild,” declared Mohammed Thuraya, manager of Al Aqsa network, which employs 500 people and runs two television channels, a radio station and a news agency. “We are used to building — building ideas, ideologies and generations. The people will not be silent waiting for the materials. Al Aqsa network will remain the conscience of the Palestinian people that broadcasts the truth.”
Mr. Thuraya said United Nations agencies refused to include his buildings on the list for reconstruction because “they consider us a terrorist channel.” He would not specify beyond “private donors” who was financing the reconstruction of the four-story, 5,400-square-foot studio and offices that were hit by Israeli bombs on July 29.
The project engineer said he paid $5,500 for 10 tons of cement, quintuple the regular price, because of scarcity caused by Israeli import restrictions and the closing of smuggling tunnels from Egypt.
In another independent initiative, the little-known Arab and International Commission to Build Gaza has cleared away rubble and is beginning to shore up columns of an Interior Ministry building erected by the former Hamas government. The commission has a Hamas official on its board, features an Egyptian dissident based in Qatar on its website, and asked on Facebook for donations to be filtered through the Islamic Bank in Tripoli.
Mohammed Abu Aqleen, the commission’s manager in Gaza, said that the Interior Ministry building was selected only because it was in danger of collapsing, and that the group had also begun to rehabilitate 20 homes throughout Gaza and to manufacture hundreds of trailers to temporarily house the displaced. He would not say where the $1 million raised so far had come from.
Referring to the effort by the Palestinian Authority and United Nations to provide assurances to Israel that so-called dual-use materials will not go to rebuild tunnels that militants used to penetrate its territory, Mr. Abu Aqleen said, “This mechanism will be just words on paper.”
But most of Gaza must await the monitoring mechanism, which Israeli and Palestinian delegations are expected to discuss further next week in Cairo. Officials at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the United Nations Development Program and the Norwegian Refugee Council, a leading international aid group, said the timetable remained elusive.
“It all depends on how fast the material can come in, which I just don’t know,” said Scott Anderson, Gaza’s deputy director of the relief and works agency. Asked why the material that already arrived was sitting in warehouses, Mr. Anderson said: “That I can’t answer. I’ve asked the question also.”
Some 39,000 Gazans remain in 18 United Nations schools serving as shelters, and many more are bunking with relatives. The relief and works agency has given 1,000 families a total of $1 million for temporary rental assistance or minor repairs. The housing ministry said it would begin giving grants of $1,000 to $2,000 next week.
In Shejaiya, a neighborhood devastated by Israel’s ground offensive and where roads remain obstacle courses of rubble piles, Ghassan Muhisen could not wait. He said he had bought 20 bags of cement for $31.75 each — they are typically $6.60 — and 400 cinder blocks for $1 each, double the normal price, and hired five local men to fix walls in his kitchen and living room shattered by Israeli shells.
“One can never be comfortable away from his home,” said Mr. Muhisen, 37, a father of three who works for the sports ministry. He said he moved back Oct. 1 after weeks with friends and relatives. “Winter is coming, cold. Instead of paying the money for the rent, I used it for the repair.”
He ran out of money before replacing the windows, so he hung sheets over them instead.
Mr. Shammaly, the warehouse manager, said he was thrilled when the Palestinian civil affairs minister called Oct. 5 and told him his company, whose annual revenue is about $13 million, was one of 12 vendors approved to handle materials for the reconstruction. Two years earlier, he had spent $2,000 installing eight cameras in his 16,000-square-foot warehouses and put guards on duty 24 hours; he had already worked with the United Nations on several projects.
But after the cement, steel and gravel sat untouched for a week, Mr. Shammaly said: “If they continue in this mechanism, I will not participate.”
“I’m a merchant, buy and sell,” he explained. “I can’t freeze goods here, pile it up.”
Fares Akram contributed reporting.
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5) Report Reveals Wider Tracking of Mail in U.S.
WASHINGTON — In a rare public accounting of its mass surveillance program, the United States Postal Service reported that it approved nearly 50,000 requests last year from law enforcement agencies and its own internal inspection unit to secretly monitor the mail of Americans for use in criminal and national security investigations.
The number of requests, contained in a little-noticed 2014 audit of the surveillance program by the Postal Service’s inspector general, shows that the surveillance program is more extensive than previously disclosed and that oversight protecting Americans from potential abuses is lax.
The audit, along with interviews and documents obtained by The New York Times under the Freedom of Information Act, offers one of the first detailed looks at the scope of the program, which has played an important role in the nation’s vast surveillance effort since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.The audit found that in many cases the Postal Service approved requests to monitor an individual’s mail without adequately describing the reason or having proper written authorization.
In addition to raising privacy concerns, the audit questioned the efficiency and accuracy of the Postal Service in handling the requests. Many requests were not processed in time, the audit said, and computer errors caused the same tracking number to be assigned to different surveillance requests.
“Insufficient controls could hinder the Postal Inspection Service’s ability to conduct effective investigations, lead to public concerns over privacy of mail and harm the Postal Service’s brand,” the audit concluded.
The audit was posted in May without public announcement on the website of the Postal Service inspector general and got almost no attention.
The surveillance program, officially called mail covers, is more than a century old, but is still considered a powerful investigative tool. At the request of state or federal law enforcement agencies or the Postal Inspection Service, postal workers record names, return addresses and any other information from the outside of letters and packages before they are delivered to a person’s home.
Law enforcement officials say this deceptively old-fashioned method of collecting data provides a wealth of information about the businesses and associates of their targets, and can lead to bank and property records and even accomplices. (Opening the mail requires a warrant.)
Interviews and court records also show that the surveillance program was used by a county attorney and sheriff to investigate a political opponent in Arizona — the county attorney was later disbarred in part because of the investigation — and to monitor privileged communications between lawyers and their clients, a practice not allowed under postal regulations.
Theodore Simon, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said he was troubled by the audit and the potential for the Postal Service to snoop uncontrolled into the private lives of Americans.
“It appears that there has been widespread disregard of the few protections that were supposed to be in place,” Mr. Simon said.
In information provided to The Times earlier this year under the Freedom of Information Act, the Postal Service said that from 2001 through 2012, local, state and federal law enforcement agencies made more than 100,000 requests to monitor the mail of Americans. That would amount to an average of some 8,000 requests a year — far fewer than the nearly 50,000 requests in 2013 that the Postal Service reported in the audit.
The difference is that the Postal Service apparently did not provide to The Times the number of surveillance requests made for national security investigations or those requested by its own investigation and law enforcement arm, the Postal Inspection Service. Typically, the inspection service works hand in hand with outside law enforcement agencies that have come to the Postal Service asking for investigations into fraud, pornography, terrorism or other potential criminal activity.
The Postal Service also uses a program called Mail Imaging, in which its computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail sent in the United States. The program’s primary purpose is to process the mail, but in some cases it is also used as a surveillance system that allows law enforcement agencies to request stored images of mail sent to and received by people they are investigating.
Another system, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking Program, was created after anthrax attacks killed five people, including two postal workers, in late 2001. It is used to track or investigate packages or letters suspected of containing biohazards like anthrax or ricin. The program was first made public in 2013 in the course of an investigation into ricin-laced letters mailed to President Obama and Michael R. Bloomberg, then New York City’s mayor, by an actress, Shannon Guess Richardson.
Despite the sweep of the programs, postal officials say they are both less intrusive than that of the National Security Agency’s vast collection of phone and Internet records and have safeguards to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans.
“You can’t just get a mail cover to go on a fishing expedition,” said Paul J. Krenn, a spokesman for the Postal Inspection Service. “There has to be a legitimate law enforcement reason, and the mail cover can’t be the sole tool.”
The mail cover surveillance requests cut across all levels of government — from global intelligence investigations by the United States Army Criminal Investigations Command, which requested 500 mail covers from 2001 through 2012, to state-level criminal inquiries by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which requested 69 mail covers in the same period. The Department of Veterans Affairs requested 305, and the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security asked for 256. The information was provided to The Times under the Freedom of Information request.
Postal officials did not say how many requests came from agencies in charge of national security — including the F.B.I., the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection — because release of the information, wrote Kimberly Williams, a public records analyst for the Postal Inspection Service, “would reveal techniques and procedures for law enforcement or prosecutions.”Defense lawyers say the secrecy concerning the surveillance makes it hard to track abuses in the program because most people are not aware they are being monitored. But there have been a few cases in which the program appears to have been abused by law enforcement officials.
In Arizona in 2011, Mary Rose Wilcox, a Maricopa County supervisor, discovered that her mail was being monitored by the county’s sheriff, Joe Arpaio. Ms. Wilcox had been a frequent critic of Mr. Arpaio, objecting to what she considered the targeting of Hispanics in his immigration sweeps.
The Postal Service had granted an earlier request from Mr. Arpaio and Andrew Thomas, who was then the county attorney, to track Ms. Wilcox’s personal and business mail.
Using information gleaned from letters and packages sent to Ms. Wilcox and her husband, Mr. Arpaio and Mr. Thomas obtained warrants for banking and other information about two restaurants the couple owned. The sheriff’s office also raided a company that hired Ms. Wilcox to provide concessions at the local airport.
“We lost the contract we had for the concession at the airport, and the investigation into our business scared people away from our restaurants,” Ms. Wilcox said in an interview. “I don’t blame the Postal Service, but you shouldn’t be able to just use these mail covers to go on a fishing expedition. There needs to be more control.”
She sued the county, was awarded nearly $1 million in a settlement in 2011 and received the money this June when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling. Mr. Thomas, the former county attorney, was disbarred for his role in investigations into the business dealings of Ms. Wilcox and other officials and for other unprofessional conduct. The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office declined to comment on Mr. Arpaio’s use of mail covers in the investigation of Ms. Wilcox.
In another instance, Cynthia Orr, a defense lawyer in San Antonio, recalled that while working on a pornography case in the early 2000s, federal prosecutors used mail covers to track communications between her team of lawyers and a client who was facing obscenity and tax evasion charges. Ms. Orr complained to prosecutors but never learned if the tracking stopped. Her team lost the case.
“The troubling part is that they don’t have to report the use of this tool to anyone,” Ms. Orr said in an interview. The Postal Service declined to comment on the case.
Frank Askin, a law professor at the Rutgers Constitutional Rights Clinic, who as a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union successfully sued the F.B.I. nearly 40 years ago after the agency monitored the mail of a 15-year-old New Jersey student, said he was concerned about the oversight of the current program.
“Postal Service employees are not judicial officers schooled in the meaning of the First Amendment,” Mr. Askin said.
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6) Top New York Correction Official, Under Fire Over Rikers Violence, to Step Down
The New York City Correction Department’s top uniformed officer, facing criticism over underreporting of violence at Rikers Island, will step down, a department spokesman said Tuesday.
The officer, William Clemons, a 29-year veteran correction official in New York, was appointed chief of department just five months ago by Mayor Bill de Blasio’s reform-minded correction commissioner, who described him at the time as a “superb corrections professional.”
The department spokesman, Peter Thorne, said Mr. Clemons was “retiring” but could not immediately provide more details.
In a statement released Tuesday morning, Joseph Ponte, the current commissioner, wrote that Mr. Clemons “proved himself an able leader” and “was a model of stability in a tumultuous time.” He said he would appoint a new chief by Dec. 1, when Mr. Clemons is scheduled to leave.
The move is a blow to Mr. Ponte, who has stalwartly defended his decision to promote Mr. Clemons in the face of unsettling revelations about his competence in recent weeks.
Mr. Clemons has faced increasing calls for his resignation since an investigation by The New York Times in September uncovered details from an internal Correction Department audit, which found he had “abdicated all responsibility” in his duties as warden of a juvenile facility at Rikers Island in 2011 where hundreds of inmate fights had been omitted from official statistics. The audit recommended that he be demoted.
Instead, The Times found, he was promoted, multiple times, while the most damning criticisms, including the recommendation of a demotion, were removed from the report by the commissioner at the time.
Mr. Ponte has said he did not see the unedited version of the report before appointing Mr. Clemons chief of department in May. Even so, he promoted Mr. Clemons despite a recommendation against it by the city’s Department of Investigation.
Mr. Clemons’s decision to step down, which was first reported by The Associated Press, comes at a time when the Correction Department faces intense pressure from the news media, lawmakers and federal authorities to address systemic brutality and corruption at Rikers Island. The United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, which released a report about violence among juveniles in August, has threatened to sue the city if changes are not made.
In recent weeks, lawmakers have seized upon Mr. Ponte’s defense of Mr. Clemons as evidence of the slow pace of change.
At a City Council hearing this month on brutality at Rikers, the Council speaker, Melissa Mark-Viverito, citing The Times’s investigation, criticized Mr. Ponte for failing to fire Mr. Clemons, calling the department chief “clearly incompetent.”
When asked why he had kept Mr. Clemons on, Mr. Ponte defended him.
“He’s got a long history of doing good work in the agency,” he said.
Mr. Clemons, who usually sits beside the commissioner at public meetings, did not appear at that hearing, raising the ire of Elizabeth Crowley, the chairwoman of the committee that oversees corrections.
Mr. Clemons, she said, “did not have the backbone to appear today before the committee.”
When asked where he was, Mr. Ponte told her that Mr. Clemons was on vacation.
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7) South African Union Breaks From A.N.C. as Alliance Frays Further
LONDON — A simmering dispute within South Africa’s
political establishment moved closer to a showdown on Monday when the
country’s biggest labor union announced that it would break with the
governing African Nation Congress and form a new socialist political
party.
The move by the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, known as Numsa, dealt a significant blow to the coalition of labor and political forces that has dominated the country since the formal end of apartheid in 1994. It threatened to speed the realignment of political forces in South Africa and strengthen the government’s adversaries on the left.
But, as the country’s leaders and factions maneuvered on Monday, the full impact of Numsa’s step remained unclear.
“We decided to break with the alliance, and we resolved to form a united front and explore the possibility for socialism in South Africa,” Numsa said in a statement, quoted in news reports, that gave no further details.South African politics has been dominated for two decades by a three-way alliance among the African National Congress, the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, of which Numsa is a member. The alliance, which grew from shared opposition to apartheid, has begun to fray.
Though Numsa withheld support from the A.N.C. in the general election in May, the party, led by President Jacob G. Zuma, won comfortably with 62 percent of the vote. Even so, it faces challenges, including charges of corruption and mismanagement that have fed popular disillusionment and provoked widespread complaints that the party has strayed from the masses it says it represents.
The election also saw a strong showing by the much smaller Economic Freedom Fighters, a party led by Julius Malema, a left-wing firebrand who once led the A.N.C.’s youth wing.
Numsa has a claimed membership of some 340,000 workers in important economic sectors like the auto industry. It has shifted to the left in recent years, after disputes with the A.N.C. over labor and economic policy.
In a statement explaining its position, Numsa said it would not voluntarily leave the labor federation, which remains allied with the ruling party.
Last week, the federation postponed a vote on whether to expel the metalworkers’ union from membership.
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8) Food Scores, a New Web Service, Ranks Grocery Items on Ingredients and Nutrition
An
environmental research organization on Monday introduced one of the
most comprehensive online databases of food products, containing
information on more than 80,000 items sold in groceries across the
nation. It offers details of ingredients and nutritional information as
well as an attempt to assess how processed the food items are.
“We know that consumers care a lot about what’s in the foods they buy, and we also know that if foods are highly processed, that can have an impact on nutrition in ways that don’t always show up on the information panels on labels,” said Renée Sharp, the director of research at the Environmental Working Group, the nonprofit group that built the new service.
The Food Scores database, compiled largely from information supplied by food companies through voluntary and mandatory labeling, combined with the group’s own research on pesticides and additives, allows consumers to find information like how many products contain brominated vegetable oil as an ingredient or whether a specific product contains added dyes and preservatives.
The Environmental Working Group aims to assign a score from 1 to 10, with 1 being the best, to each product based on how nutritious it is, how many ingredients in it or its packaging raise concerns and an estimate of how processed it is. Factors include whether a product is organically certified; raised according to various animal welfare standards or without antibiotics; and exposed to environmental contaminants and pesticides.
“You can see if a product is gluten-free, whether it potentially contains genetically modified ingredients, how it stacks up against its competition,” Ms. Sharp said. “The database is only of branded and packaged products, so bagged spinach but not spinach sold loose.”
Because of mobile technology and social media, consumers are becoming much more aware of not only what is in the foods they eat but also of questions and concerns about them. That attention has been forcing food manufacturers to reformulate products as varied as Gatorade and Kraft macaroni and cheese.
“Ingredients that are added to food purely for the convenience of industrial food makers are under scrutiny, not by regulatory agencies but by the public,” said Ken Cook, president and a founder of the environmental group.
Mr. Cook said he anticipated resistance from the food industry, and the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the trade group that represents the industry’s interests, was highly critical of the new tool, saying it was based on little more than “guesses.”
“The Environmental Working Group’s food ratings are severely flawed and will only provide consumers with misinformation about the food and beverage products they trust and enjoy,” the association said in a statement.
It said the scoring system was “void of scientific rigor and objectivity” and thus would give consumers inaccurate and misleading information.
“The addition of E.W.G.'s rating scheme to the already crowded landscape of subjective food rating systems underscores the importance of fact-based sources like the government-regulated Nutrition Facts Panel and ingredient list as consumers’ best source for consistent, reliable information about food and beverage products,” the trade group said.
Ms. Sharp said her group’s methodology was presented in depth on the website so that consumers could understand exactly how the organization arrived at its conclusions. “We laid out all of our assumptions and decisions,” she said. “We don’t think anyone is as transparent as we are about what we’re doing.”
She and Mr. Cook said the biggest surprise was how many products contained sugar. “It is astounding,” Ms. Sharp said. “Almost 60 percent of the products in the database contain added sugars.”
More than 90 percent of granola bars, for instance, have added sugars, as do 100 percent of stuffing mixes. Perhaps even more surprising, processed meats like bologna and salami contain added sugar.
Analysis of food products aimed at educating consumers about what they’re buying is increasingly common. Whole Foods, for instance, recently began rating some of the produce it sells as good, better or best based on a variety of criteria, and the Cornucopia Institute will soon introduce a yogurt scorecard, ranking a wide variety of yogurts based on whether, say, they use high-fructose corn syrup or carrageenans, among other things.
The yogurt analysis, which took more than a year, follows work the organization has done to rate organic eggs and organic milk, among other products and ingredients. “Yogurt is perceived and marketed as a healthy product, and its popularity has really taken off because of that perception,” said Mark Kastel, co-founder of Cornucopia. “But there are a lot of synthetic chemicals in many yogurts, and as much added sugar as some candy bars.”
Cornucopia’s yogurt scorecard will award “spoons” to more than 100 yogurts, with five spoons being the best rating. Yogurts that are organic score more highly, as organic foods generally do in the environmental group’s Food Scores, in part because organic producers are required to follow regulations that reduce their use of pesticides, additives and other processing agents.
Dannon and Yoplait, best-selling yogurts, get only one spoon. Michael Neuwirth, a spokesman for Dannon, noted that it made many different yogurts, including plain, unsweetened yogurt in traditional and Greek varieties as well as “nonnutritive sweetened yogurt.”
“To help people achieve a healthy diet in the way they define it for themselves, we make a huge range of nutrient dense varieties of yogurt to fulfill different needs and preferences,” Mr. Neuwirth wrote in an email.
General Mills, which distributes Yoplait in the United States, said: “Cornucopia advocates on behalf of organic, and routinely recommends organic products over alternatives. That has been their focus – and it’s clearly the agenda here.”
Food Scores, which will soon be available as an app that consumers can use with their phones to scan product bar codes, was inspired by the Environmental Working Group’s success with a similar database for cosmetics and skin care, Skin Deep. That effort spurred some cosmetics makers to change their products, and Mr. Cook is hopeful that the food database will have a similar influence.
“A cosmetics executive said the nicest thing any ‘frenemy’ has ever said to me," Mr. Cook said. “He told me that before Skin Deep, women thought they were putting on makeup and now they think they’re putting on chemicals. I think Food Scores is going to have some of the same impact.”
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9) Living Wages, Rarity for U.S. Fast-Food Workers, Served Up in Denmark
COPENHAGEN — On a recent afternoon, Hampus Elofsson ended his 40-hour workweek at a Burger King and prepared for a movie and beer with friends. He had paid his rent and all his bills, stashed away some savings, yet still had money for nights out.
That is because he earns the equivalent of $20 an hour — the base wage for fast-food workers throughout Denmark and two and a half times what many fast-food workers earn in the United States.
“You can make a decent living here working in fast food,” said Mr. Elofsson, 24. “You don’t have to struggle to get by.”
With an eye to workers like Mr. Elofsson, some American labor activists and liberal scholars are posing a provocative question: If Danish chains can pay $20 an hour, why can’t those in the United States pay the $15 an hour that many fast-food workers have been clamoring for?“We see from Denmark that it’s possible to run a profitable fast-food business while paying workers these kinds of wages,” said John Schmitt, an economist at the Center for Economic Policy Research, a liberal think tank in Washington.
Many American economists and business groups say the comparison is deeply flawed because of fundamental differences between Denmark and the United States, including Denmark’s high living costs and taxes, a generous social safety net that includes universal health care and a collective bargaining system in which employer associations and unions work together. The fast-food restaurants here are also less profitable than their American counterparts.
“Trying to compare the business and labor practices in Denmark and the U.S. is like comparing apples to autos,” said Steve Caldeira, president of the International Franchise Association, a group based in Washington that promotes franchising and has many fast-food companies as members.
“Denmark is a small country” with a far higher cost of living, Mr. Caldeira said. “Unions dominate, and the employment system revolves around that fact.”
But as Denmark illustrates, companies have managed to adapt in countries that demand a living wage, and economists like Mr. Schmitt see it as a possible model.
Denmark has no minimum-wage law. But Mr. Elofsson’s $20 an hour is the lowest the fast-food industry can pay under an agreement between Denmark’s 3F union, the nation’s largest, and the Danish employers group Horesta, which includes Burger King, McDonald’s, Starbucks and other restaurant and hotel companies.
By contrast, fast-food wages in the United States are so low that half of the nation’s fast-food workers rely on some form of public assistance, a study from the University of California, Berkeley found. American fast-food workers earn an average of $8.90 an hour.
As a shift manager at a Burger King near Tampa, Fla., Anthony Moore earns $9 an hour, typically working 35 hours a week and taking home around $300 weekly.
“It’s very inadequate,” said Mr. Moore, 26, who supervises 10 workers. His rent is $600 a month, and he often falls behind on his lighting and water bills. A single father, he receives $164 a month in food stamps for his daughters, 5 and 2.
“Sometimes I ask, ‘Do I buy food or do I buy them clothes?’ ” Mr. Moore said. “If I made $20 an hour, I could actually live, instead of dreaming about living.”
Mr. Moore’s daughters receive health care through Medicaid, while he is uninsured because he cannot afford Burger King’s coverage, he said.
“I skip the doctor,” he said, adding that he sometimes goes to work sick because “I can’t miss the money.”
Burger King declined to discuss wages or benefits, saying those decisions were made by its franchise operators. The company said that its “restaurants have provided an entry point into the work force for millions of Americans,” and that the Burger King McLamore Foundation gave some employees emergency financial assistance and college scholarships.
Mr. Schmitt, the economist, acknowledged that it would take some time for the American fast-food industry to adjust to higher wages.
“We would need to phase this in,” said Mr. Schmitt, who is co-editor of the book “Low-Wage Work in the Wealthy World.” “We’ve created a low-road economy, and it’s going to take us some time to build up the speed to get onto the high road.”
In Denmark, fast-food workers are guaranteed benefits their American counterparts could only dream of. Under the industry’s collective agreement, there are five weeks’ paid vacation, paid maternity and paternity leave and a pension plan. Workers must be paid overtime for working after 6 p.m. and on Sundays.
Unlike most American fast-food workers, the Danes often get their work schedules four weeks in advance, and employees cannot be sent home early without pay just because business slows.
Given the benefits available, Mr. Elofsson, the Burger King employee in Copenhagen, said he hoped to make his career with the company and work his way up to restaurant manager. While the Danish industry does not keep data on worker retention, HMSHost Denmark, which runs the fast-food operations at Copenhagen Airport, estimates that 70 percent of the workers at its Burger King and Starbucks franchises stay for more than a year.
By contrast, an internal study done several years ago by McDonald’s found that workers’ average tenure at the company in the United States was nearly eight months, although the National Restaurant Association said American fast-food workers averaged 20 months on the job.Danish law does not require fast-food companies or their franchisees to adhere to the wages required by the agreement with the 3F union. But they do, because employees and unions pledge in exchange not to engage in strikes, demonstrations or boycotts. “What employers get is peace,” said Peter Lykke Nielsen, the 3F union’s chief negotiator with McDonald’s.
McDonald’s learned this the hard way. When it came to Denmark in the 1980s, it refused to join the employers association or adopt any collectively bargained agreements. Only after nearly a year of raucous, union-led protests did McDonald’s relent.
In interviews, Danish employees of McDonald’s, Burger King and Starbucks said that even though Denmark had one of the world’s highest costs of living — about 30 percent higher than in the United States — their $20 wage made life affordable.
True, a Big Mac here costs more — $5.60, compared with $4.80 in the United States. But that is a price Danes are willing to pay. “We Danes accept that a burger is expensive, but we also know that working conditions and wages are decent when we eat that burger,” said Soren Kaj Andersen, a University of Copenhagen professor who specializes in labor issues.
Measured in Big Macs, McDonald’s workers in Denmark earn the equivalent of 3.4 Big Macs an hour, while their American counterparts earn 1.8, according to a study by Orley C. Ashenfelter, a Princeton economics professor, and Stepan Jurajda, an economics professor at Charles University in Prague.
And the Danish restaurants are less profitable. With fast-food wages in the United States so much lower than in Denmark, and the price of Big Macs in the two countries similar, Mr. Ashenfelter said, “It must be that U.S. McDonald’s are far more profitable.” The higher wages and the higher menu prices help explain why there are 16 McDonald’s per million inhabitants in Denmark, but 45 McDonald’s per million in the United States, Mr. Jurajda said.
McDonald’s declined requests for detailed financial data for its restaurants. But it said in a statement that the countries where it operates “have significantly different cost structures, economic environments and competitive frameworks.” The company added that it and its franchise operators “support paying valued employees fair wages aligned with a competitive marketplace.”
America’s restaurant industry predicts a wave of woe if pay were to jump toward Denmark’s levels. An increase to $15 would “limit employment opportunities” by making fast-food restaurants reluctant to hire, said Scott DeFife, an executive vice president at the National Restaurant Association. “More than doubling the starting wage will dramatically increase costs in an industry that exists on very narrow margins.”
Denmark’s high wages make it hard, though not impossible, to maintain profitability at his restaurants, said Martin Drescher, the general manager of HMSHost Denmark, the airport restaurants operator.
“We have to acknowledge it’s more expensive to operate,” said Mr. Drescher. “But we can still make money out of it — and McDonald’s does, too. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be in Denmark.”
He noted proudly that a full-time Burger King employee made enough to live on. “The company doesn’t get as much profit, but the profit is shared a little differently,” he said.
“We don’t want there to be a big difference between the richest and poorest, because poor people would just get really poor,” Mr. Drescher added. “We don’t want people living on the streets. If that happens, we consider that we as a society have failed.”
Liz Alderman reported from Copenhagen and Steven Greenhouse from New York. Anna-Katarina Gravgaard contributed reporting from Copenhagen.
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10) Ecuador: Tortoise Species Is Saved
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11) Crime Dips in New York as Misdemeanor Arrests Rise, Report Says
Two decades ago, New Yorkers were more likely to be arrested in the middle of Manhattan for a misdemeanor than in any other neighborhood. Then, as crime fell, minor arrests in the heart of the city went down too.
But almost everywhere else, they skyrocketed.
The brunt of those arrests fell on young black and Hispanic men, according to a wide-ranging report on misdemeanor arrests, released on Tuesday by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
And when arrestees reached the courtroom in recent years, the report found, nearly half saw the charges against them — for everything from jumping the turnstile to minor drug possession to assault — dismissed or dropped altogether.
The report, drawing on state and local arrest data since 1980, presents the clearest picture to date of a three-decade long shift in crime policy in New York City, beginning when crime was on the rise and ending last year when it reached historically low levels.
Thirty-four years ago, felony arrests outpaced those for misdemeanor crimes, hitting a peak in 1989 with 149,204 felony arrests. By last year, however, the two categories had not only flipped, the report found, but the arrest rate for lower-level crimes had eclipsed those for more serious offenses, rising 190 percent by 2013, when the police made 225,684 such arrests.
In presenting the report at a breakfast forum on Tuesday, Jeremy Travis, the president of John Jay College, said the steep rise in misdemeanors marked “a profound change in our city.”
While the study, by Preeti Chauhan, an assistant professor at John Jay, does not attempt to explain the reasons for the change, it provides a stark illustration in charts and figures of a policing strategy increasingly based on preventing major crime by aggressively pursuing minor offenses. The strategy is closely associated with Police Commissioner William J. Bratton and is emulated around the country.
As stop-and-frisk numbers have diminished across the city, the high number of low-level arrests has come under scrutiny. Mr. Bratton and Mayor Bill de Blasio have said officers can use discretion in how they address minor offenses, while at the same time stressing that complaints from residents drive much of misdemeanor enforcement.
“The first principle is that police respond to complaints,” said Elizabeth Glazer, the head of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice. “That’s their job. That’s their customer service.”
The report found that about half of the misdemeanor arrests over time were in response to complaints or serious offenses such as assaults, theft, drunken driving or weapons possession. The other half were for lower-level offenses, including marijuana possession or trespassing.
In an introduction to the 114-page report, Mr. Travis said the data documents “the exercise of discretion” by the police, city prosecutors and the courts.
A pair of charts tracking the most common misdemeanor charges suggest how officers are using that discretion. Arrests for more serious offenses, like assault, gradually rose, and those for crimes like theft declined first before slowly increasing, the report found. But arrests spiked and dipped over the past 30 years for lesser offenses like drug possession and turnstile jumping, a hallmark of Mr. Bratton’s crime-fighting approach in the early 1990s.
Arrests for prostitution, a quintessential sign of disorder in the “broken windows” model, declined over the last two decades, the report found. But marijuana arrests soared beginning in the early 1990s, peaking at nearly 28 percent of all misdemeanor arrests in 2000 before tapering to 15 percent of arrests last year. By comparison, the report found, marijuana arrests in five other cities in New York State never reached that proportion of misdemeanor offenses.
Once those charges reached the courtroom, nearly half ended in some form of dismissal or with prosecutors simply declining to pursue the case.
In 2011, the report found, city district attorneys declined to prosecute 10.7 percent of misdemeanors, and did so in 7.6 percent of cases the next year. Elsewhere around New York State, that rate hovered near zero.
Mr. Bratton, who sat in the audience on Tuesday but was not a speaker, viewed an early draft of the analysis and provided feedback, as did George L. Kelling, the criminologist whose “broken windows” theory of addressing minor disorder helped shape Mr. Bratton’s thinking on crime.
The arrests documented in the report vary widely by precinct and have changed over the years.
In 1993, four of the top five precincts for misdemeanor arrests were in Manhattan, including Chelsea and two Midtown precincts. By 2013, the Midtown South precinct remained a hot spot, but arrests there had declined, while misdemeanor arrests soared in East New York in Brooklyn, East Harlem in Manhattan and Morris Heights and Mott Haven in the Bronx.
The report found one relative constant over the years: Black and Hispanic men made up a far greater portion of those arrested than whites, even as misdemeanor arrests increased across the board for all ethnic groups. The arrest rate for black men in particular nearly doubled from 1990 to 2013.
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12) $2.25 Million Settlement for Family of Rikers Inmate Who Died in Overheated Cell
The family of a homeless veteran who died this year in a searing hot cell at Rikers Island will receive $2.25 million from the City of New York in a settlement announced by the comptroller’s office on Friday.
The settlement was finalized with unusual swiftness, a result both of the heightened interest in the case and the extraordinary pressure on the city to improve conditions at Rikers Island, where brutality and corruption have flourished unchecked for years.
The inmate, Jerome Murdough, died on Feb. 15, when the temperature in his cell in a mental health unit at Rikers reached over 100 degrees. The case has come to exemplify the many shortcomings of the city jails and the criminal justice system at large.Mr. Murdough, 56, was arrested a week before his death when a police officer found him in the stairwell of a public housing building in Harlem. He told the officer that he had sought shelter there from the cold. Mr. Murdough was charged with trespassing in the second degree, a misdemeanor. A judge set his bail at $2,500, which he could not pay.
He was put in a cell at Rikers Island, in a unit reserved for inmates with mental illness. Because of broken heating equipment, temperatures on his cellblock had been unusually hot for days. Though staff and inmates complained, nothing was done to fix the problem.
Mr. Murdough died seven days after his arrival at Rikers, after officials said he was left unattended for hours. New York City’s medical examiner, which ruled his death accidental, said he died of hyperthermia caused by exposure to the heat, which had interacted adversely with antipsychotic medicine he was taking for schizoaffective disorder.
In May, Mr. Murdough’s family announced that it intended to file a wrongful-death suit against the city seeking $25 million.
The settlement marked the second time that the city comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, negotiated a multimillion dollar settlement before a lawsuit was filed — essentially cutting out the Law Department from the process.
In February, Mr. Stringer agreed to pay $6.4 million to David Ranta, who was imprisoned for 23 years after being framed by a rogue detective.
Mr. Murdough’s death provoked widespread public outrage, and drew media attention to the conditions at Rikers Island. Mayor Bill de Blasio called it “shocking and troubling” and promised to spearhead reforms.
Shortly after, Rose Agro, the warden of the Rikers Island jail where Mr. Murdough was held, was demoted. She has since retired. A correction officer who was on duty in Mr. Murdough’s unit was also suspended for 30 days, and the supervisor of mechanics was barred from working in inmate housing units.
A spokeswoman for the Bronx district attorney’s office, which has jurisdiction over Rikers Island, said the case was still under investigation for potential criminal charges.
Benjamin Weiser contributed reporting.
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13) On the Other Side of Ferguson’s Protest Lines, Officers Face New Threats
BY Dan Barry
For
nearly three years, a Ferguson police dispatcher named Marione Johnson
has listened to the everyday conversation of this small city, the
routine crackle and chatter about barking dogs and possible break-ins,
about trees down and possible shots fired.
Ms. Johnson put in 25 years as a police officer in another town before Chief Thomas Jackson recruited her to dispatch officers here when appropriate. It was a familiar world to her, until that August day when a white Ferguson police officer shot to death an unarmed 18-year-old black man, and callers from across the country began condemning her and her colleagues as “baby killers” and worse.
“I’ve been called everything but a child of God,” Ms. Johnson, who is African-American, said.She said that the animosity, found on social media and in protests just outside police headquarters, had been so virulent at times that she listened more carefully these days to calls requesting assistance before she sent an officer — for fear of a possible ambush.
“You want to make sure that your officers are O.K.,” she said.
Anxiety in Ferguson is escalating again, now that a decision by the grand jury investigating the killing of the teenager, Michael Brown, by Officer Darren Wilson seems imminent. Recent revelations, including an autopsy report and accounts of witness testimony, have only added to the tension, in part because they seem more exculpatory than supportive of calls for murder charges against Officer Wilson.
No matter what the grand jury decides, law-enforcement officials are preparing for a return of the violent protests that defined the first weeks after Mr. Brown’s death, as well as the continuing brightness of an unforgiving spotlight on the Ferguson police.
“We’re under siege,” the beleaguered Chief Jackson said this week, referring specifically to the nightly protests outside headquarters, but perhaps to himself as well. Speculation continues about his possible resignation, about a push to replace him, about St. Louis County taking over policing of the city.
The chief said that he had not been asked to resign and had no plans to leave. But he called these recent weeks “horrible” and added, “It is not uncommon for me to pull up at a light and have someone yell something offensive or put up their hands” — the gesture of surrender that some say Mr. Brown was making when he was shot.
Just 11 weeks ago, on the morning of Aug. 9, the Ferguson Police Department was an unremarkable Midwestern force, with 54 officers — 50 of them white — in a city of 21,000 that is two-thirds black. By nightfall, it had been transformed into something approximating the occupying force of a white power structure.
Since then, frustration from years of racial profiling and harassment, perceived and real, has poured out. Ferguson has become a flash point, its police department now a symbol of jackbooted oppression.
Some of the actions taken by the Ferguson police after Mr. Brown’s death certainly fueled the ensuing outcry: leaving the body in the street for several hours, for example, and using heavy-handed force during the protests, at which hateful things were said from both sides of the so-called skirmish line.
But there is another side to this tragedy’s aftermath. It is not the only side, or the opposite side. Just another side.
“What I can’t understand is the constant hate,” Ms. Johnson said. “And the failure to be patient until there’s a thorough investigation.”
These days, Ferguson police officers say that they live as though someone out there intends to do them harm. They no longer wear their uniforms to or from work. They vary their routes back home. A few have relocated their families.
Even a simple stop for a soda at the Circle K has become unsettling, because of what the police describe as social-media talk about catching Ferguson officers off guard at the convenience store — and shooting them in the head.
“You are constantly wondering,” Sgt. Mike Wood, a Ferguson native, said. “I know I didn’t sign up with Burger King, but....”
One afternoon this month, Sergeant Wood, 57, and Officer Gregg McDanel, 53, sat just down the hall from where Ms. Johnson works dispatch. The two men have a combined 45 years with the Ferguson police, but they say that not once in all those years did they have cause to wear a riot helmet — until now.
Now, they have become accustomed to standing in riot gear outside their workplace, where, they say, a small number of protesters have occasionally tossed bottles, rocks and words intended to goad. One night included the muzzle flash of a gun, they said.
Officer McDanel, who handles the evidence room, said that for the first time in his career, his wife had cried as he walked out the door, headed for work.
Late last month, a Ferguson officer was shot in the arm after coming upon an apparent break-in at the new community center. As dozens of officers, including Sergeant Wood, assembled at a nearby staging area, so did dozens of protesters, guided to the location by social media. Some, he said, shouted sentiments like “How does it feel?”
“It was sickening,” he said.
Into the station came Sgt. Harry Dilworth, 45, a 21-year veteran. As one of the few African-Americans on the force, he said, he has been targeted for particular abuse. “I’ve been called a racist,” he said. “A racist!”
An Army reservist, he has done two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, and the habits he acquired overseas serve him well these days in Ferguson. He sits farther back in his car seat, so that his body is blocked by the door post. At stoplights, he leaves space between his car and those around him. He watches his rearview mirror.
“We have to adapt to the inherent threats,” he said. “Back in July, I didn’t have a gun at my front door.”
Sergeant Dilworth said that these precautions were necessary because, several weeks ago, activist hackers made public the names and addresses of Ferguson officers, with the promise “to wreak hell on our lives.”
“I’ve canceled everything electronic,” he said. “I almost went to a rotary phone.”
Now, Sergeant Dilworth sometimes directs officers to set up perimeters of safety on what would have been routine calls. He also reminds them not to react to words, recalling one encounter in which a protester confronted an officer and screamed “about what he was going to do to his wife and daughter.”
“I told him not to listen to that garbage,” he said.
“The community itself, they’re supporting us,” the sergeant added. “But that small microcosm of protesters is starting to wear on them. They’re tired.”
Weariness defined the face of Chief Jackson, 54, as he sat in his cramped office earlier this month, a wooden baton in the corner, a green mug of cold coffee on the desk. The entire department is working out of the basement while the building is being renovated.
Before his appointment in 2010, he was a decorated officer who spent 30 years with the St. Louis County Police Department; a SWAT team supervisor, hostage negotiator and undercover detective; an active community volunteer; and a gifted tenor who sometimes sang at St. Louis Blues hockey games.
Since Mr. Brown’s death, though, Chief Jackson has come to personify a small Missouri department ill-suited for the spotlight. His videotaped apology last month — to the Brown family for the handling of the body and to peaceful protesters who felt unjustly stifled — came across as too little, too late.
“There’s only one narrative out there,” the chief said.
For example, he said, people believed at one point that the police had set fire to a memorial to Mr. Brown. In fact, Sergeant Dilworth tried but failed to save it. (“Only one person tried to thank me,” the sergeant said. “Out of 50.”)
The chief said people should not forget that some of the protests over these past two and a half months have been violent. “The reality was, it was a deadly-force situation,” he said. “And nobody got hurt.”
But Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum in Washington, said that the Ferguson Police Department was paying a price for failing to develop a stronger relationship with its African-American constituency.
“They’re trying to build trust from a defensive position instead of having done it beforehand,” Mr. Wexler said. “They have a difficult job.”
That job will not get easier anytime soon. The expectation in the basement police headquarters is that if the grand jury indicts Officer Wilson, there will be unrest, and if it does not indict Officer Wilson, there will be unrest.
“It’s painful, just painful,” said Ms. Johnson, the dispatcher, before heading back to receive the calls of this torn city.
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14) U.N. Panel Warns of Dire Effects From Lack of Action Over Global Warming
COPENHAGEN — The gathering risks of climate change are so profound they could stall or even reverse generations of progress against poverty and hunger if greenhouse gas emissions continue at a runaway pace, according to a major new United Nations report.
Despite rising efforts in many countries to tackle the problem, the overall global situation is growing more acute as developing countries join the West in burning huge amounts of fossil fuels, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said here on Sunday.
Failure to reduce emissions, the group of scientists and other experts found, could threaten society with food shortages, refugee crises, the flooding of major cities and entire island nations, the mass extinction of plants and animals, and a climate so drastically altered it might become dangerous for people to work or play outside during the hottest times of the year.“Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems,” the report declared.
In the starkest language it has ever used, the expert panel made clear how far society remains from having any serious policy to limit global warming.
Doing so would require finding a way to leave the vast majority of the world’s reserves of fossil fuels in the ground, or, alternatively, developing methods to capture and bury the emissions resulting from their use, the group said.
If governments are to meet their own stated goal of limiting the warming of the planet to no more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius, above the preindustrial level, they must restrict emissions from additional fossil-fuel burning to about 1 trillion tons of carbon dioxide, the panel said.
At current growth rates, that budget is likely to be exhausted in something like 30 years. Yet energy companies have already booked coal and petroleum reserves equal to several times that amount, and they are spending some $600 billion a year to find more. Utilities and oil companies are still building coal-fired power plants and refineries, and governments are spending another $600 billion directly subsidizing the consumption of fossil fuels.
By contrast, the report found, less than $400 billion a year is being spent around the world to reduce emissions or otherwise cope with climate change. That sum is smaller than the revenue of a single American oil company, ExxonMobil.
The new report comes just a month before international delegates convene in Lima, Peru, in an effort to devise a new global treaty or other agreement to limit emissions, and it makes clear the urgency of their task.
Appearing at a news conference in Copenhagen Sunday morning to unveil the report, the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, issued an urgent appeal for strong action in Lima.
“Science has spoken. There is no ambiguity in their message,” Mr. Ban declared. “Leaders must act. Time is not on our side.”
Yet there has been no sign that national leaders are willing to discuss allocating the trillion-ton emissions budget among countries, an approach that would raise political and moral questions of fairness. On the contrary: They are moving toward a relatively weak agreement that would essentially let each country decide for itself how much effort to put into limiting global warming, and even that document would not take effect until 2020.
“If they choose not to talk about the carbon budget, they’re choosing not to address the problem of climate change,” said Myles R. Allen, a scientist at Oxford University in Britain who helped write the new report. “They might as well not bother to turn up for these meetings.”
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a scientific body appointed by the world’s governments to advise them on the causes and effects of global warming, and potential solutions. The group was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, along with Al Gore, for its efforts to call attention to the climate crisis.
The new report is a 175-page synopsis of a much longer series of reports that the panel has issued over the past year, culminating a five-year effort by the body to summarize a vast archive of published climate research.
It is the fifth such report from the group since 1990, each finding greater certainty that the climate is warming and that human activities are the primary cause.
“Human influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, in changes in the global water cycle, in reductions in snow and ice, and in global mean sea-level rise; and it is extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century,” the report said.
A core finding of the new report is that climate change is no longer a distant, future threat, but is being felt all over the world already.
“It’s here and now,” said Rajendra K. Pachauri, the chairman of the panel, in an interview. “It’s not something in the future.”
The group cited mass die-offs of forests, including those in the American West; the melting of land ice virtually everywhere in the world; an accelerating rise of the seas that is leading to increased coastal flooding; and heat waves that have devastated crops and killed tens of thousands of people.
The report contained the group’s most explicit warning yet about the food supply, saying that climate change had already become a small drag on overall global production, and could become a far larger one if emissions continued unchecked. The reported noted that in recent years the world’s food system had shown signs of instability, with sudden price increases leading to riots and, in a few cases, the collapse of governments.
A related finding is that climate change poses serious risks to basic human progress in areas such as alleviating poverty. Under the worst-case scenarios, factors like high food prices and intensified weather disasters would most likely leave poor people worse off. In fact, the report said, that has already happened to a degree.
In Washington, the Obama administration welcomed the new report, with the president’s science adviser, John P. Holdren, calling it “yet another wake-up call to the global community that we must act together swiftly and aggressively in order to stem climate change and avoid its worst impacts.”
The administration is pushing for new limits on emissions from American power plants, but faces stiff resistance in Congress and some states.
Michael Oppenheimer, a climate scientist at Princeton University and a principal author of the new report, said that a continuation of the political paralysis on emissions would leave society depending largely on luck.
If the level of greenhouse gases were to continue rising at a rapid pace over coming decades, severe effects could be headed off only if the climate turned out to be much less sensitive to those gases than most scientists think is likely, he said.
“We’ve seen many governments delay and delay and delay on implementing comprehensive emissions cuts,” Dr. Oppenheimer said. “So the need for a lot of luck looms larger and larger. Personally, I think it’s a slim reed to lean on for the fate of the planet.”
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15) In France, Dam Is the Catalyst for a Flood of Young People’s Anger
LISLE-SUR-TARN, France — The protests began a year ago in this quiet corner of southwestern France, as a small and peaceful gathering of hippies, environmental activists and utopians of all types set up tents to oppose the construction of a nearby dam.
In August, after local authorities sent diggers and then crushing machines to level the soil and destroy trees, clashes erupted between protesters and the police, turning this vast stretch of woodland into what many here called a war zone.
More than a hundred protesters, joined by a minority of violent groups, responded to tear gas and rubber bullets by throwing fire bombs. They built makeshift checkpoints, roadblocks and two watchtowers. Finally, last weekend, a 21-year-old student, Rémi Fraisse, was killed after being hit by a stun grenade that protesters say was thrown by a police officer.
The death of Mr. Fraisse, which resulted in the temporary suspension of the construction work, has now turned what had been a local protest into a national drama, spawning vigils and front-page news coverage, while prompting criticism of the government of President François Hollande for its lack of response.
But the death has also focused attention on the government’s seeming failure to engage a broad segment of France’s next generation, and the increasingly violent nature of protests inspired by antiglobalization movements, such as Occupy Wall Street, that have spread across France in recent years.
Initially fueled by environmental concerns, the protests have come to embody the disenchantment and anger of young people who see few future opportunities and feel little kinship with the government.
Many of those who gathered to oppose the dam call themselves “Zadistes,” or partisans of the ZAD, the French acronym for zones à defendre, or areas to defend. They say they have come to build an independent society. Increasingly, they are seen as environmental extremists, or “green jihadists,” as Xavier Beulin, the president of the main agriculture union, put it.
“For once, we are fighting a project that represents symbolically what we reject,” said Jordan Samson, a geography student in the southern city of Toulouse. “Our movement is spreading to an entire generation.”
The protests here are the latest aimed at a widening number of projects that the demonstrators criticize as monuments to the overweening ambitions of local politicians and their business connections.
Last month, demonstrations in support of the Zadistes were held across France, including in Nantes, where more than a hundred protesters went on a rampage. In the nearby town of Gaillac, several shops and a memorial to war dead were vandalized.
On Saturday, young protesters clashed again with the police in Nantes and Toulouse, in the south.
Several years ago, the movement sprung up in Notre-Dame-des-Landes, near the western end of the central Loire Valley, where hundreds of young people and farmers gathered in a woodland outside Nantes to oppose government plans to build an airport. Clashes in Nantes left about a dozen protesters injured.
The death of Mr. Fraisse has been subject to investigation and prompted the government to suspend the use of stun grenades against protesters nationwide.
Cécile Duflot, a former environment minister and member of Parliament, called Mr. Fraisse’s death a “permanent stain” on the government, whose response was criticized as tardy and confused.
The aftermath of the clashes in Lisle-sur-Tarn have spread fear among local farmers in one of France’s most rural and poorest areas, where farming makes up about 88 percent of the local economy.
The 8.4 million euro dam project here, designed by the local council of Tarn-et-Garonne, was aimed at creating an artificial lake to help irrigate lands for fewer than 100 local farmers.
Protests against the project began in 2013, when a group of about 30 eco-warriors gathered in Lisle-sur-Tarn to oppose the dam on a river that flows through the forest of Sivens.
But for many protesters here, the dam was designed to support the local corn farmers who practice what many here called “intensive farming” and would have threatened about 94 protected species of animals and plants.
“We saw the trees falling one after the other,” said Camille, 18, who would not give her last name for fear of running afoul of the authorities. “It was an environmental disaster.”
Like many others, Camille said she had come to the ZAD to denounce “grand projects that are useless and imposed.”
“I have heard about the crisis ever since I was born,” said Camille, who said she had just passed her final exams. “As long as there will be capitalist policies, there will be crisis.”
The demonstrators felt vindicated last week when a report commissioned by the government found that the project was too expensive, that local needs for the dam had been overestimated and that alternative options had not been sufficiently explored. But the report also said it would be difficult to stop construction at this stage.
On a recent morning, the atmosphere at the site where protesters set up tents was calm. Many gathered outside the “Métairie,” an abandoned house that had been turned into a collective kitchen.
Some sliced potatoes provided by farmers nearby, while others played a mouth harp. In one encampment, which protesters call the “front,” because of its forward location near the proposed dam site, protesters replanted trees that had been bulldozed. Others were building a makeshift oven with a mix of water, sand and soil.
Many protesters sleep in tents or recreational vehicles, and they live off the donations of local farmers and residents who bring crates filled with vegetables and clothes. They publish calls for donations on their blog, asking for equipment as varied as arc welders, blankets and batteries.
The suspension of the dam project and the intrusion of protesters have angered many farmers who struggle to keep their businesses afloat in a poor land hit by frequent droughts in summer. Many fear the protesters will ultimately halt the construction of a dam that they see as necessary.
“How do we live if we stop making corn?” said Laurent, a local farmer who did not want to give his last name because he had been vandalized and feared retaliation. “What do we want to create, a rural desert?”
Other farmers, too, reported that they had been recently vandalized, and had received anonymous, threatening letters.
Since the protests erupted, Guy de Pierpont, 66, a local farmer who breeds partridges and pheasants, said he had been sleeping with a rifle and pepper spray by his window.
A few days ago, the protesters opened his aviary illegally, and recently one of his two sons had spent time in a hospital after having fought with a group of protesters.
“They don’t come here for the dam — they come to fight,” Mr. de Pierpont said. “And they have massacred our forest.”
Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting from Paris.
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16) For Pot Inc., the Rush to Cash In Is Underway
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Please forward and post widely
Protest Now! No To Police Censorship of Mumia, and Teachers!
Reinstate the Urban Dreams Website!
Action Still Needed! Please send messages to the School Board!
- Scroll down for School Board addresses -
Here’s what happened: Under pressure from the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP)—operating through a friendly publicity agent called Fox News—the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) earlier this year shut down an entire website composed of teacher-drafted curriculum material called Urban Dreams. Why? Because this site included course guidelines on the censorship of innocent political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal! The course material compared the censorship of Mumia’s extensive radio commentaries and writings, with that of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s later writings, which focused on class exploitation and his opposition to the US’ imperialist War against Vietnam. Both were effectively silenced by the big media, including in Mumia’s case, by National Public Radio (NPR).
Mumia Is Innocent! But He’s Still a Top Target of FOP
Abu-Jamal has long been a top-row target for the FOP, which tried to get him legally killed for decades. Mumia was framed by the Philadelphia police and falsely convicted of murdering a Philadelphia policeman in 1982, with the extensive collaboration of lying prosecutors, corrupt courts, the US Justice Department, and key political figures.
Mumia’s death sentence was dropped only when a federal appeals court judge set it aside because of blatantly illegal jury instructions by the original highly racist trial judge. (The same federal judge upheld every bogus detail of Mumia’s conviction.) The local Philadelphia prosecutor and politicians chickened out of trying to get Mumia’s original death sentence reinstated due to the fact that all their evidence of his guilt had long been exposed as totally fraudulent!
FOP: Can’t Kill Him? Silence Him!
The FOP had to swallow the fact that the local mucky-mucks had dropped the ball on executing Mumia, but they were rewarded with a substitute sentence of life without the possibility of parole, imposed by a local court acting in secret. Mumia is now serving this new and equally unjust sentence of “slow death.”
This gets us back to the FOP’s main point here, which is to silence Mumia. They can’t stop Mumia from writing and recording his world-renownd commentaries (which are available at Prison Radio, www.prisonradio.org). But they look for any opportunity to smear and discredit Mumia, and keep him out of the public eye; and these snakes have found a morsel on the Urban Dreams web site to go after!
Urban Dreams Was Well Used by Teachers
Urban Dreams was initially set up under a grant from the federal Dept. of Education in 1999-2004 and contains teacher-written material on a wide variety of issues. It is (was) used extensively in California and beyond. The OUSD’s knee-jerk reaction to shut the whole site down because of a complaint from police, broadcast on the all-powerful Fox News network, shows the rapid decline of the US into police-state status. Why should we let a bunch of lying, vicious cops, whose only real job is to protect the wealthy and powerful from all of us, get away with this?
Fresh from defeating Obama’s nominee to head the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department because he served for a period as Mumia’s attorney, the FOP is attacking a school lesson plan that asks students to think outside the box of system propaganda. But the grave-diggers of capitalist oppression are stirring.
Labor Says No To Police Persecution of Mumia!
In 1999, the Oakland teachers union, Oakland Education Association (OEA), held an unauthorized teach-in on Mumia and the death penalty. Later the same year, longshore workers in the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) shut down all West-Coast ports to Free Mumia. Other teacher actions happened around the country and internationally. And now the Alameda County Labor Council, acting on a resolution submitted by an OEA member, has denounced the FOP-inspired shutdown of Urban Dreams, and called for the site’s complete restoration (ie no deletions).
Labor Says No To Censorship of Mumia, and Teachers!
We are asking union members particularly, and everyone else as well, if you abhor police-sponsored censorship of school curricula, and want to see justice and freedom for the wrongfully convicted such as Mumia Abu-Jamal, send your message of protest now to the Oakland School Board, at the three addresses below.
Union members: take the resolution below to your local union or labor council, and get it passed!
Whatever you do, send a copy of your protest letter or resolution, or a report of your actions, to Oakland Teachers for Mumia, at communard2@juno.com.
Here is the Alameda County Labor Council resolution:
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Labor Speaks: Urban Dreams Censorship Resolution
Alameda County Labor Council
Whereas Mumia Abu-Jamal, an award winning journalist, defender of the rights of the working class, people of color, and oppressed people has been imprisoned since 1982 without parole for a crime he didn’t commit after his death sentence was finally overturned;
Whereas the Oakland Unified School District’s censorship of the Urban Dreams website was in reaction to a Fox News and Fraternal Order of Police attack on a lesson plan asking students to consider a parallel between censorship of Martin Luther King’s radical ideas and censorship of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and;
Whereas it is dangerous and unacceptable to allow the police to determine the curriculum of a major school district like Oakland, or any school district;
Whereas removal of the Urban Dreams OUSD website denies educators and student access to invaluable curriculum resources by Oakland teachers with social justice themes promoting critical thinking, and;
Whereas in 1999, the Oakland Education Association led the teach-in on Mumia Abu-Jamal and the death penalty which helped deepen the debate in the U.S. on the death penalty itself, and greatly intensified the spotlight on the widespread issue of wrongful conviction and demanded justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal, and;
Whereas OEA and Alameda Contra Costa County Service Center of CTA cited the Mumia teach-in and the censored unit on Martin Luther King Jr. in its Human Rights WHO AWARD for 2013;
Be it resolved that the Alameda Labor Council condemns OUSD’s censorship of the Urban Dreams website and demands that it immediately restore access to all materials on the website, reaffirms its demand for justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal, and issues a press release to seek the widest possible support from defenders of free speech and those who seek justice for Mumia.
- Submitted by Keith Brown, OEA
- Passed, Alameda County Labor Council, 14 July 2014
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Now It’s your turn!
Join with Ed Asner, and with the Alameda County Labor Council, in protesting the
Oakland School Board’s censorship of the Urban Dreams web site!
• Ask your local union, labor council or other organization to endorse the resolution by the Alameda County Labor Council.
• Demand the School Board reinstate the Urban Dreams website without any deletions!
• Send your union resolutions or letters of protest to the following;
1. Oakland Board of Education: boe@ousd.k12.ca.us
2. Board President Davd Kakishiba: David.Kakishiba@ousd.k12.ca.us
3. Superintendent Antwan Wilson: Antwan.Wilson@ousd.k12.ca.us
Important: Send a copy of your resolution or email to:
Bob Mandel/Teachers for Mumia at: communard2@juno.com.
Thank you for your support!
-This message is from the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal,
and Oakland Teachers for Mumia.
communard2@juno.com.
B. ARTICLES IN FULL
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1) Obama Faulted in Terror Fight, New Poll Finds
For
the first time in his presidency, more Americans disapprove of
President Obama’s handling of terrorism than approve of it, as
discontent about his management of foreign affairs and the fight against
Sunni militants in Iraq and Syria weighs on an anxious and conflicted
public, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.
As Mr. Obama broadens the military offensive against Islamic extremists, the survey finds broad support for United States airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, but it also demonstrates how torn Americans are about wading back into battle in the Middle East. A majority is opposed to committing ground forces there, amid sweeping concern that increased American participation will lead to a long and costly mission.
With midterm elections approaching, Americans’ fears about a terrorist attack on United States soil are on the rise, and the public is questioning Mr. Obama’s strategy for combating the militant organization calling itself the Islamic State, also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Most respondents say the president has no clear plan for confronting the group, and that he has not been tough enough in dealing with it.
“He is ambivalent, and I think it shows,” Jennifer Shelton-Armstrong, a 45-year-old Democrat in Mission Viejo, California, said in a follow-up interview. “There is no clear plan.”
Mr. Obama has lost considerable ground with the public in the month since he announced military action against the Islamic State, which also saw the group release two videotapes showing the beheadings of American journalists. Fifty-eight percent now disapprove of his handling of foreign policy, a 10-point jump from a CBS News poll conducted last month. Fifty percent rate him negatively on handling terrorism, a 12-point increase from March, compared with 41 percent who rate him positively, while the rest had no opinion.
Taken together, the results suggest a profoundly unsettled public mood, with two-thirds of Americans surveyed saying the country is on the wrong track and half disapproving of how Mr. Obama is doing his job, a negative assessment that threatens to be a substantial drag on Democrats in November.
Still, the public is sending some mixed signals. For instance, while Americans give Mr. Obama low marks on handling terrorism, foreign policy and the Islamic State, they say they back the prescription he has laid out to counter the militants — airstrikes and no combat troops on the ground in Iraq and Syria. Respondents also said Republicans would do a better job on two of their top issues — terrorism and the economy — even though they disapprove of congressional Republicans in greater numbers than they do congressional Democrats.
The poll numbers present a steep climb for the president as he seeks to rally public support for the effort against the Islamic State, just as Democrats are seeking ways to motivate their core supporters, who include antiwar voters. Mr. Obama’s job approval ratings are strikingly similar to those of George W. Bush at the same point in his second term in office in 2006, when Americans’ war fatigue helped Democrats sweep both houses of Congress in what Mr. Bush later called “a thumping.”
The poll shows Republicans having gained sharply with voters ahead of the November balloting, with 45 percent of likely voters saying they will back Republicans in November’s contests for the House of Representatives, compared with 39 percent who say they will back Democrats.
While the survey shows both political parties deeply unpopular, Republicans fare worse than Democrats, with a majority of their own voters giving the Republicans low marks for their performance in Congress. But Mr. Obama’s poor standing is proving a rallying point for his disaffected political opposition; 55 percent of Republicans said their vote for Congress would be a vote against the president.
“It’s a vote for the lesser of two evils and a vote against Obama,” said John Durr, a 71-year-old independent in Virginia Beach, who listed economic issues and recent “scandals” involving the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Justice’s “Fast and Furious” program, and the attack on an American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, as among the reasons he would vote Republican in November. “We’ve lost world respect. I don’t think he has a foreign policy; we’re just reacting.”
The nationwide poll was conducted from Sept. 12 through Sept. 15 by landline and cellphone among 1,009 adults and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points for all adults and plus or minus 4 percent for likely voters.
The findings represent the first time since he became president that more Americans rate Mr. Obama negatively on terrorism than they do positively. Despite his low ratings on terrorism and foreign policy, a majority says it has confidence in Mr. Obama’s ability to handle an international crisis. And while most Americans continue to say the United States should not take the leading role in trying to solve international conflicts, that view is losing ground.
Fifty-four percent say the United States should not play the primary role, compared with 58 percent in June and 65 percent in February. The results help explain the political predicament facing Mr. Obama with his Democratic base, which includes an antiwar faction that is less enthusiastic than Republicans about airstrikes, while his Republican critics are considerably more hawkish and worried that the president is projecting weakness.
“My fear is he won’t go far enough — I think he should go further,” said Richard Kline, 56, an engineer and Republican in Indianola, Iowa. “I’d rather see them fought over there than over here.”
While Democrats are more positive about Mr. Obama’s management of foreign policy crises and terrorism, a third of them say he has no clear plan for countering the Islamic State and two fifths of Democrats say he is not being tough enough.
Most Americans — nearly 6 in 10 — say they view the Islamic State as a major threat to the security of the United States, and 7 in 10 support airstrikes against the group, including majorities of Republicans, Democrats and independents. Still, on the issue of sending ground troops, opposed by 55 percent of respondents, the parties diverge, with most Republicans in favor and Democrats and independents opposed.
“I’m glad President Obama is not too hawkish,” said Margaret Scioli, 67, a retired electrocardiogram technician and Democrat in Melrose, Mass. “It’s easy to get into wars, but hard to get out of them.”
The split comes amid a debate, including inside the Obama administration, about whether ground troops may ultimately be necessary to confront the Islamic State.
Mr. Obama on Wednesday renewed his vow not to involve American troops in a ground war, a day after Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, his top military adviser and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told lawmakers on Capitol Hill that he might recommend deploying them in Syria if airstrikes were not successful.
On Wednesday, the House of Representatives approved by a vote of 273-156 Mr. Obama’s request for authorization to arm and train Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State, and the Senate takes up the measure on Thursday. The poll finds 48 percent saying they back doing so, while 40 percent are opposed. A majority says it backs sending additional military advisers to Iraq.
While terrorism is a concern for voters, the survey shows the economy is by far their top issue, with 38 percent saying that topic was driving their vote this fall and more voters saying Republicans are likely to do a better job on it. That’s a notable change from last month’s CBS News Poll, which found voters split on which party would do a better job on the economy.
Republicans also get higher marks on handling foreign policy and terrorism, while Democrats have an edge on health care. Voters are split on which party would do a better job on immigration. The environment for incumbents is poisonous, with nearly 9 in 10 voters saying it is time to give new people a chance. And in a striking finding, the poll diverges from the well-worn adage that voters hate Congress but love their congressmen; nearly two-thirds now say they are ready to throw their own representatives out of office as well.
Marina Stefan and Megan Thee-Brenan contributed reporting.
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2) Artificial Sweeteners May Disrupt Body’s Blood Sugar Controls
By Kenneth Chang
Artificial sweeteners may disrupt the body’s ability to regulate blood sugar, causing metabolic changes that can be a precursor to diabetes, researchers are reporting.
That is “the very same condition that we often aim to prevent” by consuming sweeteners instead of sugar, said Dr. Eran Elinav, an immunologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, at a news conference to discuss the findings.
The scientists performed a multitude of experiments, mostly on mice, to back up their assertion that the sweeteners alter the microbiome, the population of bacteria that is in the digestive system.
The different mix of microbes, the researchers contend, changes the metabolism of glucose, causing levels to rise higher after eating and to decline more slowly than they otherwise would.
The findings by Dr. Elinav and his collaborators in Israel, including Eran Segal, a professor of computer science and applied mathematics at Weizmann, are being published Wednesday by the journal Nature.
Cathryn R. Nagler, a professor of pathology at the University of Chicago who was not involved with the research but did write an accompanying commentary in Nature, called the results “very compelling.”
She noted that many conditions, including obesity and diabetes, had been linked to changes in the microbiome. “What the study suggests,” she said, “is we should step back and reassess our extensive use of artificial sweeteners.”
Previous studies on the health effects of artificial sweeteners have come to conflicting and confusing findings. Some found that they were associated with weight loss; others found the exact opposite, that people who drank diet soda actually weighed more.
Some found a correlation between artificial sweeteners and diabetes, but those findings were not entirely convincing: Those who switch to the products may already be overweight and prone to the disease.
While acknowledging that it is too early for broad or definitive conclusions, Dr. Elinav said he had already changed his own behavior.
“I’ve consumed very large amounts of coffee, and extensively used sweeteners, thinking like many other people that they are at least not harmful to me and perhaps even beneficial,” he said. “Given the surprising results that we got in our study, I made a personal preference to stop using them.
“We don’t think the body of evidence that we present in humans is sufficient to change the current recommendations,” he continued. “But I would hope it would provoke a healthy discussion.”
In the initial set of experiments, the scientists added saccharin (the sweetener in the pink packets of Sweet’N Low), sucralose (the yellow packets of Splenda) or aspartame (the blue packets of Equal) to the drinking water of 10-week-old mice. Other mice drank plain water or water supplemented with glucose or with ordinary table sugar. After a week, there was little change in the mice who drank water or sugar water, but the group getting artificial sweeteners developed marked intolerance to glucose.
Glucose intolerance, in which the body is less able to cope with large amounts of sugar, can lead to more serious illnesses like metabolic syndrome and Type 2 diabetes.
When the researchers treated the mice with antibiotics, killing much of the bacteria in the digestive system, the glucose intolerance went away.
At present, the scientists cannot explain how the sweeteners affect the bacteria or why the three different molecules of saccharin, aspartame and sucralose result in similar changes in the glucose metabolism.
To further test their hypothesis that the change in glucose metabolism was caused by a change in bacteria, they performed another series of experiments, this time focusing just on saccharin. They took intestinal bacteria from mice who had drank saccharin-laced water and injected them in mice that had never been exposed any saccharin. Those mice developed the same glucose intolerance. And DNA sequencing showed that saccharin had markedly changed the variety of bacteria in the guts of the mice that consumed it.
Next, the researchers turned to a study they were conducting to track the effects of nutrition and gut bacteria on people’s long-term health. For 381 nondiabetic participants in the study, the researchers found a correlation between the reported use of any kind of artificial sweeteners and signs of glucose intolerance. In addition, the gut bacteria of those who used artificial sweeteners were different from those who did not.
Finally, they recruited seven volunteers who normally did not use artificial sweeteners and over six days gave them the maximum amount of saccharin recommended by the United States Food and Drug Administration. In four of the seven, blood-sugar levels were disrupted in the same way as in mice.
Further, when they injected the human participants’ bacteria into the intestines of mice, the animals again developed glucose intolerance, suggesting that effect was the same in both mice and humans.
“That experiment is compelling to me,” Dr. Nagler said.
Intriguingly — “superstriking and interesting to us,” Dr. Segal said — the intestinal bacteria of the people who did experience effects were different from those who did not. This suggests that any effects of artificial sweeteners are not universal. It also suggests probiotics — medicines consisting of live bacteria — could be used to shift gut bacteria to a population that reversed the glucose intolerance.
Dr. Frank Hu, a professor of nutrition and immunology at the Harvard School of Public Health who did not take part in the study, called it interesting but far from conclusive and added that given the number of participants, “I think the validity of the human study is questionable.”
The researchers said future research would examine aspartame and sucralose in detail as well as other alternative sweeteners like stevia.
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3) Busy Days Precede a March Focusing on Climate Change
In a three-story warehouse in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, hundreds of people are working to turn the People’s Climate March planned for Sunday into a visual spectacle.
There were victims of Hurricane Sandy from the Rockaways toiling with artists on a 30-foot inflatable life preserver, and immigrant artists constructing a papier-mâché tree embedded with axes. Elsewhere, religious leaders were building an ark and scientists were constructing a chalkboard covered with calculations about carbon.
The run-up to what organizers say will be the largest protest about climate change in the history of the United States has transformed New York City into a beehive of planning and creativity, drawing graying local activists and young artists from as far away as Germany.
“This is the final crunch, the product of six months of work to make the People’s March a big, beautiful expression of the climate movement,” said Rachel Schragis, a Brooklyn-based artist and activist who is coordinating the production of floats, banners and signs.
The march, organized by more than a dozen environmental, labor and social justice groups, is planned to wend its way through Midtown Manhattan along a two-mile route approved by the city’s Police Department last month. It will start at 11:30 a.m. at Columbus Circle, then move east along 59th Street, south on Avenue of the Americas and west on 42nd Street, finishing at 11th Avenue and West 34th Street.
Unlike the nuclear disarmament demonstration that drew more than 500,000 people to Central Park for speeches in 1982, the event on Sunday will rely on the marchers themselves to broadcast a message of frustration and anger at what organizers describe as a lack of action by American and world leaders.
At 1 p.m., after a moment of silence, marchers will be encouraged to use instruments, cellphone alarms and whistles to make as much noise as possible, helped by at least 20 marching bands and the tolling of church bells across the city.
“We’re going to sound the burglar alarm on people who are stealing the future,” said Bill McKibben, co-founder of the group 350.org, which is helping to organize the march, and the author of several books about climate change, notably “The End of Nature,” published 25 years ago.
“Since then we’ve watched the summer Arctic disappear and the ocean turn steadily acidic,” Mr. McKibben said in a phone interview on Wednesday. “It’s not just that things are not getting better. They are getting horribly worse. Unlike any other issue we have faced, this one comes with a time limit. If we don’t get it right soon, we’ll never get it right.”
Organizers say it is impossible to predict how many people could show up. But 1,400 “partner organizations” have signed on, ranging from small groups to international coalitions. In addition, students have mobilized marchers at more than 300 college campuses, and more than 2,700 climate events in 158 countries are planned to coincide with the New York march, including rallies in Delhi, Jakarta, London, Melbourne and Rio de Janeiro.
In New York, organizers are expecting 496 buses from as far away as Minnesota and Kansas to bring marchers.
“The most useful gallon of gasoline anyone will ever burn is the one that gets them to the march,” Mr. McKibben said. (By contrast, all floats will be pulled by biodeisel-powered cars and trucks or by hand, organizers said.)
The forecast called for mostly sunny weather with a high temperature of 81, which would encourage a larger turnout. In February 2013, more than 40,000 protesters turned out in Washington to demand action on climate change and to challenge the contentious Keystone XL pipeline.
The police are closing off Central Park West north of Columbus Circle, and organizers are asking marchers to gather from West 65th to West 86th Street, before the start of the march.
Leslie Cagan, a longtime New York activist who coordinated the nuclear disarmament demonstration in 1982, has met numerous times with the Police Department to iron out the logistics of Sunday’s march. “That area on Central Park West can hold a lot of people — we believe between 80,000 and 100,000,” she said. The police would not provide estimates of the number of expected attendees.
Organizers have asked marchers to go to various themed staging areas along Central Park West depending on their leanings.
For example, a contingent of labor, families, students and older adults can congregate north of West 65th Street under the rubric “We Can Build the Future.”
Organizers have run phone banks, blanketed subway stations with fliers and issued weekly news releases.
They also produced a 52-minute documentary, “Disruption,” about planning the march. The film, released on Sept. 7, includes footage of meetings and pre-march rallies — interspersed with lessons on climate change and the lagging efforts so far to stop it.
Organizers say they chose Sunday because it comes ahead of a climate summit at the United Nations on Tuesday. World delegates are expected to hold high-level discussions about climate change that will lay the groundwork for a potential global agreement on emissions next year in Paris. (Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced on Tuesday that he planned to join the march.)
“When the secretary general invited world leaders to this summit, all of us in the climate justice movement thought, ‘Left to their own devices, these guys will do the same thing they’ve done for 25 years — i.e., nothing,’ ” Mr. McKibben said. “So we thought, we better go to New York, too.”
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4) We Can Save the Caribbean’s Coral Reefs
PARROTFISH eat algae and seaweed. These brightly colored fish with beaklike mouths inhabit coral reefs, the wellsprings of ocean life. Without them and other herbivores, algae and seaweed would overgrow the reefs, suppress coral growth and threaten the incredible array of life that depends on these reefs for shelter and food.
This was happening in Bermuda, until the government in 1990 banned fish traps that were decimating the parrotfish population. Today, Bermuda’s coral reefs are relatively healthy, a bright spot in the wider Caribbean, where total coral cover has declined by half since 1970.
Last month, in a reminder of just how dire the situation facing the world’s coral reefs is, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it was listing 20 species of coral as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, including all of what were once the most abundant Caribbean corals. The action focused primarily on the projected impacts of global warming and ocean acidification. Carbon dioxide emissions are increasing ocean temperatures and making them more acidic — and less hospitable for corals.
But climate change is only half the story. Up to now, the impacts of climate change on reefs have been much less destructive than the localized effects of overfishing, runoff pollution from the land and the destruction of habitats from coastal development. Those problems have exploded in intensity over the past century and will continue to increase sharply with population growth.
Proof of the destructive power of those impacts is evident in the central Pacific where, in spite of rising temperatures, coral cover is many times higher around islands unaffected by fishing and pollution, compared with heavily fished and polluted reefs of nearby islands.
A recent detailed assessment of the changing status of Caribbean reefs over the past 40 years by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network and the International Union for Conservation of Nature provides a similarly important finding that offers hope. Across the Caribbean, reefs near islands with effective local protections and governance, like the ones around Bermuda, have double the amount of living coral compared with those that lack those protections. They also have more fish and clearer waters.But in Florida, banning fish traps — which should result in more parrotfish, less algae and more coral — has not stemmed coral decline. That’s because of extreme local pressures from millions of residents and tourists and insufficient controls on development. Similar problems plague the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, which is being damaged by agricultural runoff and the development of huge ports for exporting coal. Fishing is carefully regulated there, but those other threats must be equally well managed.
The few remaining places in the wider Caribbean with relatively healthy reefs have one thing in common: a greater abundance of parrotfish and other herbivores. They also benefit by being adjacent to islands with comparatively small populations, more modest development and less pollution. You find this in the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary in the northern Gulf of Mexico, on reefs around Curaçao and Bonaire and in protected marine areas in the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands.
Stories about coral reefs commonly focus on doom and gloom. But these new findings indicate that there is actually something we can do right now to help reefs recover: prevent overfishing, overdevelopment and pollution from the land.
None of this lessens our concerns about climate change as humanity burns more coal and oil instead of less. But there is increasing evidence that protection from local stresses promotes the resilience of reef corals to climate change.
Several Caribbean islands are moving to control overfishing and pollution. Barbuda just enacted legislation to protect parrotfish, stop overfishing and establish marine sanctuaries. And the Bahamas, Belize, Bonaire, Cuba and Curaçao are working to enhance protections.
In contrast, the condition of the coral reefs of the Florida Keys, the United States Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico is among the worst in the wider Caribbean, despite vast sums invested in the monitoring of reefs and research on the effects of climate change. This monitoring and research are vitally important, but collecting information without strong corrective action is like a doctor analyzing a patient’s decline without doing everything possible to save her life.
We need to move immediately beyond listings of species as threatened and research about climate change and take rigorous action against the local and global stresses killing corals.
Coral reefs are vital to the economies of the 38 Caribbean countries and territories and their millions of people. These reefs generate roughly $3 billion annually in tourism and fishing and provide protection from storms.
To save coral reefs, we need to follow the lead of Barbuda and our other proactive neighbors. We need to stop all forms of overfishing, establish large and effectively enforced marine protected areas and impose strict regulations on coastal development and pollution while at the same time working to reduce fossil fuel emissions driving climate change. It’s not either/or. It’s all of the above.
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5) Sierra Leone Begins 3-Day Lockdown to Fight Ebola Outbreak
FREETOWN,
Sierra Leone — One of the most stringent anti-Ebola measures to date
began here Friday morning as Sierra Leone imposed a three-day national
lockdown, ordering people off the streets and into their homes in an
effort to stamp out the deadly disease.
Police officers patrolled the streets of the densely populated capital, telling stragglers to go home and stay indoors. Volunteers in bright jerseys prepared to go house-to-house throughout the country to warn people about Ebola’s dangers and to root out those who might be infected but were staying in hiding.
The normally busy streets of Freetown were empty Friday morning, stores were closed and pedestrians were rare on the main thoroughfares.
The country’s president, justifying the extraordinary move in a radio address Thursday night, suggested that Sierra Leone was engaged in a life-or-death struggle with the disease.“Some of the things we are asking you to do are difficult, but life is better than these difficulties,” President Ernest Bai Koroma said.
More than 200 new cases of Ebola have been reported in Sierra Leone in the past week, according to the World Health Organization, with transmission described as particularly high in the capital; nearly 40 percent of cases in the country were identified in the three weeks preceding Sept. 14; and more than 560 people have died in Sierra Leone, about one-fifth of the total from this outbreak.
The campaign that began here Friday morning reflected the desperation of West African governments — and in particular those of the three hardest-hit countries, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone — as they struggle with an epidemic that the health authorities have warned is showing no signs of slowing down.
No country has attempted anything on the scale of what is being tried in Sierra Leone, where more than 20,000 volunteers enlisted to help identify households where the authorities suspect people infected with the Ebola virus are hiding.
Yet there were plenty of indications on Friday that the campaign promised more than it could initially deliver in this country of six million people, at least in the capital.
Well into the morning, the house-to-house visits had yet to begin in Kroo Bay, a densely populated warren of iron-roof shanties where roughly 14,000 people live, despite officials saying they would start at dawn.
The neighborhood, a perennial home of cholera outbreaks, sits in a sea of muddy lanes and open sewers in which pigs forage. The police cruised into Kroo Bay on a pickup truck, yelling at lingering residents to go indoors and warning of imprisonment; people simply stared at the officers and continued lingering as the police drove off.
“The policeman is doing his thing, and I am doing my thing,” said Kerfala Koroma, 22, a building contractor who added that he was waiting for his breakfast. “We can’t even afford something to eat on a normal day. How can we get something now?” (Mr. Koroma is not related to Sierra Leone’s president.)
Residents insisted that there had been no cases of Ebola in Kroo Bay, although there were loud complaints from some that the bodies of victims had been dumped in a nearby cemetery.
As the morning wore on, the house-to-house volunteers began to assemble in a bare-bones community center, with several noting pointedly that they were not being paid. Others stressed the daunting challenge of covering thousands of households with a team of only 50.
By 9 a.m., with two hours of daylight already gone, the volunteers were still being given their marching orders.
“We told them to come at 6:30, but naturally, in this part of the world, people are not too time-cautious,” Sima Conteh, the volunteers’ coordinator, said with a grin. Elsewhere in town, groups of volunteers could be seen sitting on the sidewalk.
Yet some volunteers expressed hope that their efforts would not be wasted. “You have the chance to get the people with the disease out,” said Emmanuel Cole, a 33-year-old taxi driver who said he had refused to take any passengers since the epidemic began, for fear of becoming infected.
“The country is not moving now. We have got to help the country now,” Mr. Cole said. “It is not a normal time.”
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6) Climate Change March Begins in New York City
Under leaden skies, throngs of demonstrators stretching as far as the eye could see started to move through Midtown Manhattan late Sunday morning, chanting their demands for action on climate change.
With drums and tubas, banners and floats, the People's Climate March turned Columbus Circle, where the march began just before 11:30 a.m., into a colorful tableau. The demonstrators represented a broad coalition of ages, races, geographic locales and interests, with union members, religious leaders, scientists, politicians and students joining the procession.
“I’m here because I really feel that every major social movement in this country has come when people get together,” said Carol Sutton of Norwalk, Conn., the president of a teachers' union. “It begins in the streets.”With world leaders gathering at the United Nations on Tuesday for a climate summit, marchers said the timing was right for the populist message in support of limits on carbon emissions. The signs marchers held were as varied as the movement: “There is No PlanetB,” “Forests Not for Sale” and “Jobs, Justice, Clean Energy.”“The climate is changing,” said Otis Daniels, 58, of the Bronx. “Everyone knows it; everyone feels it. But no one is doing anything about it.”
The march covers a two-mile route, down Avenue of the Americas, west on 42nd Street to 11th Avenue and south to 34th Street.
The U.N. summit this week is expected to create a framework for a potential global agreement on emissions late next year in Paris.
The timing of the march was also significant in another regard. Last week, meteorologists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that this summer — the months of June, July and August — was the hottest on record for the globe, and that 2014 was on track to break the record for the hottest year, set in 2010.
“Climate change is no longer an environmental issue; it’s an everybody issue,” Sam Barratt, a campaign director for the online advocacy group Avaaz, which helped plan the march, said on Friday.“The number of natural disasters has increased and the science is so much more clear,” he added. “This march has many messages, but the one that we’re seeing and hearing is the call for a renewable revolution.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, whose administration announced this weekend a sweeping plan to overhaul energy efficiency standards in all city-owned buildings, was among the high-profile participants expected to join the march, including the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon; former Vice President Al Gore; the actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo; at least two United States senators; and one-third of the New York City Council.
Additionally, nearly 2,700 climate events were planned in more than 150 countries to coincide with the march, considered the centerpiece of the international protest. They ranged from a small rally in Tanzania to major demonstrations from Berlin to Bogata.
Participants from across the country began arriving early on Sunday morningat the staging area near the American Museum of Natural History. Rosemary Snow, 75, stretched her legs after a nearly 14-hour bus drive from Georgia.
“I thought we’d have a lot of younger people on the bus,” said Ms. Snow, who made the trip with her grandson. “There’s a really great mix of people.”
Ms. Snow had traveled with dozens of others who came from different parts of the state, including Valdosta, Savannah and Atlanta.
A professor at the University of Georgia, Chris Cuomo of Decatur, Ga., said the group was organized by the Georgia Climate Change Coalition.
She said she hoped the coalition’s presence at the rally would “let the rest of the world know that people from small-town America, urban America, rural America care about climate change.”
Nearby, Ahni Rocheleau of Santa Fe, N.M., was seated while eating a breakfast of organic yogurt and buckwheat pancakes. She is a member of the Great March for Climate Action, a cross-country walk to raise awareness for alternative and sustainable energy practices.
“We hope the heart and mind of the people will be awakened,” she said. “Coal is not the way to go.”
Nearly 500 buses brought marchers from South Carolina, Kansas, Minnesota and Canada, while a “climate train” transported participants from California.
At 12:58 p.m., a moment of silence was to be followed by a blare of noise — a symbolic sounding of the alarm on climate change — from horns, whistles and cellphone alarms. More than 20 marching bands and tolling church bells were expected contribute to the cacophony.
No speeches were planned, but the march was to end with a block party on 11th Avenue between 34th and 38th Streets. There, participants could get a closer look at many of the floats and other artwork created for the march, including a 30-foot inflatable life preserver, 100 sunflowers and a model of the New York City skyline with bicyclists powering its lights.
New York’s political establishment was set to come out in force. On Friday, Mayor de Blasio announced on Twitter his intention to join the protest. “Proud to walk in #PeoplesClimate March on Sunday,” he wrote. “It’s everyone’s responsibility to leave a livable planet for the next generation.”
At least 17 council members planned to march. In a nod to the event, the Council announced a related package of bills on Friday aimed at reducing the city’s carbon footprint by connecting unemployed New Yorkers to green jobs, making buildings more energy-efficient and promoting low-carbon transportation. The legislation seeks an 80 percent reduction in the city’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
With its bands and colorful floats, the march offered a festive atmosphere, but organizers said that the underlying message was somber. “We are trying to celebrate our lives and this planet in order to show that this is what we are fighting for,” said Leslie Cagan, the logistics coordinator for the march. “It’s the human spirit — and everything else on this planet — that is in danger.”
The march was organized by a dozen environmental, labor and social justice groups, including the Sierra Club, Avaaz, New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, 350.org, the Transport Workers Union Local 100 and 1199 S.E.I.U. In addition, more than 1,570 “partner organizations” signed on to march.
Organizers were hoping that the warm weather forecasted for the day would yield a large turnout.
“Our biggest problem is the financial power of the fossil fuel industry,” said Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org and author of “The End of Nature.”
“We can’t match that money,” he said. “So we have to work in the currency of movements — passion, spirit, creativity and bodies — and it will all be on display on Sunday.”
Kenneth Rosen contributed reporting.
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7) U.S. and Allies Strike ISIS Targets in Syria
BEIRUT,
Lebanon — The United States and five Arab allies launched a
wide-ranging air campaign against the Islamic State and at least one
other extremist group in Syria for the first time early Tuesday,
targeting the groups’ bases, training camps and checkpoints in at least
four provinces, according to the United States military and Syrian
activists.
The attacks were said to have scattered the jihadist forces and damaged the network of facilities they have built in Syria that helped fuel the group’s seizure of a large part of Iraq this year.
Separate from the attacks on the Islamic State, the United States Central Command, or Centcom, said that American forces acting alone “took action” against “a network of seasoned Al Qaeda veterans” from the Khorasan group in Syria to disrupt “imminent attack planning against the United States and Western interests.”
Officials did not reveal where or when such attacks might take place.Al Qaeda cut ties with the Islamic State earlier this year because the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, disobeyed orders from Al Qaeda to fight only in Iraq. Just days ago, American officials said the Khorasan group, led by a shadowy figure who was once in Osama bin Laden’s inner circle, had emerged in the past year as the Syria-based cell most intent on launching a terrorist attack on the United States or on its installations overseas.
The latest campaign opened with multiple strikes before dawn that focused on the Islamic State’s de facto capital, the city of Raqqa, and on its bases in the surrounding countryside. Other strikes hit in the provinces of Deir al-Zour and Hasaka, whose oil wells the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, have exploited to finance its operations.
The extent of the damage caused by the strikes remained unclear. Centcom said the wave of fighter planes, bombers, drones and cruise missiles struck 14 targets linked to the Islamic State.
“All aircraft safely exited the strike areas,” the statement said.
Almost 50 cruise missiles were launched from two American vessels in the Red Sea and the north of the Persian Gulf, it said, adding that four other attacks were launched on militant targets in Iraq in the same period, bringing the total there to 194.
The intensity and scale of the strikes were greater than those launched by the United States in Iraq, where it has been bombing select Islamic State targets for months. The air campaign also marks the biggest direct military intervention in Syria since the crisis began more than three years ago.
Centcom identified the Arab states participating in the campaign as Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Their participation is seen as important to limit criticisms that the United States is waging war alone against Muslims. But their role varied between support for the strikes and participation, the military said.
The Jordanian Army said on Tuesday that it had carried out airstrikes against “terrorist groups” that were plotting to attack Jordan, according to Reuters.
In intervening in Syria, the United States is injecting its military might into a brutal civil war between the government of President Bashar al-Assad, the Islamic State and a range of rebel groups that originally took up arms to fight Mr. Assad but have also come to oppose the Islamic State.
It was unclear what effect the American-led strikes would have on the larger conflict.
The Islamic State, while having chalked up numerous victories against the Syrian and Iraqi security forces and against Syrian rebels, has proved vulnerable to air power in Iraq, and it is unlikely that it can continue to hold all of its territory and facilities amid a sustained air campaign.
American officials said that the strikes were not coordinated with the government of Mr. Assad, who President Obama has said has lost his legitimacy to rule and should step down. But Syrian state television reported on Monday that the United States had informed Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations before the attacks were launched. This followed weeks of threats by Syrian officials that any uncoordinated strikes on Syria would be considered an act of aggression.
Some of Syria’s allies have suggested that the government in Damascus would benefit from strikes, although analysts question whether the Syrian military has the forces it would need to do so.
Syria also has hundreds of rebels groups, many of which hate the Islamic State, and the United States has been working with allies to build up a small number groups deemed moderate. But these forces remain relatively small and are far from the Islamic State’s locations, so there is little chance that they will soon be able to seize control of any areas vacated by the Islamic State.
Reuters quoted an unidentified ISIS fighter as saying “these attacks will be answered.” The militants have already released videos showing the beheadings of two American hostages and of one British captive, and have threatened a fourth hostage, a Briton, with the same fate.
Additionally, an Algerian group linked to Islamic State has claimed to have kidnapped a French citizen. Prime Minister Manuel Valls told French radio that there would be “no discussion, no negotiation and we will never give in to blackmail” about the hostage’s fate.
France, whose warplanes joined the air campaign in Iraq last week but not the overnight strikes in Syria, has strongly denied persistent reports that it has paid ransom money to free its citizens held hostage by jihadist groups.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported strikes in five Syrian provinces, in the country’s north and east, targeting bases and training camps of the Islamic State and other groups.
In addition to Islamic State bases in the provinces of Raqqa, Hasaka, Deir al-Zour and Aleppo, strikes also hit bases belonging to the Nusra Front further west, killing at least seven Nusra fighters and eight civilians, according to the observatory, which tracks the conflict from Britain through a network of contacts in Syria.
Even for a population that has grown used to the sounds and sights of war, the new strikes proved surprising.
In a video posted online, a man in Idlib Province inspected a greenish metal hunk of what he said was the remainder of the munitions used in a strike.
“No one knows what happened yet,” the man said. “This was the first time we have heard an explosion like this during this revolution.”
Adding to the broader ramifications of the Syrian war, the Israeli military said Tuesday that it had shot down a Syrian fighter jet that had “infiltrated into Israeli airspace,” the first such incident in at least a quarter of a century.
Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a military spokesman, said the Patriot air-defense system had intercepted a Russian-made Sukhoi warplane over the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights around 9:15 a.m.
On Syria’s northern border, meanwhile, more than 130,000 Syrian Kurds have fled into Turkey to escape an advance by Islamic State fighters. The humanitarian catastrophe could worsen within days. The United Nations relief agency in Geneva said on Tuesday that it was possible that all 400,000 inhabitants of a Syrian Kurdish border town, which Arabs refer to as Ayn-al-Arab and Kurds call Kobani, would to try to flee into Turkey.
The United Nations human rights agency said Tuesday that it had received “very alarming” reports from the town of “deliberate killing of civilians, including women and children, the abduction of hundreds of Kurds by ISIL, and widespread looting and destruction of infrastructure and private property.”
Militants had taken over the main source of water, leading to severe shortages, the agency said. “While an estimated 138,000 people have fled the area,” the organization added in a statement, “hundreds of thousands remain in the region, living in fear of the kind of persecution that ISIL has carried out against religious and ethnic minorities elsewhere in Syria and Iraq.”
In Britain, senior officials said Prime Minister David Cameron was weighing whether to seek Parliament’s approval to join the air war, but only in Iraq and at the invitation of the Baghdad government.
Ben Hubbard reported from Beirut, Alan Cowell from London and Helene Cooper from Washington. Mohammed Ghannam contributed reporting from Beirut. Eric Schmitt from Washington, and Somini Sengupta from the United Nations.
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8) The New York Jail Scandal Continues
A
Justice Department investigation that last month uncovered a chamber of
horrors at the Rikers Island jail in New York City was bad enough in
its depiction of corruption and brutality in the city jail system. Now
comes the news that the Department of Correction had sanitized a 2012
report that it later turned over to federal investigators, eliminating
passages recommending demotion for two officials who were derelict in
their jobs and failed to supervise the jail they oversaw.The missing
information included the fact that hundreds of fights had been omitted
from jail statistics. The report said that the warden, William Clemons,
and his deputy, Turhan Gumusdere, had “abdicated responsibility” for
reporting inmate fights and violence statistics and “turned a blind eye”
when the staff submitted false data to make conditions seem better than
they were. There is no reason to believe that Mr. Clemons and Mr.
Gumusdere, who were recently promoted, can carry out their
responsibilities.
As The Times reported on Monday, all this was expunged at the order of the corrections commissioner at the time, Dora Schriro, who not only ordered the scrubbing of information damaging to the two officials but promoted Mr. Clemons to assistant chief of administration, despite an internal investigation raising questions about his conduct. This outrageous behavior lends credence to the charge that the department historically protected and empowered people who were comfortable with misconduct and a deep-seated culture of violence.
The problems did not stop with Ms. Schriro. According to The Times article, Joseph Ponte, who was appointed corrections commissioner by Mayor Bill de Blasio to clean up the troubled department, promoted both men. Mr. Gumusdere became warden of the largest jail at Rikers Island. Mr. Clemons was named the department’s highest-ranking officer, despite the advice of the Department of Investigation, which had reviewed his record and advised against it.
The mayor’s office insists that Mr. Ponte never saw the original report. It also says that after inspecting their work, Mr. Ponte determined the two men to be the best of the pool eligible for promotion. If true, that says volumes about the Bloomberg administration’s inattention to the problems at the corrections department and the mediocre staff it bequeathed to Mr. de Blasio. The city says it is reviewing the issue in light of the latest revelations.
The report, issued in August by the United States attorney in Manhattan, Preet Bharara, depicted Rikers Island as a horrific place where teenagers routinely suffered injuries during sadistic beatings by correction officers who acted without fear of being reported or punished. The report said that “inmates are beaten as a form of punishment, sometimes in apparent retribution for some perceived disrespectful conduct,” adding, “correction officers improperly use injurious force in response to refusals to follow orders, verbal taunts, or insults, even when the inmate presents no threat to the safety or security of staff or other inmates.” The Justice Department has called on the city to completely overhaul departmental operations and recommended that it remove adolescents from Rikers.
Mr. Bharara said in a statement on Monday that news of the suppressed information and “questionable promotions” did not instill confidence that the city would quickly meet its constitutional obligation to change the climate at Rikers. He further noted that the Justice Department stood ready to take legal action to compel long-overdue reforms at the city jails.
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9) Israeli Forces Kill 2 Suspects in Murder of Jewish Teenagers
JERUSALEM — Israeli forces early Tuesday killed the two men they suspected of abducting and murdering three Israeli teenagers from the occupied West Bank in June, according to a military spokesman, closing a crucial chapter in what became the bloodiest period of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in decades.
Lt. Col. Peter Lerner of the Israeli military said Marwan Qawasmeh, 29, and Amer Abu Aisha, 33, “came out shooting” around 6 a.m. as troops breached a two-story structure in Hebron where the suspects had been holed up for a week. “In that exchange, one of them was killed on the spot,” Colonel Lerner said. “We have one confirmed kill and the second assumed killed. Because of how he fell back into the void and the grenades that we threw after him, it’s very unlikely that he survived.”The June 12 disappearance of Naftali Fraenkel and Gilad Shaar, both 16, and Eyal Yifrach, 19, as they hitchhiked home from their West Bank yeshivas, and the subsequent Israeli crackdown in Hebron and surrounding areas, helped set off an escalation of violence that culminated in a seven-week battle between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip. Israel quickly blamed Hamas, the Islamist movement that dominates Gaza, for the kidnappings; Mr. Qawasmeh and Mr. Abu Aisha are affiliated with Hamas, though the Israeli authorities believe they acted without direction by, or perhaps even without the knowledge of, the movement’s leadership.
After the three teenagers’ bodies were found under a pile of rocks in an open field not far from Hebron, Jewish extremists snatched a Palestinian 16-year-old old, Muhammad Abu Khdeir, in his East Jerusalem neighborhood of Shuafat, beat him and burned him alive as an act of revenge. A 29-year-old eyeglass-store owner with a history of psychiatric problems and two 16-year-old relatives, all ultra-Orthodox Jews, face murder charges in that case.
The Israeli military operation that began less than a week later killed more than 2,100 Palestinians, including about 500 children, and destroyed thousands of buildings in Gaza, leaving more than 100,000 people homeless. On the Israeli side, 67 soldiers and six civilians were killed before an agreement was reached on Aug. 26 to halt the hostilities.
The early-morning shootout threatened to derail the scheduled resumption of talks Tuesday in Cairo on terms for a lasting truce, including: an arrangement for the reconstruction of Gaza; the possible exchange of Israeli soldiers’ remains for Hamas operatives arrested after the kidnapping; the lifting of Israeli restrictions on Gaza travel and trade; and efforts to disarm Hamas and other Gaza-based militant groups. Izzat al-Risheq, a Hamas political leader based in Lebanon, wrote on Twitter that Palestinian negotiators en route to the talks had turned around in protest and were “deciding on the next step.”
Hamas leaders praised Mr. Qawasmeh and Mr. Abu Aisha and described the kidnapping as part of the resistance to Israel’s occupation. Some Palestinians described the killings Tuesday morning as an extrajudicial assassination. Several schools in Hebron were closed in mourning.
“This is premeditated murder,” Kamel Hmeid, the governor of Hebron, said on Voice of Palestine Radio. “They have indicated from the start that they are not interested in arrests or confessions; they want them dead. It is a unilateral trial, judgment and verdict.”
Rachel Fraenkel, Naftali’s mother, said she was relieved to hear the kidnappers had been killed because she would be spared having to see them in court or, potentially, released as part of a political deal. She said he had “no emotional reaction” to the news but that her other six children cheered when she told them what happened.
“My kids are happy that the bad guys are gone,” Ms. Fraenkel said in a telephone interview. “We were worried about these two dangerous people, with weapons, having nothing to lose being out there. It’s a relief to know that they won’t hurt any other innocent people.”
Mr. Qawasmeh, who studied Shariah law in college but opened a barbershop after learning to cut hair in prison — he had been arrested a total of eight times, by both Israel and the Palestinian Authority, most recently in 2010 — is part of a large and prominent Hebron family with connections to Hamas. A relative, Hussam Qawasmeh, was indicted earlier this month and is suspected of being the logistical commander of the cell, handling $60,000 sent in five installments from Gaza that the Israeli authorities say was used to purchase two cars, two M-16 rifles and two pistols used in the kidnapping.
Mr. Abu Aisha held a series of odd jobs after a swimming accident that put him in a coma in 2007, and was arrested twice by Israel, in 2005 and 2006.
Hussam Bardan, a Hamas spokesman, described Mr. Qawasmeh and Mr. Abu Aisha as members of the group’s armed wing and praised them for “a long life of sacrifice and giving.”
“We are proud of you and our people will not forget your jihad,” Mr. Bardan wrote in statements circulated on social media. “You trampled the occupation’s nose in the dirt and destroyed its so-called security legend.”
Colonel Lerner described the building, in an urban section of northern Hebron, as a two-story “workshop” on a hill, with storefronts on the ground level and an area below not visible from the street. Another military official told Israel radio it was owned by the Qawasmeh family. Three sons of Arafat Qawasmeh, who was arrested in July for assisting in the kidnapping, were arrested at the site Tuesday morning.
Brig. Gen. Avi Yedai, head of the military’s forces in the West Bank, told Israel Radio that the kidnappers were given a chance to surrender, but did not respond. The Israelis then began destroying the building with a tractor and shooting at it, General Yedai said.
Colonel Lerner said of the suspects, “They were armed, they were in hiding, they were fugitives and they understood we were trying to find them.” He added, “The intelligence indicated that their intention was to fight back, and we took the necessary precautions in order to address that threat.”
The kidnapping gripped and united Israeli society, and led to an intense crackdown on Hebron in which hundreds of people, including many Hamas political leaders, were arrested, as well as an extensive 17-day search effort in the surrounding hills. But the authorities believe the three teenagers were killed shortly after they were picked up around 10 p.m. from a hitchhiking post frequented by West Bank yeshiva students.
Soon after the teenagers got into the kidnappers’ car, a stolen Hyundai i35, according to court records revealed with Hussam Qawasmeh’s indictment, one of the Palestinians “pulled out a gun, pointed it at them and told them they had been kidnapped and they should keep quiet.” One of the Israelis, Gilad, managed to dial the police emergency line from his cellphone, but the call was initially dismissed as a prank, even though he said, “I’ve been kidnapped,” followed by what sound like gunshots, a painful groan and then celebratory cheers in Arabic.
Mr. Qawasmeh and Mr. Abu Aisha were named as the prime suspects on June 26, days before the bodies were found in a plot of land owned by the Qawasmeh family. It remains unclear how and where they hid for three months, or how much help they had.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel praised the intelligence teams and special forces units that had found the men, and said he had called the parents of the teenagers after the operation was complete.
“There is nothing that will take away their pain, and there is nothing that will return these amazing dear boys, but I said to them there is accounting of justice,” Mr. Netanyahu said at the start of a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, according to a statement from his office. “I told them that we executed the mission that we promised to execute before them and all of the people of Israel.” He also told the cabinet: “We will continue to strike terror in every place.”
Fares Akram contributed reporting from Gaza City.
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10) Talk in Synagogue of Israel and Gaza Goes From Debate to Wrath to Rage
With the war in Gaza still raging, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum offered an unusual prayer for peace last month during a Friday night service at the large predominantly gay synagogue she leads in New York. Cautioning her flock not to “harden our hearts” against any who had suffered, she wove throughout the prayer the names of young Israeli soldiers — as well as Palestinian children — who were killed in Gaza.
The reaction was swift: A member of the board posted his resignation letter on Facebook, accusing Rabbi Kleinbaum of spreading propaganda for the militant Palestinian group Hamas, and three more congregants soon left.
From the other direction, Rabbi Ron Aigen heard criticism at his synagogue in Montreal this month after he gave a sermon asserting that in the recent battle, Israel had endeavored to live up to the highest standards of Jewish teaching on ethical and just war. He said that he received a letter from a member who had not heard the sermon, but announced that she was quitting because there was no room to express criticism of Israel in the synagogue, which is Reconstructionist and one of the most liberal in Montreal.
Forty-seven years after Israel’s victory in the 1967 Middle East war — celebrated by Jews worldwide — Israel’s occupation of Arab lands won in battle and its standoff with the Palestinians have become so divisive that many rabbis say it is impossible to have a civil conversation about Israel in their synagogues. Debate among Jews about Israel is nothing new, but some say the friction is now fire. Rabbis said in interviews that it may be too hot to touch, and many are anguishing over what to say about Israel in their sermons during the High Holy Days, which begin Wednesday evening.
Particularly in the large cohort of rabbis who consider themselves liberals and believers in a “two-state solution,” some said they are now hesitant to speak much about Israel at all. If they defend Israel, they risk alienating younger Jews who, rabbis say they have observed, are more detached from the Jewish state and organized Judaism. If they say anything critical of Israel, they risk angering the older, more conservative members who often are the larger donors and active volunteers.
The recent bloody outbreak of fighting between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip may have done little to change the military or political status quo there, but rabbis in the North American diaspora say the summertime war brought into focus how the ground under them has shifted.
“It used to be that Israel was always the uniting factor in the Jewish world,” said Rabbi Aigen, who has served Congregation Dorshei Emet in Montreal for 39 years. “But it’s become contentious and sadly, I think it is driving people away from the organized Jewish community. Even trying to be centrist and balanced and present two sides of the issue, it is fraught with danger.”
Israel is still, without a doubt, the spiritual center and the fondest cause of global Jewry. Many rabbis said that Hamas’s summer assaults on Israel, by rocket fire and underground tunnels, the anti-Semitism that erupted around the world and the rise of the terrorist group that calls itself the Islamic State in neighboring Syria left them feeling more aware of Israel’s vulnerability and more protective of it than ever.
“There’s just been a tremendous outpouring of support, a sense of real connection and identification with our brothers and sisters in Israel,” said Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly, which represents the Conservative movement, summing up what she heard during a recent “webinar” for rabbis preparing for the High Holy Days.
But many rabbis said in interviews conducted in recent weeks that, though they love and support Israel, they feel conflicted about its direction. These are rabbis in the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements — not the Orthodox, who make up about 10 percent of American Jews and tend to lean right on Israel. Some are rabbis who believe that the expansion of settlements in the West Bank is undermining the possibility for Palestinians to have a state of their own. They believe Israel must defend itself, but they questioned the Israeli bomb strikes in Gaza that killed so many women and children. Now, they said, they are more reluctant than ever to be open with their congregants about their views.
“There is the sense that the ability to criticize Israel has been diminished because of the war, because of the atrocities that Hamas perpetrates among its own people, and because Israel needs our support since the international community is so overwhelmingly anti-Israel,” said Rabbi Jonathan A. Stein, a recently retired senior rabbi at Temple Shaaray Tefila in Manhattan.
“The easy sermon for a rabbi to give this year will be on the rise of anti-Semitism across the world. That is a softball,” said Rabbi Stein, who is also the immediate past president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, which represents the Reform movement. “The more difficult sermon to give will be one that has any kind of critical posture.”
His sentiments were echoed by others who did not want to be identified because they felt they would risk their jobs. In a recent effort to quantify the phenomenon, one-third of 552 rabbis who responded to a questionnaire put out last year by the Jewish Council for Public Affairs said they were reluctant to express their true views on Israel. (Most who responded were not Orthodox.) The “doves” were far more likely to say they were fearful of speaking their minds than the “hawks.”
Rabbi Jill Jacobs, executive director of T’ruah: The Rabbinical Call for Human Rights, a liberal group with 1,800 member rabbis, said: “Rabbis are just really scared because they get slammed by their right-wing congregants, who are often the ones with the purse strings. They are not necessarily the numerical majority, but they are the loudest.”
One Midwestern rabbi in the Conservative movement, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is raising money from Jewish donors, said he was rejected for a position at a temple after he told the board that “there’s not just one Jewish point of view” on Israel. Another rabbi’s board put a note in her file saying she cannot speak about Israel.
After she read the names of children killed in Gaza, Rabbi Kleinbaum found herself vilified on social media. But she retained the backing of her board at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, the largest gay synagogue in the country, and some new members joined, she said. Her message, she said in an interview, is not so controversial. “If we as Jews don’t feel the pain for the loss of life of children,” she said, “we’re losing a piece of our soul.”
There is more space to be critical of Israel in Israel than in North America, said Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, a former president of the Union for Reform Judaism, who wrote an article for the current issue of Reform Judaism magazine on rabbis who feel “muzzled.” He said in an interview, “There are a range of opinions in Israel, and there should be a range of opinions here.”
Rabbi Yoffie suggested that synagogues draw a “red line” excluding those who support boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel. Few rabbis who publicly support the “B.D.S.” movement lead congregations. Rabbi Brant Rosen, one of the few, announced to his congregants in a mournful letter this month that in the coming months he will step down from leadership at the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston, Ill., after 17 years because “my activism has become a lightning rod for division.”
Rabbi Rosen said in an interview: “For many Jews, Israel is their Judaism, or at least a big part of it. So when someone challenges the centrality of Israel in a public way, it’s very painful and very difficult, especially when that person is their rabbi.”
Last year, the Board of Rabbis of Southern California of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles tried and failed to organize an event exploring how to have a dialogue about Israel, in part because of logistics and in part because it was just too contentious, said Jonathan Freund, vice president of the board.
“It was kind of ironic,” Mr. Freund said, “because we couldn’t in the end figure out how to talk about how to talk about it.”
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11) Washington: Marijuana-Use Tickets Are Nullified
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12) Deaths From Faulty Switch in G.M. Cars Edge Higher
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13) In Colorado, a Student Counterprotest to an Anti-Protest Curriculum
ARVADA, Colo. — A new conservative school board majority here in the Denver suburbs recently proposed a curriculum-review committee to promote patriotism, respect for authority and free enterprise and to guard against educational materials that “encourage or condone civil disorder.” In response, hundreds of students, teachers and parents gave the board their own lesson in civil disobedience.
On Tuesday, hundreds of students from high schools across the Jefferson County school district, the second largest in Colorado, streamed out of school and along busy thoroughfares, waving signs and championing the value of learning about the fractious and tumultuous chapters of American history.
“It’s gotten bad,” said Griffin Guttormsson, a junior at Arvada High School who wants to become a teacher and spent the school day soliciting honks from passing cars. “The school board is insane. You can’t erase our history. It’s not patriotic. It’s stupid.”The student walkout came after a bitter school board election last year and months of acrimony over charter schools, teacher pay, kindergarten expansion and, now, the proposed review committee, which would evaluate Advanced Placement United States history and elementary school health classes.
The teachers’ union, whose members forced two high schools to close Friday by calling in sick, has been in continual conflict with the new board; the board, in turn, has drawn praise from Americans for Prosperity-Colorado, a conservative group affiliated with the Koch family foundations. In April, Dustin Zvonek, the group’s director, wrote in an op-ed that the board’s election was an “exciting and hopeful moment for the county and the school district.”
So far, nothing is settled in Jefferson County. The board put off a discussion of the curriculum-review committee until a meeting in October, and Ken Witt, the board president, suggested that some of its proposed language about not promoting “civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law” might be cut.
“A lot of those words were more specific and more pointed than they have to be,” Mr. Witt said. He said that the school board was responsible for making decisions about curriculum and that the review committee would give a wider spectrum of parents and community members the power to examine what was taught in schools. He said that some had made censorship allegations “to incite and upset the student population.”
But on Tuesday, those allegations were more than enough to draw hundreds of students into the sun. They waved signs declaring, “It’s world history, not white history,” and talked about Cesar Chavez and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Leaders of the walkout urged others to stay out of the streets and not to curse, and sympathetic parents brought poster board, magic markers and bottles of water.
Almost from the outset, the three conservative newcomers to the five-person board clashed with the two others, and a steady stream of 3-to-2 votes came to represent the sharp divisions on the board and in the community. Critics of the new majority have assailed the board for hiring its own lawyer, calling it a needless expense, and accused them of conducting school business outside of public meetings. In February, the district’s superintendent, Cindy Stevenson, announced during a packed, emotional meeting that she was leaving after 12 years because the board did not trust or respect her. Her replacement, an assistant superintendent from Douglas County, prompted more accusations that the new majority in Jefferson County was trying to steer the district far to the right.
“We’ve had conservatives on our board before,” said Michele Patterson, the president of the district’s parent-teacher association. “They were wonderful. These people, they’re not interested in balance or compromise. They have a political agenda that they’re intent on pushing through.”
Mr. Witt rejected the criticism, saying he was dedicated to improving student achievement, giving equal footing to charter-school students and rewarding educators for doing their jobs well.“I would rather be able to do those things without conflict, but at the end of the day, it’s very important that we align with those goals,” he said.
In March 2010, a similar debate roiled the Texas Board of Education as its members voted overwhelmingly to adopt a social studies curriculum that heralded American capitalism and ensured that students would learn about the conservative movement’s rise in the 1980s.
In Colorado, students said the protests had been organized over the weekend on Facebook groups after they read about the teacher sick day on Friday. Some on Tuesday wandered off after a while or returned to class. Others stayed out for hours.
Leighanne Grey, a senior at Arvada High School, said that after second period, a student ran through the halls yelling, “The protest is still on!” and she and scores of her classmates got up and left.
She said that learning about history, strife and all, had given her a clearer understanding of the country.
“As we grow up, you always hear that America’s the greatest, the land of the free and the home of the brave,” she said. “For all the good things we’ve done, we’ve done some terrible things. It’s important to learn about those things, or we’re doomed to repeat the past.”
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14) A California Dream: Not Having to Settle for Just One Bedroom
IRVINE,
Calif. — This was the state that embodied the middle-class American
dream: Move west, acquire a small slice of property, perhaps with a palm
tree or two.
For decades, comfortable suburbs like this one just south of Los Angeles boomed with new housing tracts designed to attract the latest arrivals. When space started to come at a premium, developers moved inland, building more homes for people who could not afford the more expensive coastal areas.
But now, cities across the state are grappling with a dwindling stock of housing that can be considered affordable for anyone but the wealthiest. In much of the state, a two-bedroom apartment or home is virtually impossible to acquire with anything less than a six-figure salary.
“It’s hard to imagine how all of California doesn’t become like New York City and San Francisco, where you have very rich people and poor people but nothing in between,” said Richard K. Green, an economist and director of the Lusk Center for Real Estate at the University of Southern California. “That’s socially unhealthy and unsustainable, but it’s where we are going right now — affordability is its worst ever, and we’re seeing a hollowing-out of the middle class here.”
The problem extends far beyond San Francisco, where wealth from the technology industry has sent housing costs skyrocketing. In Los Angeles and Orange Counties, less than 25 percent of homes for sale are within reach of the region’s middle-class earners, according to an analysis by Trulia, a real estate website. Of 10 markets nationwide that Trulia ranked as least affordable for the middle class, six were in California.
“I talk a lot of buyers out of sticker shock,” said Linda Ginex, a real estate agent in Orange County. She routinely steers clients to suburbs they might not have initially considered or, for people who insist on living in the most desirable cities, into condominiums instead of houses. “A lot of people who grow up here think they can afford what their parents had, but that’s not always realistic,” she said.
In Los Angeles, the average renter spends nearly half of his or her income on rent, according to a study released this year by the University of California, Los Angeles. To make the rent, many families have opted to double up with other families, sometimes cramming six or seven people into a small apartment.
Denny Bak, 31, who grew up as a son of a minister in Aliso Viejo, a small city in southern Orange County, figured that with his salary as a police officer and his wife’s as a nurse, they would easily be able to find a three-bedroom house with a small yard. But when the couple set out searching in the neighborhoods he knew best, homes were at least $800,000 — more than double what they could afford.
Eventually, they found an older, ranch-style home in La Mirada, another small city south of Los Angeles.
“We both grew up here and had this notion that we would have the same promises our parents had,” Mr. Bak said. “It’s just not that easy. We make good money — probably more than our parents did — and it still feels like a struggle to stay here.”
It is not only would-be homeowners who are feeling the effect. A renter in Los Angeles County would have to make at least $27 an hour to be able to afford a two-bedroom apartment, according to a report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, which estimated that the state is short of roughly one million homes for the working poor. And while housing prices are increasing rapidly, incomes in the state remain flat.
“We can’t find any way for people earning a median income to keep up pace; that’s what’s really scary,” said Matt Schwartz, the chief executive of the California Housing Partnership Corporation, which monitors affordable housing throughout the state. “We’ve seen this happening for a long time in San Francisco, but now it’s going on in Sacramento, in the Central Valley — the demand is far outpacing the supply. It’s no longer just that the low-income folks are getting squeezed out of a decent place to live.”
Abel Ruiz has lived with his family in Santa Ana, an inland city in Orange County, for more than a decade. Their landlord recently increased the rent on their one-bedroom apartment to $1,100, plus an $18 surcharge per resident, an increase of more than $300.
Mr. Ruiz, 30, works for the local parks department and has considered getting his own place. Instead, he helps his parents make the rent. The living room is divided in half, his mother and father sleeping on one side and his 18-year-old sister on the other. He and his 12-year-old brother share the bedroom in the back.
“Everything is multiuse,” he said. “Do we think about moving? Sure, but that means I have to find another job, and who knows how hard that might be.”
Banks and other investors have been buying up single-family homes all over the region, particularly in parts of the state that were hit hardest during the foreclosure crisis, like the northern suburbs of Los Angeles County and the Inland Empire, a metropolitan area east of Los Angeles. Foreign investors are paying cash for properties, as investments or as pieds-à-terre. Some renters have complained of neglect, saying that absentee landlords ignore complaints about cockroaches or leaky pipes.
But local investors have also been buying modest single-family homes, either to lease them to tenants or to “flip” them, renovating them and selling at a profit. Robert Ganem, a former mortgage broker, has bought more than 65 properties in the last four years.
“Things are not too far off the peak prices now, and we just see them going up and up,” Mr. Ganem said. “In one complex, I bought a condo for $400,000, and six months later, the exact same model on the same floor sold for $500,000. The market is certainly there.”
When Mr. Ganem rents out condos in the suburbs, he typically charges $2,500 to $3,000 for a three-bedroom — and immediately has more than a dozen applicants, he said.
“It’s usually good people who got stuck in the crash — a married couple with one or two kids who need a stable place,” he said. “I’m getting to choose who looks to be the most attractive, so I look at who has the most extra in the bank, who has the most stable job, all those kinds of things.”
Steve Twardowski, who works as an engineer for an oil company, has been looking for a home in Southern California for himself and his wife for the last year and said the process had become “a bit of a nightmare.”
“If you make six figures, you should not have trouble finding a single-family home, but we have this crazy cost of living here,” Mr. Twardowski said. “I don’t know how people are coming to this state because right now, it feels like it is just for rich folks.” The couple considered leaving for Texas but eventually found a modest three-bedroom home in Long Beach.
“This is gentrification on steroids,” said Stan Humphries, the chief economist at Zillow.com, which shows homes for sale and their valuations. “What is unique here is you have an entire state really shifting — people are bidding up prices all over the place. These were quintessential suburbs and cities built for people working as secretaries, but the newest generation is simply not going to be able to stay anymore.”
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15) Cleared After Nearly 23 Years in Prison, but Not Free
Striding across a jailhouse visiting room on Saturday, Everton Wagstaffe — innocent in the eyes of the law, a prisoner of the persistence that liberated him — craned his neck to see who was waiting. He grinned broadly, stuck out his hand to welcome visitors, then apologized for an undetectable shortfall in personal hygiene.
“I don’t have my soaps or anything,” Mr. Wagstaffe explained. “I’m locked in all day, just get out for chow and then come back. No showers, no telephone.”
These were slight matters.
On Tuesday, Mr. Wagstaffe left the custody of New York authorities for the first time since his arrest in January 1992 on charges that he had kidnapped and murdered a teenage girl, Jennifer Negron.Having been cleared last week by an appellate court after nearly 23 years behind bars, Mr. Wagstaffe spent the weekend moving across various state prisons before being transferred to a federal immigration detention center outside Buffalo. Mr. Wagstaffe, 45, is a Jamaican citizen. He now hopes to contest a deportation order filed many years ago.
“The conviction was a tragedy,” Mr. Wagstaffe said, “but I have made the best of it.”
He and a co-defendant, Reginald Connor, were convicted of kidnapping on the testimony of a single eyewitness, a drug addict who was a police informer in Brooklyn’s 75th Precinct. She claimed to have seen Mr. Wagstaffe drag the girl from the street and force her into a car with Mr. Connor at the wheel. From the beginning, both insisted that they were innocent and did not know each other.
In its ruling last week, the court said there was evidence of possible fraud and deception at the heart of the case. The Brooklyn district attorney’s office was responsible for “burying” evidence that contradicted testimony by detectives that the informer had led them to Mr. Wagstaffe and Mr. Connor, according to the decision.
When he first entered prison, Mr. Wagstaffe said, he was barely literate.
“You are here and ask yourself: Why hope?” he said. “Why not just pass the time, and let the universe do what it will?”
He dueled with despair, beginning slowly. “I used cartons of cigarettes to get guys to write letters for me,” Mr. Wagstaffe said. Then he decided he had better handle his own affairs, and sold clothes so he could buy books and get his high school equivalency diploma.
Ten years ago this Wednesday, on Sept. 24, 2004, he filed his first motion requesting DNA testing of the physical evidence. He had no lawyer at the time.
Every comma, every verb in all of his legal papers was fought by teams of lawyers, first under Charles J. Hynes, the former Brooklyn district attorney, and then by his successor, Kenneth P. Thompson. The physical evidence was lost for years, then found. Testing took more than two years. None of the evidence matched Mr. Wagstaffe or Mr. Connor, but prosecutors argued that the results were not compelling enough to upend the conviction.
An alibi witness was located. The owner of a car supposedly used in the kidnapping swore that she had it at church when the crime was committed. A neighbor said that he saw a teenage boyfriend trying to drag Ms. Negron into a car, and that neither Mr. Connor nor Mr. Wagstaffe was involved.
A judge named Sheryl L. Parker heard arguments on most of this in 2010, then a year later ruled against them. On procedural grounds, she said, she did not have to decide whether the detectives and informer had lied about the investigation.
But the appellate court said last week that this was the most important matter of all: Computer records showed that the police had been pursuing the two men 24 hours before they spoke with the only witness to implicate them. Anne M. Gutmann, the prosecutor in the trial, had turned over those records as jury selection was beginning, along with a pile of other documents.
Mr. Wagstaffe first noticed the time stamps after nearly a decade behind bars. This information would have hurt the credibility of the sole witness and the detectives.
That was so important, the appellate court ruled, that it did not have to delve into the other issues raised by lawyers for the men.
“Once there is a fraud, it stays a fraud,” Mr. Wagstaffe said. “It doesn’t matter if there is a failure by a litigator to raise it.”
Mr. Thompson, the district attorney, issued a terse statement on Tuesday: “We disagree on the basis for which they vacated the conviction and set aside the verdict. We are reviewing our options.”
On Saturday, Mr. Wagstaffe said he was trying to find peace. “The universe will work with us,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how much wealth and resources the district attorney may have. I have one thing, that I’m in the right. I’ve outlived this place.”
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Bay
Area United Against War Newsletter
Table
of Contents:
A.
EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. ARTICLES IN FULL
B. ARTICLES IN FULL
C.
SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
D.
VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.
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A.
EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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1st Amendment Under Attack: Governor of PA Threatens to Silence Mumia
Mumia, Prison Radio, and the constitutional rights of all of us to Freedom of Speech are in serious jeopardy.
In response to Mumia's Commencement speech at Goddard College earlier this month, Pennsylvania legislators passed a Bill this week, the "Revictimization Relief Act, "which will allow victims, District Attorneys, and the Attorney General to sue prisoners for speaking if it causes "mental anguish."
(c) Jon Jonik
This is a clear attempt to silence Mumia, by passing bills supposedly intended to help victims. The FOP simply wants to shut prisoners up and shut Prison Radio down!
Prison Radio has vowed to continue to broadcast his words, regardless of threats or intimidation. Prison Radio has pledged that if the DA or AG sues Mumia and gets an injunction we will have dozens of notable people stand in for him and read his work so that his words will continue to reach the airwaves.
Also consider that Mumia has recorded over 3,000 essays and published seven books (2 more will be released in 2015) in nine languages, and has three major broadcast and theatrical movies of which he is the subject. The latest movie "Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary" is currently airing on the STARZ network, sold out theaters from coast to coast, and has been translated into German and Spanish, and has sold 20,000 DVDs.
Abolitionist Law Center
The Abolitionist Law Center is representing Mumia and Prison Radio. ALC legal director Bret Grote: “The ‘Silence Mumia Law’ should be understood in the wake of the Ferguson rebellion, as race and class-based mass incarceration – and the role of police in enforcing it via arbitrary arrests, frame-ups, and extrajudicial killings – is being questioned more than ever, and the Fraternal order of Police and the government are scrambling to re-establish the lie that police forces and other institutions of state violence are righteous protectors of public safety that are beyond question.”
TAKE ACTION!
1) Call PA Governor Tom Corbett and demand that he veto SB508.
(717) 787-2500 (215) 560-2640 governor@pa.gov
"This bill is an unconstitutional attempt to silence prisoners and specifically Mumia Abu-Jamal and violates the First Amendment"
2) Send a positive note to the two PA state senators who took a principled stand against this bill. These folks spoke out eloquently on why the assembly should not pass this bill. We know that the Fraternal Order of Police have threatened and pressured them. click here for the address
Pennsylvania Sen. Daylin Leach (D., Montgomery) called the bill “the most extreme violation of the First Amendment imaginable.”
Watch the video of the FOP and PA state senate authorizing legislation for injunction to silence Mumia. 10/6/14 full press conference with Gov. Corbett, DA Phil Seth Williams, etc.
Dear friends, please realize that we are carrying a heavy burden. We are putting up 2-3 Mumia's essays each week and we are now engaged in a legal battle of great import. The first amendment stands in the balance. We have a matching grant of $45K - yes, that is right! 45K. We need to match this grant by Nov. 15th. Can you help us?
Support Prison Radio
$35 is the yearly membership.
$50 will get you a beautiful tote bag (you can special order a yoga mat bag, just call us).
$100 will get the DVD "Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary"
$300 will bring one essay to the airwaves.
$1000 (or $88.83 per month) will make you a member of our Prison Radio Freedom Circle. Take a moment and Support Prison Radio
Luchando por la justicia y la libertad,
Noelle Hanrahan, Director, Prison Radio
PRISON RADIO
P.O. Box 411074 San Francisco, CA 94141
www.prisonradio.org
info@prisonradio.org 415-706-5222
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Yesterday, the ACLU and Chelsea Manning filed a lawsuit against the Army demanding the necessary medical treatment for Manning’s previously diagnosed gender dysphoria.
By continuing to deny Manning treatment, the Army is directly violating Chelsea’s constitutional rights under the 8th amendment. Chase Strangio, attorney in the ACLU Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender project and co-counsel on Ms. Manning’s case, notes “such clear disregard of well-established medical protocols constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.”
Due to a full year of neglecting Manning’s medical care, the ACLU had previously announced a Sept 4th deadline for the Army to provide treatment. After continued failure to provide treatment, the ACLU filed a lawsuit yesterday and released the following statement:
ACLU Demands Government Provide Chelsea Manning Necessary Medical Care
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 23, 2014
CONTACT: Crystal Cooper, ACLU National, 212-549-2666; media@aclu.org
WASHINGTON—Today, Chelsea Manning filed a lawsuit in federal court in the District of Columbia against Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and other Department of Defense (DOD) and Department of the Army officials for their failure to provide necessary medical treatment for her gender dysphoria, a condition with which she was originally diagnosed by Army doctors more than four years ago.
The complaint is accompanied by a motion for preliminary injunction demanding that Ms. Manning be provided hormone therapy, permission to follow female grooming standards, and access to treatment by a medical provider qualified to treat her condition. Ms. Manning is currently serving a thirty-five year prison sentence at the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Ft. Leavenworth Kansas, and though the military recognizes that she has gender dysphoria requiring treatment, critical care has been withheld without any medical basis.
“The government continues to deny Ms. Manning’s access to necessary medical treatment for gender dysphoria, without which she will continue to suffer severe psychological harms,” said Chase Strangio, attorney in the ACLU Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender project and co-counsel on Ms. Manning’s case. “Such clear disregard of well-established medical protocols constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.”
Ms. Manning is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU of the Nation’s Capital, the ACLU of Kansas and civilian defense counsel David E. Coombs. Last month, Ms. Manning’s legal team sent a letter to the DOD and Army officials demanding that she receive treatment for gender dysphoria in accordance with medical standards of care, including hormone therapy and permission to follow female grooming standards. Her treatment needs have continued to be unmet and her distress has escalated.
“I am proud to be standing with the ACLU behind Chelsea on this very important issue.” said David E. Coombs, “It is my hope that through this action, Chelsea will receive the medical care that she needs without having to suffer any further anguish.”
Gender dysphoria is a serious medical condition that requires hormone therapy and changes to gender expression, like growing hair, to live consistently with one’s gender identity as part of accepted standards of care.
Without necessary treatment, gender dysphoria can cause severe psychological distress, anxiety, and suicidality. For this reason, the National Commission on Correctional Health Care and the American Psychological Association have issued policy statements that support providing treatment to prisoners diagnosed with the condition in accordance with established standards of care, as the Federal Bureau of Prisons and many state corrections agencies are already doing.
A copy of the complaint is available at:
aclu.org/lgbt-rights-prisoners-rights/manning-v-hagel-et-al-complaint-declaratory-and-injunctive-relief
The motion for preliminary injunction is available at:
aclu.org/lgbt-rights-prisoners-rights/manning-v-hagel-et-al-plaintiffs-motion-preliminary-injunction
This press release is available at:
aclu.org/lgbt-rights-prisoners-rights/aclu-demands-government-provide-chelsea-manning-necessary-medical-care
—Free Chelsea Manning, September 24, 2014
http://www.chelseamanning.org/press/aclu-files-lawsuit-against-army-demands-medical-care-for-manning
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Vicious, unjust rulings in case of Rasmea Odeh
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1st Amendment Under Attack: Governor of PA Threatens to Silence Mumia
Mumia, Prison Radio, and the constitutional rights of all of us to Freedom of Speech are in serious jeopardy.
In response to Mumia's Commencement speech at Goddard College earlier this month, Pennsylvania legislators passed a Bill this week, the "Revictimization Relief Act, "which will allow victims, District Attorneys, and the Attorney General to sue prisoners for speaking if it causes "mental anguish."
(c) Jon Jonik
This is a clear attempt to silence Mumia, by passing bills supposedly intended to help victims. The FOP simply wants to shut prisoners up and shut Prison Radio down!
Prison Radio has vowed to continue to broadcast his words, regardless of threats or intimidation. Prison Radio has pledged that if the DA or AG sues Mumia and gets an injunction we will have dozens of notable people stand in for him and read his work so that his words will continue to reach the airwaves.
Also consider that Mumia has recorded over 3,000 essays and published seven books (2 more will be released in 2015) in nine languages, and has three major broadcast and theatrical movies of which he is the subject. The latest movie "Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary" is currently airing on the STARZ network, sold out theaters from coast to coast, and has been translated into German and Spanish, and has sold 20,000 DVDs.
Abolitionist Law Center
The Abolitionist Law Center is representing Mumia and Prison Radio. ALC legal director Bret Grote: “The ‘Silence Mumia Law’ should be understood in the wake of the Ferguson rebellion, as race and class-based mass incarceration – and the role of police in enforcing it via arbitrary arrests, frame-ups, and extrajudicial killings – is being questioned more than ever, and the Fraternal order of Police and the government are scrambling to re-establish the lie that police forces and other institutions of state violence are righteous protectors of public safety that are beyond question.”
TAKE ACTION!
1) Call PA Governor Tom Corbett and demand that he veto SB508.
(717) 787-2500 (215) 560-2640 governor@pa.gov
"This bill is an unconstitutional attempt to silence prisoners and specifically Mumia Abu-Jamal and violates the First Amendment"
2) Send a positive note to the two PA state senators who took a principled stand against this bill. These folks spoke out eloquently on why the assembly should not pass this bill. We know that the Fraternal Order of Police have threatened and pressured them. click here for the address
Pennsylvania Sen. Daylin Leach (D., Montgomery) called the bill “the most extreme violation of the First Amendment imaginable.”
Watch the video of the FOP and PA state senate authorizing legislation for injunction to silence Mumia. 10/6/14 full press conference with Gov. Corbett, DA Phil Seth Williams, etc.
Dear friends, please realize that we are carrying a heavy burden. We are putting up 2-3 Mumia's essays each week and we are now engaged in a legal battle of great import. The first amendment stands in the balance. We have a matching grant of $45K - yes, that is right! 45K. We need to match this grant by Nov. 15th. Can you help us?
Support Prison Radio
$35 is the yearly membership.
$50 will get you a beautiful tote bag (you can special order a yoga mat bag, just call us).
$100 will get the DVD "Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary"
$300 will bring one essay to the airwaves.
$1000 (or $88.83 per month) will make you a member of our Prison Radio Freedom Circle. Take a moment and Support Prison Radio
Luchando por la justicia y la libertad,
Noelle Hanrahan, Director, Prison Radio
PRISON RADIO
P.O. Box 411074 San Francisco, CA 94141
www.prisonradio.org
info@prisonradio.org 415-706-5222
Pennsylvania
legislators are trying to stop prisoners from speaking about their
ideas and experiences. Last week, PA Representative Mike Vereb
introduced a bill (HB2533) called the “Revictimization Relief Act,”
which would allow victims, District Attorneys, and the Attorney General
to sue people who have been convicted of “personal injury” crimes for
speaking out publicly if it causes the victim of the crime “mental
anguish.”
The bill was written in response to political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal’s commencement speech at Goddard College, and is a clear attempt to silence Mumia and other prisoners and formerly incarcerated people. We believe that this legislation is not actually an attempt to help victims, but a cynical move by legislators to stop people in prison from speaking out against an unjust system.
While to us this seems like a clear violation of the first amendment, unfortunately the PA General Assembly doesn’t appear to agree, and they have fast-tracked the bill for approval and amended another bill (SB508) to include the same language. The legislation could be voted on as early as Wednesday.
If this bill passes, it will be a huge blow to the movement against mass incarceration. People inside prisons play a leading role in these struggles, and their perspectives, analysis, and strategies are essential to our work. Incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people who write books, contribute to newspapers, or even write for our Voices from the Inside section would run the risk of legal consequences just for sharing their ideas.
That’s why we are asking you to take action TUESDAY OCTOBER 14 by calling Pennsylvania lawmakers to tell them that prisoners should not be denied the right to speak.
Please call your legislators and demand that they vote NO on HB2533 and SB508. You can look up contact information at http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/findyourlegislator/.
We are also asking folks to call the following Senate leaders and ask them to stop the bill from moving forward:
Senate Majority Whip Pat Browne (717) 787-1349
Senate Minority Whip Anthony Williams (717) 787-5970
Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (717) 787-4712
Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa (717) 787-7683
Not sure what to say on the phone? Click here for a sample call script.
Want to write a letter to your legislators, or looking for more talking points? Click here for more info!
- See more at: http://decarceratepa.info/freespeech#sthash.TtdN3AkI.dpuf
The bill was written in response to political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal’s commencement speech at Goddard College, and is a clear attempt to silence Mumia and other prisoners and formerly incarcerated people. We believe that this legislation is not actually an attempt to help victims, but a cynical move by legislators to stop people in prison from speaking out against an unjust system.
While to us this seems like a clear violation of the first amendment, unfortunately the PA General Assembly doesn’t appear to agree, and they have fast-tracked the bill for approval and amended another bill (SB508) to include the same language. The legislation could be voted on as early as Wednesday.
If this bill passes, it will be a huge blow to the movement against mass incarceration. People inside prisons play a leading role in these struggles, and their perspectives, analysis, and strategies are essential to our work. Incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people who write books, contribute to newspapers, or even write for our Voices from the Inside section would run the risk of legal consequences just for sharing their ideas.
That’s why we are asking you to take action TUESDAY OCTOBER 14 by calling Pennsylvania lawmakers to tell them that prisoners should not be denied the right to speak.
Please call your legislators and demand that they vote NO on HB2533 and SB508. You can look up contact information at http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/findyourlegislator/.
We are also asking folks to call the following Senate leaders and ask them to stop the bill from moving forward:
Senate Majority Whip Pat Browne (717) 787-1349
Senate Minority Whip Anthony Williams (717) 787-5970
Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (717) 787-4712
Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa (717) 787-7683
Not sure what to say on the phone? Click here for a sample call script.
Want to write a letter to your legislators, or looking for more talking points? Click here for more info!
- See more at: http://decarceratepa.info/freespeech#sthash.TtdN3AkI.dpuf
Pennsylvania
legislators are trying to stop prisoners from speaking about their
ideas and experiences. Last week, PA Representative Mike Vereb
introduced a bill (HB2533) called the “Revictimization Relief Act,”
which would allow victims, District Attorneys, and the Attorney General
to sue people who have been convicted of “personal injury” crimes for
speaking out publicly if it causes the victim of the crime “mental
anguish.”
The bill was written in response to political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal’s commencement speech at Goddard College, and is a clear attempt to silence Mumia and other prisoners and formerly incarcerated people. We believe that this legislation is not actually an attempt to help victims, but a cynical move by legislators to stop people in prison from speaking out against an unjust system.
While to us this seems like a clear violation of the first amendment, unfortunately the PA General Assembly doesn’t appear to agree, and they have fast-tracked the bill for approval and amended another bill (SB508) to include the same language. The legislation could be voted on as early as Wednesday.
If this bill passes, it will be a huge blow to the movement against mass incarceration. People inside prisons play a leading role in these struggles, and their perspectives, analysis, and strategies are essential to our work. Incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people who write books, contribute to newspapers, or even write for our Voices from the Inside section would run the risk of legal consequences just for sharing their ideas.
That’s why we are asking you to take action TUESDAY OCTOBER 14 by calling Pennsylvania lawmakers to tell them that prisoners should not be denied the right to speak.
Please call your legislators and demand that they vote NO on HB2533 and SB508. You can look up contact information at http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/findyourlegislator/.
We are also asking folks to call the following Senate leaders and ask them to stop the bill from moving forward:
Senate Majority Whip Pat Browne (717) 787-1349
Senate Minority Whip Anthony Williams (717) 787-5970
Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (717) 787-4712
Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa (717) 787-7683
Not sure what to say on the phone? Click here for a sample call script.
Want to write a letter to your legislators, or looking for more talking points? Click here for more info!
- See more at: http://decarceratepa.info/freespeech#sthash.TtdN3AkI.dpuf
The bill was written in response to political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal’s commencement speech at Goddard College, and is a clear attempt to silence Mumia and other prisoners and formerly incarcerated people. We believe that this legislation is not actually an attempt to help victims, but a cynical move by legislators to stop people in prison from speaking out against an unjust system.
While to us this seems like a clear violation of the first amendment, unfortunately the PA General Assembly doesn’t appear to agree, and they have fast-tracked the bill for approval and amended another bill (SB508) to include the same language. The legislation could be voted on as early as Wednesday.
If this bill passes, it will be a huge blow to the movement against mass incarceration. People inside prisons play a leading role in these struggles, and their perspectives, analysis, and strategies are essential to our work. Incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people who write books, contribute to newspapers, or even write for our Voices from the Inside section would run the risk of legal consequences just for sharing their ideas.
That’s why we are asking you to take action TUESDAY OCTOBER 14 by calling Pennsylvania lawmakers to tell them that prisoners should not be denied the right to speak.
Please call your legislators and demand that they vote NO on HB2533 and SB508. You can look up contact information at http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/findyourlegislator/.
We are also asking folks to call the following Senate leaders and ask them to stop the bill from moving forward:
Senate Majority Whip Pat Browne (717) 787-1349
Senate Minority Whip Anthony Williams (717) 787-5970
Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (717) 787-4712
Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa (717) 787-7683
Not sure what to say on the phone? Click here for a sample call script.
Want to write a letter to your legislators, or looking for more talking points? Click here for more info!
- See more at: http://decarceratepa.info/freespeech#sthash.TtdN3AkI.dpuf
Pennsylvania
legislators are trying to stop prisoners from speaking about their
ideas and experiences. Last week, PA Representative Mike Vereb
introduced a bill (HB2533) called the “Revictimization Relief Act,”
which would allow victims, District Attorneys, and the Attorney General
to sue people who have been convicted of “personal injury” crimes for
speaking out publicly if it causes the victim of the crime “mental
anguish.”
The bill was written in response to political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal’s commencement speech at Goddard College, and is a clear attempt to silence Mumia and other prisoners and formerly incarcerated people. We believe that this legislation is not actually an attempt to help victims, but a cynical move by legislators to stop people in prison from speaking out against an unjust system.
While to us this seems like a clear violation of the first amendment, unfortunately the PA General Assembly doesn’t appear to agree, and they have fast-tracked the bill for approval and amended another bill (SB508) to include the same language. The legislation could be voted on as early as Wednesday.
If this bill passes, it will be a huge blow to the movement against mass incarceration. People inside prisons play a leading role in these struggles, and their perspectives, analysis, and strategies are essential to our work. Incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people who write books, contribute to newspapers, or even write for our Voices from the Inside section would run the risk of legal consequences just for sharing their ideas.
That’s why we are asking you to take action TUESDAY OCTOBER 14 by calling Pennsylvania lawmakers to tell them that prisoners should not be denied the right to speak.
Please call your legislators and demand that they vote NO on HB2533 and SB508. You can look up contact information at http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/findyourlegislator/.
We are also asking folks to call the following Senate leaders and ask them to stop the bill from moving forward:
Senate Majority Whip Pat Browne (717) 787-1349
Senate Minority Whip Anthony Williams (717) 787-5970
Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (717) 787-4712
Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa (717) 787-7683
Not sure what to say on the phone? Click here for a sample call script.
Want to write a letter to your legislators, or looking for more talking points? Click here for more info!
- See more at: http://decarceratepa.info/freespeech#sthash.TtdN3AkI.dpuf
The bill was written in response to political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal’s commencement speech at Goddard College, and is a clear attempt to silence Mumia and other prisoners and formerly incarcerated people. We believe that this legislation is not actually an attempt to help victims, but a cynical move by legislators to stop people in prison from speaking out against an unjust system.
While to us this seems like a clear violation of the first amendment, unfortunately the PA General Assembly doesn’t appear to agree, and they have fast-tracked the bill for approval and amended another bill (SB508) to include the same language. The legislation could be voted on as early as Wednesday.
If this bill passes, it will be a huge blow to the movement against mass incarceration. People inside prisons play a leading role in these struggles, and their perspectives, analysis, and strategies are essential to our work. Incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people who write books, contribute to newspapers, or even write for our Voices from the Inside section would run the risk of legal consequences just for sharing their ideas.
That’s why we are asking you to take action TUESDAY OCTOBER 14 by calling Pennsylvania lawmakers to tell them that prisoners should not be denied the right to speak.
Please call your legislators and demand that they vote NO on HB2533 and SB508. You can look up contact information at http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/findyourlegislator/.
We are also asking folks to call the following Senate leaders and ask them to stop the bill from moving forward:
Senate Majority Whip Pat Browne (717) 787-1349
Senate Minority Whip Anthony Williams (717) 787-5970
Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (717) 787-4712
Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa (717) 787-7683
Not sure what to say on the phone? Click here for a sample call script.
Want to write a letter to your legislators, or looking for more talking points? Click here for more info!
- See more at: http://decarceratepa.info/freespeech#sthash.TtdN3AkI.dpuf
Pennsylvania
legislators are trying to stop prisoners from speaking about their
ideas and experiences. Last week, PA Representative Mike Vereb
introduced a bill (HB2533) called the “Revictimization Relief Act,”
which would allow victims, District Attorneys, and the Attorney General
to sue people who have been convicted of “personal injury” crimes for
speaking out publicly if it causes the victim of the crime “mental
anguish.”
The bill was written in response to political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal’s commencement speech at Goddard College, and is a clear attempt to silence Mumia and other prisoners and formerly incarcerated people. We believe that this legislation is not actually an attempt to help victims, but a cynical move by legislators to stop people in prison from speaking out against an unjust system.
While to us this seems like a clear violation of the first amendment, unfortunately the PA General Assembly doesn’t appear to agree, and they have fast-tracked the bill for approval and amended another bill (SB508) to include the same language. The legislation could be voted on as early as Wednesday.
If this bill passes, it will be a huge blow to the movement against mass incarceration. People inside prisons play a leading role in these struggles, and their perspectives, analysis, and strategies are essential to our work. Incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people who write books, contribute to newspapers, or even write for our Voices from the Inside section would run the risk of legal consequences just for sharing their ideas.
That’s why we are asking you to take action TUESDAY OCTOBER 14 by calling Pennsylvania lawmakers to tell them that prisoners should not be denied the right to speak.
Please call your legislators and demand that they vote NO on HB2533 and SB508. You can look up contact information at http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/findyourlegislator/.
We are also asking folks to call the following Senate leaders and ask them to stop the bill from moving forward:
Senate Majority Whip Pat Browne (717) 787-1349
Senate Minority Whip Anthony Williams (717) 787-5970
Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (717) 787-4712
Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa (717) 787-7683
Not sure what to say on the phone? Click here for a sample call script.
Want to write a letter to your legislators, or looking for more talking points? Click here for more info!
- See more at: http://decarceratepa.info/freespeech#sthash.TtdN3AkI.dpuf
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*The bill was written in response to political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal’s commencement speech at Goddard College, and is a clear attempt to silence Mumia and other prisoners and formerly incarcerated people. We believe that this legislation is not actually an attempt to help victims, but a cynical move by legislators to stop people in prison from speaking out against an unjust system.
While to us this seems like a clear violation of the first amendment, unfortunately the PA General Assembly doesn’t appear to agree, and they have fast-tracked the bill for approval and amended another bill (SB508) to include the same language. The legislation could be voted on as early as Wednesday.
If this bill passes, it will be a huge blow to the movement against mass incarceration. People inside prisons play a leading role in these struggles, and their perspectives, analysis, and strategies are essential to our work. Incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people who write books, contribute to newspapers, or even write for our Voices from the Inside section would run the risk of legal consequences just for sharing their ideas.
That’s why we are asking you to take action TUESDAY OCTOBER 14 by calling Pennsylvania lawmakers to tell them that prisoners should not be denied the right to speak.
Please call your legislators and demand that they vote NO on HB2533 and SB508. You can look up contact information at http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/findyourlegislator/.
We are also asking folks to call the following Senate leaders and ask them to stop the bill from moving forward:
Senate Majority Whip Pat Browne (717) 787-1349
Senate Minority Whip Anthony Williams (717) 787-5970
Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (717) 787-4712
Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa (717) 787-7683
Not sure what to say on the phone? Click here for a sample call script.
Want to write a letter to your legislators, or looking for more talking points? Click here for more info!
- See more at: http://decarceratepa.info/freespeech#sthash.TtdN3AkI.dpuf
Medical Care Needed for Chelsea Manning!
ACLU files lawsuit against Army demanding medical care for Manning
By the Chelsea Manning Support Network
Yesterday, the ACLU and Chelsea Manning filed a lawsuit against the Army demanding the necessary medical treatment for Manning’s previously diagnosed gender dysphoria.
By continuing to deny Manning treatment, the Army is directly violating Chelsea’s constitutional rights under the 8th amendment. Chase Strangio, attorney in the ACLU Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender project and co-counsel on Ms. Manning’s case, notes “such clear disregard of well-established medical protocols constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.”
Due to a full year of neglecting Manning’s medical care, the ACLU had previously announced a Sept 4th deadline for the Army to provide treatment. After continued failure to provide treatment, the ACLU filed a lawsuit yesterday and released the following statement:
ACLU Demands Government Provide Chelsea Manning Necessary Medical Care
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 23, 2014
CONTACT: Crystal Cooper, ACLU National, 212-549-2666; media@aclu.org
WASHINGTON—Today, Chelsea Manning filed a lawsuit in federal court in the District of Columbia against Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and other Department of Defense (DOD) and Department of the Army officials for their failure to provide necessary medical treatment for her gender dysphoria, a condition with which she was originally diagnosed by Army doctors more than four years ago.
The complaint is accompanied by a motion for preliminary injunction demanding that Ms. Manning be provided hormone therapy, permission to follow female grooming standards, and access to treatment by a medical provider qualified to treat her condition. Ms. Manning is currently serving a thirty-five year prison sentence at the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Ft. Leavenworth Kansas, and though the military recognizes that she has gender dysphoria requiring treatment, critical care has been withheld without any medical basis.
“The government continues to deny Ms. Manning’s access to necessary medical treatment for gender dysphoria, without which she will continue to suffer severe psychological harms,” said Chase Strangio, attorney in the ACLU Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender project and co-counsel on Ms. Manning’s case. “Such clear disregard of well-established medical protocols constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.”
Ms. Manning is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU of the Nation’s Capital, the ACLU of Kansas and civilian defense counsel David E. Coombs. Last month, Ms. Manning’s legal team sent a letter to the DOD and Army officials demanding that she receive treatment for gender dysphoria in accordance with medical standards of care, including hormone therapy and permission to follow female grooming standards. Her treatment needs have continued to be unmet and her distress has escalated.
“I am proud to be standing with the ACLU behind Chelsea on this very important issue.” said David E. Coombs, “It is my hope that through this action, Chelsea will receive the medical care that she needs without having to suffer any further anguish.”
Gender dysphoria is a serious medical condition that requires hormone therapy and changes to gender expression, like growing hair, to live consistently with one’s gender identity as part of accepted standards of care.
Without necessary treatment, gender dysphoria can cause severe psychological distress, anxiety, and suicidality. For this reason, the National Commission on Correctional Health Care and the American Psychological Association have issued policy statements that support providing treatment to prisoners diagnosed with the condition in accordance with established standards of care, as the Federal Bureau of Prisons and many state corrections agencies are already doing.
A copy of the complaint is available at:
aclu.org/lgbt-rights-prisoners-rights/manning-v-hagel-et-al-complaint-declaratory-and-injunctive-relief
The motion for preliminary injunction is available at:
aclu.org/lgbt-rights-prisoners-rights/manning-v-hagel-et-al-plaintiffs-motion-preliminary-injunction
This press release is available at:
aclu.org/lgbt-rights-prisoners-rights/aclu-demands-government-provide-chelsea-manning-necessary-medical-care
—Free Chelsea Manning, September 24, 2014
http://www.chelseamanning.org/press/aclu-files-lawsuit-against-army-demands-medical-care-for-manning
Write to Chelsea Manning:
Mail must be addressed exactly as follows:
CHELSEA E. MANNING 89289
1300 NORTH WAREHOUSE ROAD
FORT LEAVENWORTH, KANSAS 66027-2304
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Vicious, unjust rulings in case of Rasmea Odeh
Come to Detroit Nov. 4 and Stand Up for Justice!
Please register with your plans to attend the trial. This is also our way to connect both "drivers and riders" from around the country.
Statement of Rasmea Defense Committee
Judge Gershwin Drain handed down a series of outrageous and unjust decisions, Oct. 27 – 28, in the case of revered Palestinian American leader Rasmea Odeh. The government is going all out to railroad Rasmea, to jail and deport her. There was nothing fair about her being indicted on trumped up immigration charges in the first place. The recent rulings by Judge Drain indicate that there will be nothing fair about Rasmea’s trial either.
Determined and collective action by those of us who yearn for justice, and civil and human rights, is imperative. We must fill the streets around the courthouse in Detroit, pack the courtroom during the trial, and organize demonstrations around the country. If there is to be a measure of justice in this case, we are the ones who must provide it.
In the late 1960s, Rasmea Odeh was jailed by the Israeli occupiers of Palestine, where she was tortured and raped. She has spent the past 20 years in the U.S., making huge contributions to not only the Arab community of Chicagoland, but also the immigrant rights, racial justice, women’s rights and many other movements. She is being victimized for a second time in Detroit.
Judge Drain agreed that Rasmea’s assertion that she faced torture and sexual abuse at the hands of her Israeli captors is “credible,” then contradicted himself and ruled it cannot be brought up in the course of her trial - even though this was at the heart of her defense. Her attorneys had planned to call an expert witness to the stand, but now will not be allowed to. Clinical psychologist Dr. Mary Fabri, who has decades of experience working with torture survivors, would have testified that an error Rasmea allegedly made in filling out immigration forms (the basis for the charge against her) was the result of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Instead, Judge Drain will allow the prosecution to use documents provided by the Israelis as evidence in the case, even though these documents are the products of Israeli military courts and a “legal” system that routinely uses torture. He has even gone so far as to rule that when Rasmea testifies, she can only address issues that the prosecution agrees to allow.
No fair minded person can accept any of this. That is why we have to go all out for Tuesday, November 4, in Detroit.
Rasmea Odeh has devoted her entire life to making this world a better place. The U.S. government wants to criminalize those that stand up for Palestine. We cannot allow this to happen. We do not know how long Rasmea’s trial will last, but due to the extreme limits that Judge Drain has placed on the scope of the trial, we are urging supporters to prioritize attending the first week - Tuesday, November 4th, through Friday, November 7th.
Pack the courtroom! Don’t let them win!
Please register your plans to attend the trial. We will work to get you a ride (or to fill your car), or housing.
To register, visit StopFBI.net
Or, fill out this online form.
Or, email info@stopfbi.net
follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend
Copyright © 2014 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights reserved.
Thanks for your ongoing interest in the fight against FBI repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists!
Our mailing address is:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
—Committee to Stop FBI Repression, October 6, 2014
http://www.stopfbi.net/2014/10/6/detroit-us-attorney-threatens-supporters-rasmea-odeh
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Please forward and post widely
Protest Now! No To Police Censorship of Mumia, and Teachers!
Reinstate the Urban Dreams Website!
Action Still Needed! Please send messages to the School Board!
- Scroll down for School Board addresses -
Here’s what happened: Under pressure from the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP)—operating through a friendly publicity agent called Fox News—the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) earlier this year shut down an entire website composed of teacher-drafted curriculum material called Urban Dreams. Why? Because this site included course guidelines on the censorship of innocent political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal! The course material compared the censorship of Mumia’s extensive radio commentaries and writings, with that of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s later writings, which focused on class exploitation and his opposition to the US’ imperialist War against Vietnam. Both were effectively silenced by the big media, including in Mumia’s case, by National Public Radio (NPR).
Mumia Is Innocent! But He’s Still a Top Target of FOP
Abu-Jamal has long been a top-row target for the FOP, which tried to get him legally killed for decades. Mumia was framed by the Philadelphia police and falsely convicted of murdering a Philadelphia policeman in 1982, with the extensive collaboration of lying prosecutors, corrupt courts, the US Justice Department, and key political figures.
Mumia’s death sentence was dropped only when a federal appeals court judge set it aside because of blatantly illegal jury instructions by the original highly racist trial judge. (The same federal judge upheld every bogus detail of Mumia’s conviction.) The local Philadelphia prosecutor and politicians chickened out of trying to get Mumia’s original death sentence reinstated due to the fact that all their evidence of his guilt had long been exposed as totally fraudulent!
FOP: Can’t Kill Him? Silence Him!
The FOP had to swallow the fact that the local mucky-mucks had dropped the ball on executing Mumia, but they were rewarded with a substitute sentence of life without the possibility of parole, imposed by a local court acting in secret. Mumia is now serving this new and equally unjust sentence of “slow death.”
This gets us back to the FOP’s main point here, which is to silence Mumia. They can’t stop Mumia from writing and recording his world-renownd commentaries (which are available at Prison Radio, www.prisonradio.org). But they look for any opportunity to smear and discredit Mumia, and keep him out of the public eye; and these snakes have found a morsel on the Urban Dreams web site to go after!
Urban Dreams Was Well Used by Teachers
Urban Dreams was initially set up under a grant from the federal Dept. of Education in 1999-2004 and contains teacher-written material on a wide variety of issues. It is (was) used extensively in California and beyond. The OUSD’s knee-jerk reaction to shut the whole site down because of a complaint from police, broadcast on the all-powerful Fox News network, shows the rapid decline of the US into police-state status. Why should we let a bunch of lying, vicious cops, whose only real job is to protect the wealthy and powerful from all of us, get away with this?
Fresh from defeating Obama’s nominee to head the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department because he served for a period as Mumia’s attorney, the FOP is attacking a school lesson plan that asks students to think outside the box of system propaganda. But the grave-diggers of capitalist oppression are stirring.
Labor Says No To Police Persecution of Mumia!
In 1999, the Oakland teachers union, Oakland Education Association (OEA), held an unauthorized teach-in on Mumia and the death penalty. Later the same year, longshore workers in the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) shut down all West-Coast ports to Free Mumia. Other teacher actions happened around the country and internationally. And now the Alameda County Labor Council, acting on a resolution submitted by an OEA member, has denounced the FOP-inspired shutdown of Urban Dreams, and called for the site’s complete restoration (ie no deletions).
Labor Says No To Censorship of Mumia, and Teachers!
We are asking union members particularly, and everyone else as well, if you abhor police-sponsored censorship of school curricula, and want to see justice and freedom for the wrongfully convicted such as Mumia Abu-Jamal, send your message of protest now to the Oakland School Board, at the three addresses below.
Union members: take the resolution below to your local union or labor council, and get it passed!
Whatever you do, send a copy of your protest letter or resolution, or a report of your actions, to Oakland Teachers for Mumia, at communard2@juno.com.
Here is the Alameda County Labor Council resolution:
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Labor Speaks: Urban Dreams Censorship Resolution
Alameda County Labor Council
Whereas Mumia Abu-Jamal, an award winning journalist, defender of the rights of the working class, people of color, and oppressed people has been imprisoned since 1982 without parole for a crime he didn’t commit after his death sentence was finally overturned;
Whereas the Oakland Unified School District’s censorship of the Urban Dreams website was in reaction to a Fox News and Fraternal Order of Police attack on a lesson plan asking students to consider a parallel between censorship of Martin Luther King’s radical ideas and censorship of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and;
Whereas it is dangerous and unacceptable to allow the police to determine the curriculum of a major school district like Oakland, or any school district;
Whereas removal of the Urban Dreams OUSD website denies educators and student access to invaluable curriculum resources by Oakland teachers with social justice themes promoting critical thinking, and;
Whereas in 1999, the Oakland Education Association led the teach-in on Mumia Abu-Jamal and the death penalty which helped deepen the debate in the U.S. on the death penalty itself, and greatly intensified the spotlight on the widespread issue of wrongful conviction and demanded justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal, and;
Whereas OEA and Alameda Contra Costa County Service Center of CTA cited the Mumia teach-in and the censored unit on Martin Luther King Jr. in its Human Rights WHO AWARD for 2013;
Be it resolved that the Alameda Labor Council condemns OUSD’s censorship of the Urban Dreams website and demands that it immediately restore access to all materials on the website, reaffirms its demand for justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal, and issues a press release to seek the widest possible support from defenders of free speech and those who seek justice for Mumia.
- Submitted by Keith Brown, OEA
- Passed, Alameda County Labor Council, 14 July 2014
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Now It’s your turn!
Join with Ed Asner, and with the Alameda County Labor Council, in protesting the
Oakland School Board’s censorship of the Urban Dreams web site!
• Ask your local union, labor council or other organization to endorse the resolution by the Alameda County Labor Council.
• Demand the School Board reinstate the Urban Dreams website without any deletions!
• Send your union resolutions or letters of protest to the following;
1. Oakland Board of Education: boe@ousd.k12.ca.us
2. Board President Davd Kakishiba: David.Kakishiba@ousd.k12.ca.us
3. Superintendent Antwan Wilson: Antwan.Wilson@ousd.k12.ca.us
Important: Send a copy of your resolution or email to:
Bob Mandel/Teachers for Mumia at: communard2@juno.com.
Thank you for your support!
-This message is from the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal,
and Oakland Teachers for Mumia.
communard2@juno.com.
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B. ARTICLES IN FULL
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1) Kansas: Guilty Verdict Upheld in Doctor’s Killing
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
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2) Protesters march against Renzi labor reforms in Rome
"taly's overall employment rate is one of the
lowest in the euro zone, at 55.7 percent in August, and joblessness
among young people is running at a record-high 44.2 percent."
Sat Oct 25, 2014 10:47am EDT
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/25/us-italy-demonstration-idUSKCN0IE0AV20141025?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews
(Reuters) - Demonstrators from across Italy filled the streets of Rome on Saturday to protest against labor market reforms which the government of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has made a cornerstone of its policy.
Red flags bearing the logo of Italy's largest union, the CGIL, waved over town squares as thousands of people rallied behind the group's call for job creation and job security.
The CIGL estimated that 1 million people had turned out by the early afternoon. Members of Renzi's own party also attended the protests, suggesting the issue had created divisions within the government.
The prime minister wants to give businesses more flexibility to hire and fire staff and won majority backing from his party late in September for plans to change employee protection rules that critics say deter companies from hiring new staff, contributing to chronic economic weakness.
"If Renzi and his government have their antennas up, as they usually do, they will receive a very strong signal today which is that the majority of the people who work and who want to work in this country do not agree with their politics," the general secretary of the metalworkers' union Fiom, Maurizio Landini, told Reuters TV.
"If he really wants to change this country he needs to do it with these people, not against us," Landini said.
European policymakers have applauded Renzi's proposals, which also aim to mend a labor market divided between young workers with few employments rights and older employees whose jobs are rigidly protected.
The unusual standoff between labor unions and a coalition led by a left-wing party is also fueled by wider discontent about austerity policies, including heavy public spending cuts, adopted by governments to meet European Union budget rules.
Italian newspapers said a boat and two planes had been chartered to bring people from the island of Sardinia to join the protests.
DEMOCRATIC PARTY DIVIDED?
Unions and left-wing members of Renzi's Democratic Party (PD) say the proposals undermine workers' rights and do nothing to address the underlying causes of weakness in the Italian economy, which has contracted by around 9 percent since the start of the financial crisis in 2007.
Italy's overall employment rate is one of the lowest in the euro zone, at 55.7 percent in August, and joblessness among young people is running at a record-high 44.2 percent.
As Rome reverberated with stamping feet and whistles, Renzi was in Florence, where he used to be mayor, holding a meeting on jobs and investment with members of his party.
PD members in Florence as well as those attending the protests in Rome fended off questions about whether there was any dispute within the party. Reform Minister Maria Elena Boschi said in Florence there was no conflict between the two events.
Hedge fund founder and long-time Renzi ally Davide Serra said at the meeting in Florence that people had the right to go on strike but warned of possible damage to the economy.
"We should try to understand that there is a cost. Someone who was going to come and invest here tomorrow will not come," Serra told reporters.
Former PD chairman Gianni Cuperlo, who lost out to Renzi in a 2013 race to lead the party, said in Rome that he thought that the unions' demands needed to be addressed.
"These are exactly the requests that we need to address in political debate, within the party and in parliament, to make progress with the reforms this government wants to carry out," Cuperlo told Italy's RAI News.
The CGIL has likened Renzi to Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minister who fought to weaken trade unions during the 1980s.
(Reporting by Roberto Mignucci and Carmelo Camilli in Rome and Silvia Ognibene in Florence, Writing by Isla Binnie; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Susan Fenton)
Sat Oct 25, 2014 10:47am EDT
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/25/us-italy-demonstration-idUSKCN0IE0AV20141025?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews
(Reuters) - Demonstrators from across Italy filled the streets of Rome on Saturday to protest against labor market reforms which the government of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has made a cornerstone of its policy.
Red flags bearing the logo of Italy's largest union, the CGIL, waved over town squares as thousands of people rallied behind the group's call for job creation and job security.
The CIGL estimated that 1 million people had turned out by the early afternoon. Members of Renzi's own party also attended the protests, suggesting the issue had created divisions within the government.
The prime minister wants to give businesses more flexibility to hire and fire staff and won majority backing from his party late in September for plans to change employee protection rules that critics say deter companies from hiring new staff, contributing to chronic economic weakness.
"If Renzi and his government have their antennas up, as they usually do, they will receive a very strong signal today which is that the majority of the people who work and who want to work in this country do not agree with their politics," the general secretary of the metalworkers' union Fiom, Maurizio Landini, told Reuters TV.
"If he really wants to change this country he needs to do it with these people, not against us," Landini said.
European policymakers have applauded Renzi's proposals, which also aim to mend a labor market divided between young workers with few employments rights and older employees whose jobs are rigidly protected.
The unusual standoff between labor unions and a coalition led by a left-wing party is also fueled by wider discontent about austerity policies, including heavy public spending cuts, adopted by governments to meet European Union budget rules.
Italian newspapers said a boat and two planes had been chartered to bring people from the island of Sardinia to join the protests.
DEMOCRATIC PARTY DIVIDED?
Unions and left-wing members of Renzi's Democratic Party (PD) say the proposals undermine workers' rights and do nothing to address the underlying causes of weakness in the Italian economy, which has contracted by around 9 percent since the start of the financial crisis in 2007.
Italy's overall employment rate is one of the lowest in the euro zone, at 55.7 percent in August, and joblessness among young people is running at a record-high 44.2 percent.
As Rome reverberated with stamping feet and whistles, Renzi was in Florence, where he used to be mayor, holding a meeting on jobs and investment with members of his party.
PD members in Florence as well as those attending the protests in Rome fended off questions about whether there was any dispute within the party. Reform Minister Maria Elena Boschi said in Florence there was no conflict between the two events.
Hedge fund founder and long-time Renzi ally Davide Serra said at the meeting in Florence that people had the right to go on strike but warned of possible damage to the economy.
"We should try to understand that there is a cost. Someone who was going to come and invest here tomorrow will not come," Serra told reporters.
Former PD chairman Gianni Cuperlo, who lost out to Renzi in a 2013 race to lead the party, said in Rome that he thought that the unions' demands needed to be addressed.
"These are exactly the requests that we need to address in political debate, within the party and in parliament, to make progress with the reforms this government wants to carry out," Cuperlo told Italy's RAI News.
The CGIL has likened Renzi to Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minister who fought to weaken trade unions during the 1980s.
(Reporting by Roberto Mignucci and Carmelo Camilli in Rome and Silvia Ognibene in Florence, Writing by Isla Binnie; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Susan Fenton)
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3) Law Lets I.R.S. Seize Accounts on Suspicion, No Crime Required
By SHAILA DEWAN
ARNOLDS PARK, Iowa — For almost 40 years, Carole Hinders has dished out Mexican specialties at her modest cash-only restaurant. For just as long, she deposited the earnings at a small bank branch a block away — until last year, when two tax agents knocked on her door and informed her that they had seized her checking account, almost $33,000.
The Internal Revenue Service agents did not accuse Ms. Hinders of money laundering or cheating on her taxes — in fact, she has not been charged with any crime. Instead, the money was seized solely because she had deposited less than $10,000 at a time, which they viewed as an attempt to avoid triggering a required government report.
“How can this happen?” Ms. Hinders said in a recent interview. “Who takes your money before they prove that you’ve done anything wrong with it?”
The federal government does.
Using a law designed to catch drug traffickers, racketeers and terrorists by tracking their cash, the government has gone after run-of-the-mill business owners and wage earners without so much as an allegation that they have committed serious crimes. The government can take the money without ever filing a criminal complaint, and the owners are left to prove they are innocent. Many give up.
“They’re going after people who are really not criminals,” said David Smith, a former federal prosecutor who is now a forfeiture expert and lawyer in Virginia. “They’re middle-class citizens who have never had any trouble with the law.”
On Thursday, in response to questions from The New York Times, the I.R.S. announced that it would curtail the practice, focusing instead on cases where the money is believed to have been acquired illegally or seizure is deemed justified by “exceptional circumstances.”
Richard Weber, the chief of Criminal Investigation at the I.R.S., said in a written statement, “This policy update will ensure that C.I. continues to focus our limited investigative resources on identifying and investigating violations within our jurisdiction that closely align with C.I.’s mission and key priorities.” He added that making deposits under $10,000 to evade reporting requirements, called structuring, is still a crime whether the money is from legal or illegal sources. The new policy will not apply to past seizures.
The I.R.S. is one of several federal agencies that pursue such cases and then refer them to the Justice Department. The Justice Department does not track the total number of cases pursued, the amount of money seized or how many of the cases were related to other crimes, said Peter Carr, a spokesman.
But the Institute for Justice, a Washington-based public interest law firm that is seeking to reform civil forfeiture practices, analyzed structuring data from the I.R.S., which made 639 seizures in 2012, up from 114 in 2005. Only one in five was prosecuted as a criminal structuring case.
The practice has swept up dairy farmers in Maryland, an Army sergeant in Virginia saving for his children’s college education and Ms. Hinders, 67, who has borrowed money, strained her credit cards and taken out a second mortgage to keep her restaurant going.
Their money was seized under an increasingly controversial area of law known as civil asset forfeiture, which allows law enforcement agents to take property they suspect of being tied to crime even if no criminal charges are filed. Law enforcement agencies get to keep a share of whatever is forfeited.
Critics say this incentive has led to the creation of a law enforcement dragnet, with more than 100 multiagency task forces combing through bank reports, looking for accounts to seize. Under the Bank Secrecy Act, banks and other financial institutions must report cash deposits greater than $10,000. But since many criminals are aware of that requirement, banks also are supposed to report any suspicious transactions, including deposit patterns below $10,000. Last year, banks filed more than 700,000 suspicious activity reports. Owners who are caught up in structuring cases often cannot afford to fight. The median amount seized by the I.R.S. was $34,000, according to the Institute for Justice analysis, while legal costs can easily mount to $20,000 or more.
There is nothing illegal about depositing less than $10,000cash unless it is done specifically to evade the reporting requirement. But often a mere bank statement is enough for investigators to obtain a seizure warrant. In one Long Island case, the police submitted almost a year’s worth of daily deposits by a business, ranging from $5,550 to $9,910. The officer wrote in his warrant affidavit that based on his training and experience, the pattern “is consistent with structuring.” The government seized $447,000 from the business, a cash-intensive candy and cigarette distributor that has been run by one family for 27 years.
There are often legitimate business reasons for keeping deposits below $10,000, said Larry Salzman, a lawyer with the Institute for Justice who is representing Ms. Hinders and the Long Island family pro bono. For example, he said, a grocery store owner in Fraser, Mich., had an insurance policy that covered only up to $10,000 cash. When he neared the limit, he would make a deposit.
Ms. Hinders said that she did not know about the reporting requirement and that for decades, she thought she had been doing everyone a favor.
“My mom had told me if you keep your deposits under $10,000, the bank avoids paperwork,” she said. “I didn’t actually think it had anything to do with the I.R.S.”
In May 2012, the bank branch Ms. Hinders used was acquired by Northwest Banker. JoLynn Van Steenwyk, the fraud and security manager for Northwest, said she could not discuss individual clients, but explained that the bank did not have access to past account histories after it acquired Ms. Hinders’s branch.
Banks are not permitted to advise customers that their deposit habits may be illegal or educate them about structuring unless they ask, in which case they are given a federal pamphlet, Ms. Van Steenwyk said. “We’re not allowed to tell them anything,” she said.
Still lawyers say it is not unusual for depositors to be advised by financial professionals, or even bank tellers, to keep their deposits below the reporting threshold. In the Long Island case, the company, Bi-County Distributors, had three bank accounts closed because of the paperwork burden of its frequent cash deposits, said Jeff Hirsch, the eldest of three brothers who own the company. Their accountant then recommended staying below the limit, so for more than a decade the company had been using its excess cash to pay vendors.
More than two years ago, the government seized $447,000, and the brothers have been unable to retrieve it. Mr. Salzman, who has taken over legal representation of the brothers, has argued that prosecutors violated a strict timeline laid out in the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act, passed in 2000 to curb abuses. The office of the federal attorney for the Eastern District of New York said the law’s timeline did not apply in this case. Still, prosecutors asked the Hirsch’s first lawyer, Joseph Potashnik, to waive the CARFA timeline. The waiver he signed expired almost two years ago.
The federal attorney’s office said that parties often voluntarily negotiated to avoid going to court, and that Mr. Potashnik had been engaged in talks until just a few months ago. But Mr. Potashnik said he had spent that time trying, to no avail, to show that the brothers were innocent. They even paid a forensic accounting firm $25,000 to check the books.
“I don’t think they’re really interested in anything,” Mr. Potashnik said of the prosecutors. “They just want the money.”
Bi-County has survived only because longtime vendors have extended credit — one is owed almost $300,000, Mr. Hirsch said. Twice, the government has made settlement offers that would require the brothers to give up an “excessive” portion of the money, according to a new court filing.
“We’re just hanging on as a family here,” Mr. Hirsch said. “We weren’t going to take a settlement, because I was not guilty.”
Army Sgt. Jeff Cortazzo of Arlington, Va., began saving for his daughters’ college costs during the financial crisis, when many banks were failing. He stored cash first in his basement and then in a safe-deposit box. All of the money came from paychecks, he said, but he worried that when he deposited it in a bank, he would be forced to pay taxes on the money again. So he asked the bank teller what to do.
“She said: ‘Oh, that’s easy. You just have to deposit less than $10,000.’”
The government seized $66,000; settling cost Sergeant Cortazzo $21,000. As a result, the eldest of his three daughters had to delay college by a year.
“Why didn’t the teller tell me that was illegal?” he said. “I would have just plopped the whole thing in the account and been done with it.”
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4) Aid for Gazans Arrives, but Remains Untouched
By JODI RUDOREN
GAZA CITY — Truckloads of cement, steel and gravel that Israel allowed into Gaza on Oct. 14 with great fanfare remain locked in warehouses, unavailable to thousands of families desperate to fix homes damaged by Israeli attacks as wintry winds and rain begin.
About $150,000 of construction material sits behind two link chains at Hatem Shammaly’s place in the Shejaiya neighborhood. Every day, a half-dozen United Nations and Palestinian Authority workers stop by to look at the supplies, said Mr. Shammaly, and at the eight security cameras trained on the site. Every day, too, Gazans show up begging to buy the stuff, but Mr. Shammaly is not allowed to sell.
“It’s like a mourning house outside, crying and weeping — nobody believes that we can’t control or handle a single bag,” he said. “Yesterday a woman came here. She wanted just two bags of cement, she wanted to repair her home. She was cursing God against us.”
Two months after a cease-fire ended this summer’s battle between Israel and Hamas, reconstruction of more than 100,000 damaged or destroyed buildings remains a distant dream.
The Palestinian housing ministry’s damage assessment is only 60 percent complete. Officials say they have yet to collect a dime of the $5.4 billion that international donors have pledged to the effort. A promised monitoring mechanism to ensure materials are not diverted to military purposes is not in place. Rubble removal has barely begun.
But the landscape is not completely stagnant: Outside the approved system, a dozen men were at work this week rebuilding the headquarters of Al Aqsa satellite channel, one of the Hamas-affiliated media network’s four sites struck by Israel this summer.
One worker was busy coating silver support beams to ward off rust. Others passed recycled rebar up several stories. They had already erected two cinder block walls and wood-framed a sloped roof in a project that began Oct. 8 and was expected to take three months.
“The Zionist enemy destroys, and we rebuild,” declared Mohammed Thuraya, manager of Al Aqsa network, which employs 500 people and runs two television channels, a radio station and a news agency. “We are used to building — building ideas, ideologies and generations. The people will not be silent waiting for the materials. Al Aqsa network will remain the conscience of the Palestinian people that broadcasts the truth.”
Mr. Thuraya said United Nations agencies refused to include his buildings on the list for reconstruction because “they consider us a terrorist channel.” He would not specify beyond “private donors” who was financing the reconstruction of the four-story, 5,400-square-foot studio and offices that were hit by Israeli bombs on July 29.
The project engineer said he paid $5,500 for 10 tons of cement, quintuple the regular price, because of scarcity caused by Israeli import restrictions and the closing of smuggling tunnels from Egypt.
In another independent initiative, the little-known Arab and International Commission to Build Gaza has cleared away rubble and is beginning to shore up columns of an Interior Ministry building erected by the former Hamas government. The commission has a Hamas official on its board, features an Egyptian dissident based in Qatar on its website, and asked on Facebook for donations to be filtered through the Islamic Bank in Tripoli.
Mohammed Abu Aqleen, the commission’s manager in Gaza, said that the Interior Ministry building was selected only because it was in danger of collapsing, and that the group had also begun to rehabilitate 20 homes throughout Gaza and to manufacture hundreds of trailers to temporarily house the displaced. He would not say where the $1 million raised so far had come from.
Referring to the effort by the Palestinian Authority and United Nations to provide assurances to Israel that so-called dual-use materials will not go to rebuild tunnels that militants used to penetrate its territory, Mr. Abu Aqleen said, “This mechanism will be just words on paper.”
But most of Gaza must await the monitoring mechanism, which Israeli and Palestinian delegations are expected to discuss further next week in Cairo. Officials at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the United Nations Development Program and the Norwegian Refugee Council, a leading international aid group, said the timetable remained elusive.
“It all depends on how fast the material can come in, which I just don’t know,” said Scott Anderson, Gaza’s deputy director of the relief and works agency. Asked why the material that already arrived was sitting in warehouses, Mr. Anderson said: “That I can’t answer. I’ve asked the question also.”
Some 39,000 Gazans remain in 18 United Nations schools serving as shelters, and many more are bunking with relatives. The relief and works agency has given 1,000 families a total of $1 million for temporary rental assistance or minor repairs. The housing ministry said it would begin giving grants of $1,000 to $2,000 next week.
In Shejaiya, a neighborhood devastated by Israel’s ground offensive and where roads remain obstacle courses of rubble piles, Ghassan Muhisen could not wait. He said he had bought 20 bags of cement for $31.75 each — they are typically $6.60 — and 400 cinder blocks for $1 each, double the normal price, and hired five local men to fix walls in his kitchen and living room shattered by Israeli shells.
“One can never be comfortable away from his home,” said Mr. Muhisen, 37, a father of three who works for the sports ministry. He said he moved back Oct. 1 after weeks with friends and relatives. “Winter is coming, cold. Instead of paying the money for the rent, I used it for the repair.”
He ran out of money before replacing the windows, so he hung sheets over them instead.
Mr. Shammaly, the warehouse manager, said he was thrilled when the Palestinian civil affairs minister called Oct. 5 and told him his company, whose annual revenue is about $13 million, was one of 12 vendors approved to handle materials for the reconstruction. Two years earlier, he had spent $2,000 installing eight cameras in his 16,000-square-foot warehouses and put guards on duty 24 hours; he had already worked with the United Nations on several projects.
But after the cement, steel and gravel sat untouched for a week, Mr. Shammaly said: “If they continue in this mechanism, I will not participate.”
“I’m a merchant, buy and sell,” he explained. “I can’t freeze goods here, pile it up.”
Fares Akram contributed reporting.
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5) Report Reveals Wider Tracking of Mail in U.S.
By RON NIXON
WASHINGTON — In a rare public accounting of its mass surveillance program, the United States Postal Service reported that it approved nearly 50,000 requests last year from law enforcement agencies and its own internal inspection unit to secretly monitor the mail of Americans for use in criminal and national security investigations.
The number of requests, contained in a little-noticed 2014 audit of the surveillance program by the Postal Service’s inspector general, shows that the surveillance program is more extensive than previously disclosed and that oversight protecting Americans from potential abuses is lax.
The audit, along with interviews and documents obtained by The New York Times under the Freedom of Information Act, offers one of the first detailed looks at the scope of the program, which has played an important role in the nation’s vast surveillance effort since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.The audit found that in many cases the Postal Service approved requests to monitor an individual’s mail without adequately describing the reason or having proper written authorization.
In addition to raising privacy concerns, the audit questioned the efficiency and accuracy of the Postal Service in handling the requests. Many requests were not processed in time, the audit said, and computer errors caused the same tracking number to be assigned to different surveillance requests.
“Insufficient controls could hinder the Postal Inspection Service’s ability to conduct effective investigations, lead to public concerns over privacy of mail and harm the Postal Service’s brand,” the audit concluded.
The audit was posted in May without public announcement on the website of the Postal Service inspector general and got almost no attention.
The surveillance program, officially called mail covers, is more than a century old, but is still considered a powerful investigative tool. At the request of state or federal law enforcement agencies or the Postal Inspection Service, postal workers record names, return addresses and any other information from the outside of letters and packages before they are delivered to a person’s home.
Law enforcement officials say this deceptively old-fashioned method of collecting data provides a wealth of information about the businesses and associates of their targets, and can lead to bank and property records and even accomplices. (Opening the mail requires a warrant.)
Interviews and court records also show that the surveillance program was used by a county attorney and sheriff to investigate a political opponent in Arizona — the county attorney was later disbarred in part because of the investigation — and to monitor privileged communications between lawyers and their clients, a practice not allowed under postal regulations.
Theodore Simon, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said he was troubled by the audit and the potential for the Postal Service to snoop uncontrolled into the private lives of Americans.
“It appears that there has been widespread disregard of the few protections that were supposed to be in place,” Mr. Simon said.
In information provided to The Times earlier this year under the Freedom of Information Act, the Postal Service said that from 2001 through 2012, local, state and federal law enforcement agencies made more than 100,000 requests to monitor the mail of Americans. That would amount to an average of some 8,000 requests a year — far fewer than the nearly 50,000 requests in 2013 that the Postal Service reported in the audit.
The difference is that the Postal Service apparently did not provide to The Times the number of surveillance requests made for national security investigations or those requested by its own investigation and law enforcement arm, the Postal Inspection Service. Typically, the inspection service works hand in hand with outside law enforcement agencies that have come to the Postal Service asking for investigations into fraud, pornography, terrorism or other potential criminal activity.
The Postal Service also uses a program called Mail Imaging, in which its computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail sent in the United States. The program’s primary purpose is to process the mail, but in some cases it is also used as a surveillance system that allows law enforcement agencies to request stored images of mail sent to and received by people they are investigating.
Another system, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking Program, was created after anthrax attacks killed five people, including two postal workers, in late 2001. It is used to track or investigate packages or letters suspected of containing biohazards like anthrax or ricin. The program was first made public in 2013 in the course of an investigation into ricin-laced letters mailed to President Obama and Michael R. Bloomberg, then New York City’s mayor, by an actress, Shannon Guess Richardson.
Despite the sweep of the programs, postal officials say they are both less intrusive than that of the National Security Agency’s vast collection of phone and Internet records and have safeguards to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans.
“You can’t just get a mail cover to go on a fishing expedition,” said Paul J. Krenn, a spokesman for the Postal Inspection Service. “There has to be a legitimate law enforcement reason, and the mail cover can’t be the sole tool.”
The mail cover surveillance requests cut across all levels of government — from global intelligence investigations by the United States Army Criminal Investigations Command, which requested 500 mail covers from 2001 through 2012, to state-level criminal inquiries by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which requested 69 mail covers in the same period. The Department of Veterans Affairs requested 305, and the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security asked for 256. The information was provided to The Times under the Freedom of Information request.
Postal officials did not say how many requests came from agencies in charge of national security — including the F.B.I., the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection — because release of the information, wrote Kimberly Williams, a public records analyst for the Postal Inspection Service, “would reveal techniques and procedures for law enforcement or prosecutions.”Defense lawyers say the secrecy concerning the surveillance makes it hard to track abuses in the program because most people are not aware they are being monitored. But there have been a few cases in which the program appears to have been abused by law enforcement officials.
In Arizona in 2011, Mary Rose Wilcox, a Maricopa County supervisor, discovered that her mail was being monitored by the county’s sheriff, Joe Arpaio. Ms. Wilcox had been a frequent critic of Mr. Arpaio, objecting to what she considered the targeting of Hispanics in his immigration sweeps.
The Postal Service had granted an earlier request from Mr. Arpaio and Andrew Thomas, who was then the county attorney, to track Ms. Wilcox’s personal and business mail.
Using information gleaned from letters and packages sent to Ms. Wilcox and her husband, Mr. Arpaio and Mr. Thomas obtained warrants for banking and other information about two restaurants the couple owned. The sheriff’s office also raided a company that hired Ms. Wilcox to provide concessions at the local airport.
“We lost the contract we had for the concession at the airport, and the investigation into our business scared people away from our restaurants,” Ms. Wilcox said in an interview. “I don’t blame the Postal Service, but you shouldn’t be able to just use these mail covers to go on a fishing expedition. There needs to be more control.”
She sued the county, was awarded nearly $1 million in a settlement in 2011 and received the money this June when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling. Mr. Thomas, the former county attorney, was disbarred for his role in investigations into the business dealings of Ms. Wilcox and other officials and for other unprofessional conduct. The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office declined to comment on Mr. Arpaio’s use of mail covers in the investigation of Ms. Wilcox.
In another instance, Cynthia Orr, a defense lawyer in San Antonio, recalled that while working on a pornography case in the early 2000s, federal prosecutors used mail covers to track communications between her team of lawyers and a client who was facing obscenity and tax evasion charges. Ms. Orr complained to prosecutors but never learned if the tracking stopped. Her team lost the case.
“The troubling part is that they don’t have to report the use of this tool to anyone,” Ms. Orr said in an interview. The Postal Service declined to comment on the case.
Frank Askin, a law professor at the Rutgers Constitutional Rights Clinic, who as a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union successfully sued the F.B.I. nearly 40 years ago after the agency monitored the mail of a 15-year-old New Jersey student, said he was concerned about the oversight of the current program.
“Postal Service employees are not judicial officers schooled in the meaning of the First Amendment,” Mr. Askin said.
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6) Top New York Correction Official, Under Fire Over Rikers Violence, to Step Down
By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ and MICHAEL WINERIP
The New York City Correction Department’s top uniformed officer, facing criticism over underreporting of violence at Rikers Island, will step down, a department spokesman said Tuesday.
The officer, William Clemons, a 29-year veteran correction official in New York, was appointed chief of department just five months ago by Mayor Bill de Blasio’s reform-minded correction commissioner, who described him at the time as a “superb corrections professional.”
The department spokesman, Peter Thorne, said Mr. Clemons was “retiring” but could not immediately provide more details.
In a statement released Tuesday morning, Joseph Ponte, the current commissioner, wrote that Mr. Clemons “proved himself an able leader” and “was a model of stability in a tumultuous time.” He said he would appoint a new chief by Dec. 1, when Mr. Clemons is scheduled to leave.
The move is a blow to Mr. Ponte, who has stalwartly defended his decision to promote Mr. Clemons in the face of unsettling revelations about his competence in recent weeks.
Mr. Clemons has faced increasing calls for his resignation since an investigation by The New York Times in September uncovered details from an internal Correction Department audit, which found he had “abdicated all responsibility” in his duties as warden of a juvenile facility at Rikers Island in 2011 where hundreds of inmate fights had been omitted from official statistics. The audit recommended that he be demoted.
Instead, The Times found, he was promoted, multiple times, while the most damning criticisms, including the recommendation of a demotion, were removed from the report by the commissioner at the time.
Mr. Ponte has said he did not see the unedited version of the report before appointing Mr. Clemons chief of department in May. Even so, he promoted Mr. Clemons despite a recommendation against it by the city’s Department of Investigation.
Mr. Clemons’s decision to step down, which was first reported by The Associated Press, comes at a time when the Correction Department faces intense pressure from the news media, lawmakers and federal authorities to address systemic brutality and corruption at Rikers Island. The United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, which released a report about violence among juveniles in August, has threatened to sue the city if changes are not made.
In recent weeks, lawmakers have seized upon Mr. Ponte’s defense of Mr. Clemons as evidence of the slow pace of change.
At a City Council hearing this month on brutality at Rikers, the Council speaker, Melissa Mark-Viverito, citing The Times’s investigation, criticized Mr. Ponte for failing to fire Mr. Clemons, calling the department chief “clearly incompetent.”
When asked why he had kept Mr. Clemons on, Mr. Ponte defended him.
“He’s got a long history of doing good work in the agency,” he said.
Mr. Clemons, who usually sits beside the commissioner at public meetings, did not appear at that hearing, raising the ire of Elizabeth Crowley, the chairwoman of the committee that oversees corrections.
Mr. Clemons, she said, “did not have the backbone to appear today before the committee.”
When asked where he was, Mr. Ponte told her that Mr. Clemons was on vacation.
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7) South African Union Breaks From A.N.C. as Alliance Frays Further
By ALAN COWELL
The move by the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, known as Numsa, dealt a significant blow to the coalition of labor and political forces that has dominated the country since the formal end of apartheid in 1994. It threatened to speed the realignment of political forces in South Africa and strengthen the government’s adversaries on the left.
But, as the country’s leaders and factions maneuvered on Monday, the full impact of Numsa’s step remained unclear.
“We decided to break with the alliance, and we resolved to form a united front and explore the possibility for socialism in South Africa,” Numsa said in a statement, quoted in news reports, that gave no further details.South African politics has been dominated for two decades by a three-way alliance among the African National Congress, the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, of which Numsa is a member. The alliance, which grew from shared opposition to apartheid, has begun to fray.
Though Numsa withheld support from the A.N.C. in the general election in May, the party, led by President Jacob G. Zuma, won comfortably with 62 percent of the vote. Even so, it faces challenges, including charges of corruption and mismanagement that have fed popular disillusionment and provoked widespread complaints that the party has strayed from the masses it says it represents.
The election also saw a strong showing by the much smaller Economic Freedom Fighters, a party led by Julius Malema, a left-wing firebrand who once led the A.N.C.’s youth wing.
Numsa has a claimed membership of some 340,000 workers in important economic sectors like the auto industry. It has shifted to the left in recent years, after disputes with the A.N.C. over labor and economic policy.
In a statement explaining its position, Numsa said it would not voluntarily leave the labor federation, which remains allied with the ruling party.
Last week, the federation postponed a vote on whether to expel the metalworkers’ union from membership.
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8) Food Scores, a New Web Service, Ranks Grocery Items on Ingredients and Nutrition
“We know that consumers care a lot about what’s in the foods they buy, and we also know that if foods are highly processed, that can have an impact on nutrition in ways that don’t always show up on the information panels on labels,” said Renée Sharp, the director of research at the Environmental Working Group, the nonprofit group that built the new service.
The Food Scores database, compiled largely from information supplied by food companies through voluntary and mandatory labeling, combined with the group’s own research on pesticides and additives, allows consumers to find information like how many products contain brominated vegetable oil as an ingredient or whether a specific product contains added dyes and preservatives.
The Environmental Working Group aims to assign a score from 1 to 10, with 1 being the best, to each product based on how nutritious it is, how many ingredients in it or its packaging raise concerns and an estimate of how processed it is. Factors include whether a product is organically certified; raised according to various animal welfare standards or without antibiotics; and exposed to environmental contaminants and pesticides.
“You can see if a product is gluten-free, whether it potentially contains genetically modified ingredients, how it stacks up against its competition,” Ms. Sharp said. “The database is only of branded and packaged products, so bagged spinach but not spinach sold loose.”
Because of mobile technology and social media, consumers are becoming much more aware of not only what is in the foods they eat but also of questions and concerns about them. That attention has been forcing food manufacturers to reformulate products as varied as Gatorade and Kraft macaroni and cheese.
“Ingredients that are added to food purely for the convenience of industrial food makers are under scrutiny, not by regulatory agencies but by the public,” said Ken Cook, president and a founder of the environmental group.
Mr. Cook said he anticipated resistance from the food industry, and the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the trade group that represents the industry’s interests, was highly critical of the new tool, saying it was based on little more than “guesses.”
“The Environmental Working Group’s food ratings are severely flawed and will only provide consumers with misinformation about the food and beverage products they trust and enjoy,” the association said in a statement.
It said the scoring system was “void of scientific rigor and objectivity” and thus would give consumers inaccurate and misleading information.
“The addition of E.W.G.'s rating scheme to the already crowded landscape of subjective food rating systems underscores the importance of fact-based sources like the government-regulated Nutrition Facts Panel and ingredient list as consumers’ best source for consistent, reliable information about food and beverage products,” the trade group said.
Ms. Sharp said her group’s methodology was presented in depth on the website so that consumers could understand exactly how the organization arrived at its conclusions. “We laid out all of our assumptions and decisions,” she said. “We don’t think anyone is as transparent as we are about what we’re doing.”
She and Mr. Cook said the biggest surprise was how many products contained sugar. “It is astounding,” Ms. Sharp said. “Almost 60 percent of the products in the database contain added sugars.”
More than 90 percent of granola bars, for instance, have added sugars, as do 100 percent of stuffing mixes. Perhaps even more surprising, processed meats like bologna and salami contain added sugar.
Analysis of food products aimed at educating consumers about what they’re buying is increasingly common. Whole Foods, for instance, recently began rating some of the produce it sells as good, better or best based on a variety of criteria, and the Cornucopia Institute will soon introduce a yogurt scorecard, ranking a wide variety of yogurts based on whether, say, they use high-fructose corn syrup or carrageenans, among other things.
The yogurt analysis, which took more than a year, follows work the organization has done to rate organic eggs and organic milk, among other products and ingredients. “Yogurt is perceived and marketed as a healthy product, and its popularity has really taken off because of that perception,” said Mark Kastel, co-founder of Cornucopia. “But there are a lot of synthetic chemicals in many yogurts, and as much added sugar as some candy bars.”
Cornucopia’s yogurt scorecard will award “spoons” to more than 100 yogurts, with five spoons being the best rating. Yogurts that are organic score more highly, as organic foods generally do in the environmental group’s Food Scores, in part because organic producers are required to follow regulations that reduce their use of pesticides, additives and other processing agents.
Dannon and Yoplait, best-selling yogurts, get only one spoon. Michael Neuwirth, a spokesman for Dannon, noted that it made many different yogurts, including plain, unsweetened yogurt in traditional and Greek varieties as well as “nonnutritive sweetened yogurt.”
“To help people achieve a healthy diet in the way they define it for themselves, we make a huge range of nutrient dense varieties of yogurt to fulfill different needs and preferences,” Mr. Neuwirth wrote in an email.
General Mills, which distributes Yoplait in the United States, said: “Cornucopia advocates on behalf of organic, and routinely recommends organic products over alternatives. That has been their focus – and it’s clearly the agenda here.”
Food Scores, which will soon be available as an app that consumers can use with their phones to scan product bar codes, was inspired by the Environmental Working Group’s success with a similar database for cosmetics and skin care, Skin Deep. That effort spurred some cosmetics makers to change their products, and Mr. Cook is hopeful that the food database will have a similar influence.
“A cosmetics executive said the nicest thing any ‘frenemy’ has ever said to me," Mr. Cook said. “He told me that before Skin Deep, women thought they were putting on makeup and now they think they’re putting on chemicals. I think Food Scores is going to have some of the same impact.”
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9) Living Wages, Rarity for U.S. Fast-Food Workers, Served Up in Denmark
By LIZ ALDERMAN and STEVEN GREENHOUSE
COPENHAGEN — On a recent afternoon, Hampus Elofsson ended his 40-hour workweek at a Burger King and prepared for a movie and beer with friends. He had paid his rent and all his bills, stashed away some savings, yet still had money for nights out.
That is because he earns the equivalent of $20 an hour — the base wage for fast-food workers throughout Denmark and two and a half times what many fast-food workers earn in the United States.
“You can make a decent living here working in fast food,” said Mr. Elofsson, 24. “You don’t have to struggle to get by.”
With an eye to workers like Mr. Elofsson, some American labor activists and liberal scholars are posing a provocative question: If Danish chains can pay $20 an hour, why can’t those in the United States pay the $15 an hour that many fast-food workers have been clamoring for?“We see from Denmark that it’s possible to run a profitable fast-food business while paying workers these kinds of wages,” said John Schmitt, an economist at the Center for Economic Policy Research, a liberal think tank in Washington.
Many American economists and business groups say the comparison is deeply flawed because of fundamental differences between Denmark and the United States, including Denmark’s high living costs and taxes, a generous social safety net that includes universal health care and a collective bargaining system in which employer associations and unions work together. The fast-food restaurants here are also less profitable than their American counterparts.
“Trying to compare the business and labor practices in Denmark and the U.S. is like comparing apples to autos,” said Steve Caldeira, president of the International Franchise Association, a group based in Washington that promotes franchising and has many fast-food companies as members.
“Denmark is a small country” with a far higher cost of living, Mr. Caldeira said. “Unions dominate, and the employment system revolves around that fact.”
But as Denmark illustrates, companies have managed to adapt in countries that demand a living wage, and economists like Mr. Schmitt see it as a possible model.
Denmark has no minimum-wage law. But Mr. Elofsson’s $20 an hour is the lowest the fast-food industry can pay under an agreement between Denmark’s 3F union, the nation’s largest, and the Danish employers group Horesta, which includes Burger King, McDonald’s, Starbucks and other restaurant and hotel companies.
By contrast, fast-food wages in the United States are so low that half of the nation’s fast-food workers rely on some form of public assistance, a study from the University of California, Berkeley found. American fast-food workers earn an average of $8.90 an hour.
As a shift manager at a Burger King near Tampa, Fla., Anthony Moore earns $9 an hour, typically working 35 hours a week and taking home around $300 weekly.
“It’s very inadequate,” said Mr. Moore, 26, who supervises 10 workers. His rent is $600 a month, and he often falls behind on his lighting and water bills. A single father, he receives $164 a month in food stamps for his daughters, 5 and 2.
“Sometimes I ask, ‘Do I buy food or do I buy them clothes?’ ” Mr. Moore said. “If I made $20 an hour, I could actually live, instead of dreaming about living.”
Mr. Moore’s daughters receive health care through Medicaid, while he is uninsured because he cannot afford Burger King’s coverage, he said.
“I skip the doctor,” he said, adding that he sometimes goes to work sick because “I can’t miss the money.”
Burger King declined to discuss wages or benefits, saying those decisions were made by its franchise operators. The company said that its “restaurants have provided an entry point into the work force for millions of Americans,” and that the Burger King McLamore Foundation gave some employees emergency financial assistance and college scholarships.
Mr. Schmitt, the economist, acknowledged that it would take some time for the American fast-food industry to adjust to higher wages.
“We would need to phase this in,” said Mr. Schmitt, who is co-editor of the book “Low-Wage Work in the Wealthy World.” “We’ve created a low-road economy, and it’s going to take us some time to build up the speed to get onto the high road.”
In Denmark, fast-food workers are guaranteed benefits their American counterparts could only dream of. Under the industry’s collective agreement, there are five weeks’ paid vacation, paid maternity and paternity leave and a pension plan. Workers must be paid overtime for working after 6 p.m. and on Sundays.
Unlike most American fast-food workers, the Danes often get their work schedules four weeks in advance, and employees cannot be sent home early without pay just because business slows.
Given the benefits available, Mr. Elofsson, the Burger King employee in Copenhagen, said he hoped to make his career with the company and work his way up to restaurant manager. While the Danish industry does not keep data on worker retention, HMSHost Denmark, which runs the fast-food operations at Copenhagen Airport, estimates that 70 percent of the workers at its Burger King and Starbucks franchises stay for more than a year.
By contrast, an internal study done several years ago by McDonald’s found that workers’ average tenure at the company in the United States was nearly eight months, although the National Restaurant Association said American fast-food workers averaged 20 months on the job.Danish law does not require fast-food companies or their franchisees to adhere to the wages required by the agreement with the 3F union. But they do, because employees and unions pledge in exchange not to engage in strikes, demonstrations or boycotts. “What employers get is peace,” said Peter Lykke Nielsen, the 3F union’s chief negotiator with McDonald’s.
McDonald’s learned this the hard way. When it came to Denmark in the 1980s, it refused to join the employers association or adopt any collectively bargained agreements. Only after nearly a year of raucous, union-led protests did McDonald’s relent.
In interviews, Danish employees of McDonald’s, Burger King and Starbucks said that even though Denmark had one of the world’s highest costs of living — about 30 percent higher than in the United States — their $20 wage made life affordable.
True, a Big Mac here costs more — $5.60, compared with $4.80 in the United States. But that is a price Danes are willing to pay. “We Danes accept that a burger is expensive, but we also know that working conditions and wages are decent when we eat that burger,” said Soren Kaj Andersen, a University of Copenhagen professor who specializes in labor issues.
Measured in Big Macs, McDonald’s workers in Denmark earn the equivalent of 3.4 Big Macs an hour, while their American counterparts earn 1.8, according to a study by Orley C. Ashenfelter, a Princeton economics professor, and Stepan Jurajda, an economics professor at Charles University in Prague.
And the Danish restaurants are less profitable. With fast-food wages in the United States so much lower than in Denmark, and the price of Big Macs in the two countries similar, Mr. Ashenfelter said, “It must be that U.S. McDonald’s are far more profitable.” The higher wages and the higher menu prices help explain why there are 16 McDonald’s per million inhabitants in Denmark, but 45 McDonald’s per million in the United States, Mr. Jurajda said.
McDonald’s declined requests for detailed financial data for its restaurants. But it said in a statement that the countries where it operates “have significantly different cost structures, economic environments and competitive frameworks.” The company added that it and its franchise operators “support paying valued employees fair wages aligned with a competitive marketplace.”
America’s restaurant industry predicts a wave of woe if pay were to jump toward Denmark’s levels. An increase to $15 would “limit employment opportunities” by making fast-food restaurants reluctant to hire, said Scott DeFife, an executive vice president at the National Restaurant Association. “More than doubling the starting wage will dramatically increase costs in an industry that exists on very narrow margins.”
Denmark’s high wages make it hard, though not impossible, to maintain profitability at his restaurants, said Martin Drescher, the general manager of HMSHost Denmark, the airport restaurants operator.
“We have to acknowledge it’s more expensive to operate,” said Mr. Drescher. “But we can still make money out of it — and McDonald’s does, too. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be in Denmark.”
He noted proudly that a full-time Burger King employee made enough to live on. “The company doesn’t get as much profit, but the profit is shared a little differently,” he said.
“We don’t want there to be a big difference between the richest and poorest, because poor people would just get really poor,” Mr. Drescher added. “We don’t want people living on the streets. If that happens, we consider that we as a society have failed.”
Liz Alderman reported from Copenhagen and Steven Greenhouse from New York. Anna-Katarina Gravgaard contributed reporting from Copenhagen.
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10) Ecuador: Tortoise Species Is Saved
By REUTERS
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11) Crime Dips in New York as Misdemeanor Arrests Rise, Report Says
Two decades ago, New Yorkers were more likely to be arrested in the middle of Manhattan for a misdemeanor than in any other neighborhood. Then, as crime fell, minor arrests in the heart of the city went down too.
But almost everywhere else, they skyrocketed.
The brunt of those arrests fell on young black and Hispanic men, according to a wide-ranging report on misdemeanor arrests, released on Tuesday by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
And when arrestees reached the courtroom in recent years, the report found, nearly half saw the charges against them — for everything from jumping the turnstile to minor drug possession to assault — dismissed or dropped altogether.
The report, drawing on state and local arrest data since 1980, presents the clearest picture to date of a three-decade long shift in crime policy in New York City, beginning when crime was on the rise and ending last year when it reached historically low levels.
Thirty-four years ago, felony arrests outpaced those for misdemeanor crimes, hitting a peak in 1989 with 149,204 felony arrests. By last year, however, the two categories had not only flipped, the report found, but the arrest rate for lower-level crimes had eclipsed those for more serious offenses, rising 190 percent by 2013, when the police made 225,684 such arrests.
In presenting the report at a breakfast forum on Tuesday, Jeremy Travis, the president of John Jay College, said the steep rise in misdemeanors marked “a profound change in our city.”
While the study, by Preeti Chauhan, an assistant professor at John Jay, does not attempt to explain the reasons for the change, it provides a stark illustration in charts and figures of a policing strategy increasingly based on preventing major crime by aggressively pursuing minor offenses. The strategy is closely associated with Police Commissioner William J. Bratton and is emulated around the country.
As stop-and-frisk numbers have diminished across the city, the high number of low-level arrests has come under scrutiny. Mr. Bratton and Mayor Bill de Blasio have said officers can use discretion in how they address minor offenses, while at the same time stressing that complaints from residents drive much of misdemeanor enforcement.
“The first principle is that police respond to complaints,” said Elizabeth Glazer, the head of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice. “That’s their job. That’s their customer service.”
The report found that about half of the misdemeanor arrests over time were in response to complaints or serious offenses such as assaults, theft, drunken driving or weapons possession. The other half were for lower-level offenses, including marijuana possession or trespassing.
In an introduction to the 114-page report, Mr. Travis said the data documents “the exercise of discretion” by the police, city prosecutors and the courts.
A pair of charts tracking the most common misdemeanor charges suggest how officers are using that discretion. Arrests for more serious offenses, like assault, gradually rose, and those for crimes like theft declined first before slowly increasing, the report found. But arrests spiked and dipped over the past 30 years for lesser offenses like drug possession and turnstile jumping, a hallmark of Mr. Bratton’s crime-fighting approach in the early 1990s.
Arrests for prostitution, a quintessential sign of disorder in the “broken windows” model, declined over the last two decades, the report found. But marijuana arrests soared beginning in the early 1990s, peaking at nearly 28 percent of all misdemeanor arrests in 2000 before tapering to 15 percent of arrests last year. By comparison, the report found, marijuana arrests in five other cities in New York State never reached that proportion of misdemeanor offenses.
Once those charges reached the courtroom, nearly half ended in some form of dismissal or with prosecutors simply declining to pursue the case.
In 2011, the report found, city district attorneys declined to prosecute 10.7 percent of misdemeanors, and did so in 7.6 percent of cases the next year. Elsewhere around New York State, that rate hovered near zero.
Mr. Bratton, who sat in the audience on Tuesday but was not a speaker, viewed an early draft of the analysis and provided feedback, as did George L. Kelling, the criminologist whose “broken windows” theory of addressing minor disorder helped shape Mr. Bratton’s thinking on crime.
The arrests documented in the report vary widely by precinct and have changed over the years.
In 1993, four of the top five precincts for misdemeanor arrests were in Manhattan, including Chelsea and two Midtown precincts. By 2013, the Midtown South precinct remained a hot spot, but arrests there had declined, while misdemeanor arrests soared in East New York in Brooklyn, East Harlem in Manhattan and Morris Heights and Mott Haven in the Bronx.
The report found one relative constant over the years: Black and Hispanic men made up a far greater portion of those arrested than whites, even as misdemeanor arrests increased across the board for all ethnic groups. The arrest rate for black men in particular nearly doubled from 1990 to 2013.
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12) $2.25 Million Settlement for Family of Rikers Inmate Who Died in Overheated Cell
The family of a homeless veteran who died this year in a searing hot cell at Rikers Island will receive $2.25 million from the City of New York in a settlement announced by the comptroller’s office on Friday.
The settlement was finalized with unusual swiftness, a result both of the heightened interest in the case and the extraordinary pressure on the city to improve conditions at Rikers Island, where brutality and corruption have flourished unchecked for years.
The inmate, Jerome Murdough, died on Feb. 15, when the temperature in his cell in a mental health unit at Rikers reached over 100 degrees. The case has come to exemplify the many shortcomings of the city jails and the criminal justice system at large.Mr. Murdough, 56, was arrested a week before his death when a police officer found him in the stairwell of a public housing building in Harlem. He told the officer that he had sought shelter there from the cold. Mr. Murdough was charged with trespassing in the second degree, a misdemeanor. A judge set his bail at $2,500, which he could not pay.
He was put in a cell at Rikers Island, in a unit reserved for inmates with mental illness. Because of broken heating equipment, temperatures on his cellblock had been unusually hot for days. Though staff and inmates complained, nothing was done to fix the problem.
Mr. Murdough died seven days after his arrival at Rikers, after officials said he was left unattended for hours. New York City’s medical examiner, which ruled his death accidental, said he died of hyperthermia caused by exposure to the heat, which had interacted adversely with antipsychotic medicine he was taking for schizoaffective disorder.
In May, Mr. Murdough’s family announced that it intended to file a wrongful-death suit against the city seeking $25 million.
The settlement marked the second time that the city comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, negotiated a multimillion dollar settlement before a lawsuit was filed — essentially cutting out the Law Department from the process.
In February, Mr. Stringer agreed to pay $6.4 million to David Ranta, who was imprisoned for 23 years after being framed by a rogue detective.
Mr. Murdough’s death provoked widespread public outrage, and drew media attention to the conditions at Rikers Island. Mayor Bill de Blasio called it “shocking and troubling” and promised to spearhead reforms.
Shortly after, Rose Agro, the warden of the Rikers Island jail where Mr. Murdough was held, was demoted. She has since retired. A correction officer who was on duty in Mr. Murdough’s unit was also suspended for 30 days, and the supervisor of mechanics was barred from working in inmate housing units.
A spokeswoman for the Bronx district attorney’s office, which has jurisdiction over Rikers Island, said the case was still under investigation for potential criminal charges.
Benjamin Weiser contributed reporting.
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13) On the Other Side of Ferguson’s Protest Lines, Officers Face New Threats
BY Dan Barry
Ms. Johnson put in 25 years as a police officer in another town before Chief Thomas Jackson recruited her to dispatch officers here when appropriate. It was a familiar world to her, until that August day when a white Ferguson police officer shot to death an unarmed 18-year-old black man, and callers from across the country began condemning her and her colleagues as “baby killers” and worse.
“I’ve been called everything but a child of God,” Ms. Johnson, who is African-American, said.She said that the animosity, found on social media and in protests just outside police headquarters, had been so virulent at times that she listened more carefully these days to calls requesting assistance before she sent an officer — for fear of a possible ambush.
“You want to make sure that your officers are O.K.,” she said.
Anxiety in Ferguson is escalating again, now that a decision by the grand jury investigating the killing of the teenager, Michael Brown, by Officer Darren Wilson seems imminent. Recent revelations, including an autopsy report and accounts of witness testimony, have only added to the tension, in part because they seem more exculpatory than supportive of calls for murder charges against Officer Wilson.
No matter what the grand jury decides, law-enforcement officials are preparing for a return of the violent protests that defined the first weeks after Mr. Brown’s death, as well as the continuing brightness of an unforgiving spotlight on the Ferguson police.
“We’re under siege,” the beleaguered Chief Jackson said this week, referring specifically to the nightly protests outside headquarters, but perhaps to himself as well. Speculation continues about his possible resignation, about a push to replace him, about St. Louis County taking over policing of the city.
The chief said that he had not been asked to resign and had no plans to leave. But he called these recent weeks “horrible” and added, “It is not uncommon for me to pull up at a light and have someone yell something offensive or put up their hands” — the gesture of surrender that some say Mr. Brown was making when he was shot.
Just 11 weeks ago, on the morning of Aug. 9, the Ferguson Police Department was an unremarkable Midwestern force, with 54 officers — 50 of them white — in a city of 21,000 that is two-thirds black. By nightfall, it had been transformed into something approximating the occupying force of a white power structure.
Since then, frustration from years of racial profiling and harassment, perceived and real, has poured out. Ferguson has become a flash point, its police department now a symbol of jackbooted oppression.
Some of the actions taken by the Ferguson police after Mr. Brown’s death certainly fueled the ensuing outcry: leaving the body in the street for several hours, for example, and using heavy-handed force during the protests, at which hateful things were said from both sides of the so-called skirmish line.
But there is another side to this tragedy’s aftermath. It is not the only side, or the opposite side. Just another side.
“What I can’t understand is the constant hate,” Ms. Johnson said. “And the failure to be patient until there’s a thorough investigation.”
These days, Ferguson police officers say that they live as though someone out there intends to do them harm. They no longer wear their uniforms to or from work. They vary their routes back home. A few have relocated their families.
Even a simple stop for a soda at the Circle K has become unsettling, because of what the police describe as social-media talk about catching Ferguson officers off guard at the convenience store — and shooting them in the head.
“You are constantly wondering,” Sgt. Mike Wood, a Ferguson native, said. “I know I didn’t sign up with Burger King, but....”
One afternoon this month, Sergeant Wood, 57, and Officer Gregg McDanel, 53, sat just down the hall from where Ms. Johnson works dispatch. The two men have a combined 45 years with the Ferguson police, but they say that not once in all those years did they have cause to wear a riot helmet — until now.
Now, they have become accustomed to standing in riot gear outside their workplace, where, they say, a small number of protesters have occasionally tossed bottles, rocks and words intended to goad. One night included the muzzle flash of a gun, they said.
Officer McDanel, who handles the evidence room, said that for the first time in his career, his wife had cried as he walked out the door, headed for work.
Late last month, a Ferguson officer was shot in the arm after coming upon an apparent break-in at the new community center. As dozens of officers, including Sergeant Wood, assembled at a nearby staging area, so did dozens of protesters, guided to the location by social media. Some, he said, shouted sentiments like “How does it feel?”
“It was sickening,” he said.
Into the station came Sgt. Harry Dilworth, 45, a 21-year veteran. As one of the few African-Americans on the force, he said, he has been targeted for particular abuse. “I’ve been called a racist,” he said. “A racist!”
An Army reservist, he has done two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, and the habits he acquired overseas serve him well these days in Ferguson. He sits farther back in his car seat, so that his body is blocked by the door post. At stoplights, he leaves space between his car and those around him. He watches his rearview mirror.
“We have to adapt to the inherent threats,” he said. “Back in July, I didn’t have a gun at my front door.”
Sergeant Dilworth said that these precautions were necessary because, several weeks ago, activist hackers made public the names and addresses of Ferguson officers, with the promise “to wreak hell on our lives.”
“I’ve canceled everything electronic,” he said. “I almost went to a rotary phone.”
Now, Sergeant Dilworth sometimes directs officers to set up perimeters of safety on what would have been routine calls. He also reminds them not to react to words, recalling one encounter in which a protester confronted an officer and screamed “about what he was going to do to his wife and daughter.”
“I told him not to listen to that garbage,” he said.
“The community itself, they’re supporting us,” the sergeant added. “But that small microcosm of protesters is starting to wear on them. They’re tired.”
Weariness defined the face of Chief Jackson, 54, as he sat in his cramped office earlier this month, a wooden baton in the corner, a green mug of cold coffee on the desk. The entire department is working out of the basement while the building is being renovated.
Before his appointment in 2010, he was a decorated officer who spent 30 years with the St. Louis County Police Department; a SWAT team supervisor, hostage negotiator and undercover detective; an active community volunteer; and a gifted tenor who sometimes sang at St. Louis Blues hockey games.
Since Mr. Brown’s death, though, Chief Jackson has come to personify a small Missouri department ill-suited for the spotlight. His videotaped apology last month — to the Brown family for the handling of the body and to peaceful protesters who felt unjustly stifled — came across as too little, too late.
“There’s only one narrative out there,” the chief said.
For example, he said, people believed at one point that the police had set fire to a memorial to Mr. Brown. In fact, Sergeant Dilworth tried but failed to save it. (“Only one person tried to thank me,” the sergeant said. “Out of 50.”)
The chief said people should not forget that some of the protests over these past two and a half months have been violent. “The reality was, it was a deadly-force situation,” he said. “And nobody got hurt.”
But Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum in Washington, said that the Ferguson Police Department was paying a price for failing to develop a stronger relationship with its African-American constituency.
“They’re trying to build trust from a defensive position instead of having done it beforehand,” Mr. Wexler said. “They have a difficult job.”
That job will not get easier anytime soon. The expectation in the basement police headquarters is that if the grand jury indicts Officer Wilson, there will be unrest, and if it does not indict Officer Wilson, there will be unrest.
“It’s painful, just painful,” said Ms. Johnson, the dispatcher, before heading back to receive the calls of this torn city.
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14) U.N. Panel Warns of Dire Effects From Lack of Action Over Global Warming
By JUSTIN GILLIS
COPENHAGEN — The gathering risks of climate change are so profound they could stall or even reverse generations of progress against poverty and hunger if greenhouse gas emissions continue at a runaway pace, according to a major new United Nations report.
Despite rising efforts in many countries to tackle the problem, the overall global situation is growing more acute as developing countries join the West in burning huge amounts of fossil fuels, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said here on Sunday.
Failure to reduce emissions, the group of scientists and other experts found, could threaten society with food shortages, refugee crises, the flooding of major cities and entire island nations, the mass extinction of plants and animals, and a climate so drastically altered it might become dangerous for people to work or play outside during the hottest times of the year.“Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems,” the report declared.
In the starkest language it has ever used, the expert panel made clear how far society remains from having any serious policy to limit global warming.
Doing so would require finding a way to leave the vast majority of the world’s reserves of fossil fuels in the ground, or, alternatively, developing methods to capture and bury the emissions resulting from their use, the group said.
If governments are to meet their own stated goal of limiting the warming of the planet to no more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius, above the preindustrial level, they must restrict emissions from additional fossil-fuel burning to about 1 trillion tons of carbon dioxide, the panel said.
At current growth rates, that budget is likely to be exhausted in something like 30 years. Yet energy companies have already booked coal and petroleum reserves equal to several times that amount, and they are spending some $600 billion a year to find more. Utilities and oil companies are still building coal-fired power plants and refineries, and governments are spending another $600 billion directly subsidizing the consumption of fossil fuels.
By contrast, the report found, less than $400 billion a year is being spent around the world to reduce emissions or otherwise cope with climate change. That sum is smaller than the revenue of a single American oil company, ExxonMobil.
The new report comes just a month before international delegates convene in Lima, Peru, in an effort to devise a new global treaty or other agreement to limit emissions, and it makes clear the urgency of their task.
Appearing at a news conference in Copenhagen Sunday morning to unveil the report, the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, issued an urgent appeal for strong action in Lima.
“Science has spoken. There is no ambiguity in their message,” Mr. Ban declared. “Leaders must act. Time is not on our side.”
Yet there has been no sign that national leaders are willing to discuss allocating the trillion-ton emissions budget among countries, an approach that would raise political and moral questions of fairness. On the contrary: They are moving toward a relatively weak agreement that would essentially let each country decide for itself how much effort to put into limiting global warming, and even that document would not take effect until 2020.
“If they choose not to talk about the carbon budget, they’re choosing not to address the problem of climate change,” said Myles R. Allen, a scientist at Oxford University in Britain who helped write the new report. “They might as well not bother to turn up for these meetings.”
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a scientific body appointed by the world’s governments to advise them on the causes and effects of global warming, and potential solutions. The group was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, along with Al Gore, for its efforts to call attention to the climate crisis.
The new report is a 175-page synopsis of a much longer series of reports that the panel has issued over the past year, culminating a five-year effort by the body to summarize a vast archive of published climate research.
It is the fifth such report from the group since 1990, each finding greater certainty that the climate is warming and that human activities are the primary cause.
“Human influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, in changes in the global water cycle, in reductions in snow and ice, and in global mean sea-level rise; and it is extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century,” the report said.
A core finding of the new report is that climate change is no longer a distant, future threat, but is being felt all over the world already.
“It’s here and now,” said Rajendra K. Pachauri, the chairman of the panel, in an interview. “It’s not something in the future.”
The group cited mass die-offs of forests, including those in the American West; the melting of land ice virtually everywhere in the world; an accelerating rise of the seas that is leading to increased coastal flooding; and heat waves that have devastated crops and killed tens of thousands of people.
The report contained the group’s most explicit warning yet about the food supply, saying that climate change had already become a small drag on overall global production, and could become a far larger one if emissions continued unchecked. The reported noted that in recent years the world’s food system had shown signs of instability, with sudden price increases leading to riots and, in a few cases, the collapse of governments.
A related finding is that climate change poses serious risks to basic human progress in areas such as alleviating poverty. Under the worst-case scenarios, factors like high food prices and intensified weather disasters would most likely leave poor people worse off. In fact, the report said, that has already happened to a degree.
In Washington, the Obama administration welcomed the new report, with the president’s science adviser, John P. Holdren, calling it “yet another wake-up call to the global community that we must act together swiftly and aggressively in order to stem climate change and avoid its worst impacts.”
The administration is pushing for new limits on emissions from American power plants, but faces stiff resistance in Congress and some states.
Michael Oppenheimer, a climate scientist at Princeton University and a principal author of the new report, said that a continuation of the political paralysis on emissions would leave society depending largely on luck.
If the level of greenhouse gases were to continue rising at a rapid pace over coming decades, severe effects could be headed off only if the climate turned out to be much less sensitive to those gases than most scientists think is likely, he said.
“We’ve seen many governments delay and delay and delay on implementing comprehensive emissions cuts,” Dr. Oppenheimer said. “So the need for a lot of luck looms larger and larger. Personally, I think it’s a slim reed to lean on for the fate of the planet.”
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15) In France, Dam Is the Catalyst for a Flood of Young People’s Anger
By MAÏA de la BAUME
LISLE-SUR-TARN, France — The protests began a year ago in this quiet corner of southwestern France, as a small and peaceful gathering of hippies, environmental activists and utopians of all types set up tents to oppose the construction of a nearby dam.
In August, after local authorities sent diggers and then crushing machines to level the soil and destroy trees, clashes erupted between protesters and the police, turning this vast stretch of woodland into what many here called a war zone.
More than a hundred protesters, joined by a minority of violent groups, responded to tear gas and rubber bullets by throwing fire bombs. They built makeshift checkpoints, roadblocks and two watchtowers. Finally, last weekend, a 21-year-old student, Rémi Fraisse, was killed after being hit by a stun grenade that protesters say was thrown by a police officer.
The death of Mr. Fraisse, which resulted in the temporary suspension of the construction work, has now turned what had been a local protest into a national drama, spawning vigils and front-page news coverage, while prompting criticism of the government of President François Hollande for its lack of response.
But the death has also focused attention on the government’s seeming failure to engage a broad segment of France’s next generation, and the increasingly violent nature of protests inspired by antiglobalization movements, such as Occupy Wall Street, that have spread across France in recent years.
Initially fueled by environmental concerns, the protests have come to embody the disenchantment and anger of young people who see few future opportunities and feel little kinship with the government.
Many of those who gathered to oppose the dam call themselves “Zadistes,” or partisans of the ZAD, the French acronym for zones à defendre, or areas to defend. They say they have come to build an independent society. Increasingly, they are seen as environmental extremists, or “green jihadists,” as Xavier Beulin, the president of the main agriculture union, put it.
“For once, we are fighting a project that represents symbolically what we reject,” said Jordan Samson, a geography student in the southern city of Toulouse. “Our movement is spreading to an entire generation.”
The protests here are the latest aimed at a widening number of projects that the demonstrators criticize as monuments to the overweening ambitions of local politicians and their business connections.
Last month, demonstrations in support of the Zadistes were held across France, including in Nantes, where more than a hundred protesters went on a rampage. In the nearby town of Gaillac, several shops and a memorial to war dead were vandalized.
On Saturday, young protesters clashed again with the police in Nantes and Toulouse, in the south.
Several years ago, the movement sprung up in Notre-Dame-des-Landes, near the western end of the central Loire Valley, where hundreds of young people and farmers gathered in a woodland outside Nantes to oppose government plans to build an airport. Clashes in Nantes left about a dozen protesters injured.
The death of Mr. Fraisse has been subject to investigation and prompted the government to suspend the use of stun grenades against protesters nationwide.
Cécile Duflot, a former environment minister and member of Parliament, called Mr. Fraisse’s death a “permanent stain” on the government, whose response was criticized as tardy and confused.
The aftermath of the clashes in Lisle-sur-Tarn have spread fear among local farmers in one of France’s most rural and poorest areas, where farming makes up about 88 percent of the local economy.
The 8.4 million euro dam project here, designed by the local council of Tarn-et-Garonne, was aimed at creating an artificial lake to help irrigate lands for fewer than 100 local farmers.
Protests against the project began in 2013, when a group of about 30 eco-warriors gathered in Lisle-sur-Tarn to oppose the dam on a river that flows through the forest of Sivens.
But for many protesters here, the dam was designed to support the local corn farmers who practice what many here called “intensive farming” and would have threatened about 94 protected species of animals and plants.
“We saw the trees falling one after the other,” said Camille, 18, who would not give her last name for fear of running afoul of the authorities. “It was an environmental disaster.”
Like many others, Camille said she had come to the ZAD to denounce “grand projects that are useless and imposed.”
“I have heard about the crisis ever since I was born,” said Camille, who said she had just passed her final exams. “As long as there will be capitalist policies, there will be crisis.”
The demonstrators felt vindicated last week when a report commissioned by the government found that the project was too expensive, that local needs for the dam had been overestimated and that alternative options had not been sufficiently explored. But the report also said it would be difficult to stop construction at this stage.
On a recent morning, the atmosphere at the site where protesters set up tents was calm. Many gathered outside the “Métairie,” an abandoned house that had been turned into a collective kitchen.
Some sliced potatoes provided by farmers nearby, while others played a mouth harp. In one encampment, which protesters call the “front,” because of its forward location near the proposed dam site, protesters replanted trees that had been bulldozed. Others were building a makeshift oven with a mix of water, sand and soil.
Many protesters sleep in tents or recreational vehicles, and they live off the donations of local farmers and residents who bring crates filled with vegetables and clothes. They publish calls for donations on their blog, asking for equipment as varied as arc welders, blankets and batteries.
The suspension of the dam project and the intrusion of protesters have angered many farmers who struggle to keep their businesses afloat in a poor land hit by frequent droughts in summer. Many fear the protesters will ultimately halt the construction of a dam that they see as necessary.
“How do we live if we stop making corn?” said Laurent, a local farmer who did not want to give his last name because he had been vandalized and feared retaliation. “What do we want to create, a rural desert?”
Other farmers, too, reported that they had been recently vandalized, and had received anonymous, threatening letters.
Since the protests erupted, Guy de Pierpont, 66, a local farmer who breeds partridges and pheasants, said he had been sleeping with a rifle and pepper spray by his window.
A few days ago, the protesters opened his aviary illegally, and recently one of his two sons had spent time in a hospital after having fought with a group of protesters.
“They don’t come here for the dam — they come to fight,” Mr. de Pierpont said. “And they have massacred our forest.”
Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting from Paris.
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16) For Pot Inc., the Rush to Cash In Is Underway
A Competition to Get a Medical Marijuana License in New York
More than a year before the first legal dose of marijuana will be dispensed in New York, a group of entrepreneurs gathered at the Marriott Marquis hotel in Times Square in late October to discuss strategy with an influential state lawmaker. It was the weekly meet-up of the Cannabis and Hemp Association, which formed in May to get a jump on future business.
The mood among the 18 people at the table was one of excitement. Oleg Maryasis, 30, a former financial adviser, said he had just met with a group of investors who were eager to sink tens of millions of dollars into the New York cannabis trade.
The group’s organizer, Scott Giannotti, a bald, heavyset 35-year-old from Long Island whose résumé includes selling cellphones and rapping, and who now sells LED grow lights from China, questioned the meeting’s special guest, State Senator Diane J. Savino. Ms. Savino, a Democrat who represents parts of Brooklyn and Staten Island, was a sponsor of the medical marijuana bill that New York passed last summer, 18 years after it was first proposed; her efforts led Elle magazine to name her one of its “13 most potent women in the pot industry now.”
“Senator,” Mr. Giannotti said, “what can we do to help you out?”
Ms. Savino offered some cautionary words. The State Health Department, she said, had not yet written guidelines for the medical marijuana program, and the licenses available for companies keen to participate would be few and costly. And, she added, legalized recreational use, as proposed by State Senator Liz Krueger, a Manhattan Democrat, was unlikely any time soon.
Still, Ms. Savino called the legislation a turning point, for the state and the industry. “We can probably take in a couple hundred million dollars a year, minimally,” she said, referring to potential tax revenue. “You’re going to have patients who are acclimated to medical marijuana, doctors who recognize it, communities who realize that if they have a dispensary it’s not the end of the world. Then you’re going to have more demand. In a state this size, the potential is huge.”
When Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed the Compassionate Care Act in July, it gave the Health Department 18 months to come up with regulations and choose up to five companies to grow and dispense medical marijuana.
Now, for the state’s would-be growers, private equity investors, labor unions, lawyers, lobbyists, consultants, branding firms, suits, stoners and hucksters, the rush is on.
This is the moment when old-guard legalizers meet a new breed of capitalist.
In October, 900 people flocked to a hotel in Midtown Manhattan for a $900-a-head, three-day East Coast Cannabis Business Expo, Educational Conference and Regulatory Summit, the first of its kind in New York. The event’s organizers were two veterans of the tanning salon business; the crowd ranged from venture capitalists to chocolatiers to people currently growing illegally, with a smattering of doctors and representatives of at least one nursing home conglomerate. There were vendors of supply-chain tracking software, security services and malpractice insurance, as well as a manufacturer of precision-grade scales from the diamond district. Not a single bong in the house.
“This is sexy, this is drugs,” one speaker, Adam Bierman, a managing partner of MedMen, a California-based consulting company, told a crowded conference room. “This is something there’s already demand for. This is selling pot.”
Under New York’s law, licensed companies will grow and sell their own product, from “seed to sale.” Doctors can recommend, but not prescribe, it to treat a limited set of conditions, including cancer, multiple sclerosis and AIDS. Though federal law still prohibits the sale and possession of marijuana, the Justice Department advised its prosecutors in 2013 that if state laws to legalize the substance properly limited its spread, and if companies complied with state laws, they should not be prosecuted.
Because banks and credit-card companies are federally regulated, the purchase and sale of cannabis has so far been a cash business. New York’s health commissioner will set the price of the drug, probably based on the street value.
New York’s law is among the most restrictive to be passed by the 23 states that have legalized marijuana use in some form. The 20 dispensaries set to open in a state of nearly 20 million people are likely to be high-volume centers, located away from schools or houses of worship, where patients or caregivers with state identification cards can get up to a month’s supply of non-smokable product.
The emerging industry has drawn people from unlikely precincts. Patrick McCarthy, a lobbyist who spent the last three years pushing legalization for cannabis companies, was once an aide to Gov. George E. Pataki and the executive director of the New York Republican State Committee. Dean Petkanas, who plans to seek a state license, was a chief financial officer at Stratton Oakmont, the penny-stock boiler room operation depicted in “The Wolf of Wall Street”; Mr. Petkanas now runs a “phyto-medical company” called KannaLife Sciences that hopes to get F.D.A. approval of a cannabis-based treatment for two types of brain encephalopathy. At the conference, he wore a pinstripe three-piece suit and spoke in torrents.
“I did a lot of pharmaceutical work on Wall Street when I was in boutique investment banking,” he said, skipping over his time at Stratton Oakmont. “I spent a lot of time in merchant banking. I really dug in hard.” Shares of KannaLife’s parent company, Medical Marijuana Inc., have fallen by more than half since earlier this year.
The competition to acquire the five available licenses will be fierce and expensive. Application costs alone could run to several hundred thousand dollars; start-up costs could top $20 million. “I would suggest that anyone who wants to be serious be prepared to spend at least a million dollars” on an application, said Evan Nison, 24, a lobbyist and consultant for cannabis companies and a founder of the New York Cannabis Alliance, which advocates changing the state’s marijuana laws. Richard N. Gottfried, a Democratic state assemblyman from Manhattan who led the long fight to legalize medical marijuana, cited an unwritten formula of government regulation. “When you make a statute very restrictive — and the governor did that in the last hours — you raise the stakes and create a need for more lawyers and consultants,” he said.
Out-of-state firms able to show they have run successful cannabis operations elsewhere will have an edge in the licensing process. But any hope for quick profits will be limited by the small number of conditions for which New York is allowing the drug’s use.
Still, the arrival of medical marijuana opens the door to a potentially huge market, said Derek Peterson, 40, a former senior vice president at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney. Mr. Peterson now heads Terra Tech, a publicly traded company that already operates a five-acre hydroponic growing facility in New Jersey turning out basil, kale and other produce while awaiting the opening of more local dispensaries, which Gov. Chris Christie opposes.
“We don’t love the way the New York policy works, but over time the legislation can change,” Mr. Peterson said. “Even if you can’t make a significant profit now, you can invest in it for the future.” He compared New York to Nevada, where Terra Tech had already spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to apply for a license and hired Senator Harry Reid’s son Rory as a lobbyist. The cost of applying in New York, he said, might run in the high six figures. Cannabis industry cash has begun to flow into New York. Ms. Savino said her campaign donations from out-of-state growers were “around $10,000 or $15,000 — not much.”
The amount of money at stake has attracted investors from across the spectrum; from Wall Street to High Times magazine, the 40-year-old counterculture survivor that earlier this year announced that it planned to create a private equity High Times Growth Fund to invest in the cannabis businesses.
Unions have also claimed a share. In New York, all licensees will be union shops, a result of two years of lobbying by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which has also been successful in other states. Cannabis is a rare growth sector for organized labor. “We saw around the country that these jobs had the potential to be real middle-class jobs if the workers were organized,” said Ed Draves, a lobbyist with Bolton St. Johns who led the push for the union. “Here in New York, you saw the home health care industry develop, where a lot of the workers were health care workers who couldn’t attain health care or pension benefits. We didn’t want to see that as we developed this industry.”
For investors, the business strikes a familiar chord, with the potential for huge growth and high risk. “There are a lot of parallels that I draw to what happened in the technology space in the late ’90s and early 2000s,” said Al Foreman, a former managing director of J.P. Morgan’s growth equity fund Highbridge Principal Strategies. Since leaving Wall Street last December, Mr. Foreman helped start a private equity group called Tuatara Capital that plans to invest in cannabis industries across the Americas. “For lack of another term,” Mr. Foreman said, “it’s a new frontier.”
Tuatara has not yet started raising money, and Mr. Foreman declined to say how much it hopes to amass. But he said there was already interest among investors. And, he added, the nascent cannabis industry is ahead of where the technology sector was 20 years ago.
Because people have been buying marijuana for years, he said, “it’s a more easily identifiable consumer base than what you might have seen in the early days of the Internet, when people were still trying to figure out how to get paying customers. We’re talking about an industry with real assets and markets where there is existing demand.”
Mr. Foreman noted that the cultural gap between Wall Street and the purveyors of products like Ghost Train Haze and Holy Grail Kush is not what it once was. Money changes everything. “When I took a trip to Denver to walk the halls and the plants and the factories, you realize that these are not kids in the basement,” he said. “The stereotype is shattered by the level of professionalism. Some of these companies will grow into really large companies.”
High Times hopes to grow with them, said Michael Kennedy, its controlling owner. Mr. Kennedy, a criminal lawyer who at the magazine’s inception represented its founder in an investigation into smuggling charges, said High Times was close to launching its private equity fund with two partners — so close that he would not discuss previously disclosed details for fear of violating government rules against soliciting business ahead of a launch. An interview with Mr. Kennedy published by Bloomberg Businessweek in June cited a target of $300 million for the fund.
On a recent day, Malcolm MacKinnon, the magazine’s silver-haired editor, presided over a staff of more than two dozen, with ages ranging from their 20s to their 60s, as they worked quietly on the February issue (the cover story: a showdown between cannabis sativa and cannabis indica). Professionally, Mr. MacKinnon uses the pseudonym Dan Skye, an artifact from less cannabis-friendly times, when he was raising children and coaching Little League.With its run-of-the-mill cubicles, the office felt more like the law firm that shares space with the magazine than the partying High Times suggested by its pages. Asked whether the staff smoked in the office, Mr. MacKinnon replied with a note of sarcasm, “Gee, we wouldn’t do that because it’s illegal.”
The private equity fund continues the magazine’s efforts to merge with the mainstream. These days, High Times organizes a sprawling trade show and smoke-off called the Cannabis Cup. Once limited to a single annual event in Amsterdam, where competitors vied to provide the most potent herb, the Cannabis Cup is now a domestic affair that draws tens of thousands of attendees to multiple locations. Versions were held in five cities in the United States this year, with speakers and vendors of everything a contemporary cannabis consumer might fancy, except, in some places, cannabis.
High Times is now a legacy business, with four decades of experience in a field many are just entering, Mr. MacKinnon said.
“Everybody wants to talk to us now.”
That group may include people like Ari Hoffnung, 40, who hopes to get one of the New York licenses. He named his fledgling company Fiorello Pharmaceuticals Inc., in tribute to New York mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia, who opposed the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, when the substance was still legal. For now, Mr. Hoffnung has formed an investor group, while seeking to forge partnerships with companies that have grown and dispensed marijuana in other states.
Mr. Hoffnung is a former managing director at Bear Stearns, and was a deputy comptroller when John C. Liu served as the city comptroller. He said he became interested in medical marijuana after seeing “folks in my family with A.L.S. and other conditions where cannabis has been proven helpful to relieve pain and suffering.”
But he had another interest in legal cannabis. While working for Mr. Liu, he took part in a study that asked how many city residents might benefit from the legalization of marijuana, and how much money the city might reap. The numbers were big: 100,000 patients for medical cannabis, and tax revenue of $400 million if recreational use were legalized.
The figures, Mr. Hoffnung acknowledged, will not be realized until well into the future, if ever. But the current regulatory conditions, with each state setting its own laws and no distribution across state lines, might be an advantage for smaller companies like his.
“No major companies want to create a business model and have to replicate it in 23 states,” he said. “That doesn’t allow economies of scale.”
That could change, especially as businesses press state and federal legislators harder. In New York, the public is already on board, said Mr. McCarthy, the lobbyist, citing polls that show support for medical marijuana at 83 percent in the state, up from just 58 percent a few years ago. The support, he said, is widespread. “There’s no drop off from a senior in Buffalo to an independent soccer mom in Suffolk.”
In the meantime, at the Cannabis and Hemp Association meeting, the aspiring moguls had a regulatory request for Ms. Savino. They wanted more regulation, not less. Specifically, Mr. Giannotti worried about over-the-counter remedies being sold as non-psychoactive hemp oil or CBD oil (CBD, or cannabidiol, is one of the active ingredients in cannabis). Such products are largely unregulated and sell for as much as hundreds of dollars for a small amount. The attendees worried that such companies might taint the industry. Could the state crack down on them?
Ms. Savino pulled a bottle of something called Green Cures CBD Oil from her purse, eying it skeptically. “People believe what they want to believe,” she said. “It’s hard to protect people from what they think will help.”
Mr. Maryasis said he hoped the over-the-counter products, which were plentiful at the recent trade show, were not a sign of things to come, especially before regulated medical marijuana becomes available.
“This sets a bad standard for the industry,” he said. “We want to lead with genuineness, and not just opportunism.”
He added: “If we do this right, we can be an example to the nation. We don’t have to be the first ones to legalize it. We just have to do it right.”
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By JOHN LELAND and MOSI SECRET
More than a year before the first legal dose of marijuana will be dispensed in New York, a group of entrepreneurs gathered at the Marriott Marquis hotel in Times Square in late October to discuss strategy with an influential state lawmaker. It was the weekly meet-up of the Cannabis and Hemp Association, which formed in May to get a jump on future business.
The mood among the 18 people at the table was one of excitement. Oleg Maryasis, 30, a former financial adviser, said he had just met with a group of investors who were eager to sink tens of millions of dollars into the New York cannabis trade.
The group’s organizer, Scott Giannotti, a bald, heavyset 35-year-old from Long Island whose résumé includes selling cellphones and rapping, and who now sells LED grow lights from China, questioned the meeting’s special guest, State Senator Diane J. Savino. Ms. Savino, a Democrat who represents parts of Brooklyn and Staten Island, was a sponsor of the medical marijuana bill that New York passed last summer, 18 years after it was first proposed; her efforts led Elle magazine to name her one of its “13 most potent women in the pot industry now.”
“Senator,” Mr. Giannotti said, “what can we do to help you out?”
Ms. Savino offered some cautionary words. The State Health Department, she said, had not yet written guidelines for the medical marijuana program, and the licenses available for companies keen to participate would be few and costly. And, she added, legalized recreational use, as proposed by State Senator Liz Krueger, a Manhattan Democrat, was unlikely any time soon.
Still, Ms. Savino called the legislation a turning point, for the state and the industry. “We can probably take in a couple hundred million dollars a year, minimally,” she said, referring to potential tax revenue. “You’re going to have patients who are acclimated to medical marijuana, doctors who recognize it, communities who realize that if they have a dispensary it’s not the end of the world. Then you’re going to have more demand. In a state this size, the potential is huge.”
When Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed the Compassionate Care Act in July, it gave the Health Department 18 months to come up with regulations and choose up to five companies to grow and dispense medical marijuana.
Now, for the state’s would-be growers, private equity investors, labor unions, lawyers, lobbyists, consultants, branding firms, suits, stoners and hucksters, the rush is on.
This is the moment when old-guard legalizers meet a new breed of capitalist.
In October, 900 people flocked to a hotel in Midtown Manhattan for a $900-a-head, three-day East Coast Cannabis Business Expo, Educational Conference and Regulatory Summit, the first of its kind in New York. The event’s organizers were two veterans of the tanning salon business; the crowd ranged from venture capitalists to chocolatiers to people currently growing illegally, with a smattering of doctors and representatives of at least one nursing home conglomerate. There were vendors of supply-chain tracking software, security services and malpractice insurance, as well as a manufacturer of precision-grade scales from the diamond district. Not a single bong in the house.
“This is sexy, this is drugs,” one speaker, Adam Bierman, a managing partner of MedMen, a California-based consulting company, told a crowded conference room. “This is something there’s already demand for. This is selling pot.”
Under New York’s law, licensed companies will grow and sell their own product, from “seed to sale.” Doctors can recommend, but not prescribe, it to treat a limited set of conditions, including cancer, multiple sclerosis and AIDS. Though federal law still prohibits the sale and possession of marijuana, the Justice Department advised its prosecutors in 2013 that if state laws to legalize the substance properly limited its spread, and if companies complied with state laws, they should not be prosecuted.
Because banks and credit-card companies are federally regulated, the purchase and sale of cannabis has so far been a cash business. New York’s health commissioner will set the price of the drug, probably based on the street value.
New York’s law is among the most restrictive to be passed by the 23 states that have legalized marijuana use in some form. The 20 dispensaries set to open in a state of nearly 20 million people are likely to be high-volume centers, located away from schools or houses of worship, where patients or caregivers with state identification cards can get up to a month’s supply of non-smokable product.
The emerging industry has drawn people from unlikely precincts. Patrick McCarthy, a lobbyist who spent the last three years pushing legalization for cannabis companies, was once an aide to Gov. George E. Pataki and the executive director of the New York Republican State Committee. Dean Petkanas, who plans to seek a state license, was a chief financial officer at Stratton Oakmont, the penny-stock boiler room operation depicted in “The Wolf of Wall Street”; Mr. Petkanas now runs a “phyto-medical company” called KannaLife Sciences that hopes to get F.D.A. approval of a cannabis-based treatment for two types of brain encephalopathy. At the conference, he wore a pinstripe three-piece suit and spoke in torrents.
“I did a lot of pharmaceutical work on Wall Street when I was in boutique investment banking,” he said, skipping over his time at Stratton Oakmont. “I spent a lot of time in merchant banking. I really dug in hard.” Shares of KannaLife’s parent company, Medical Marijuana Inc., have fallen by more than half since earlier this year.
The competition to acquire the five available licenses will be fierce and expensive. Application costs alone could run to several hundred thousand dollars; start-up costs could top $20 million. “I would suggest that anyone who wants to be serious be prepared to spend at least a million dollars” on an application, said Evan Nison, 24, a lobbyist and consultant for cannabis companies and a founder of the New York Cannabis Alliance, which advocates changing the state’s marijuana laws. Richard N. Gottfried, a Democratic state assemblyman from Manhattan who led the long fight to legalize medical marijuana, cited an unwritten formula of government regulation. “When you make a statute very restrictive — and the governor did that in the last hours — you raise the stakes and create a need for more lawyers and consultants,” he said.
Out-of-state firms able to show they have run successful cannabis operations elsewhere will have an edge in the licensing process. But any hope for quick profits will be limited by the small number of conditions for which New York is allowing the drug’s use.
Still, the arrival of medical marijuana opens the door to a potentially huge market, said Derek Peterson, 40, a former senior vice president at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney. Mr. Peterson now heads Terra Tech, a publicly traded company that already operates a five-acre hydroponic growing facility in New Jersey turning out basil, kale and other produce while awaiting the opening of more local dispensaries, which Gov. Chris Christie opposes.
“We don’t love the way the New York policy works, but over time the legislation can change,” Mr. Peterson said. “Even if you can’t make a significant profit now, you can invest in it for the future.” He compared New York to Nevada, where Terra Tech had already spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to apply for a license and hired Senator Harry Reid’s son Rory as a lobbyist. The cost of applying in New York, he said, might run in the high six figures. Cannabis industry cash has begun to flow into New York. Ms. Savino said her campaign donations from out-of-state growers were “around $10,000 or $15,000 — not much.”
The amount of money at stake has attracted investors from across the spectrum; from Wall Street to High Times magazine, the 40-year-old counterculture survivor that earlier this year announced that it planned to create a private equity High Times Growth Fund to invest in the cannabis businesses.
Unions have also claimed a share. In New York, all licensees will be union shops, a result of two years of lobbying by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which has also been successful in other states. Cannabis is a rare growth sector for organized labor. “We saw around the country that these jobs had the potential to be real middle-class jobs if the workers were organized,” said Ed Draves, a lobbyist with Bolton St. Johns who led the push for the union. “Here in New York, you saw the home health care industry develop, where a lot of the workers were health care workers who couldn’t attain health care or pension benefits. We didn’t want to see that as we developed this industry.”
For investors, the business strikes a familiar chord, with the potential for huge growth and high risk. “There are a lot of parallels that I draw to what happened in the technology space in the late ’90s and early 2000s,” said Al Foreman, a former managing director of J.P. Morgan’s growth equity fund Highbridge Principal Strategies. Since leaving Wall Street last December, Mr. Foreman helped start a private equity group called Tuatara Capital that plans to invest in cannabis industries across the Americas. “For lack of another term,” Mr. Foreman said, “it’s a new frontier.”
Tuatara has not yet started raising money, and Mr. Foreman declined to say how much it hopes to amass. But he said there was already interest among investors. And, he added, the nascent cannabis industry is ahead of where the technology sector was 20 years ago.
Because people have been buying marijuana for years, he said, “it’s a more easily identifiable consumer base than what you might have seen in the early days of the Internet, when people were still trying to figure out how to get paying customers. We’re talking about an industry with real assets and markets where there is existing demand.”
Mr. Foreman noted that the cultural gap between Wall Street and the purveyors of products like Ghost Train Haze and Holy Grail Kush is not what it once was. Money changes everything. “When I took a trip to Denver to walk the halls and the plants and the factories, you realize that these are not kids in the basement,” he said. “The stereotype is shattered by the level of professionalism. Some of these companies will grow into really large companies.”
High Times hopes to grow with them, said Michael Kennedy, its controlling owner. Mr. Kennedy, a criminal lawyer who at the magazine’s inception represented its founder in an investigation into smuggling charges, said High Times was close to launching its private equity fund with two partners — so close that he would not discuss previously disclosed details for fear of violating government rules against soliciting business ahead of a launch. An interview with Mr. Kennedy published by Bloomberg Businessweek in June cited a target of $300 million for the fund.
On a recent day, Malcolm MacKinnon, the magazine’s silver-haired editor, presided over a staff of more than two dozen, with ages ranging from their 20s to their 60s, as they worked quietly on the February issue (the cover story: a showdown between cannabis sativa and cannabis indica). Professionally, Mr. MacKinnon uses the pseudonym Dan Skye, an artifact from less cannabis-friendly times, when he was raising children and coaching Little League.With its run-of-the-mill cubicles, the office felt more like the law firm that shares space with the magazine than the partying High Times suggested by its pages. Asked whether the staff smoked in the office, Mr. MacKinnon replied with a note of sarcasm, “Gee, we wouldn’t do that because it’s illegal.”
The private equity fund continues the magazine’s efforts to merge with the mainstream. These days, High Times organizes a sprawling trade show and smoke-off called the Cannabis Cup. Once limited to a single annual event in Amsterdam, where competitors vied to provide the most potent herb, the Cannabis Cup is now a domestic affair that draws tens of thousands of attendees to multiple locations. Versions were held in five cities in the United States this year, with speakers and vendors of everything a contemporary cannabis consumer might fancy, except, in some places, cannabis.
High Times is now a legacy business, with four decades of experience in a field many are just entering, Mr. MacKinnon said.
“Everybody wants to talk to us now.”
That group may include people like Ari Hoffnung, 40, who hopes to get one of the New York licenses. He named his fledgling company Fiorello Pharmaceuticals Inc., in tribute to New York mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia, who opposed the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, when the substance was still legal. For now, Mr. Hoffnung has formed an investor group, while seeking to forge partnerships with companies that have grown and dispensed marijuana in other states.
Mr. Hoffnung is a former managing director at Bear Stearns, and was a deputy comptroller when John C. Liu served as the city comptroller. He said he became interested in medical marijuana after seeing “folks in my family with A.L.S. and other conditions where cannabis has been proven helpful to relieve pain and suffering.”
But he had another interest in legal cannabis. While working for Mr. Liu, he took part in a study that asked how many city residents might benefit from the legalization of marijuana, and how much money the city might reap. The numbers were big: 100,000 patients for medical cannabis, and tax revenue of $400 million if recreational use were legalized.
The figures, Mr. Hoffnung acknowledged, will not be realized until well into the future, if ever. But the current regulatory conditions, with each state setting its own laws and no distribution across state lines, might be an advantage for smaller companies like his.
“No major companies want to create a business model and have to replicate it in 23 states,” he said. “That doesn’t allow economies of scale.”
That could change, especially as businesses press state and federal legislators harder. In New York, the public is already on board, said Mr. McCarthy, the lobbyist, citing polls that show support for medical marijuana at 83 percent in the state, up from just 58 percent a few years ago. The support, he said, is widespread. “There’s no drop off from a senior in Buffalo to an independent soccer mom in Suffolk.”
In the meantime, at the Cannabis and Hemp Association meeting, the aspiring moguls had a regulatory request for Ms. Savino. They wanted more regulation, not less. Specifically, Mr. Giannotti worried about over-the-counter remedies being sold as non-psychoactive hemp oil or CBD oil (CBD, or cannabidiol, is one of the active ingredients in cannabis). Such products are largely unregulated and sell for as much as hundreds of dollars for a small amount. The attendees worried that such companies might taint the industry. Could the state crack down on them?
Ms. Savino pulled a bottle of something called Green Cures CBD Oil from her purse, eying it skeptically. “People believe what they want to believe,” she said. “It’s hard to protect people from what they think will help.”
Mr. Maryasis said he hoped the over-the-counter products, which were plentiful at the recent trade show, were not a sign of things to come, especially before regulated medical marijuana becomes available.
“This sets a bad standard for the industry,” he said. “We want to lead with genuineness, and not just opportunism.”
He added: “If we do this right, we can be an example to the nation. We don’t have to be the first ones to legalize it. We just have to do it right.”
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C.
SPECIAL APPEALS AND
ONGOING
CAMPAIGNS
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Free the Whistle-Blowers
An Appeal from Daniel Ellsberg
I am immensely thankful to both these young whistle-blowers who have so bravely stood up against the powerful forces of the US government in order to reveal corruption, illegal spying and war crimes. They were both motivated by their commitments to democracy and justice. They both chose to reveal information directly to the public, at great cost to themselves, so that citizens and taxpayers could be fully informed of the facts. They also revealed the amazing potential of new technologies to increase public access to information and strengthen democracy. It saddens me that our current political leaders, rather than embracing this potential, have chosen to tighten their strangleholds on power and information, turning away from both progress and justice.
Shockingly, the Obama administration has prosecuted more whistle-blowers under the Espionage Act than every previous president combined. These heroes do not deserve to be thrown in prison or called a traitor for doing the right thing. Obama’s unprecedented and unconstitutional abuse of the Espionage Act—as if it were a British-type Official Secrets Act, never intended by Congress and a violation of our First Amendment—and Manning’s 35-year prison sentence will have a chilling effect on future citizens’ willingness to uncover hidden injustices. The government has already brought comparable charges against Snowden.
The only remedy to this chilling precedent, designed to effect government whistle-blowers as a whole, is to overturn the Manning verdict. Given that Manning’s court martial produced the longest trial record in US military history, it will take a top legal team countless hours to prepare their defense. But as an Advisory Board member for the Chelsea Manning Support Network, I was inspired by the way citizens around the world stepped forward to help fund a strong defense during Manning’s trial. I remain hopeful that enough people will recognize the immense importance of these appeals and will contribute to help us finish the struggle we started. That struggle, of course, is for a just political system and freedom for our whistle-blowers.
Chelsea Manning has continued to demonstrate uncommon bravery and character, even from behind bars. With the New York Times Op-Ed she published last month, she has cemented her position as a compelling voice for government reform. Working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq, Manning was privy to a special view of the inner-workings of our military’s propaganda systems. Despite her personal struggles, she felt compelled to share her knowledge of what was happening in Iraq with the Americans people. If the military hadn’t hidden the number of civilian casualties and incidences of torture detailed in the Iraq Logs she released, we would have known far sooner to expect the civil war that has gripped Iraq fully today. Her exposure of US knowledge of the corruption in Tunisia, by the dictator our government supported, was a critical catalyst of the non-violent uprising which toppled that dictator, in turn directly inspiring the occupation of Tahrir Square in Egypt and then the Occupy movement in the US
I personally am inspired by Chelsea Manning as I am by Edward Snowden, which is why I have spent countless hours advocating for both of them. I’m asking you to join me today in supporting what I believe to be one of the most important legal proceedings in our country’s history. We are fortunate to have a truly impressive legal team that has agreed to partner with us. Already, our new appeals attorney Nancy Hollander and her team have begun to research legal strategies, and are collaborating with Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the international news media to highlight the significance of this case.
Chelsea is only 26 now, younger than I was when I learned to recognize the injustices of the Vietnam War. She wishes to complete her education, as I did, and go into public service. Imagine what great things she could both learn and teach the world if she were free. Now imagine if our corrupt government officials are allowed to get their way, holding her behind bars until life has almost passed her by, and extraditing Snowden to suffer the same outcome. What a sad result that would be for our country and our humanity.
I have been waiting forty years for a legal process to at long last prove the unconstitutionality of the Espionage Act as applied to whistle-blowers (the Supreme Court has never yet addressed this issue). This appeals process can accomplish that, and it can reduce Chelsea’s sentence by decades. But unfortunately, without your help today it will not happen. We must raise $100,000 by September 1st, to ensure that Chelsea’s team have the resources to fully fight this stage of the appeals process.
Unless Manning’s conviction is overturned in appeals, Snowden and many other whistle-blowers, today and in the future, will face a similar fate. And with them will perish one of the most critical lifelines for our democracy. But you can join me in fighting back. I’m asking you to do it for Chelsea, to do it for Snowden, and to do it because it’s the right thing to do to preserve our democracy. We can only win this great struggle with your help. Please contribute to help us fund Chelsea’s legal appeals today.
It’s time we band together on the right side of history once again.
Free the Whistle-Blowers
An Appeal from Daniel Ellsberg
July 21, 2014 by Daniel Ellsberg
NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden, a personal hero of mine, has recently filed to renew his asylum in Russia. Exiled thousands of miles from friends and family, he awaits his fate. He learned from the example of another top hero of mine, Chelsea Manning. Manning helped inspire his revelations that if he released his vital information while in this country he would have been held incommunicado in isolation as Chelsea was for over ten months—in Snowden’s case probably for the rest of his life. And facing comparable charges to Chelsea’s, he would have no more chance than Chelsea to have a truly fair trial—being prevented by the prosecution and judge (as I was, forty years ago) from even raising arguments of public interest or lack of harm in connection with his disclosures. Contrary to the hollow advice of Hillary Clinton or John Kerry, if he were to return to America he would not be able to “make his case” neither “in court,” nor “to the public” from a prison cell.I am immensely thankful to both these young whistle-blowers who have so bravely stood up against the powerful forces of the US government in order to reveal corruption, illegal spying and war crimes. They were both motivated by their commitments to democracy and justice. They both chose to reveal information directly to the public, at great cost to themselves, so that citizens and taxpayers could be fully informed of the facts. They also revealed the amazing potential of new technologies to increase public access to information and strengthen democracy. It saddens me that our current political leaders, rather than embracing this potential, have chosen to tighten their strangleholds on power and information, turning away from both progress and justice.
Shockingly, the Obama administration has prosecuted more whistle-blowers under the Espionage Act than every previous president combined. These heroes do not deserve to be thrown in prison or called a traitor for doing the right thing. Obama’s unprecedented and unconstitutional abuse of the Espionage Act—as if it were a British-type Official Secrets Act, never intended by Congress and a violation of our First Amendment—and Manning’s 35-year prison sentence will have a chilling effect on future citizens’ willingness to uncover hidden injustices. The government has already brought comparable charges against Snowden.
The only remedy to this chilling precedent, designed to effect government whistle-blowers as a whole, is to overturn the Manning verdict. Given that Manning’s court martial produced the longest trial record in US military history, it will take a top legal team countless hours to prepare their defense. But as an Advisory Board member for the Chelsea Manning Support Network, I was inspired by the way citizens around the world stepped forward to help fund a strong defense during Manning’s trial. I remain hopeful that enough people will recognize the immense importance of these appeals and will contribute to help us finish the struggle we started. That struggle, of course, is for a just political system and freedom for our whistle-blowers.
Chelsea Manning has continued to demonstrate uncommon bravery and character, even from behind bars. With the New York Times Op-Ed she published last month, she has cemented her position as a compelling voice for government reform. Working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq, Manning was privy to a special view of the inner-workings of our military’s propaganda systems. Despite her personal struggles, she felt compelled to share her knowledge of what was happening in Iraq with the Americans people. If the military hadn’t hidden the number of civilian casualties and incidences of torture detailed in the Iraq Logs she released, we would have known far sooner to expect the civil war that has gripped Iraq fully today. Her exposure of US knowledge of the corruption in Tunisia, by the dictator our government supported, was a critical catalyst of the non-violent uprising which toppled that dictator, in turn directly inspiring the occupation of Tahrir Square in Egypt and then the Occupy movement in the US
I personally am inspired by Chelsea Manning as I am by Edward Snowden, which is why I have spent countless hours advocating for both of them. I’m asking you to join me today in supporting what I believe to be one of the most important legal proceedings in our country’s history. We are fortunate to have a truly impressive legal team that has agreed to partner with us. Already, our new appeals attorney Nancy Hollander and her team have begun to research legal strategies, and are collaborating with Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the international news media to highlight the significance of this case.
Chelsea is only 26 now, younger than I was when I learned to recognize the injustices of the Vietnam War. She wishes to complete her education, as I did, and go into public service. Imagine what great things she could both learn and teach the world if she were free. Now imagine if our corrupt government officials are allowed to get their way, holding her behind bars until life has almost passed her by, and extraditing Snowden to suffer the same outcome. What a sad result that would be for our country and our humanity.
I have been waiting forty years for a legal process to at long last prove the unconstitutionality of the Espionage Act as applied to whistle-blowers (the Supreme Court has never yet addressed this issue). This appeals process can accomplish that, and it can reduce Chelsea’s sentence by decades. But unfortunately, without your help today it will not happen. We must raise $100,000 by September 1st, to ensure that Chelsea’s team have the resources to fully fight this stage of the appeals process.
Unless Manning’s conviction is overturned in appeals, Snowden and many other whistle-blowers, today and in the future, will face a similar fate. And with them will perish one of the most critical lifelines for our democracy. But you can join me in fighting back. I’m asking you to do it for Chelsea, to do it for Snowden, and to do it because it’s the right thing to do to preserve our democracy. We can only win this great struggle with your help. Please contribute to help us fund Chelsea’s legal appeals today.
It’s time we band together on the right side of history once again.
Daniel Ellsberg
Please contribute to help us fund Chelsea’s legal appeals today!
Learn now how you can write a letter to be included in Chelsea Manning’s official application for clemency!
Please share this information to friends and community leaders, urging them to add their voice to this important effort before it's too late.
Please share this information to friends and community leaders, urging them to add their voice to this important effort before it's too late.
http://www.privatemanning.org/pardonpetition
Help
us continue to cover 100%
of Pvt. Manning's legal fees! Donate today.
of Pvt. Manning's legal fees! Donate today.
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38591
COURAGE
TO RESIST
http://couragetoresist.org
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610
510-488-3559
http://couragetoresist.org
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610
510-488-3559
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Only an Innocent Man Would Voluntarily Return
to Prison to Fight Against his Life Sentence
and For Exoneration —
That Courageous Man is Lorenzo Johnson.
The PA Attorney General’s Office Agrees to Investigate New Facts and Witnesses —
Send Your Message Now to PA AG
Kathleen Kane: Dismiss the Charges!
Free Lorenzo Johnson!
On January 29, 2014 Lorenzo Johnson’s attorney, Michael Wiseman, met with representatives of PA Attorney General Kathleen Kane to discuss the new evidence of Lorenzo Johnson’s innocence contained in legal filings now pending in the Pennsylvania courts. This includes affidavits confirming Johnson’s presence in New York City at the time of the Harrisburg murder and the identity of the actual killers, as well as police and prosecutorial misconduct.
Attorney Wiseman said Kane’s office promised to investigate these new facts in order to assess whether they merit the relief that Lorenzo Johnson seeks in his PCRA petition.
Speaking to AP reporter Mary Claire Dale on February 11, 2014 Wiseman said, “We believe the witnesses we presented to them are credible, and give a coherent version of the events. I take them at their word, that they’re going to do a straightforward, honest review.” Kane spokesman Joe Peters confirmed the meeting to AP “but said the office won’t comment on the new evidence until the court filing,” (referring to the March 31, 2014 date for the AG’s response to Johnson’s October 2013 court filing).
It is the Office of the PA Attorney General that is responsible for the false prosecution of Lorenzo Johnson from trial through appeals. And just a few months ago, the Attorney General’s office opposed a federal petition based on this new evidence saying there was no prima facie claim for relief. This resulted in the denial of Lorenzo Johnson’s Motion to File a Second Writ of Habeas Corpus in the federal court.
On December 18, 2013 a press conference called by the Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson protested these actions of the PA Attorney General and delivered petitions demanding dismissal of the charges and immediate freedom for Lorenzo. Tazza, Lorenzo’s wife, declared, “1,000 signatures means we are not in this alone…I won't stop until he’s home. There is nothing and no one that can stop me from fighting for what’s right.”
This is Lorenzo Johnson’s second fight for his innocence and freedom. In January 2012, after 16 years of court battles to prove his innocence, a federal appeals court held his sentence was based on insufficient evidence – a judicial acquittal. Lorenzo was freed from prison. But after a petition filed by the PA Attorney General the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated Lorenzo Johnson’s conviction and he was re-incarcerated to continue serving a life sentence without parole for a murder he did not commit.
This innocent man drove himself back to prison in June 2012—after less than five months of freedom—leaving his new wife and family, construction job and advocacy on behalf of others wrongfully convicted. The reason Lorenzo Johnson voluntarily returned to prison? Because he is innocent and fighting for full vindication.
In the words of Lorenzo Johnson, “A second is too long to be in prison when you are Innocent, so eighteen years … is Intolerable.”
Add your voices and demand again: Dismiss the charges against Lorenzo Johnson. Free Lorenzo NOW!
SIGN LORENZO JOHNSON'S FREEDOM PETITION
CONTRIBUTE TO HELP TAZZA AND THE OTHER FAMILY MEMBERS VISIT LORENZO AND STAY IN CONTACT!
Write: Lorenzo Johnson
DF 1036
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Rd.
Frackville, PA 17932
Email: Lorenzo Johnson through JPAY.com code:
Lorenzo Johnson DF 1036 PA DOC
www.FreeLorenzoJohnson.org
Only an Innocent Man Would Voluntarily Return
to Prison to Fight Against his Life Sentence
and For Exoneration —
That Courageous Man is Lorenzo Johnson.
The PA Attorney General’s Office Agrees to Investigate New Facts and Witnesses —
Send Your Message Now to PA AG
Kathleen Kane: Dismiss the Charges!
Free Lorenzo Johnson!
On January 29, 2014 Lorenzo Johnson’s attorney, Michael Wiseman, met with representatives of PA Attorney General Kathleen Kane to discuss the new evidence of Lorenzo Johnson’s innocence contained in legal filings now pending in the Pennsylvania courts. This includes affidavits confirming Johnson’s presence in New York City at the time of the Harrisburg murder and the identity of the actual killers, as well as police and prosecutorial misconduct.
Attorney Wiseman said Kane’s office promised to investigate these new facts in order to assess whether they merit the relief that Lorenzo Johnson seeks in his PCRA petition.
Speaking to AP reporter Mary Claire Dale on February 11, 2014 Wiseman said, “We believe the witnesses we presented to them are credible, and give a coherent version of the events. I take them at their word, that they’re going to do a straightforward, honest review.” Kane spokesman Joe Peters confirmed the meeting to AP “but said the office won’t comment on the new evidence until the court filing,” (referring to the March 31, 2014 date for the AG’s response to Johnson’s October 2013 court filing).
It is the Office of the PA Attorney General that is responsible for the false prosecution of Lorenzo Johnson from trial through appeals. And just a few months ago, the Attorney General’s office opposed a federal petition based on this new evidence saying there was no prima facie claim for relief. This resulted in the denial of Lorenzo Johnson’s Motion to File a Second Writ of Habeas Corpus in the federal court.
On December 18, 2013 a press conference called by the Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson protested these actions of the PA Attorney General and delivered petitions demanding dismissal of the charges and immediate freedom for Lorenzo. Tazza, Lorenzo’s wife, declared, “1,000 signatures means we are not in this alone…I won't stop until he’s home. There is nothing and no one that can stop me from fighting for what’s right.”
This is Lorenzo Johnson’s second fight for his innocence and freedom. In January 2012, after 16 years of court battles to prove his innocence, a federal appeals court held his sentence was based on insufficient evidence – a judicial acquittal. Lorenzo was freed from prison. But after a petition filed by the PA Attorney General the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated Lorenzo Johnson’s conviction and he was re-incarcerated to continue serving a life sentence without parole for a murder he did not commit.
This innocent man drove himself back to prison in June 2012—after less than five months of freedom—leaving his new wife and family, construction job and advocacy on behalf of others wrongfully convicted. The reason Lorenzo Johnson voluntarily returned to prison? Because he is innocent and fighting for full vindication.
In the words of Lorenzo Johnson, “A second is too long to be in prison when you are Innocent, so eighteen years … is Intolerable.”
Add your voices and demand again: Dismiss the charges against Lorenzo Johnson. Free Lorenzo NOW!
SIGN LORENZO JOHNSON'S FREEDOM PETITION
CONTRIBUTE TO HELP TAZZA AND THE OTHER FAMILY MEMBERS VISIT LORENZO AND STAY IN CONTACT!
Write: Lorenzo Johnson
DF 1036
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Rd.
Frackville, PA 17932
Email: Lorenzo Johnson through JPAY.com code:
Lorenzo Johnson DF 1036 PA DOC
www.FreeLorenzoJohnson.org
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U.S.
Court of Appeals Rules Against Lorenzo Johnson’s
New Legal Challenge to His Frame-up Conviction!
Demand the PA Attorney General Dismiss the Charges!
Free Lorenzo Johnson, Now!
New Legal Challenge to His Frame-up Conviction!
Demand the PA Attorney General Dismiss the Charges!
Free Lorenzo Johnson, Now!
The
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit denied Lorenzo Johnson’s motion to
file a Second Habeas Corpus Petition. The order contained the outrageous
declaration that Johnson hadn’t made a “prima facie case” that he had new
evidence of his innocence. This not only puts a legal obstacle in Johnson’s
path as his fight for freedom makes its way (again) through the state and
federal courts—but it undermines the newly filed Pennsylvania state appeal that
is pending in the Court of Common Pleas.
Stripped
of “legalese,” the court’s October 15, 2013 order says Johnson’s new
evidence was not brought into court soon enough—although it was the prosecution
and police who withheld evidence and coerced witnesses into lying or not coming
forward with the truth! This, despite over fifteen years and rounds of legal
battles to uncover the evidence of government misconduct. This is a set-back
for Lorenzo Johnson’s renewed fight for his freedom, but Johnson is even more
determined as his PA state court appeal continues.
Increased
public support and protest is needed. The fight for Lorenzo Johnson’s freedom
is not only a fight for this courageous man and family. The fight for Lorenzo
Johnson is also a fight for all the innocent others who have been framed and
are sitting in the slow death of prison. The PA Attorney General is directly
pursuing the charges against Lorenzo, despite the evidence of his innocence and
the corruption of the police. Free Lorenzo Johnson, Now!
—Rachel
Wolkenstein, Esq.
October 25, 2013
For
more on the federal court and PA state court legal filings.
Hear
Mumia’s latest commentary, “Cat Cries”
Go
to: www.FreeLorenzoJohnson.org for more information, to sign the petition, and
how to help.
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SAVE
CCSF!
Posted
on August 25, 2013
Cartoon
by Anthonty Mata for CCSF Guardsman
DOE
CAMPAIGN
We
are working to ensure that the ACCJC’s authority is not renewed by the
Department of Education this December when they are up for their 5-year
renewal. Our campaign made it possible for over 50 Third Party Comments to be
sent to the DOE re: the ACCJC. Our next step in this campaign is to send a
delegation from CCSF to Washington, D.C. to give oral comments at the hearing
on December 12th. We expect to have an array of forces aligned on the other
side who have much more money and resources than we do.
So
please support this effort to get ACCJC authority revoked!
LEGAL
CAMPAIGN
Save
CCSF members have been meeting with Attorney Dan Siegel since last May to
explore legal avenues to fight the ACCJC. After much consideration, and
consultation with AFT 2121’s attorney as well as the SF City Attorney’s office,
Dan has come up with a legal strategy that is complimentary to what is already
being pursued. In fact, AFT 2121’s attorney is encouraging us to go forward.
The
total costs of pursuing this (depositions, etc.) will be substantially more
than $15,000. However, Dan is willing to do it for a fixed fee of $15,000. He
will not expect a retainer, i.e. payment in advance, but we should start
payments ASAP. If we win the ACCJC will have to pay our costs.
PLEASE
HELP BOTH OF THESE IMPORTANT EFFORTS!
Checks
can be made out to Save CCSF Coalition with “legal” in the memo line and sent
to:
Save
CCSF Coalition
2132
Prince St.
Berkeley, CA 94705
Or
you may donate online: http://www.gofundme.com/4841ns
http://www.saveccsf.org/
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16 Years in Solitary Confinement Is Like a "Living Tomb"
American
Civil Liberties Union petition to end long-term solitary confinement:
California
Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard: We stand with the prisoners on hunger
strike. We urge you to comply with the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in
America’s Prisons 2006 recommendations regarding an end to long-term solitary
confinement.
In
California, hundreds of prisoners have been held in solitary for more than a
decade – some for infractions as trivial as reading Machiavelli's "The
Prince."
Gabriel
Reyes describes the pain of being isolated for at least 22 hours a day for the
last 16 years:
“Unless
you have lived it, you cannot imagine what it feels like to be by yourself,
between four cold walls, with little concept of time…. It is a living tomb …’ I
have not been allowed physical contact with any of my loved ones since 1995…I
feel helpless and hopeless. In short, I am being psychologically tortured.”
That’s
why over 30,000 prisoners in California began a hunger strike – the biggest the
state has ever seen. They’re refusing food to protest prisoners being held for
decades in solitary and to push for other changes to improve their basic
conditions.
California
Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard has tried to dismiss the strikers and
refuses to negotiate, but the media pressure is building through the strike. If
tens of thousands of us take action, we can help keep this issue in the
spotlight so that Secretary Beard can’t ignore the inhumane treatment of
prisoners.
Sign
the petition urging Corrections Secretary Beard to end the use of long-term
solitary confinement.
Solitary
is such an extreme form of punishment that a United Nations torture rapporteur
called for an international ban on the practice except in rare occasions.
Here’s why:
The
majority of the 80,000 people held in solitary in this country are severely
mentally ill or because of a minor infraction (it’s a myth that it’s only for
violent prisoners)
Even
for people with stable mental health, solitary causes severe psychological
reactions, often leading people to attempt suicide
It
jeopardizes public safety because prisoners held in solitary have a harder time
reintegrating into society.
And
to add insult to injury, the hunger strikers are now facing retaliation – their
lawyers are being restricted from visiting and the strikers are being punished.
But the media continues to write about the hunger strike and we can help keep
the pressure on Secretary Beard by signing this petition.
Sign
the petition urging Corrections Secretary Beard to end the use of long-term
solitary confinement.
Our
criminal justice system should keep communities safe and treat people fairly.
The use of solitary confinement undermines both of these goals – but little by
little, we can help put a stop to such cruelty.
Thank
you,
Anthony
for the ACLU Action team
P.S.
The hunger strikers have developed five core demands to address their basic
conditions, the main one being an end to long-term solitary confinement. They
are:
-End
group punishment – prisoners say that officials often punish groups to address
individual rule violations
-Abolish
the debriefing policy, which is often demanded in return for better food or
release from solitary
-End
long-term solitary confinement
-Provide
adequate and nutritious food
-Expand
or provide constructive programming and privileges for indefinite SHU inmates
Sources
“Solitary
- and anger - in California's prisons.” Los Angeles Times July 13, 2013
“Pelican
Bay Prison Hunger-Strikers' Stories: Gabriel Reyes.” TruthOut July 9, 2013
“Solitary
confinement should be banned in most cases, UN expert says.” UN News October
18, 2011
"Stop
Solitary - Two Pager" ACLU.org
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What
you Didn't know about NYPD's Stop and Frisk program !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rfJHx0Gj6ys#at=990
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Egypt:
The Next President -- a little Egyptian boy speaks his remarkable mind!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeDm2PrNV1I
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Wealth
Inequality in America
[This
is a must see to believe video...bw]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QPKKQnijnsM
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Read
the transcription of hero Bradley Manning's 35-page statement explaining why he
leaked "state secrets" to WikiLeaks.
March
1, 2013
Alternet
The
statement was read by Pfc. Bradley Manning at a providence inquiry for his
formal plea of guilty to one specification as charged and nine specifications
for lesser included offenses. He pled not guilty to 12 other specifications.
This rush transcript was taken by journalist Alexa O'Brien at Thursday's
pretrial hearing and first appeared on Salon.com.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/bradley-mannings-surprising-statement-court-details-why-he-made-his-historic?akid=10129.229473.UZvQfK&rd=1&src=newsletter802922&t=7
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You
Have the Right to Remain Silent: NLG Guide to Law Enforcement Encounters
Posted
1 day ago on July 27, 2012, 10:28 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt
Occupy
Wall Street is a nonviolent movement for social and economic justice, but in
recent days disturbing reports have emerged of Occupy-affiliated activists
being targeted by US law enforcement, including agents from the FBI and
Department of Homeland Security. To help ensure Occupiers and allied activists
know their rights when encountering law enforcement, we are publishing in full
the National Lawyers Guild's booklet: You Have the Right to Remain Silent. The
NLG provides invaluable support to the Occupy movement and other activists –
please click here to support the NLG.
We
strongly encourage all Occupiers to read and share the information provided
below. We also recommend you enter the NLG's national hotline number
(888-654-3265) into your cellphone (if you have one) and keep a copy handy.
This information is not a substitute for legal advice. You should contact the
NLG or a criminal defense attorney immediately if you have been visited by the
FBI or other law enforcement officials. You should also alert your relatives,
friends, co-workers and others so that they will be prepared if they are
contacted as well.
You
Have the Right to Remain Silent: A Know Your Rights Guide for Law Enforcement
Encounters
What
Rights Do I Have?
Whether
or not you're a citizen, you have rights under the United States Constitution.
The Fifth Amendment gives every person the right to remain silent: not to
answer questions asked by a police officer or government agent. The Fourth
Amendment restricts the government's power to enter and search your home or
workplace, although there are many exceptions and new laws have expanded the
government's power to conduct surveillance. The First Amendment protects your
right to speak freely and to advocate for social change. However, if you are a
non-citizen, the Department of Homeland Security may target you based on your
political activities.
Standing
Up For Free Speech
The
government's crusade against politically-active individuals is intended to
disrupt and suppress the exercise of time-honored free speech activities, such
as boycotts, protests, grassroots organizing and solidarity work. Remember that
you have the right to stand up to the intimidation tactics of FBI agents and
other law enforcement officials who, with political motives, are targeting
organizing and free speech activities. Informed resistance to these tactics and
steadfast defense of your and others' rights can bring positive results. Each
person who takes a courageous stand makes future resistance to government oppression
easier for all. The National Lawyers Guild has a long tradition of standing up
to government repression. The organization itself was labeled a
"subversive" group during the McCarthy Era and was subject to FBI
surveillance and infiltration for many years. Guild attorneys have defended
FBI-targeted members of the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement,
and the Puerto Rican independence movement. The NLG exposed FBI surveillance,
infiltration and disruption tactics that were detailed during the 1975-76
COINTELPRO hearings. In 1989 the NLG prevailed in a lawsuit on behalf of
several activist organizations, including the Guild, that forced the FBI to
expose the extent to which it had been spying on activist movements. Under the
settlement, the FBI turned over roughly 400,000 pages of its files on the
Guild, which are now available at the Tamiment Library at New York University.
What
if FBI Agents or Police Contact Me?
What
if an agent or police officer comes to the door?
Do
not invite the agents or police into your home. Do not answer any questions.
Tell the agent that you do not wish to talk with him or her. You can state that
your lawyer will contact them on your behalf. You can do this by stepping
outside and pulling the door behind you so that the interior of your home or
office is not visible, getting their contact information or business cards and
then returning inside. They should cease questioning after this. If the agent
or officer gives a reason for contacting you, take notes and give the
information to your attorney. Anything you say, no matter how seemingly
harmless or insignificant, may be used against you or others in the future.
Lying to or misleading a federal agent is a crime. The more you speak, the more
opportunity for federal law enforcement to find something you said (even if not
intentionally) false and assert that you lied to a federal officer.
Do
I have to answer questions?
You
have the constitutional right to remain silent. It is not a crime to refuse to
answer questions. You do not have to talk to anyone, even if you have been
arrested or are in jail. You should affirmatively and unambiguously state that
you wish to remain silent and that you wish to consult an attorney. Once you
make the request to speak to a lawyer, do not say anything else. The Supreme
Court recently ruled that answering law enforcement questions may be taken as a
waiver of your right to remain silent, so it is important that you assert your
rights and maintain them. Only a judge can order you to answer questions. There
is one exception: some states have "stop and identify" statutes which
require you to provide identity information or your name if you have been
detained on reasonable suspicion that you may have committed a crime. A lawyer
in your state can advise you of the status of these requirements where you
reside.
Do
I have to give my name?
As
above, in some states you can be detained or arrested for merely refusing to
give your name. And in any state, police do not always follow the law, and
refusing to give your name may make them suspicious or more hostile and lead to
your arrest, even without just cause, so use your judgment. Giving a false name
could in some circumstances be a crime.
Do
I need a lawyer?
You
have the right to talk to a lawyer before you decide whether to answer
questions from law enforcement. It is a good idea to talk to a lawyer if you
are considering answering any questions. You have the right to have a lawyer
present during any interview. The lawyer's job is to protect your rights. Once
you tell the agent that you want to talk to a lawyer, he or she should stop
trying to question you and should make any further contact through your lawyer.
If you do not have a lawyer, you can still tell the officer you want to speak to
one before answering questions. Remember to get the name, agency and telephone
number of any investigator who visits you, and give that information to your
lawyer. The government does not have to provide you with a free lawyer unless
you are charged with a crime, but the NLG or another organization may be able
to help you find a lawyer for free or at a reduced rate.
If
I refuse to answer questions or say I want a lawyer, won't it seem like I have
something to hide?
Anything
you say to law enforcement can be used against you and others. You can never
tell how a seemingly harmless bit of information might be used or manipulated
to hurt you or someone else. That is why the right not to talk is a fundamental
right under the Constitution. Keep in mind that although law enforcement agents
are allowed to lie to you, lying to a government agent is a crime. Remaining
silent is not. The safest things to say are "I am going to remain
silent," "I want to speak to my lawyer," and "I do not consent
to a search." It is a common practice for law enforcement agents to try to
get you to waive your rights by telling you that if you have nothing to hide
you would talk or that talking would "just clear things up." The fact
is, if they are questioning you, they are looking to incriminate you or someone
you may know, or they are engaged in political intelligence gathering. You
should feel comfortable standing firm in protection and defense of your rights
and refusing to answer questions.
Can
agents search my home or office?
You
do not have to let police or agents into your home or office unless they have
and produce a valid search warrant. A search warrant is a written court order
that allows the police to conduct a specified search. Interfering with a
warrantless search probably will not stop it and you might get arrested. But
you should say "I do not consent to a search," and call a criminal
defense lawyer or the NLG. You should be aware that a roommate or guest can
legally consent to a search of your house if the police believe that person has
the authority to give consent, and your employer can consent to a search of
your workspace without your permission.
What
if agents have a search warrant?
If
you are present when agents come for the search, you can ask to see the
warrant. The warrant must specify in detail the places to be searched and the
people or things to be taken away. Tell the agents you do not consent to the
search so that they cannot go beyond what the warrant authorizes. Ask if you
are allowed to watch the search; if you are allowed to, you should. Take notes,
including names, badge numbers, what agency each officer is from, where they
searched and what they took. If others are present, have them act as witnesses
to watch carefully what is happening. If the agents ask you to give them
documents, your computer, or anything else, look to see if the item is listed
in the warrant. If it is not, do not consent to them taking it without talking
to a lawyer. You do not have to answer questions. Talk to a lawyer first.
(Note: If agents present an arrest warrant, they may only perform a cursory
visual search of the premises to see if the person named in the arrest warrant
is present.)
Do
I have to answer questions if I have been arrested?
No.
If you are arrested, you do not have to answer any questions. You should
affirmatively and unambiguously state that you wish to assert your right to
remain silent. Ask for a lawyer right away. Do not say anything else. Repeat to
every officer who tries to talk to or question you that you wish to remain
silent and that you wish to speak to a lawyer. You should always talk to a
lawyer before you decide to answer any questions.
What
if I speak to government agents anyway?
Even
if you have already answered some questions, you can refuse to answer other
questions until you have a lawyer. If you find yourself talking, stop. Assert
that you wish to remain silent and that you wish to speak to a lawyer.
What
if the police stop me on the street?
Ask
if you are free to go. If the answer is yes, consider just walking away. If the
police say you are not under arrest, but are not free to go, then you are being
detained. The police can pat down the outside of your clothing if they have
reason to suspect you might be armed and dangerous. If they search any more
than this, say clearly, "I do not consent to a search." They may keep
searching anyway. If this happens, do not resist because you can be charged
with assault or resisting arrest. You do not have to answer any questions. You
do not have to open bags or any closed container. Tell the officers you do not
consent to a search of your bags or other property.
What
if police or agents stop me in my car?
Keep
your hands where the police can see them. If you are driving a vehicle, you
must show your license, registration and, in some states, proof of insurance.
You do not have to consent to a search. But the police may have legal grounds
to search your car anyway. Clearly state that you do not consent. Officers may
separate passengers and drivers from each other to question them, but no one
has to answer any questions.
What
if I am treated badly by the police or the FBI?
Write
down the officer's badge number, name or other identifying information. You
have a right to ask the officer for this information. Try to find witnesses and
their names and phone numbers. If you are injured, seek medical attention and
take pictures of the injuries as soon as you can. Call a lawyer as soon as
possible.
What
if the police or FBI threaten me with a grand jury subpoena if I don't answer
their questions?
A
grand jury subpoena is a written order for you to go to court and testify about
information you may have. It is common for the FBI to threaten you with a
subpoena to get you to talk to them. If they are going to subpoena you, they
will do so anyway. You should not volunteer to speak just because you are
threatened with a subpoena. You should consult a lawyer.
What
if I receive a grand jury subpoena?
Grand
jury proceedings are not the same as testifying at an open court trial. You are
not allowed to have a lawyer present (although one may wait in the hallway and
you may ask to consult with him or her after each question) and you may be asked
to answer questions about your activities and associations. Because of the
witness's limited rights in this situation, the government has frequently used
grand jury subpoenas to gather information about activists and political
organizations. It is common for the FBI to threaten activists with a subpoena
in order to elicit information about their political views and activities and
those of their associates. There are legal grounds for stopping
("quashing") subpoenas, and receiving one does not necessarily mean
that you are suspected of a crime. If you do receive a subpoena, call the NLG
National Hotline at 888-NLG-ECOL (888-654-3265) or call a criminal defense
attorney immediately.
The
government regularly uses grand jury subpoena power to investigate and seek
evidence related to politically-active individuals and social movements. This
practice is aimed at prosecuting activists and, through intimidation and
disruption, discouraging continued activism.
Federal
grand jury subpoenas are served in person. If you receive one, it is critically
important that you retain the services of an attorney, preferably one who
understands your goals and, if applicable, understands the nature of your
political work, and has experience with these issues. Most lawyers are trained
to provide the best legal defense for their client, often at the expense of
others. Beware lawyers who summarily advise you to cooperate with grand juries,
testify against friends, or cut off contact with your friends and political
activists. Cooperation usually leads to others being subpoenaed and
investigated. You also run the risk of being charged with perjury, a felony,
should you omit any pertinent information or should there be inconsistencies in
your testimony.
Frequently
prosecutors will offer "use immunity," meaning that the prosecutor is
prohibited from using your testimony or any leads from it to bring charges
against you. If a subsequent prosecution is brought, the prosecutor bears the
burden of proving that all of its evidence was obtained independent of the
immunized testimony. You should be aware, however, that they will use anything
you say to manipulate associates into sharing more information about you by
suggesting that you have betrayed confidences.
In
front of a grand jury you can "take the Fifth" (exercise your right
to remain silent). However, the prosecutor may impose immunity on you, which
strips you of Fifth Amendment protection and subjects you to the possibility of
being cited for contempt and jailed if you refuse to answer further. In front
of a grand jury you have no Sixth Amendment right to counsel, although you can
consult with a lawyer outside the grand jury room after each question.
What
if I don't cooperate with the grand jury?
If
you receive a grand jury subpoena and elect to not cooperate, you may be held
in civil contempt. There is a chance that you may be jailed or imprisoned for
the length of the grand jury in an effort to coerce you to cooperate. Regular
grand juries sit for a basic term of 18 months, which can be extended up to a
total of 24 months. It is lawful to hold you in order to coerce your
cooperation, but unlawful to hold you as a means of punishment. In rare
instances you may face criminal contempt charges.
What
If I Am Not a Citizen and the DHS Contacts Me?
The
Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) is now part of the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) and has been renamed and reorganized into: 1. The
Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS); 2. The Bureau of Customs
and Border Protection (CBP); and 3. The Bureau of Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE). All three bureaus will be referred to as DHS for the
purposes of this pamphlet.
?
Assert your rights. If you do not demand your rights or if you sign papers
waiving your rights, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may deport you
before you see a lawyer or an immigration judge. Never sign anything without
reading, understanding and knowing the consequences of signing it.
?
Talk to a lawyer. If possible, carry with you the name and telephone number of
an immigration lawyer who will take your calls. The immigration laws are hard
to understand and there have been many recent changes. DHS will not explain
your options to you. As soon as you encounter a DHS agent, call your attorney.
If you can't do it right away, keep trying. Always talk to an immigration
lawyer before leaving the U.S. Even some legal permanent residents can be
barred from returning.
Based
on today's laws, regulations and DHS guidelines, non-citizens usually have the
following rights, no matter what their immigration status. This information may
change, so it is important to contact a lawyer. The following rights apply to
non-citizens who are inside the U.S. Non-citizens at the border who are trying
to enter the U.S. do not have all the same rights.
Do
I have the right to talk to a lawyer before answering any DHS questions or
signing any DHS papers?
Yes.
You have the right to call a lawyer or your family if you are detained, and you
have the right to be visited by a lawyer in detention. You have the right to
have your attorney with you at any hearing before an immigration judge. You do
not have the right to a government-appointed attorney for immigration
proceedings, but if you have been arrested, immigration officials must show you
a list of free or low cost legal service providers.
Should
I carry my green card or other immigration papers with me?
If
you have documents authorizing you to stay in the U.S., you must carry them
with you. Presenting false or expired papers to DHS may lead to deportation or
criminal prosecution. An unexpired green card, I-94, Employment Authorization
Card, Border Crossing Card or other papers that prove you are in legal status
will satisfy this requirement. If you do not carry these papers with you, you
could be charged with a crime. Always keep a copy of your immigration papers
with a trusted family member or friend who can fax them to you, if need be.
Check with your immigration lawyer about your specific case.
Am
I required to talk to government officers about my immigration history?
If
you are undocumented, out of status, a legal permanent resident (green card
holder), or a citizen, you do not have to answer any questions about your
immigration history. (You may want to consider giving your name; see above for
more information about this.) If you are not in any of these categories, and
you are being questioned by a DHS or FBI agent, then you may create problems
with your immigration status if you refuse to provide information requested by
the agent. If you have a lawyer, you can tell the agent that your lawyer will
answer questions on your behalf. If answering questions could lead the agent to
information that connects you with criminal activity, you should consider
refusing to talk to the agent at all.
If
I am arrested for immigration violations, do I have the right to a hearing
before an immigration judge to defend myself against deportation charges?
Yes.
In most cases only an immigration judge can order you deported. But if you
waive your rights or take "voluntary departure," agreeing to leave
the country, you could be deported without a hearing. If you have criminal
convictions, were arrested at the border, came to the U.S. through the visa
waiver program or have been ordered deported in the past, you could be deported
without a hearing. Contact a lawyer immediately to see if there is any relief
for you.
Can
I call my consulate if I am arrested?
Yes.
Non-citizens arrested in the U.S. have the right to call their consulate or to
have the police tell the consulate of your arrest. The police must let your
consulate visit or speak with you if consular officials decide to do so. Your
consulate might help you find a lawyer or offer other help. You also have the
right to refuse help from your consulate.
What
happens if I give up my right to a hearing or leave the U.S. before the hearing
is over?
You
could lose your eligibility for certain immigration benefits, and you could be
barred from returning to the U.S. for a number of years. You should always talk
to an immigration lawyer before you decide to give up your right to a hearing.
What
should I do if I want to contact DHS?
Always
talk to a lawyer before contacting DHS, even on the phone. Many DHS officers
view "enforcement" as their primary job and will not explain all of
your options to you.
What
Are My Rights at Airports?
IMPORTANT
NOTE: It is illegal for law enforcement to perform any stops, searches,
detentions or removals based solely on your race, national origin, religion,
sex or ethnicity.
If
I am entering the U.S. with valid travel papers can a U.S. customs agent stop
and search me?
Yes.
Customs agents have the right to stop, detain and search every person and item.
Can
my bags or I be searched after going through metal detectors with no problem or
after security sees that my bags do not contain a weapon?
Yes.
Even if the initial screen of your bags reveals nothing suspicious, the
screeners have the authority to conduct a further search of you or your bags.
If
I am on an airplane, can an airline employee interrogate me or ask me to get
off the plane?
The
pilot of an airplane has the right to refuse to fly a passenger if he or she
believes the passenger is a threat to the safety of the flight. The pilot's decision
must be reasonable and based on observations of you, not stereotypes.
What
If I Am Under 18?
Do
I have to answer questions?
No.
Minors too have the right to remain silent. You cannot be arrested for refusing
to talk to the police, probation officers, or school officials, except in some
states you may have to give your name if you have been detained.
What
if I am detained?
If
you are detained at a community detention facility or Juvenile Hall, you
normally must be released to a parent or guardian. If charges are filed against
you, in most states you are entitled to counsel (just like an adult) at no
cost.
Do
I have the right to express political views at school?
Public
school students generally have a First Amendment right to politically organize
at school by passing out leaflets, holding meetings, etc., as long as those
activities are not disruptive and do not violate legitimate school rules. You
may not be singled out based on your politics, ethnicity or religion.
Can
my backpack or locker be searched?
School
officials can search students' backpacks and lockers without a warrant if they
reasonably suspect that you are involved in criminal activity or carrying drugs
or weapons. Do not consent to the police or school officials searching your property,
but do not physically resist or you may face criminal charges.
Disclaimer
This
booklet is not a substitute for legal advice. You should contact an attorney if
you have been visited by the FBI or other law enforcement officials. You should
also alert your relatives, friends, co-workers and others so that they will be
prepared if they are contacted as well.
NLG
National Hotline for Activists Contacted by the FBI
888-NLG-ECOL
(888-654-3265)
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*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Free
Mumia NOW!
Prisonradio.org
Write
to Mumia:
Mumia
Abu-Jamal AM 8335
SCI
Mahanoy
301
Morea Road
Frackville,
PA 17932
FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Rachel Wolkenstein
August
21, 2011 (917) 689-4009
MUMIA
ABU-JAMAL ILLEGALLY SENTENCED TO
LIFE
IMPRISONMENT WITHOUT PAROLE!
FREE
MUMIA NOW!
www.FreeMumia.com
http://blacktalkradionetwork.com/profiles/blogs/mumia-is-formally-sentenced-to-life-in-prison-w-out-hearing-he-s
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*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
"A
Child's View from Gaza: Palestinian Children's Art and the Fight Against
Censorship"
book
https://www.mecaforpeace.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=25
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
WITNESS
GAZA
http://www.witnessgaza.com/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
The
Battle Is Still On To
FREE
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL!
The
Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO
Box 16222 • Oakland CA 94610
www.laboractionmumia.org
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
KEVIN
COOPER IS INNOCENT! FREE KEVIN COOPER!
Reasonable
doubts about executing Kevin Cooper
Chronicle
Editorial
Monday,
December 13, 2010
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/13/EDG81GP0I7.DTL
Death
penalty -- Kevin Cooper is Innocent! Help save his life from San Quentin's
death
row!
http://www.savekevincooper.org/
http://www.savekevincooper.org/pages/essays_content.html?ID=255
URGENT
ACTION APPEAL
-
From Amnesty International USA
17
December 2010
Click
here to take action online:
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&\
b=2590179&template=x.ascx&action=15084
To
learn about recent Urgent Action successes and updates, go to
http://www.amnestyusa.org/iar/success
For
a print-friendly version of this Urgent Action (PDF):
http://www.amnestyusa.org/actioncenter/actions/uaa25910.pdf
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Short
Video About Al-Awda's Work
The
following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's
work
since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown
on
Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l
Al-Awda
Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected
over
the past nine years.
Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurl
Support
Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!
Al-Awda,
The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial
support
to carry out its work.
To
submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go to
http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html
and
follow the simple instructions.
Thank
you for your generosity!
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
D.
VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.:
[Some
of these videos are embeded on the BAUAW website:
http://bauaw.blogspot.com/
or bauaw.org ...bw]
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Prison vs School: The Tour
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogmtAQlp9HI
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Checkpoint - Jasiri X
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq6Y6LSjulU
Published on Jan 28, 2014
"Checkpoint" is based on the
oppression and discrimination Jasiri X witnessed firsthand during his
recent trip to Palestine and Israel "Checkpoint" is produced by Agent of
Change, and directed by Haute Muslim. Download "Checkpoint" at https://jasirix.bandcamp.com/track/ch....
Follow Jasiri X at https://twitter.com/jasiri_x
LYRICS
Journal of the hard times tales from the dark side
Evidence of the settlements on my hard drive
Man I swear my heart died at the end of that car ride
When I saw that checkpoint welcome to apartheid
Soldiers wear military green at the checkpoint
Automatic guns that's machine at the checkpoint
Tavors not m16s at the checkpoint
Fingers on the trigger you'll get leaned at the checkpoint
Little children grown adults or teens at the checkpoint
All ya papers better be clean at the checkpoint
You gotta but your finger on the screen at the checkpoint
And pray that red light turns green at the check point
If Martin Luther King had a dream of the checkpoint
He wake with loud screams from the scenes at the checkpoint
It's Malcolm X by any means at the check point
Imagine if you daily routine was the checkpoint
Separation walls that's surrounding the checkpoint
On top is barbwire like a crown on the checkpoint
Better have ya permits if your found at the checkpoint
Gunmen on the tower aiming down at the checkpoint
The idea is to keep you in fear of the checkpoint
You enter through the cage in the rear of the checkpoint
It feels like prison on a tier at the check point
I'd rather be anywhere but here at this checkpoint
Nelson Mandela wasn't blind to the check point
He stood for free Palestine not a check point
Support BDS don't give a dime to the checkpoint
This is international crime at the checkpoint
Arabs get treated like dogs at the checkpoint
Cause discrimination is the law at the checkpoint
Criminalized without a cause at the checkpoint
I'm just telling you what I saw at the checkpoint
Soldiers got bad attitudes at the checkpoint
Condescending and real rude at the checkpoint
Don't look em in they eyes when they move at the checkpoint
They might strip a man or woman nude at the checkpoint
Soldiers might blow you out of ya shoes at the checkpoint
Gas you up and then light the fuse at the checkpoint
Everyday you stand to be accused at the checkpoint
Each time your life you could lose at the checkpoint
If Martin Luther King had a dream of the checkpoint
He wake with loud screams from the scenes at the checkpoint
It's Malcolm X by any means at the check point
Imagine if you daily routine was the checkpoint
At the airport in Tel Aviv is a checkpoint
They pulled over our taxi at the checkpoint
Passport visa ID at the checkpoint
Soldiers going all through my things at the checkpoint
Said I was high risk security at the checkpoint
Because of the oppression I see at the checkpoint
Occupation in the 3rd degree at the checkpoint
All a nigga wanna do is leave fuck a checkpoint
Follow Jasiri X at https://twitter.com/jasiri_x
LYRICS
Journal of the hard times tales from the dark side
Evidence of the settlements on my hard drive
Man I swear my heart died at the end of that car ride
When I saw that checkpoint welcome to apartheid
Soldiers wear military green at the checkpoint
Automatic guns that's machine at the checkpoint
Tavors not m16s at the checkpoint
Fingers on the trigger you'll get leaned at the checkpoint
Little children grown adults or teens at the checkpoint
All ya papers better be clean at the checkpoint
You gotta but your finger on the screen at the checkpoint
And pray that red light turns green at the check point
If Martin Luther King had a dream of the checkpoint
He wake with loud screams from the scenes at the checkpoint
It's Malcolm X by any means at the check point
Imagine if you daily routine was the checkpoint
Separation walls that's surrounding the checkpoint
On top is barbwire like a crown on the checkpoint
Better have ya permits if your found at the checkpoint
Gunmen on the tower aiming down at the checkpoint
The idea is to keep you in fear of the checkpoint
You enter through the cage in the rear of the checkpoint
It feels like prison on a tier at the check point
I'd rather be anywhere but here at this checkpoint
Nelson Mandela wasn't blind to the check point
He stood for free Palestine not a check point
Support BDS don't give a dime to the checkpoint
This is international crime at the checkpoint
Arabs get treated like dogs at the checkpoint
Cause discrimination is the law at the checkpoint
Criminalized without a cause at the checkpoint
I'm just telling you what I saw at the checkpoint
Soldiers got bad attitudes at the checkpoint
Condescending and real rude at the checkpoint
Don't look em in they eyes when they move at the checkpoint
They might strip a man or woman nude at the checkpoint
Soldiers might blow you out of ya shoes at the checkpoint
Gas you up and then light the fuse at the checkpoint
Everyday you stand to be accused at the checkpoint
Each time your life you could lose at the checkpoint
If Martin Luther King had a dream of the checkpoint
He wake with loud screams from the scenes at the checkpoint
It's Malcolm X by any means at the check point
Imagine if you daily routine was the checkpoint
At the airport in Tel Aviv is a checkpoint
They pulled over our taxi at the checkpoint
Passport visa ID at the checkpoint
Soldiers going all through my things at the checkpoint
Said I was high risk security at the checkpoint
Because of the oppression I see at the checkpoint
Occupation in the 3rd degree at the checkpoint
All a nigga wanna do is leave fuck a checkpoint
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Exceptional
art from the streets of Oakland:
Oakland
Street Dancing
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
NYC
RESTAURANT WORKERS DANCE & SING FOR A WAGE HIKE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_s8e1R6rG8&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
On
Gun Control, Martin Luther King, the Deacons of Defense and the history of
Black Liberation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzYKisvBN1o&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Fukushima
Never Again
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU-Z4VLDGxU
"Fukushima,
Never Again" tells the story of the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdowns in
north east Japan in March of 2011 and exposes the cover-up by Tepco and the
Japanese government.
This
is the first film that interviews the Mothers Of Fukushima, nuclear power
experts and trade unionists who are fighting for justice and the protection of
the children and the people of Japan and the world. The residents and citizens
were forced to buy their own geiger counters and radiation dosimeters in order
to test their communities to find out if they were in danger.
The
government said contaminated soil in children's school grounds was safe and
then
when
the people found out it was contaminated and removed the top soil, the
government and TEPCO refused to remove it from the school grounds.
It
also relays how the nuclear energy program for "peaceful atoms" was brought
to Japan under the auspices of the US military occupation and also the criminal
cover-up of the safety dangers of the plant by TEPCO and GE management which
built the plant in Fukushima. It also interviews Kei Sugaoka, the GE nulcear
plant inspector from the bay area who exposed cover-ups in the safety at the
Fukushima plant and was retaliated against by GE. This documentary allows the
voices of the people and workers to speak out about the reality of the disaster
and what this means not only for the people of Japan but the people of the
world as the US government and nuclear industry continue to push for more new
plants and government subsidies. This film breaks
the
information blockade story line of the corporate media in Japan, the US and
around the world that Fukushima is over.
Production
Of Labor Video Project
P.O.
Box 720027
San
Francisco, CA 94172
www.laborvideo.org
lvpsf@laborvideo.org
For
information on obtaining the video go to:
www.fukushimaneveragain.com
(415)282-1908
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1000
year of war through the world
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiG8neU4_bs&feature=share
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Anatomy
of a Massacre - Afganistan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6BnRc11aug&feature=player_embedded
Afghans
accuse multiple soldiers of pre-meditated murder
To
see more go to http://www.youtube.com/user/journeymanpictures
Follow
us on Facebook (http://goo.gl/YRw42) or Twitter
(http://www.twitter.com/journeymanvod)
The
recent massacre of 17 civilians by a rogue US soldier has been shrouded in
mystery.
But through unprecedented access to those involved, this report
confronts
the accusations that Bales didn't act alone.
"They
came into my room and they killed my family". Stories like this are common
amongst
the survivors in Aklozai and Najiban. As are the shocking accusations
that
Sergeant Bales was not acting alone. Even President Karzai has announced
"one
man can not do that". Chief investigator, General Karimi, is suspicious
that
despite being fully armed, Bales freely left his base without raising
alarm.
"How come he leaves at night and nobody is aware? Every time we have
weapon
accountability and personal accountability." These are just a few of the
questions
the American army and government are yet to answer. One thing however
is
very clear, the massacre has unleashed a wave of grief and outrage which
means
relations in Kandahar will be tense for years to come: "If I could lay my
hands
on those infidels, I would rip them apart with my bare hands."
A
Film By SBS
Distributed
By Journeyman Pictures
April
2012
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Photo
of George Zimmerman, in 2005 photo, left, and in a more recent photo.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/04/02/us/the-events-leading-to-the-sooti\
ng-of-trayvon-martin.html?hp
SPD
Security Cams.wmv
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WWDNbQUgm4&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Kids
being put on buses and transported from school to "alternate
locations" in
Terror
Drills
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFia_w8adWQ
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Private
prisons,
a
recession resistant investment opportunity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIGLDOxx9Vg
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Attack
Dogs used on a High School Walkout in MD, Four Students Charged With
"Thought
Crimes"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wafMaML17w
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Common
forms of misconduct by Law Enforcement Officials and Prosecutors
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViSpM4K276w&feature=related
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Organizing
and Instigating: OCCUPY - Ronnie Goodman
http://arthazelwood.com/instigator/occupy/occupy-birth-video.html
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Rep
News 12: Yes We Kony
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68GbzIkYdc8
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
The
New Black by The Mavrix - Official Music Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4rLfja8488
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Japan
One Year Later
http://www.onlineschools.org/japan-one-year-later/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
The
CIA's Heart Attack Gun
http://www.brasschecktv.com/videos/assassination-studies/the-cias-heart-attack-g\
un-.html
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
The
Invisible American Workforce
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/8/5/new_expos_tracks_alec_private_prison
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Labor
Beat: NATO vs The 1st Amendment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbQxnb4so3U
For
more detailed information, send us a request at mail@laborbeat.org.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
The
Battle of Oakland
by
brandon jourdan plus
http://vimeo.com/36256273
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Officers
Pulled Off Street After Tape of Beating Surfaces
By
ANDY NEWMAN
February
1, 2012, 10:56 am
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/officers-pulled-off-street-after-ta\
pe-of-beating-surfaces/?ref=nyregion
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
This
is excellent! Michelle Alexander pulls no punches!
Michelle
Alexander, Author of The New Jim Crow, speaks about the political
strategy
behind
the War on Drugs and its connection to the mass incarceration of Black
and
Brown people in the United States.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P75cbEdNo2U&feature=player_embedded
If
you think Bill Clinton was "the first black President" you need to
watch this
video
and see how much damage his administration caused for the black community
as
a result of his get tough attitude on crime that appealed to white swing
voters.
This
speech took place at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem on January 12,
2012.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
FREE
BRADLEY MANNING
http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/national-call-in-for-bradley
I
received the following reply from the White House November 18, 2011 regarding
the
Bradley Manning petition I signed:
"Why
We Can't Comment on Bradley Manning
"Thank
you for signing the petition 'Free PFC Bradley Manning, the accused
WikiLeaks
whistleblower.' We appreciate your participation in the We the People
platform
on WhiteHouse.gov.
The
We the People Terms of Participation explain that 'the White House may
decline
to address certain procurement, law enforcement, adjudicatory, or
similar
matters properly within the jurisdiction of federal departments or
agencies,
federal courts, or state and local government.' The military justice
system
is charged with enforcing the Uniform Code of
Military
Justice. Accordingly, the White House declines to comment on the
specific
case raised in this petition...
That's
funny! I guess Obama didn't get this memo. Here's what Obama said about
Bradley:
BRADLEY
MANNING "BROKE THE LAW" SAYS OBAMA!
"He
broke the law!" says Obama about Bradley Manning who has yet to even be
charged,
let alone, gone to trial and found guilty. How horrendous is it for the
President
to declare someone guilty before going to trial or being charged with
a
crime! Justice in the U.S.A.!
Obama
on FREE BRADLEY MANNING protest... San Francisco, CA. April 21, 2011-
Presidential
remarks on interrupt/interaction/performance art happening at
fundraiser.
Logan Price queries Barack after org. FRESH JUICE PARTY political
action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfmtUpd4id0&feature=youtu.be
Release
Bradley Manning
Almost
Gone (The Ballad Of Bradley Manning)
Written
by Graham Nash and James Raymond (son of David Crosby)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAYG7yJpBbQ&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Julian
Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVGqE726OAo&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
School
police increasingly arresting American students?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl-efNBvjUU&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
FYI:
Nuclear
Detonation Timeline "1945-1998"
The
2053 nuclear tests and explosions that took place between 1945 and 1998 are
plotted
visually and audibly on a world map.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9lquok4Pdk&feature=share&mid=5408
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
We
Are the 99 Percent
We
are the 99 percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to
choose
between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are
suffering
from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay
and
no rights, if we're working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1
percent
is getting everything. We are the 99 percent.
Brought
to you by the people who occupy wall street. Why will YOU occupy?
OccupyWallSt.org
Occupytogether.org
wearethe99percentuk.tumblr.com
http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
We
Are The People Who Will Save Our Schools
YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFAOJsBxAxY
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
In
honor of the 75th Anniversary of the 44-Day Flint Michigan sit-down strike at
GM
that began December 30, 1936:
According
to Michael Moore, (Although he has done some good things, this clip
isn't
one of them) in this clip from his film, "Capitalism a Love Story,"
it was
Roosevelt
who saved the day!):
"After
a bloody battle one evening, the Governor of Michigan, with the support
of
the President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, sent in the National
Guard.
But the guns and the soldiers weren't used on the workers; they were
pointed
at the police and the hired goons warning them to leave these workers
alone.
For Mr. Roosevelt believed that the men inside had a right to a redress
of
their grievances." -Michael Moore's 'Capitalism: A Love Story'
-
Flint Sit-Down Strike http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8x1_q9wg58
But
those cannons were not aimed at the goons and cops! They were aimed straight
at
the factory filled with strikers! Watch what REALLY happened and how the
strike
was really won!
'With
babies & banners' -- 75 years since the 44-day Flint sit-down strike
http://links.org.au/node/2681
--Inspiring
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
HALLELUJAH
CORPORATIONS (revised edition).mov
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws0WSNRpy3g
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
ONE
OF THE GREATEST POSTS ON YOUTUBE SO FAR!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8C-qIgbP9o&feature=share&mid=552
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
ILWU
Local 10 Longshore Workers Speak-Out At Oakland Port Shutdown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JUpBpZYwms
Uploaded
by laborvideo on Dec 13, 2011
ILWU
Local 10 longshore workers speak out during a blockade of the Port of
Oakland
called for by Occupy Oakland. Anthony Levieges and Clarence Thomas rank
and
file members of the union. The action took place on December 12, 2011 and
the
interview took place at Pier 30 on the Oakland docks.
For
more information on the ILWU Local 21 Longview EGT struggle go to
http://www.facebook.com/groups/256313837734192/
For
further info on the action and the press conferernce go to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz3fE-Vhrw8&feature=youtu.be
Production
of Labor Video Project www.laborvideo.org
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
UC
Davis Police Violence Adds Fuel to Fire
By
Scott Galindez, Reader Supported News
19
November 11
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/275-42/8485-uc-davis-police-violence-add\
s-fuel-to-fire
UC
Davis Protestors Pepper Sprayed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AdDLhPwpp4&feature=player_embedded
Police
PEPPER SPRAY UC Davis STUDENT PROTESTERS!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuWEx6Cfn-I&feature=player_embedded
Police
pepper spraying and arresting students at UC Davis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmJmmnMkuEM&feature=player_embedded
*---------*
UC
Davis Chancellor Katehi walks to her car
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CZ0t9ez_EGI#!
Occupy
Seattle - 84 Year Old Woman Dorli Rainey Pepper Sprayed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTIyE_JlJzw&feature=related
*---------*
THE
BEST VIDEO ON "OCCUPY THE WORLD"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S880UldxB1o
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Shot
by police with rubber bullet at Occupy Oakland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0pX9LeE-g8&feature=player_embedded
*---------*
Copwatch@Occupy
Oakland: Beware of Police Infiltrators and Provocateurs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrvMzqopHH0
*---------*
Occupy
Oakland 11-2 Strike: Police Tear Gas, Black Bloc, War in the Streets
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Tu_D8SFYck&feature=player_embedded
*----*
Quebec
police admitted that, in 2007, thugs carrying rocks to a peaceful protest
were
actually undercover Quebec police officers:
POLICE
STATE Criminal Cops EXPOSED As Agent Provocateurs @ SPP Protest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoiisMMCFT0&feature=player_embedded
*----*
Quebec
police admit going undercover at montebello protests
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAfzUOx53Rg&feature=player_embedded
G20:
Epic Undercover Police Fail
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrJ7aU-n1L8&feature=player_embedded
*----*
WHAT
HAPPENED IN OAKLAND TUESDAY NIGHT, OCTOBER 25:
Occupy
Oakland Protest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlPs-REyl-0&feature=player_embedded
Cops
make mass arrests at occupy Oakland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R27kD2_7PwU&feature=player_embedded
Raw
Video: Protesters Clash With Oakland Police
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpO-lJr2BQY&feature=player_embedded
Occupy
Oakland - Flashbangs USED on protesters OPD LIES
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqNOPZLw03Q&feature=player_embedded
KTVU
TV Video of Police violence
http://www.ktvu.com/video/29587714/index.html
Marine
Vet wounded, tear gas & flash-bang grenades thrown in downtown
Oakland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMUgPTCgwcQ&feature=player_embedded
Tear
Gas billowing through 14th & Broadway in Downtown Oakland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU4Y0pwJtWE&feature=player_embedded
Arrests
at Occupy Atlanta -- This is what a police state looks like
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YStWz6jbeZA&feature=player_embedded
*---------*
Labor
Beat: Hey You Billionaire, Pay Your Fair Share
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY8isD33f-I
*---------*
Voices
of Occupy Boston 2011 - Kwame Somburu (Paul Boutelle) Part I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA48gmfGB6U&feature=youtu.be
Voices
of Occupy Boston 2011 - Kwame Somburu (Paul Boutelle) Part II
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjKZpOk7TyM&feature=related
*---------*
#Occupy
Wall Street In Washington Square: Mohammed Ezzeldin, former occupier of
Egypt's
Tahrir Square Speaks at Washington Square!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziodsFWEb5Y&feature=player_embedded
*---------*
#OccupyTheHood,
Occupy Wall Street
By
adele pham
http://vimeo.com/30146870
*---------*
Live
arrest at brooklyn bridge #occupywallstreet by We are Change
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yULSI-31Pto&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
FREE
THE CUBAN FIVE!
http://www.thecuban5.org/wordpress/index.php
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmS4kHC_OlY&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
One
World One Revolution -- MUST SEE VIDEO -- Powerful and beautiful...bw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE3R1BQrYCw&feature=player_embedded
"When
injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty." Thomas Jefferson
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Japan:
angry Fukushima citizens confront government (video)
Posted
by Xeni Jardin on Monday, Jul 25th at 11:36am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVuGwc9dlhQ&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Labor
Beat: Labor Stands with Subpoenaed Activists Against FBI Raids and Grand
Jury
Investigation of antiwar and social justice activists.
"If
trouble is not at your door. It's on it's way, or it just left."
"Investigate
the Billionaires...Full investigation into Wall Street..." Jesse
Sharkey,
Vice
President,
Chicago Teachers Union
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSNUSIGZCMQ
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Coal
Ash: One Valley's Tale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E7h-DNvwx4&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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unsubscribe go to: bauaw2003-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
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*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Please forward and post widely
Protest Now! No To Police Censorship of Mumia, and Teachers!
Reinstate the Urban Dreams Website!
Action Still Needed! Please send messages to the School Board!
- Scroll down for School Board addresses -
Here’s what happened: Under pressure from the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP)—operating through a friendly publicity agent called Fox News—the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) earlier this year shut down an entire website composed of teacher-drafted curriculum material called Urban Dreams. Why? Because this site included course guidelines on the censorship of innocent political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal! The course material compared the censorship of Mumia’s extensive radio commentaries and writings, with that of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s later writings, which focused on class exploitation and his opposition to the US’ imperialist War against Vietnam. Both were effectively silenced by the big media, including in Mumia’s case, by National Public Radio (NPR).
Mumia Is Innocent! But He’s Still a Top Target of FOP
Abu-Jamal has long been a top-row target for the FOP, which tried to get him legally killed for decades. Mumia was framed by the Philadelphia police and falsely convicted of murdering a Philadelphia policeman in 1982, with the extensive collaboration of lying prosecutors, corrupt courts, the US Justice Department, and key political figures.
Mumia’s death sentence was dropped only when a federal appeals court judge set it aside because of blatantly illegal jury instructions by the original highly racist trial judge. (The same federal judge upheld every bogus detail of Mumia’s conviction.) The local Philadelphia prosecutor and politicians chickened out of trying to get Mumia’s original death sentence reinstated due to the fact that all their evidence of his guilt had long been exposed as totally fraudulent!
FOP: Can’t Kill Him? Silence Him!
The FOP had to swallow the fact that the local mucky-mucks had dropped the ball on executing Mumia, but they were rewarded with a substitute sentence of life without the possibility of parole, imposed by a local court acting in secret. Mumia is now serving this new and equally unjust sentence of “slow death.”
This gets us back to the FOP’s main point here, which is to silence Mumia. They can’t stop Mumia from writing and recording his world-renownd commentaries (which are available at Prison Radio, www.prisonradio.org). But they look for any opportunity to smear and discredit Mumia, and keep him out of the public eye; and these snakes have found a morsel on the Urban Dreams web site to go after!
Urban Dreams Was Well Used by Teachers
Urban Dreams was initially set up under a grant from the federal Dept. of Education in 1999-2004 and contains teacher-written material on a wide variety of issues. It is (was) used extensively in California and beyond. The OUSD’s knee-jerk reaction to shut the whole site down because of a complaint from police, broadcast on the all-powerful Fox News network, shows the rapid decline of the US into police-state status. Why should we let a bunch of lying, vicious cops, whose only real job is to protect the wealthy and powerful from all of us, get away with this?
Fresh from defeating Obama’s nominee to head the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department because he served for a period as Mumia’s attorney, the FOP is attacking a school lesson plan that asks students to think outside the box of system propaganda. But the grave-diggers of capitalist oppression are stirring.
Labor Says No To Police Persecution of Mumia!
In 1999, the Oakland teachers union, Oakland Education Association (OEA), held an unauthorized teach-in on Mumia and the death penalty. Later the same year, longshore workers in the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) shut down all West-Coast ports to Free Mumia. Other teacher actions happened around the country and internationally. And now the Alameda County Labor Council, acting on a resolution submitted by an OEA member, has denounced the FOP-inspired shutdown of Urban Dreams, and called for the site’s complete restoration (ie no deletions).
Labor Says No To Censorship of Mumia, and Teachers!
We are asking union members particularly, and everyone else as well, if you abhor police-sponsored censorship of school curricula, and want to see justice and freedom for the wrongfully convicted such as Mumia Abu-Jamal, send your message of protest now to the Oakland School Board, at the three addresses below.
Union members: take the resolution below to your local union or labor council, and get it passed!
Whatever you do, send a copy of your protest letter or resolution, or a report of your actions, to Oakland Teachers for Mumia, at communard2@juno.com.
Here is the Alameda County Labor Council resolution:
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Labor Speaks: Urban Dreams Censorship Resolution
Alameda County Labor Council
Whereas Mumia Abu-Jamal, an award winning journalist, defender of the rights of the working class, people of color, and oppressed people has been imprisoned since 1982 without parole for a crime he didn’t commit after his death sentence was finally overturned;
Whereas the Oakland Unified School District’s censorship of the Urban Dreams website was in reaction to a Fox News and Fraternal Order of Police attack on a lesson plan asking students to consider a parallel between censorship of Martin Luther King’s radical ideas and censorship of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and;
Whereas it is dangerous and unacceptable to allow the police to determine the curriculum of a major school district like Oakland, or any school district;
Whereas removal of the Urban Dreams OUSD website denies educators and student access to invaluable curriculum resources by Oakland teachers with social justice themes promoting critical thinking, and;
Whereas in 1999, the Oakland Education Association led the teach-in on Mumia Abu-Jamal and the death penalty which helped deepen the debate in the U.S. on the death penalty itself, and greatly intensified the spotlight on the widespread issue of wrongful conviction and demanded justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal, and;
Whereas OEA and Alameda Contra Costa County Service Center of CTA cited the Mumia teach-in and the censored unit on Martin Luther King Jr. in its Human Rights WHO AWARD for 2013;
Be it resolved that the Alameda Labor Council condemns OUSD’s censorship of the Urban Dreams website and demands that it immediately restore access to all materials on the website, reaffirms its demand for justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal, and issues a press release to seek the widest possible support from defenders of free speech and those who seek justice for Mumia.
- Submitted by Keith Brown, OEA
- Passed, Alameda County Labor Council, 14 July 2014
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Now It’s your turn!
Join with Ed Asner, and with the Alameda County Labor Council, in protesting the
Oakland School Board’s censorship of the Urban Dreams web site!
• Ask your local union, labor council or other organization to endorse the resolution by the Alameda County Labor Council.
• Demand the School Board reinstate the Urban Dreams website without any deletions!
• Send your union resolutions or letters of protest to the following;
1. Oakland Board of Education: boe@ousd.k12.ca.us
2. Board President Davd Kakishiba: David.Kakishiba@ousd.k12.ca.us
3. Superintendent Antwan Wilson: Antwan.Wilson@ousd.k12.ca.us
Important: Send a copy of your resolution or email to:
Bob Mandel/Teachers for Mumia at: communard2@juno.com.
Thank you for your support!
-This message is from the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal,
and Oakland Teachers for Mumia.
communard2@juno.com.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
B. ARTICLES IN FULL
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) Obama Faulted in Terror Fight, New Poll Finds
2) Artificial Sweeteners May Disrupt Body’s Blood Sugar Controls
By Kenneth Chang
By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS and DALIA SUSSMAN
By Kenneth Chang
3) Busy Days Precede a March Focusing on Climate Change
4) We Can Save the Caribbean’s Coral Reefs
5) Sierra Leone Begins 3-Day Lockdown to Fight Ebola Outbreak
[Does anyone else think this is insane? What about cleaning up the squalor? What about ending the poverty? Is this what the 3,000 U.S. troops are going to do to "fight Ebola?" Are they simply going to arrest those that are ill and take them away to die? ...bw]
6) Climate Change March Begins in New York City
7) U.S. and Allies Strike ISIS Targets in Syria
8) The New York Jail Scandal Continues
9) Israeli Forces Kill 2 Suspects in Murder of Jewish Teenagers
10) Talk in Synagogue of Israel and Gaza Goes From Debate to Wrath to Rage
11) Washington: Marijuana-Use Tickets Are Nullified
12) Deaths From Faulty Switch in G.M. Cars Edge Higher
13) In Colorado, a Student Counterprotest to an Anti-Protest Curriculum
14) A California Dream: Not Having to Settle for Just One Bedroom
15) Cleared After Nearly 23 Years in Prison, but Not Free
4) We Can Save the Caribbean’s Coral Reefs
By JEREMY JACKSON and AYANA ELIZABETH JOHNSON
[Does anyone else think this is insane? What about cleaning up the squalor? What about ending the poverty? Is this what the 3,000 U.S. troops are going to do to "fight Ebola?" Are they simply going to arrest those that are ill and take them away to die? ...bw]
6) Climate Change March Begins in New York City
7) U.S. and Allies Strike ISIS Targets in Syria
By JODI RUDOREN
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
By HILARY STOUT
13) In Colorado, a Student Counterprotest to an Anti-Protest Curriculum
By JACK HEALY
By JIM DWYER
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) Obama Faulted in Terror Fight, New Poll Finds
By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS and DALIA SUSSMAN
As Mr. Obama broadens the military offensive against Islamic extremists, the survey finds broad support for United States airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, but it also demonstrates how torn Americans are about wading back into battle in the Middle East. A majority is opposed to committing ground forces there, amid sweeping concern that increased American participation will lead to a long and costly mission.
With midterm elections approaching, Americans’ fears about a terrorist attack on United States soil are on the rise, and the public is questioning Mr. Obama’s strategy for combating the militant organization calling itself the Islamic State, also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Most respondents say the president has no clear plan for confronting the group, and that he has not been tough enough in dealing with it.
“He is ambivalent, and I think it shows,” Jennifer Shelton-Armstrong, a 45-year-old Democrat in Mission Viejo, California, said in a follow-up interview. “There is no clear plan.”
Mr. Obama has lost considerable ground with the public in the month since he announced military action against the Islamic State, which also saw the group release two videotapes showing the beheadings of American journalists. Fifty-eight percent now disapprove of his handling of foreign policy, a 10-point jump from a CBS News poll conducted last month. Fifty percent rate him negatively on handling terrorism, a 12-point increase from March, compared with 41 percent who rate him positively, while the rest had no opinion.
Taken together, the results suggest a profoundly unsettled public mood, with two-thirds of Americans surveyed saying the country is on the wrong track and half disapproving of how Mr. Obama is doing his job, a negative assessment that threatens to be a substantial drag on Democrats in November.
Still, the public is sending some mixed signals. For instance, while Americans give Mr. Obama low marks on handling terrorism, foreign policy and the Islamic State, they say they back the prescription he has laid out to counter the militants — airstrikes and no combat troops on the ground in Iraq and Syria. Respondents also said Republicans would do a better job on two of their top issues — terrorism and the economy — even though they disapprove of congressional Republicans in greater numbers than they do congressional Democrats.
The poll numbers present a steep climb for the president as he seeks to rally public support for the effort against the Islamic State, just as Democrats are seeking ways to motivate their core supporters, who include antiwar voters. Mr. Obama’s job approval ratings are strikingly similar to those of George W. Bush at the same point in his second term in office in 2006, when Americans’ war fatigue helped Democrats sweep both houses of Congress in what Mr. Bush later called “a thumping.”
The poll shows Republicans having gained sharply with voters ahead of the November balloting, with 45 percent of likely voters saying they will back Republicans in November’s contests for the House of Representatives, compared with 39 percent who say they will back Democrats.
While the survey shows both political parties deeply unpopular, Republicans fare worse than Democrats, with a majority of their own voters giving the Republicans low marks for their performance in Congress. But Mr. Obama’s poor standing is proving a rallying point for his disaffected political opposition; 55 percent of Republicans said their vote for Congress would be a vote against the president.
“It’s a vote for the lesser of two evils and a vote against Obama,” said John Durr, a 71-year-old independent in Virginia Beach, who listed economic issues and recent “scandals” involving the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Justice’s “Fast and Furious” program, and the attack on an American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, as among the reasons he would vote Republican in November. “We’ve lost world respect. I don’t think he has a foreign policy; we’re just reacting.”
The nationwide poll was conducted from Sept. 12 through Sept. 15 by landline and cellphone among 1,009 adults and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points for all adults and plus or minus 4 percent for likely voters.
The findings represent the first time since he became president that more Americans rate Mr. Obama negatively on terrorism than they do positively. Despite his low ratings on terrorism and foreign policy, a majority says it has confidence in Mr. Obama’s ability to handle an international crisis. And while most Americans continue to say the United States should not take the leading role in trying to solve international conflicts, that view is losing ground.
Fifty-four percent say the United States should not play the primary role, compared with 58 percent in June and 65 percent in February. The results help explain the political predicament facing Mr. Obama with his Democratic base, which includes an antiwar faction that is less enthusiastic than Republicans about airstrikes, while his Republican critics are considerably more hawkish and worried that the president is projecting weakness.
“My fear is he won’t go far enough — I think he should go further,” said Richard Kline, 56, an engineer and Republican in Indianola, Iowa. “I’d rather see them fought over there than over here.”
While Democrats are more positive about Mr. Obama’s management of foreign policy crises and terrorism, a third of them say he has no clear plan for countering the Islamic State and two fifths of Democrats say he is not being tough enough.
Most Americans — nearly 6 in 10 — say they view the Islamic State as a major threat to the security of the United States, and 7 in 10 support airstrikes against the group, including majorities of Republicans, Democrats and independents. Still, on the issue of sending ground troops, opposed by 55 percent of respondents, the parties diverge, with most Republicans in favor and Democrats and independents opposed.
“I’m glad President Obama is not too hawkish,” said Margaret Scioli, 67, a retired electrocardiogram technician and Democrat in Melrose, Mass. “It’s easy to get into wars, but hard to get out of them.”
The split comes amid a debate, including inside the Obama administration, about whether ground troops may ultimately be necessary to confront the Islamic State.
Mr. Obama on Wednesday renewed his vow not to involve American troops in a ground war, a day after Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, his top military adviser and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told lawmakers on Capitol Hill that he might recommend deploying them in Syria if airstrikes were not successful.
On Wednesday, the House of Representatives approved by a vote of 273-156 Mr. Obama’s request for authorization to arm and train Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State, and the Senate takes up the measure on Thursday. The poll finds 48 percent saying they back doing so, while 40 percent are opposed. A majority says it backs sending additional military advisers to Iraq.
While terrorism is a concern for voters, the survey shows the economy is by far their top issue, with 38 percent saying that topic was driving their vote this fall and more voters saying Republicans are likely to do a better job on it. That’s a notable change from last month’s CBS News Poll, which found voters split on which party would do a better job on the economy.
Republicans also get higher marks on handling foreign policy and terrorism, while Democrats have an edge on health care. Voters are split on which party would do a better job on immigration. The environment for incumbents is poisonous, with nearly 9 in 10 voters saying it is time to give new people a chance. And in a striking finding, the poll diverges from the well-worn adage that voters hate Congress but love their congressmen; nearly two-thirds now say they are ready to throw their own representatives out of office as well.
Marina Stefan and Megan Thee-Brenan contributed reporting.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
2) Artificial Sweeteners May Disrupt Body’s Blood Sugar Controls
By Kenneth Chang
Artificial sweeteners may disrupt the body’s ability to regulate blood sugar, causing metabolic changes that can be a precursor to diabetes, researchers are reporting.
That is “the very same condition that we often aim to prevent” by consuming sweeteners instead of sugar, said Dr. Eran Elinav, an immunologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, at a news conference to discuss the findings.
The scientists performed a multitude of experiments, mostly on mice, to back up their assertion that the sweeteners alter the microbiome, the population of bacteria that is in the digestive system.
The different mix of microbes, the researchers contend, changes the metabolism of glucose, causing levels to rise higher after eating and to decline more slowly than they otherwise would.
The findings by Dr. Elinav and his collaborators in Israel, including Eran Segal, a professor of computer science and applied mathematics at Weizmann, are being published Wednesday by the journal Nature.
Cathryn R. Nagler, a professor of pathology at the University of Chicago who was not involved with the research but did write an accompanying commentary in Nature, called the results “very compelling.”
She noted that many conditions, including obesity and diabetes, had been linked to changes in the microbiome. “What the study suggests,” she said, “is we should step back and reassess our extensive use of artificial sweeteners.”
Previous studies on the health effects of artificial sweeteners have come to conflicting and confusing findings. Some found that they were associated with weight loss; others found the exact opposite, that people who drank diet soda actually weighed more.
Some found a correlation between artificial sweeteners and diabetes, but those findings were not entirely convincing: Those who switch to the products may already be overweight and prone to the disease.
While acknowledging that it is too early for broad or definitive conclusions, Dr. Elinav said he had already changed his own behavior.
“I’ve consumed very large amounts of coffee, and extensively used sweeteners, thinking like many other people that they are at least not harmful to me and perhaps even beneficial,” he said. “Given the surprising results that we got in our study, I made a personal preference to stop using them.
“We don’t think the body of evidence that we present in humans is sufficient to change the current recommendations,” he continued. “But I would hope it would provoke a healthy discussion.”
In the initial set of experiments, the scientists added saccharin (the sweetener in the pink packets of Sweet’N Low), sucralose (the yellow packets of Splenda) or aspartame (the blue packets of Equal) to the drinking water of 10-week-old mice. Other mice drank plain water or water supplemented with glucose or with ordinary table sugar. After a week, there was little change in the mice who drank water or sugar water, but the group getting artificial sweeteners developed marked intolerance to glucose.
Glucose intolerance, in which the body is less able to cope with large amounts of sugar, can lead to more serious illnesses like metabolic syndrome and Type 2 diabetes.
When the researchers treated the mice with antibiotics, killing much of the bacteria in the digestive system, the glucose intolerance went away.
At present, the scientists cannot explain how the sweeteners affect the bacteria or why the three different molecules of saccharin, aspartame and sucralose result in similar changes in the glucose metabolism.
To further test their hypothesis that the change in glucose metabolism was caused by a change in bacteria, they performed another series of experiments, this time focusing just on saccharin. They took intestinal bacteria from mice who had drank saccharin-laced water and injected them in mice that had never been exposed any saccharin. Those mice developed the same glucose intolerance. And DNA sequencing showed that saccharin had markedly changed the variety of bacteria in the guts of the mice that consumed it.
Next, the researchers turned to a study they were conducting to track the effects of nutrition and gut bacteria on people’s long-term health. For 381 nondiabetic participants in the study, the researchers found a correlation between the reported use of any kind of artificial sweeteners and signs of glucose intolerance. In addition, the gut bacteria of those who used artificial sweeteners were different from those who did not.
Finally, they recruited seven volunteers who normally did not use artificial sweeteners and over six days gave them the maximum amount of saccharin recommended by the United States Food and Drug Administration. In four of the seven, blood-sugar levels were disrupted in the same way as in mice.
Further, when they injected the human participants’ bacteria into the intestines of mice, the animals again developed glucose intolerance, suggesting that effect was the same in both mice and humans.
“That experiment is compelling to me,” Dr. Nagler said.
Intriguingly — “superstriking and interesting to us,” Dr. Segal said — the intestinal bacteria of the people who did experience effects were different from those who did not. This suggests that any effects of artificial sweeteners are not universal. It also suggests probiotics — medicines consisting of live bacteria — could be used to shift gut bacteria to a population that reversed the glucose intolerance.
Dr. Frank Hu, a professor of nutrition and immunology at the Harvard School of Public Health who did not take part in the study, called it interesting but far from conclusive and added that given the number of participants, “I think the validity of the human study is questionable.”
The researchers said future research would examine aspartame and sucralose in detail as well as other alternative sweeteners like stevia.
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3) Busy Days Precede a March Focusing on Climate Change
In a three-story warehouse in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, hundreds of people are working to turn the People’s Climate March planned for Sunday into a visual spectacle.
There were victims of Hurricane Sandy from the Rockaways toiling with artists on a 30-foot inflatable life preserver, and immigrant artists constructing a papier-mâché tree embedded with axes. Elsewhere, religious leaders were building an ark and scientists were constructing a chalkboard covered with calculations about carbon.
The run-up to what organizers say will be the largest protest about climate change in the history of the United States has transformed New York City into a beehive of planning and creativity, drawing graying local activists and young artists from as far away as Germany.
“This is the final crunch, the product of six months of work to make the People’s March a big, beautiful expression of the climate movement,” said Rachel Schragis, a Brooklyn-based artist and activist who is coordinating the production of floats, banners and signs.
The march, organized by more than a dozen environmental, labor and social justice groups, is planned to wend its way through Midtown Manhattan along a two-mile route approved by the city’s Police Department last month. It will start at 11:30 a.m. at Columbus Circle, then move east along 59th Street, south on Avenue of the Americas and west on 42nd Street, finishing at 11th Avenue and West 34th Street.
Unlike the nuclear disarmament demonstration that drew more than 500,000 people to Central Park for speeches in 1982, the event on Sunday will rely on the marchers themselves to broadcast a message of frustration and anger at what organizers describe as a lack of action by American and world leaders.
At 1 p.m., after a moment of silence, marchers will be encouraged to use instruments, cellphone alarms and whistles to make as much noise as possible, helped by at least 20 marching bands and the tolling of church bells across the city.
“We’re going to sound the burglar alarm on people who are stealing the future,” said Bill McKibben, co-founder of the group 350.org, which is helping to organize the march, and the author of several books about climate change, notably “The End of Nature,” published 25 years ago.
“Since then we’ve watched the summer Arctic disappear and the ocean turn steadily acidic,” Mr. McKibben said in a phone interview on Wednesday. “It’s not just that things are not getting better. They are getting horribly worse. Unlike any other issue we have faced, this one comes with a time limit. If we don’t get it right soon, we’ll never get it right.”
Organizers say it is impossible to predict how many people could show up. But 1,400 “partner organizations” have signed on, ranging from small groups to international coalitions. In addition, students have mobilized marchers at more than 300 college campuses, and more than 2,700 climate events in 158 countries are planned to coincide with the New York march, including rallies in Delhi, Jakarta, London, Melbourne and Rio de Janeiro.
In New York, organizers are expecting 496 buses from as far away as Minnesota and Kansas to bring marchers.
“The most useful gallon of gasoline anyone will ever burn is the one that gets them to the march,” Mr. McKibben said. (By contrast, all floats will be pulled by biodeisel-powered cars and trucks or by hand, organizers said.)
The forecast called for mostly sunny weather with a high temperature of 81, which would encourage a larger turnout. In February 2013, more than 40,000 protesters turned out in Washington to demand action on climate change and to challenge the contentious Keystone XL pipeline.
The police are closing off Central Park West north of Columbus Circle, and organizers are asking marchers to gather from West 65th to West 86th Street, before the start of the march.
Leslie Cagan, a longtime New York activist who coordinated the nuclear disarmament demonstration in 1982, has met numerous times with the Police Department to iron out the logistics of Sunday’s march. “That area on Central Park West can hold a lot of people — we believe between 80,000 and 100,000,” she said. The police would not provide estimates of the number of expected attendees.
Organizers have asked marchers to go to various themed staging areas along Central Park West depending on their leanings.
For example, a contingent of labor, families, students and older adults can congregate north of West 65th Street under the rubric “We Can Build the Future.”
Organizers have run phone banks, blanketed subway stations with fliers and issued weekly news releases.
They also produced a 52-minute documentary, “Disruption,” about planning the march. The film, released on Sept. 7, includes footage of meetings and pre-march rallies — interspersed with lessons on climate change and the lagging efforts so far to stop it.
Organizers say they chose Sunday because it comes ahead of a climate summit at the United Nations on Tuesday. World delegates are expected to hold high-level discussions about climate change that will lay the groundwork for a potential global agreement on emissions next year in Paris. (Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced on Tuesday that he planned to join the march.)
“When the secretary general invited world leaders to this summit, all of us in the climate justice movement thought, ‘Left to their own devices, these guys will do the same thing they’ve done for 25 years — i.e., nothing,’ ” Mr. McKibben said. “So we thought, we better go to New York, too.”
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4) We Can Save the Caribbean’s Coral Reefs
By JEREMY JACKSON and AYANA ELIZABETH JOHNSON
PARROTFISH eat algae and seaweed. These brightly colored fish with beaklike mouths inhabit coral reefs, the wellsprings of ocean life. Without them and other herbivores, algae and seaweed would overgrow the reefs, suppress coral growth and threaten the incredible array of life that depends on these reefs for shelter and food.
This was happening in Bermuda, until the government in 1990 banned fish traps that were decimating the parrotfish population. Today, Bermuda’s coral reefs are relatively healthy, a bright spot in the wider Caribbean, where total coral cover has declined by half since 1970.
Last month, in a reminder of just how dire the situation facing the world’s coral reefs is, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it was listing 20 species of coral as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, including all of what were once the most abundant Caribbean corals. The action focused primarily on the projected impacts of global warming and ocean acidification. Carbon dioxide emissions are increasing ocean temperatures and making them more acidic — and less hospitable for corals.
But climate change is only half the story. Up to now, the impacts of climate change on reefs have been much less destructive than the localized effects of overfishing, runoff pollution from the land and the destruction of habitats from coastal development. Those problems have exploded in intensity over the past century and will continue to increase sharply with population growth.
Proof of the destructive power of those impacts is evident in the central Pacific where, in spite of rising temperatures, coral cover is many times higher around islands unaffected by fishing and pollution, compared with heavily fished and polluted reefs of nearby islands.
A recent detailed assessment of the changing status of Caribbean reefs over the past 40 years by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network and the International Union for Conservation of Nature provides a similarly important finding that offers hope. Across the Caribbean, reefs near islands with effective local protections and governance, like the ones around Bermuda, have double the amount of living coral compared with those that lack those protections. They also have more fish and clearer waters.But in Florida, banning fish traps — which should result in more parrotfish, less algae and more coral — has not stemmed coral decline. That’s because of extreme local pressures from millions of residents and tourists and insufficient controls on development. Similar problems plague the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, which is being damaged by agricultural runoff and the development of huge ports for exporting coal. Fishing is carefully regulated there, but those other threats must be equally well managed.
The few remaining places in the wider Caribbean with relatively healthy reefs have one thing in common: a greater abundance of parrotfish and other herbivores. They also benefit by being adjacent to islands with comparatively small populations, more modest development and less pollution. You find this in the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary in the northern Gulf of Mexico, on reefs around Curaçao and Bonaire and in protected marine areas in the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands.
Stories about coral reefs commonly focus on doom and gloom. But these new findings indicate that there is actually something we can do right now to help reefs recover: prevent overfishing, overdevelopment and pollution from the land.
None of this lessens our concerns about climate change as humanity burns more coal and oil instead of less. But there is increasing evidence that protection from local stresses promotes the resilience of reef corals to climate change.
Several Caribbean islands are moving to control overfishing and pollution. Barbuda just enacted legislation to protect parrotfish, stop overfishing and establish marine sanctuaries. And the Bahamas, Belize, Bonaire, Cuba and Curaçao are working to enhance protections.
In contrast, the condition of the coral reefs of the Florida Keys, the United States Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico is among the worst in the wider Caribbean, despite vast sums invested in the monitoring of reefs and research on the effects of climate change. This monitoring and research are vitally important, but collecting information without strong corrective action is like a doctor analyzing a patient’s decline without doing everything possible to save her life.
We need to move immediately beyond listings of species as threatened and research about climate change and take rigorous action against the local and global stresses killing corals.
Coral reefs are vital to the economies of the 38 Caribbean countries and territories and their millions of people. These reefs generate roughly $3 billion annually in tourism and fishing and provide protection from storms.
To save coral reefs, we need to follow the lead of Barbuda and our other proactive neighbors. We need to stop all forms of overfishing, establish large and effectively enforced marine protected areas and impose strict regulations on coastal development and pollution while at the same time working to reduce fossil fuel emissions driving climate change. It’s not either/or. It’s all of the above.
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5) Sierra Leone Begins 3-Day Lockdown to Fight Ebola Outbreak
Police officers patrolled the streets of the densely populated capital, telling stragglers to go home and stay indoors. Volunteers in bright jerseys prepared to go house-to-house throughout the country to warn people about Ebola’s dangers and to root out those who might be infected but were staying in hiding.
The normally busy streets of Freetown were empty Friday morning, stores were closed and pedestrians were rare on the main thoroughfares.
The country’s president, justifying the extraordinary move in a radio address Thursday night, suggested that Sierra Leone was engaged in a life-or-death struggle with the disease.“Some of the things we are asking you to do are difficult, but life is better than these difficulties,” President Ernest Bai Koroma said.
More than 200 new cases of Ebola have been reported in Sierra Leone in the past week, according to the World Health Organization, with transmission described as particularly high in the capital; nearly 40 percent of cases in the country were identified in the three weeks preceding Sept. 14; and more than 560 people have died in Sierra Leone, about one-fifth of the total from this outbreak.
The campaign that began here Friday morning reflected the desperation of West African governments — and in particular those of the three hardest-hit countries, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone — as they struggle with an epidemic that the health authorities have warned is showing no signs of slowing down.
No country has attempted anything on the scale of what is being tried in Sierra Leone, where more than 20,000 volunteers enlisted to help identify households where the authorities suspect people infected with the Ebola virus are hiding.
Yet there were plenty of indications on Friday that the campaign promised more than it could initially deliver in this country of six million people, at least in the capital.
Well into the morning, the house-to-house visits had yet to begin in Kroo Bay, a densely populated warren of iron-roof shanties where roughly 14,000 people live, despite officials saying they would start at dawn.
The neighborhood, a perennial home of cholera outbreaks, sits in a sea of muddy lanes and open sewers in which pigs forage. The police cruised into Kroo Bay on a pickup truck, yelling at lingering residents to go indoors and warning of imprisonment; people simply stared at the officers and continued lingering as the police drove off.
“The policeman is doing his thing, and I am doing my thing,” said Kerfala Koroma, 22, a building contractor who added that he was waiting for his breakfast. “We can’t even afford something to eat on a normal day. How can we get something now?” (Mr. Koroma is not related to Sierra Leone’s president.)
Residents insisted that there had been no cases of Ebola in Kroo Bay, although there were loud complaints from some that the bodies of victims had been dumped in a nearby cemetery.
As the morning wore on, the house-to-house volunteers began to assemble in a bare-bones community center, with several noting pointedly that they were not being paid. Others stressed the daunting challenge of covering thousands of households with a team of only 50.
By 9 a.m., with two hours of daylight already gone, the volunteers were still being given their marching orders.
“We told them to come at 6:30, but naturally, in this part of the world, people are not too time-cautious,” Sima Conteh, the volunteers’ coordinator, said with a grin. Elsewhere in town, groups of volunteers could be seen sitting on the sidewalk.
Yet some volunteers expressed hope that their efforts would not be wasted. “You have the chance to get the people with the disease out,” said Emmanuel Cole, a 33-year-old taxi driver who said he had refused to take any passengers since the epidemic began, for fear of becoming infected.
“The country is not moving now. We have got to help the country now,” Mr. Cole said. “It is not a normal time.”
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6) Climate Change March Begins in New York City
Under leaden skies, throngs of demonstrators stretching as far as the eye could see started to move through Midtown Manhattan late Sunday morning, chanting their demands for action on climate change.
With drums and tubas, banners and floats, the People's Climate March turned Columbus Circle, where the march began just before 11:30 a.m., into a colorful tableau. The demonstrators represented a broad coalition of ages, races, geographic locales and interests, with union members, religious leaders, scientists, politicians and students joining the procession.
“I’m here because I really feel that every major social movement in this country has come when people get together,” said Carol Sutton of Norwalk, Conn., the president of a teachers' union. “It begins in the streets.”With world leaders gathering at the United Nations on Tuesday for a climate summit, marchers said the timing was right for the populist message in support of limits on carbon emissions. The signs marchers held were as varied as the movement: “There is No PlanetB,” “Forests Not for Sale” and “Jobs, Justice, Clean Energy.”“The climate is changing,” said Otis Daniels, 58, of the Bronx. “Everyone knows it; everyone feels it. But no one is doing anything about it.”
The march covers a two-mile route, down Avenue of the Americas, west on 42nd Street to 11th Avenue and south to 34th Street.
The U.N. summit this week is expected to create a framework for a potential global agreement on emissions late next year in Paris.
The timing of the march was also significant in another regard. Last week, meteorologists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that this summer — the months of June, July and August — was the hottest on record for the globe, and that 2014 was on track to break the record for the hottest year, set in 2010.
“Climate change is no longer an environmental issue; it’s an everybody issue,” Sam Barratt, a campaign director for the online advocacy group Avaaz, which helped plan the march, said on Friday.“The number of natural disasters has increased and the science is so much more clear,” he added. “This march has many messages, but the one that we’re seeing and hearing is the call for a renewable revolution.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, whose administration announced this weekend a sweeping plan to overhaul energy efficiency standards in all city-owned buildings, was among the high-profile participants expected to join the march, including the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon; former Vice President Al Gore; the actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo; at least two United States senators; and one-third of the New York City Council.
Additionally, nearly 2,700 climate events were planned in more than 150 countries to coincide with the march, considered the centerpiece of the international protest. They ranged from a small rally in Tanzania to major demonstrations from Berlin to Bogata.
Participants from across the country began arriving early on Sunday morningat the staging area near the American Museum of Natural History. Rosemary Snow, 75, stretched her legs after a nearly 14-hour bus drive from Georgia.
“I thought we’d have a lot of younger people on the bus,” said Ms. Snow, who made the trip with her grandson. “There’s a really great mix of people.”
Ms. Snow had traveled with dozens of others who came from different parts of the state, including Valdosta, Savannah and Atlanta.
A professor at the University of Georgia, Chris Cuomo of Decatur, Ga., said the group was organized by the Georgia Climate Change Coalition.
She said she hoped the coalition’s presence at the rally would “let the rest of the world know that people from small-town America, urban America, rural America care about climate change.”
Nearby, Ahni Rocheleau of Santa Fe, N.M., was seated while eating a breakfast of organic yogurt and buckwheat pancakes. She is a member of the Great March for Climate Action, a cross-country walk to raise awareness for alternative and sustainable energy practices.
“We hope the heart and mind of the people will be awakened,” she said. “Coal is not the way to go.”
Nearly 500 buses brought marchers from South Carolina, Kansas, Minnesota and Canada, while a “climate train” transported participants from California.
At 12:58 p.m., a moment of silence was to be followed by a blare of noise — a symbolic sounding of the alarm on climate change — from horns, whistles and cellphone alarms. More than 20 marching bands and tolling church bells were expected contribute to the cacophony.
No speeches were planned, but the march was to end with a block party on 11th Avenue between 34th and 38th Streets. There, participants could get a closer look at many of the floats and other artwork created for the march, including a 30-foot inflatable life preserver, 100 sunflowers and a model of the New York City skyline with bicyclists powering its lights.
New York’s political establishment was set to come out in force. On Friday, Mayor de Blasio announced on Twitter his intention to join the protest. “Proud to walk in #PeoplesClimate March on Sunday,” he wrote. “It’s everyone’s responsibility to leave a livable planet for the next generation.”
At least 17 council members planned to march. In a nod to the event, the Council announced a related package of bills on Friday aimed at reducing the city’s carbon footprint by connecting unemployed New Yorkers to green jobs, making buildings more energy-efficient and promoting low-carbon transportation. The legislation seeks an 80 percent reduction in the city’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
With its bands and colorful floats, the march offered a festive atmosphere, but organizers said that the underlying message was somber. “We are trying to celebrate our lives and this planet in order to show that this is what we are fighting for,” said Leslie Cagan, the logistics coordinator for the march. “It’s the human spirit — and everything else on this planet — that is in danger.”
The march was organized by a dozen environmental, labor and social justice groups, including the Sierra Club, Avaaz, New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, 350.org, the Transport Workers Union Local 100 and 1199 S.E.I.U. In addition, more than 1,570 “partner organizations” signed on to march.
Organizers were hoping that the warm weather forecasted for the day would yield a large turnout.
“Our biggest problem is the financial power of the fossil fuel industry,” said Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org and author of “The End of Nature.”
“We can’t match that money,” he said. “So we have to work in the currency of movements — passion, spirit, creativity and bodies — and it will all be on display on Sunday.”
Kenneth Rosen contributed reporting.
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7) U.S. and Allies Strike ISIS Targets in Syria
The attacks were said to have scattered the jihadist forces and damaged the network of facilities they have built in Syria that helped fuel the group’s seizure of a large part of Iraq this year.
Separate from the attacks on the Islamic State, the United States Central Command, or Centcom, said that American forces acting alone “took action” against “a network of seasoned Al Qaeda veterans” from the Khorasan group in Syria to disrupt “imminent attack planning against the United States and Western interests.”
Officials did not reveal where or when such attacks might take place.Al Qaeda cut ties with the Islamic State earlier this year because the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, disobeyed orders from Al Qaeda to fight only in Iraq. Just days ago, American officials said the Khorasan group, led by a shadowy figure who was once in Osama bin Laden’s inner circle, had emerged in the past year as the Syria-based cell most intent on launching a terrorist attack on the United States or on its installations overseas.
The latest campaign opened with multiple strikes before dawn that focused on the Islamic State’s de facto capital, the city of Raqqa, and on its bases in the surrounding countryside. Other strikes hit in the provinces of Deir al-Zour and Hasaka, whose oil wells the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, have exploited to finance its operations.
The extent of the damage caused by the strikes remained unclear. Centcom said the wave of fighter planes, bombers, drones and cruise missiles struck 14 targets linked to the Islamic State.
“All aircraft safely exited the strike areas,” the statement said.
Almost 50 cruise missiles were launched from two American vessels in the Red Sea and the north of the Persian Gulf, it said, adding that four other attacks were launched on militant targets in Iraq in the same period, bringing the total there to 194.
The intensity and scale of the strikes were greater than those launched by the United States in Iraq, where it has been bombing select Islamic State targets for months. The air campaign also marks the biggest direct military intervention in Syria since the crisis began more than three years ago.
Centcom identified the Arab states participating in the campaign as Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Their participation is seen as important to limit criticisms that the United States is waging war alone against Muslims. But their role varied between support for the strikes and participation, the military said.
The Jordanian Army said on Tuesday that it had carried out airstrikes against “terrorist groups” that were plotting to attack Jordan, according to Reuters.
In intervening in Syria, the United States is injecting its military might into a brutal civil war between the government of President Bashar al-Assad, the Islamic State and a range of rebel groups that originally took up arms to fight Mr. Assad but have also come to oppose the Islamic State.
It was unclear what effect the American-led strikes would have on the larger conflict.
The Islamic State, while having chalked up numerous victories against the Syrian and Iraqi security forces and against Syrian rebels, has proved vulnerable to air power in Iraq, and it is unlikely that it can continue to hold all of its territory and facilities amid a sustained air campaign.
American officials said that the strikes were not coordinated with the government of Mr. Assad, who President Obama has said has lost his legitimacy to rule and should step down. But Syrian state television reported on Monday that the United States had informed Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations before the attacks were launched. This followed weeks of threats by Syrian officials that any uncoordinated strikes on Syria would be considered an act of aggression.
Some of Syria’s allies have suggested that the government in Damascus would benefit from strikes, although analysts question whether the Syrian military has the forces it would need to do so.
Syria also has hundreds of rebels groups, many of which hate the Islamic State, and the United States has been working with allies to build up a small number groups deemed moderate. But these forces remain relatively small and are far from the Islamic State’s locations, so there is little chance that they will soon be able to seize control of any areas vacated by the Islamic State.
Reuters quoted an unidentified ISIS fighter as saying “these attacks will be answered.” The militants have already released videos showing the beheadings of two American hostages and of one British captive, and have threatened a fourth hostage, a Briton, with the same fate.
Additionally, an Algerian group linked to Islamic State has claimed to have kidnapped a French citizen. Prime Minister Manuel Valls told French radio that there would be “no discussion, no negotiation and we will never give in to blackmail” about the hostage’s fate.
France, whose warplanes joined the air campaign in Iraq last week but not the overnight strikes in Syria, has strongly denied persistent reports that it has paid ransom money to free its citizens held hostage by jihadist groups.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported strikes in five Syrian provinces, in the country’s north and east, targeting bases and training camps of the Islamic State and other groups.
In addition to Islamic State bases in the provinces of Raqqa, Hasaka, Deir al-Zour and Aleppo, strikes also hit bases belonging to the Nusra Front further west, killing at least seven Nusra fighters and eight civilians, according to the observatory, which tracks the conflict from Britain through a network of contacts in Syria.
Even for a population that has grown used to the sounds and sights of war, the new strikes proved surprising.
In a video posted online, a man in Idlib Province inspected a greenish metal hunk of what he said was the remainder of the munitions used in a strike.
“No one knows what happened yet,” the man said. “This was the first time we have heard an explosion like this during this revolution.”
Adding to the broader ramifications of the Syrian war, the Israeli military said Tuesday that it had shot down a Syrian fighter jet that had “infiltrated into Israeli airspace,” the first such incident in at least a quarter of a century.
Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a military spokesman, said the Patriot air-defense system had intercepted a Russian-made Sukhoi warplane over the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights around 9:15 a.m.
On Syria’s northern border, meanwhile, more than 130,000 Syrian Kurds have fled into Turkey to escape an advance by Islamic State fighters. The humanitarian catastrophe could worsen within days. The United Nations relief agency in Geneva said on Tuesday that it was possible that all 400,000 inhabitants of a Syrian Kurdish border town, which Arabs refer to as Ayn-al-Arab and Kurds call Kobani, would to try to flee into Turkey.
The United Nations human rights agency said Tuesday that it had received “very alarming” reports from the town of “deliberate killing of civilians, including women and children, the abduction of hundreds of Kurds by ISIL, and widespread looting and destruction of infrastructure and private property.”
Militants had taken over the main source of water, leading to severe shortages, the agency said. “While an estimated 138,000 people have fled the area,” the organization added in a statement, “hundreds of thousands remain in the region, living in fear of the kind of persecution that ISIL has carried out against religious and ethnic minorities elsewhere in Syria and Iraq.”
In Britain, senior officials said Prime Minister David Cameron was weighing whether to seek Parliament’s approval to join the air war, but only in Iraq and at the invitation of the Baghdad government.
Ben Hubbard reported from Beirut, Alan Cowell from London and Helene Cooper from Washington. Mohammed Ghannam contributed reporting from Beirut. Eric Schmitt from Washington, and Somini Sengupta from the United Nations.
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8) The New York Jail Scandal Continues
As The Times reported on Monday, all this was expunged at the order of the corrections commissioner at the time, Dora Schriro, who not only ordered the scrubbing of information damaging to the two officials but promoted Mr. Clemons to assistant chief of administration, despite an internal investigation raising questions about his conduct. This outrageous behavior lends credence to the charge that the department historically protected and empowered people who were comfortable with misconduct and a deep-seated culture of violence.
The problems did not stop with Ms. Schriro. According to The Times article, Joseph Ponte, who was appointed corrections commissioner by Mayor Bill de Blasio to clean up the troubled department, promoted both men. Mr. Gumusdere became warden of the largest jail at Rikers Island. Mr. Clemons was named the department’s highest-ranking officer, despite the advice of the Department of Investigation, which had reviewed his record and advised against it.
The mayor’s office insists that Mr. Ponte never saw the original report. It also says that after inspecting their work, Mr. Ponte determined the two men to be the best of the pool eligible for promotion. If true, that says volumes about the Bloomberg administration’s inattention to the problems at the corrections department and the mediocre staff it bequeathed to Mr. de Blasio. The city says it is reviewing the issue in light of the latest revelations.
The report, issued in August by the United States attorney in Manhattan, Preet Bharara, depicted Rikers Island as a horrific place where teenagers routinely suffered injuries during sadistic beatings by correction officers who acted without fear of being reported or punished. The report said that “inmates are beaten as a form of punishment, sometimes in apparent retribution for some perceived disrespectful conduct,” adding, “correction officers improperly use injurious force in response to refusals to follow orders, verbal taunts, or insults, even when the inmate presents no threat to the safety or security of staff or other inmates.” The Justice Department has called on the city to completely overhaul departmental operations and recommended that it remove adolescents from Rikers.
Mr. Bharara said in a statement on Monday that news of the suppressed information and “questionable promotions” did not instill confidence that the city would quickly meet its constitutional obligation to change the climate at Rikers. He further noted that the Justice Department stood ready to take legal action to compel long-overdue reforms at the city jails.
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9) Israeli Forces Kill 2 Suspects in Murder of Jewish Teenagers
By JODI RUDOREN
JERUSALEM — Israeli forces early Tuesday killed the two men they suspected of abducting and murdering three Israeli teenagers from the occupied West Bank in June, according to a military spokesman, closing a crucial chapter in what became the bloodiest period of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in decades.
Lt. Col. Peter Lerner of the Israeli military said Marwan Qawasmeh, 29, and Amer Abu Aisha, 33, “came out shooting” around 6 a.m. as troops breached a two-story structure in Hebron where the suspects had been holed up for a week. “In that exchange, one of them was killed on the spot,” Colonel Lerner said. “We have one confirmed kill and the second assumed killed. Because of how he fell back into the void and the grenades that we threw after him, it’s very unlikely that he survived.”The June 12 disappearance of Naftali Fraenkel and Gilad Shaar, both 16, and Eyal Yifrach, 19, as they hitchhiked home from their West Bank yeshivas, and the subsequent Israeli crackdown in Hebron and surrounding areas, helped set off an escalation of violence that culminated in a seven-week battle between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip. Israel quickly blamed Hamas, the Islamist movement that dominates Gaza, for the kidnappings; Mr. Qawasmeh and Mr. Abu Aisha are affiliated with Hamas, though the Israeli authorities believe they acted without direction by, or perhaps even without the knowledge of, the movement’s leadership.
After the three teenagers’ bodies were found under a pile of rocks in an open field not far from Hebron, Jewish extremists snatched a Palestinian 16-year-old old, Muhammad Abu Khdeir, in his East Jerusalem neighborhood of Shuafat, beat him and burned him alive as an act of revenge. A 29-year-old eyeglass-store owner with a history of psychiatric problems and two 16-year-old relatives, all ultra-Orthodox Jews, face murder charges in that case.
The Israeli military operation that began less than a week later killed more than 2,100 Palestinians, including about 500 children, and destroyed thousands of buildings in Gaza, leaving more than 100,000 people homeless. On the Israeli side, 67 soldiers and six civilians were killed before an agreement was reached on Aug. 26 to halt the hostilities.
The early-morning shootout threatened to derail the scheduled resumption of talks Tuesday in Cairo on terms for a lasting truce, including: an arrangement for the reconstruction of Gaza; the possible exchange of Israeli soldiers’ remains for Hamas operatives arrested after the kidnapping; the lifting of Israeli restrictions on Gaza travel and trade; and efforts to disarm Hamas and other Gaza-based militant groups. Izzat al-Risheq, a Hamas political leader based in Lebanon, wrote on Twitter that Palestinian negotiators en route to the talks had turned around in protest and were “deciding on the next step.”
Hamas leaders praised Mr. Qawasmeh and Mr. Abu Aisha and described the kidnapping as part of the resistance to Israel’s occupation. Some Palestinians described the killings Tuesday morning as an extrajudicial assassination. Several schools in Hebron were closed in mourning.
“This is premeditated murder,” Kamel Hmeid, the governor of Hebron, said on Voice of Palestine Radio. “They have indicated from the start that they are not interested in arrests or confessions; they want them dead. It is a unilateral trial, judgment and verdict.”
Rachel Fraenkel, Naftali’s mother, said she was relieved to hear the kidnappers had been killed because she would be spared having to see them in court or, potentially, released as part of a political deal. She said he had “no emotional reaction” to the news but that her other six children cheered when she told them what happened.
“My kids are happy that the bad guys are gone,” Ms. Fraenkel said in a telephone interview. “We were worried about these two dangerous people, with weapons, having nothing to lose being out there. It’s a relief to know that they won’t hurt any other innocent people.”
Mr. Qawasmeh, who studied Shariah law in college but opened a barbershop after learning to cut hair in prison — he had been arrested a total of eight times, by both Israel and the Palestinian Authority, most recently in 2010 — is part of a large and prominent Hebron family with connections to Hamas. A relative, Hussam Qawasmeh, was indicted earlier this month and is suspected of being the logistical commander of the cell, handling $60,000 sent in five installments from Gaza that the Israeli authorities say was used to purchase two cars, two M-16 rifles and two pistols used in the kidnapping.
Mr. Abu Aisha held a series of odd jobs after a swimming accident that put him in a coma in 2007, and was arrested twice by Israel, in 2005 and 2006.
Hussam Bardan, a Hamas spokesman, described Mr. Qawasmeh and Mr. Abu Aisha as members of the group’s armed wing and praised them for “a long life of sacrifice and giving.”
“We are proud of you and our people will not forget your jihad,” Mr. Bardan wrote in statements circulated on social media. “You trampled the occupation’s nose in the dirt and destroyed its so-called security legend.”
Colonel Lerner described the building, in an urban section of northern Hebron, as a two-story “workshop” on a hill, with storefronts on the ground level and an area below not visible from the street. Another military official told Israel radio it was owned by the Qawasmeh family. Three sons of Arafat Qawasmeh, who was arrested in July for assisting in the kidnapping, were arrested at the site Tuesday morning.
Brig. Gen. Avi Yedai, head of the military’s forces in the West Bank, told Israel Radio that the kidnappers were given a chance to surrender, but did not respond. The Israelis then began destroying the building with a tractor and shooting at it, General Yedai said.
Colonel Lerner said of the suspects, “They were armed, they were in hiding, they were fugitives and they understood we were trying to find them.” He added, “The intelligence indicated that their intention was to fight back, and we took the necessary precautions in order to address that threat.”
The kidnapping gripped and united Israeli society, and led to an intense crackdown on Hebron in which hundreds of people, including many Hamas political leaders, were arrested, as well as an extensive 17-day search effort in the surrounding hills. But the authorities believe the three teenagers were killed shortly after they were picked up around 10 p.m. from a hitchhiking post frequented by West Bank yeshiva students.
Soon after the teenagers got into the kidnappers’ car, a stolen Hyundai i35, according to court records revealed with Hussam Qawasmeh’s indictment, one of the Palestinians “pulled out a gun, pointed it at them and told them they had been kidnapped and they should keep quiet.” One of the Israelis, Gilad, managed to dial the police emergency line from his cellphone, but the call was initially dismissed as a prank, even though he said, “I’ve been kidnapped,” followed by what sound like gunshots, a painful groan and then celebratory cheers in Arabic.
Mr. Qawasmeh and Mr. Abu Aisha were named as the prime suspects on June 26, days before the bodies were found in a plot of land owned by the Qawasmeh family. It remains unclear how and where they hid for three months, or how much help they had.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel praised the intelligence teams and special forces units that had found the men, and said he had called the parents of the teenagers after the operation was complete.
“There is nothing that will take away their pain, and there is nothing that will return these amazing dear boys, but I said to them there is accounting of justice,” Mr. Netanyahu said at the start of a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, according to a statement from his office. “I told them that we executed the mission that we promised to execute before them and all of the people of Israel.” He also told the cabinet: “We will continue to strike terror in every place.”
Fares Akram contributed reporting from Gaza City.
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10) Talk in Synagogue of Israel and Gaza Goes From Debate to Wrath to Rage
With the war in Gaza still raging, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum offered an unusual prayer for peace last month during a Friday night service at the large predominantly gay synagogue she leads in New York. Cautioning her flock not to “harden our hearts” against any who had suffered, she wove throughout the prayer the names of young Israeli soldiers — as well as Palestinian children — who were killed in Gaza.
The reaction was swift: A member of the board posted his resignation letter on Facebook, accusing Rabbi Kleinbaum of spreading propaganda for the militant Palestinian group Hamas, and three more congregants soon left.
From the other direction, Rabbi Ron Aigen heard criticism at his synagogue in Montreal this month after he gave a sermon asserting that in the recent battle, Israel had endeavored to live up to the highest standards of Jewish teaching on ethical and just war. He said that he received a letter from a member who had not heard the sermon, but announced that she was quitting because there was no room to express criticism of Israel in the synagogue, which is Reconstructionist and one of the most liberal in Montreal.
Forty-seven years after Israel’s victory in the 1967 Middle East war — celebrated by Jews worldwide — Israel’s occupation of Arab lands won in battle and its standoff with the Palestinians have become so divisive that many rabbis say it is impossible to have a civil conversation about Israel in their synagogues. Debate among Jews about Israel is nothing new, but some say the friction is now fire. Rabbis said in interviews that it may be too hot to touch, and many are anguishing over what to say about Israel in their sermons during the High Holy Days, which begin Wednesday evening.
Particularly in the large cohort of rabbis who consider themselves liberals and believers in a “two-state solution,” some said they are now hesitant to speak much about Israel at all. If they defend Israel, they risk alienating younger Jews who, rabbis say they have observed, are more detached from the Jewish state and organized Judaism. If they say anything critical of Israel, they risk angering the older, more conservative members who often are the larger donors and active volunteers.
The recent bloody outbreak of fighting between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip may have done little to change the military or political status quo there, but rabbis in the North American diaspora say the summertime war brought into focus how the ground under them has shifted.
“It used to be that Israel was always the uniting factor in the Jewish world,” said Rabbi Aigen, who has served Congregation Dorshei Emet in Montreal for 39 years. “But it’s become contentious and sadly, I think it is driving people away from the organized Jewish community. Even trying to be centrist and balanced and present two sides of the issue, it is fraught with danger.”
Israel is still, without a doubt, the spiritual center and the fondest cause of global Jewry. Many rabbis said that Hamas’s summer assaults on Israel, by rocket fire and underground tunnels, the anti-Semitism that erupted around the world and the rise of the terrorist group that calls itself the Islamic State in neighboring Syria left them feeling more aware of Israel’s vulnerability and more protective of it than ever.
“There’s just been a tremendous outpouring of support, a sense of real connection and identification with our brothers and sisters in Israel,” said Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly, which represents the Conservative movement, summing up what she heard during a recent “webinar” for rabbis preparing for the High Holy Days.
But many rabbis said in interviews conducted in recent weeks that, though they love and support Israel, they feel conflicted about its direction. These are rabbis in the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements — not the Orthodox, who make up about 10 percent of American Jews and tend to lean right on Israel. Some are rabbis who believe that the expansion of settlements in the West Bank is undermining the possibility for Palestinians to have a state of their own. They believe Israel must defend itself, but they questioned the Israeli bomb strikes in Gaza that killed so many women and children. Now, they said, they are more reluctant than ever to be open with their congregants about their views.
“There is the sense that the ability to criticize Israel has been diminished because of the war, because of the atrocities that Hamas perpetrates among its own people, and because Israel needs our support since the international community is so overwhelmingly anti-Israel,” said Rabbi Jonathan A. Stein, a recently retired senior rabbi at Temple Shaaray Tefila in Manhattan.
“The easy sermon for a rabbi to give this year will be on the rise of anti-Semitism across the world. That is a softball,” said Rabbi Stein, who is also the immediate past president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, which represents the Reform movement. “The more difficult sermon to give will be one that has any kind of critical posture.”
His sentiments were echoed by others who did not want to be identified because they felt they would risk their jobs. In a recent effort to quantify the phenomenon, one-third of 552 rabbis who responded to a questionnaire put out last year by the Jewish Council for Public Affairs said they were reluctant to express their true views on Israel. (Most who responded were not Orthodox.) The “doves” were far more likely to say they were fearful of speaking their minds than the “hawks.”
Rabbi Jill Jacobs, executive director of T’ruah: The Rabbinical Call for Human Rights, a liberal group with 1,800 member rabbis, said: “Rabbis are just really scared because they get slammed by their right-wing congregants, who are often the ones with the purse strings. They are not necessarily the numerical majority, but they are the loudest.”
One Midwestern rabbi in the Conservative movement, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is raising money from Jewish donors, said he was rejected for a position at a temple after he told the board that “there’s not just one Jewish point of view” on Israel. Another rabbi’s board put a note in her file saying she cannot speak about Israel.
After she read the names of children killed in Gaza, Rabbi Kleinbaum found herself vilified on social media. But she retained the backing of her board at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, the largest gay synagogue in the country, and some new members joined, she said. Her message, she said in an interview, is not so controversial. “If we as Jews don’t feel the pain for the loss of life of children,” she said, “we’re losing a piece of our soul.”
There is more space to be critical of Israel in Israel than in North America, said Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, a former president of the Union for Reform Judaism, who wrote an article for the current issue of Reform Judaism magazine on rabbis who feel “muzzled.” He said in an interview, “There are a range of opinions in Israel, and there should be a range of opinions here.”
Rabbi Yoffie suggested that synagogues draw a “red line” excluding those who support boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel. Few rabbis who publicly support the “B.D.S.” movement lead congregations. Rabbi Brant Rosen, one of the few, announced to his congregants in a mournful letter this month that in the coming months he will step down from leadership at the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston, Ill., after 17 years because “my activism has become a lightning rod for division.”
Rabbi Rosen said in an interview: “For many Jews, Israel is their Judaism, or at least a big part of it. So when someone challenges the centrality of Israel in a public way, it’s very painful and very difficult, especially when that person is their rabbi.”
Last year, the Board of Rabbis of Southern California of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles tried and failed to organize an event exploring how to have a dialogue about Israel, in part because of logistics and in part because it was just too contentious, said Jonathan Freund, vice president of the board.
“It was kind of ironic,” Mr. Freund said, “because we couldn’t in the end figure out how to talk about how to talk about it.”
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11) Washington: Marijuana-Use Tickets Are Nullified
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
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12) Deaths From Faulty Switch in G.M. Cars Edge Higher
By HILARY STOUT
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13) In Colorado, a Student Counterprotest to an Anti-Protest Curriculum
By JACK HEALY
ARVADA, Colo. — A new conservative school board majority here in the Denver suburbs recently proposed a curriculum-review committee to promote patriotism, respect for authority and free enterprise and to guard against educational materials that “encourage or condone civil disorder.” In response, hundreds of students, teachers and parents gave the board their own lesson in civil disobedience.
On Tuesday, hundreds of students from high schools across the Jefferson County school district, the second largest in Colorado, streamed out of school and along busy thoroughfares, waving signs and championing the value of learning about the fractious and tumultuous chapters of American history.
“It’s gotten bad,” said Griffin Guttormsson, a junior at Arvada High School who wants to become a teacher and spent the school day soliciting honks from passing cars. “The school board is insane. You can’t erase our history. It’s not patriotic. It’s stupid.”The student walkout came after a bitter school board election last year and months of acrimony over charter schools, teacher pay, kindergarten expansion and, now, the proposed review committee, which would evaluate Advanced Placement United States history and elementary school health classes.
The teachers’ union, whose members forced two high schools to close Friday by calling in sick, has been in continual conflict with the new board; the board, in turn, has drawn praise from Americans for Prosperity-Colorado, a conservative group affiliated with the Koch family foundations. In April, Dustin Zvonek, the group’s director, wrote in an op-ed that the board’s election was an “exciting and hopeful moment for the county and the school district.”
So far, nothing is settled in Jefferson County. The board put off a discussion of the curriculum-review committee until a meeting in October, and Ken Witt, the board president, suggested that some of its proposed language about not promoting “civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law” might be cut.
“A lot of those words were more specific and more pointed than they have to be,” Mr. Witt said. He said that the school board was responsible for making decisions about curriculum and that the review committee would give a wider spectrum of parents and community members the power to examine what was taught in schools. He said that some had made censorship allegations “to incite and upset the student population.”
But on Tuesday, those allegations were more than enough to draw hundreds of students into the sun. They waved signs declaring, “It’s world history, not white history,” and talked about Cesar Chavez and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Leaders of the walkout urged others to stay out of the streets and not to curse, and sympathetic parents brought poster board, magic markers and bottles of water.
Almost from the outset, the three conservative newcomers to the five-person board clashed with the two others, and a steady stream of 3-to-2 votes came to represent the sharp divisions on the board and in the community. Critics of the new majority have assailed the board for hiring its own lawyer, calling it a needless expense, and accused them of conducting school business outside of public meetings. In February, the district’s superintendent, Cindy Stevenson, announced during a packed, emotional meeting that she was leaving after 12 years because the board did not trust or respect her. Her replacement, an assistant superintendent from Douglas County, prompted more accusations that the new majority in Jefferson County was trying to steer the district far to the right.
“We’ve had conservatives on our board before,” said Michele Patterson, the president of the district’s parent-teacher association. “They were wonderful. These people, they’re not interested in balance or compromise. They have a political agenda that they’re intent on pushing through.”
Mr. Witt rejected the criticism, saying he was dedicated to improving student achievement, giving equal footing to charter-school students and rewarding educators for doing their jobs well.“I would rather be able to do those things without conflict, but at the end of the day, it’s very important that we align with those goals,” he said.
In March 2010, a similar debate roiled the Texas Board of Education as its members voted overwhelmingly to adopt a social studies curriculum that heralded American capitalism and ensured that students would learn about the conservative movement’s rise in the 1980s.
In Colorado, students said the protests had been organized over the weekend on Facebook groups after they read about the teacher sick day on Friday. Some on Tuesday wandered off after a while or returned to class. Others stayed out for hours.
Leighanne Grey, a senior at Arvada High School, said that after second period, a student ran through the halls yelling, “The protest is still on!” and she and scores of her classmates got up and left.
She said that learning about history, strife and all, had given her a clearer understanding of the country.
“As we grow up, you always hear that America’s the greatest, the land of the free and the home of the brave,” she said. “For all the good things we’ve done, we’ve done some terrible things. It’s important to learn about those things, or we’re doomed to repeat the past.”
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14) A California Dream: Not Having to Settle for Just One Bedroom
For decades, comfortable suburbs like this one just south of Los Angeles boomed with new housing tracts designed to attract the latest arrivals. When space started to come at a premium, developers moved inland, building more homes for people who could not afford the more expensive coastal areas.
But now, cities across the state are grappling with a dwindling stock of housing that can be considered affordable for anyone but the wealthiest. In much of the state, a two-bedroom apartment or home is virtually impossible to acquire with anything less than a six-figure salary.
“It’s hard to imagine how all of California doesn’t become like New York City and San Francisco, where you have very rich people and poor people but nothing in between,” said Richard K. Green, an economist and director of the Lusk Center for Real Estate at the University of Southern California. “That’s socially unhealthy and unsustainable, but it’s where we are going right now — affordability is its worst ever, and we’re seeing a hollowing-out of the middle class here.”
The problem extends far beyond San Francisco, where wealth from the technology industry has sent housing costs skyrocketing. In Los Angeles and Orange Counties, less than 25 percent of homes for sale are within reach of the region’s middle-class earners, according to an analysis by Trulia, a real estate website. Of 10 markets nationwide that Trulia ranked as least affordable for the middle class, six were in California.
“I talk a lot of buyers out of sticker shock,” said Linda Ginex, a real estate agent in Orange County. She routinely steers clients to suburbs they might not have initially considered or, for people who insist on living in the most desirable cities, into condominiums instead of houses. “A lot of people who grow up here think they can afford what their parents had, but that’s not always realistic,” she said.
In Los Angeles, the average renter spends nearly half of his or her income on rent, according to a study released this year by the University of California, Los Angeles. To make the rent, many families have opted to double up with other families, sometimes cramming six or seven people into a small apartment.
Denny Bak, 31, who grew up as a son of a minister in Aliso Viejo, a small city in southern Orange County, figured that with his salary as a police officer and his wife’s as a nurse, they would easily be able to find a three-bedroom house with a small yard. But when the couple set out searching in the neighborhoods he knew best, homes were at least $800,000 — more than double what they could afford.
Eventually, they found an older, ranch-style home in La Mirada, another small city south of Los Angeles.
“We both grew up here and had this notion that we would have the same promises our parents had,” Mr. Bak said. “It’s just not that easy. We make good money — probably more than our parents did — and it still feels like a struggle to stay here.”
It is not only would-be homeowners who are feeling the effect. A renter in Los Angeles County would have to make at least $27 an hour to be able to afford a two-bedroom apartment, according to a report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, which estimated that the state is short of roughly one million homes for the working poor. And while housing prices are increasing rapidly, incomes in the state remain flat.
“We can’t find any way for people earning a median income to keep up pace; that’s what’s really scary,” said Matt Schwartz, the chief executive of the California Housing Partnership Corporation, which monitors affordable housing throughout the state. “We’ve seen this happening for a long time in San Francisco, but now it’s going on in Sacramento, in the Central Valley — the demand is far outpacing the supply. It’s no longer just that the low-income folks are getting squeezed out of a decent place to live.”
Abel Ruiz has lived with his family in Santa Ana, an inland city in Orange County, for more than a decade. Their landlord recently increased the rent on their one-bedroom apartment to $1,100, plus an $18 surcharge per resident, an increase of more than $300.
Mr. Ruiz, 30, works for the local parks department and has considered getting his own place. Instead, he helps his parents make the rent. The living room is divided in half, his mother and father sleeping on one side and his 18-year-old sister on the other. He and his 12-year-old brother share the bedroom in the back.
“Everything is multiuse,” he said. “Do we think about moving? Sure, but that means I have to find another job, and who knows how hard that might be.”
Banks and other investors have been buying up single-family homes all over the region, particularly in parts of the state that were hit hardest during the foreclosure crisis, like the northern suburbs of Los Angeles County and the Inland Empire, a metropolitan area east of Los Angeles. Foreign investors are paying cash for properties, as investments or as pieds-à-terre. Some renters have complained of neglect, saying that absentee landlords ignore complaints about cockroaches or leaky pipes.
But local investors have also been buying modest single-family homes, either to lease them to tenants or to “flip” them, renovating them and selling at a profit. Robert Ganem, a former mortgage broker, has bought more than 65 properties in the last four years.
“Things are not too far off the peak prices now, and we just see them going up and up,” Mr. Ganem said. “In one complex, I bought a condo for $400,000, and six months later, the exact same model on the same floor sold for $500,000. The market is certainly there.”
When Mr. Ganem rents out condos in the suburbs, he typically charges $2,500 to $3,000 for a three-bedroom — and immediately has more than a dozen applicants, he said.
“It’s usually good people who got stuck in the crash — a married couple with one or two kids who need a stable place,” he said. “I’m getting to choose who looks to be the most attractive, so I look at who has the most extra in the bank, who has the most stable job, all those kinds of things.”
Steve Twardowski, who works as an engineer for an oil company, has been looking for a home in Southern California for himself and his wife for the last year and said the process had become “a bit of a nightmare.”
“If you make six figures, you should not have trouble finding a single-family home, but we have this crazy cost of living here,” Mr. Twardowski said. “I don’t know how people are coming to this state because right now, it feels like it is just for rich folks.” The couple considered leaving for Texas but eventually found a modest three-bedroom home in Long Beach.
“This is gentrification on steroids,” said Stan Humphries, the chief economist at Zillow.com, which shows homes for sale and their valuations. “What is unique here is you have an entire state really shifting — people are bidding up prices all over the place. These were quintessential suburbs and cities built for people working as secretaries, but the newest generation is simply not going to be able to stay anymore.”
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15) Cleared After Nearly 23 Years in Prison, but Not Free
By JIM DWYER
Striding across a jailhouse visiting room on Saturday, Everton Wagstaffe — innocent in the eyes of the law, a prisoner of the persistence that liberated him — craned his neck to see who was waiting. He grinned broadly, stuck out his hand to welcome visitors, then apologized for an undetectable shortfall in personal hygiene.
“I don’t have my soaps or anything,” Mr. Wagstaffe explained. “I’m locked in all day, just get out for chow and then come back. No showers, no telephone.”
These were slight matters.
On Tuesday, Mr. Wagstaffe left the custody of New York authorities for the first time since his arrest in January 1992 on charges that he had kidnapped and murdered a teenage girl, Jennifer Negron.Having been cleared last week by an appellate court after nearly 23 years behind bars, Mr. Wagstaffe spent the weekend moving across various state prisons before being transferred to a federal immigration detention center outside Buffalo. Mr. Wagstaffe, 45, is a Jamaican citizen. He now hopes to contest a deportation order filed many years ago.
“The conviction was a tragedy,” Mr. Wagstaffe said, “but I have made the best of it.”
He and a co-defendant, Reginald Connor, were convicted of kidnapping on the testimony of a single eyewitness, a drug addict who was a police informer in Brooklyn’s 75th Precinct. She claimed to have seen Mr. Wagstaffe drag the girl from the street and force her into a car with Mr. Connor at the wheel. From the beginning, both insisted that they were innocent and did not know each other.
In its ruling last week, the court said there was evidence of possible fraud and deception at the heart of the case. The Brooklyn district attorney’s office was responsible for “burying” evidence that contradicted testimony by detectives that the informer had led them to Mr. Wagstaffe and Mr. Connor, according to the decision.
When he first entered prison, Mr. Wagstaffe said, he was barely literate.
“You are here and ask yourself: Why hope?” he said. “Why not just pass the time, and let the universe do what it will?”
He dueled with despair, beginning slowly. “I used cartons of cigarettes to get guys to write letters for me,” Mr. Wagstaffe said. Then he decided he had better handle his own affairs, and sold clothes so he could buy books and get his high school equivalency diploma.
Ten years ago this Wednesday, on Sept. 24, 2004, he filed his first motion requesting DNA testing of the physical evidence. He had no lawyer at the time.
Every comma, every verb in all of his legal papers was fought by teams of lawyers, first under Charles J. Hynes, the former Brooklyn district attorney, and then by his successor, Kenneth P. Thompson. The physical evidence was lost for years, then found. Testing took more than two years. None of the evidence matched Mr. Wagstaffe or Mr. Connor, but prosecutors argued that the results were not compelling enough to upend the conviction.
An alibi witness was located. The owner of a car supposedly used in the kidnapping swore that she had it at church when the crime was committed. A neighbor said that he saw a teenage boyfriend trying to drag Ms. Negron into a car, and that neither Mr. Connor nor Mr. Wagstaffe was involved.
A judge named Sheryl L. Parker heard arguments on most of this in 2010, then a year later ruled against them. On procedural grounds, she said, she did not have to decide whether the detectives and informer had lied about the investigation.
But the appellate court said last week that this was the most important matter of all: Computer records showed that the police had been pursuing the two men 24 hours before they spoke with the only witness to implicate them. Anne M. Gutmann, the prosecutor in the trial, had turned over those records as jury selection was beginning, along with a pile of other documents.
Mr. Wagstaffe first noticed the time stamps after nearly a decade behind bars. This information would have hurt the credibility of the sole witness and the detectives.
That was so important, the appellate court ruled, that it did not have to delve into the other issues raised by lawyers for the men.
“Once there is a fraud, it stays a fraud,” Mr. Wagstaffe said. “It doesn’t matter if there is a failure by a litigator to raise it.”
Mr. Thompson, the district attorney, issued a terse statement on Tuesday: “We disagree on the basis for which they vacated the conviction and set aside the verdict. We are reviewing our options.”
On Saturday, Mr. Wagstaffe said he was trying to find peace. “The universe will work with us,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how much wealth and resources the district attorney may have. I have one thing, that I’m in the right. I’ve outlived this place.”
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C.
SPECIAL APPEALS AND
ONGOING
CAMPAIGNS
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Free the Whistle-Blowers
An Appeal from Daniel Ellsberg
I am immensely thankful to both these young whistle-blowers who have so bravely stood up against the powerful forces of the US government in order to reveal corruption, illegal spying and war crimes. They were both motivated by their commitments to democracy and justice. They both chose to reveal information directly to the public, at great cost to themselves, so that citizens and taxpayers could be fully informed of the facts. They also revealed the amazing potential of new technologies to increase public access to information and strengthen democracy. It saddens me that our current political leaders, rather than embracing this potential, have chosen to tighten their strangleholds on power and information, turning away from both progress and justice.
Shockingly, the Obama administration has prosecuted more whistle-blowers under the Espionage Act than every previous president combined. These heroes do not deserve to be thrown in prison or called a traitor for doing the right thing. Obama’s unprecedented and unconstitutional abuse of the Espionage Act—as if it were a British-type Official Secrets Act, never intended by Congress and a violation of our First Amendment—and Manning’s 35-year prison sentence will have a chilling effect on future citizens’ willingness to uncover hidden injustices. The government has already brought comparable charges against Snowden.
The only remedy to this chilling precedent, designed to effect government whistle-blowers as a whole, is to overturn the Manning verdict. Given that Manning’s court martial produced the longest trial record in US military history, it will take a top legal team countless hours to prepare their defense. But as an Advisory Board member for the Chelsea Manning Support Network, I was inspired by the way citizens around the world stepped forward to help fund a strong defense during Manning’s trial. I remain hopeful that enough people will recognize the immense importance of these appeals and will contribute to help us finish the struggle we started. That struggle, of course, is for a just political system and freedom for our whistle-blowers.
Chelsea Manning has continued to demonstrate uncommon bravery and character, even from behind bars. With the New York Times Op-Ed she published last month, she has cemented her position as a compelling voice for government reform. Working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq, Manning was privy to a special view of the inner-workings of our military’s propaganda systems. Despite her personal struggles, she felt compelled to share her knowledge of what was happening in Iraq with the Americans people. If the military hadn’t hidden the number of civilian casualties and incidences of torture detailed in the Iraq Logs she released, we would have known far sooner to expect the civil war that has gripped Iraq fully today. Her exposure of US knowledge of the corruption in Tunisia, by the dictator our government supported, was a critical catalyst of the non-violent uprising which toppled that dictator, in turn directly inspiring the occupation of Tahrir Square in Egypt and then the Occupy movement in the US
I personally am inspired by Chelsea Manning as I am by Edward Snowden, which is why I have spent countless hours advocating for both of them. I’m asking you to join me today in supporting what I believe to be one of the most important legal proceedings in our country’s history. We are fortunate to have a truly impressive legal team that has agreed to partner with us. Already, our new appeals attorney Nancy Hollander and her team have begun to research legal strategies, and are collaborating with Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the international news media to highlight the significance of this case.
Chelsea is only 26 now, younger than I was when I learned to recognize the injustices of the Vietnam War. She wishes to complete her education, as I did, and go into public service. Imagine what great things she could both learn and teach the world if she were free. Now imagine if our corrupt government officials are allowed to get their way, holding her behind bars until life has almost passed her by, and extraditing Snowden to suffer the same outcome. What a sad result that would be for our country and our humanity.
I have been waiting forty years for a legal process to at long last prove the unconstitutionality of the Espionage Act as applied to whistle-blowers (the Supreme Court has never yet addressed this issue). This appeals process can accomplish that, and it can reduce Chelsea’s sentence by decades. But unfortunately, without your help today it will not happen. We must raise $100,000 by September 1st, to ensure that Chelsea’s team have the resources to fully fight this stage of the appeals process.
Unless Manning’s conviction is overturned in appeals, Snowden and many other whistle-blowers, today and in the future, will face a similar fate. And with them will perish one of the most critical lifelines for our democracy. But you can join me in fighting back. I’m asking you to do it for Chelsea, to do it for Snowden, and to do it because it’s the right thing to do to preserve our democracy. We can only win this great struggle with your help. Please contribute to help us fund Chelsea’s legal appeals today.
It’s time we band together on the right side of history once again.
Free the Whistle-Blowers
An Appeal from Daniel Ellsberg
July 21, 2014 by Daniel Ellsberg
NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden, a personal hero of mine, has recently filed to renew his asylum in Russia. Exiled thousands of miles from friends and family, he awaits his fate. He learned from the example of another top hero of mine, Chelsea Manning. Manning helped inspire his revelations that if he released his vital information while in this country he would have been held incommunicado in isolation as Chelsea was for over ten months—in Snowden’s case probably for the rest of his life. And facing comparable charges to Chelsea’s, he would have no more chance than Chelsea to have a truly fair trial—being prevented by the prosecution and judge (as I was, forty years ago) from even raising arguments of public interest or lack of harm in connection with his disclosures. Contrary to the hollow advice of Hillary Clinton or John Kerry, if he were to return to America he would not be able to “make his case” neither “in court,” nor “to the public” from a prison cell.I am immensely thankful to both these young whistle-blowers who have so bravely stood up against the powerful forces of the US government in order to reveal corruption, illegal spying and war crimes. They were both motivated by their commitments to democracy and justice. They both chose to reveal information directly to the public, at great cost to themselves, so that citizens and taxpayers could be fully informed of the facts. They also revealed the amazing potential of new technologies to increase public access to information and strengthen democracy. It saddens me that our current political leaders, rather than embracing this potential, have chosen to tighten their strangleholds on power and information, turning away from both progress and justice.
Shockingly, the Obama administration has prosecuted more whistle-blowers under the Espionage Act than every previous president combined. These heroes do not deserve to be thrown in prison or called a traitor for doing the right thing. Obama’s unprecedented and unconstitutional abuse of the Espionage Act—as if it were a British-type Official Secrets Act, never intended by Congress and a violation of our First Amendment—and Manning’s 35-year prison sentence will have a chilling effect on future citizens’ willingness to uncover hidden injustices. The government has already brought comparable charges against Snowden.
The only remedy to this chilling precedent, designed to effect government whistle-blowers as a whole, is to overturn the Manning verdict. Given that Manning’s court martial produced the longest trial record in US military history, it will take a top legal team countless hours to prepare their defense. But as an Advisory Board member for the Chelsea Manning Support Network, I was inspired by the way citizens around the world stepped forward to help fund a strong defense during Manning’s trial. I remain hopeful that enough people will recognize the immense importance of these appeals and will contribute to help us finish the struggle we started. That struggle, of course, is for a just political system and freedom for our whistle-blowers.
Chelsea Manning has continued to demonstrate uncommon bravery and character, even from behind bars. With the New York Times Op-Ed she published last month, she has cemented her position as a compelling voice for government reform. Working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq, Manning was privy to a special view of the inner-workings of our military’s propaganda systems. Despite her personal struggles, she felt compelled to share her knowledge of what was happening in Iraq with the Americans people. If the military hadn’t hidden the number of civilian casualties and incidences of torture detailed in the Iraq Logs she released, we would have known far sooner to expect the civil war that has gripped Iraq fully today. Her exposure of US knowledge of the corruption in Tunisia, by the dictator our government supported, was a critical catalyst of the non-violent uprising which toppled that dictator, in turn directly inspiring the occupation of Tahrir Square in Egypt and then the Occupy movement in the US
I personally am inspired by Chelsea Manning as I am by Edward Snowden, which is why I have spent countless hours advocating for both of them. I’m asking you to join me today in supporting what I believe to be one of the most important legal proceedings in our country’s history. We are fortunate to have a truly impressive legal team that has agreed to partner with us. Already, our new appeals attorney Nancy Hollander and her team have begun to research legal strategies, and are collaborating with Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the international news media to highlight the significance of this case.
Chelsea is only 26 now, younger than I was when I learned to recognize the injustices of the Vietnam War. She wishes to complete her education, as I did, and go into public service. Imagine what great things she could both learn and teach the world if she were free. Now imagine if our corrupt government officials are allowed to get their way, holding her behind bars until life has almost passed her by, and extraditing Snowden to suffer the same outcome. What a sad result that would be for our country and our humanity.
I have been waiting forty years for a legal process to at long last prove the unconstitutionality of the Espionage Act as applied to whistle-blowers (the Supreme Court has never yet addressed this issue). This appeals process can accomplish that, and it can reduce Chelsea’s sentence by decades. But unfortunately, without your help today it will not happen. We must raise $100,000 by September 1st, to ensure that Chelsea’s team have the resources to fully fight this stage of the appeals process.
Unless Manning’s conviction is overturned in appeals, Snowden and many other whistle-blowers, today and in the future, will face a similar fate. And with them will perish one of the most critical lifelines for our democracy. But you can join me in fighting back. I’m asking you to do it for Chelsea, to do it for Snowden, and to do it because it’s the right thing to do to preserve our democracy. We can only win this great struggle with your help. Please contribute to help us fund Chelsea’s legal appeals today.
It’s time we band together on the right side of history once again.
Daniel Ellsberg
Please contribute to help us fund Chelsea’s legal appeals today!
Learn now how you can write a letter to be included in Chelsea Manning’s official application for clemency!
Please share this information to friends and community leaders, urging them to add their voice to this important effort before it's too late.
Please share this information to friends and community leaders, urging them to add their voice to this important effort before it's too late.
http://www.privatemanning.org/pardonpetition
Help
us continue to cover 100%
of Pvt. Manning's legal fees! Donate today.
of Pvt. Manning's legal fees! Donate today.
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38591
COURAGE
TO RESIST
http://couragetoresist.org
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610
510-488-3559
http://couragetoresist.org
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610
510-488-3559
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Only an Innocent Man Would Voluntarily Return
to Prison to Fight Against his Life Sentence
and For Exoneration —
That Courageous Man is Lorenzo Johnson.
The PA Attorney General’s Office Agrees to Investigate New Facts and Witnesses —
Send Your Message Now to PA AG
Kathleen Kane: Dismiss the Charges!
Free Lorenzo Johnson!
On January 29, 2014 Lorenzo Johnson’s attorney, Michael Wiseman, met with representatives of PA Attorney General Kathleen Kane to discuss the new evidence of Lorenzo Johnson’s innocence contained in legal filings now pending in the Pennsylvania courts. This includes affidavits confirming Johnson’s presence in New York City at the time of the Harrisburg murder and the identity of the actual killers, as well as police and prosecutorial misconduct.
Attorney Wiseman said Kane’s office promised to investigate these new facts in order to assess whether they merit the relief that Lorenzo Johnson seeks in his PCRA petition.
Speaking to AP reporter Mary Claire Dale on February 11, 2014 Wiseman said, “We believe the witnesses we presented to them are credible, and give a coherent version of the events. I take them at their word, that they’re going to do a straightforward, honest review.” Kane spokesman Joe Peters confirmed the meeting to AP “but said the office won’t comment on the new evidence until the court filing,” (referring to the March 31, 2014 date for the AG’s response to Johnson’s October 2013 court filing).
It is the Office of the PA Attorney General that is responsible for the false prosecution of Lorenzo Johnson from trial through appeals. And just a few months ago, the Attorney General’s office opposed a federal petition based on this new evidence saying there was no prima facie claim for relief. This resulted in the denial of Lorenzo Johnson’s Motion to File a Second Writ of Habeas Corpus in the federal court.
On December 18, 2013 a press conference called by the Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson protested these actions of the PA Attorney General and delivered petitions demanding dismissal of the charges and immediate freedom for Lorenzo. Tazza, Lorenzo’s wife, declared, “1,000 signatures means we are not in this alone…I won't stop until he’s home. There is nothing and no one that can stop me from fighting for what’s right.”
This is Lorenzo Johnson’s second fight for his innocence and freedom. In January 2012, after 16 years of court battles to prove his innocence, a federal appeals court held his sentence was based on insufficient evidence – a judicial acquittal. Lorenzo was freed from prison. But after a petition filed by the PA Attorney General the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated Lorenzo Johnson’s conviction and he was re-incarcerated to continue serving a life sentence without parole for a murder he did not commit.
This innocent man drove himself back to prison in June 2012—after less than five months of freedom—leaving his new wife and family, construction job and advocacy on behalf of others wrongfully convicted. The reason Lorenzo Johnson voluntarily returned to prison? Because he is innocent and fighting for full vindication.
In the words of Lorenzo Johnson, “A second is too long to be in prison when you are Innocent, so eighteen years … is Intolerable.”
Add your voices and demand again: Dismiss the charges against Lorenzo Johnson. Free Lorenzo NOW!
SIGN LORENZO JOHNSON'S FREEDOM PETITION
CONTRIBUTE TO HELP TAZZA AND THE OTHER FAMILY MEMBERS VISIT LORENZO AND STAY IN CONTACT!
Write: Lorenzo Johnson
DF 1036
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Rd.
Frackville, PA 17932
Email: Lorenzo Johnson through JPAY.com code:
Lorenzo Johnson DF 1036 PA DOC
www.FreeLorenzoJohnson.org
Only an Innocent Man Would Voluntarily Return
to Prison to Fight Against his Life Sentence
and For Exoneration —
That Courageous Man is Lorenzo Johnson.
The PA Attorney General’s Office Agrees to Investigate New Facts and Witnesses —
Send Your Message Now to PA AG
Kathleen Kane: Dismiss the Charges!
Free Lorenzo Johnson!
On January 29, 2014 Lorenzo Johnson’s attorney, Michael Wiseman, met with representatives of PA Attorney General Kathleen Kane to discuss the new evidence of Lorenzo Johnson’s innocence contained in legal filings now pending in the Pennsylvania courts. This includes affidavits confirming Johnson’s presence in New York City at the time of the Harrisburg murder and the identity of the actual killers, as well as police and prosecutorial misconduct.
Attorney Wiseman said Kane’s office promised to investigate these new facts in order to assess whether they merit the relief that Lorenzo Johnson seeks in his PCRA petition.
Speaking to AP reporter Mary Claire Dale on February 11, 2014 Wiseman said, “We believe the witnesses we presented to them are credible, and give a coherent version of the events. I take them at their word, that they’re going to do a straightforward, honest review.” Kane spokesman Joe Peters confirmed the meeting to AP “but said the office won’t comment on the new evidence until the court filing,” (referring to the March 31, 2014 date for the AG’s response to Johnson’s October 2013 court filing).
It is the Office of the PA Attorney General that is responsible for the false prosecution of Lorenzo Johnson from trial through appeals. And just a few months ago, the Attorney General’s office opposed a federal petition based on this new evidence saying there was no prima facie claim for relief. This resulted in the denial of Lorenzo Johnson’s Motion to File a Second Writ of Habeas Corpus in the federal court.
On December 18, 2013 a press conference called by the Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson protested these actions of the PA Attorney General and delivered petitions demanding dismissal of the charges and immediate freedom for Lorenzo. Tazza, Lorenzo’s wife, declared, “1,000 signatures means we are not in this alone…I won't stop until he’s home. There is nothing and no one that can stop me from fighting for what’s right.”
This is Lorenzo Johnson’s second fight for his innocence and freedom. In January 2012, after 16 years of court battles to prove his innocence, a federal appeals court held his sentence was based on insufficient evidence – a judicial acquittal. Lorenzo was freed from prison. But after a petition filed by the PA Attorney General the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated Lorenzo Johnson’s conviction and he was re-incarcerated to continue serving a life sentence without parole for a murder he did not commit.
This innocent man drove himself back to prison in June 2012—after less than five months of freedom—leaving his new wife and family, construction job and advocacy on behalf of others wrongfully convicted. The reason Lorenzo Johnson voluntarily returned to prison? Because he is innocent and fighting for full vindication.
In the words of Lorenzo Johnson, “A second is too long to be in prison when you are Innocent, so eighteen years … is Intolerable.”
Add your voices and demand again: Dismiss the charges against Lorenzo Johnson. Free Lorenzo NOW!
SIGN LORENZO JOHNSON'S FREEDOM PETITION
CONTRIBUTE TO HELP TAZZA AND THE OTHER FAMILY MEMBERS VISIT LORENZO AND STAY IN CONTACT!
Write: Lorenzo Johnson
DF 1036
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Rd.
Frackville, PA 17932
Email: Lorenzo Johnson through JPAY.com code:
Lorenzo Johnson DF 1036 PA DOC
www.FreeLorenzoJohnson.org
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U.S.
Court of Appeals Rules Against Lorenzo Johnson’s
New Legal Challenge to His Frame-up Conviction!
Demand the PA Attorney General Dismiss the Charges!
Free Lorenzo Johnson, Now!
New Legal Challenge to His Frame-up Conviction!
Demand the PA Attorney General Dismiss the Charges!
Free Lorenzo Johnson, Now!
The
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit denied Lorenzo Johnson’s motion to
file a Second Habeas Corpus Petition. The order contained the outrageous
declaration that Johnson hadn’t made a “prima facie case” that he had new
evidence of his innocence. This not only puts a legal obstacle in Johnson’s
path as his fight for freedom makes its way (again) through the state and
federal courts—but it undermines the newly filed Pennsylvania state appeal that
is pending in the Court of Common Pleas.
Stripped
of “legalese,” the court’s October 15, 2013 order says Johnson’s new
evidence was not brought into court soon enough—although it was the prosecution
and police who withheld evidence and coerced witnesses into lying or not coming
forward with the truth! This, despite over fifteen years and rounds of legal
battles to uncover the evidence of government misconduct. This is a set-back
for Lorenzo Johnson’s renewed fight for his freedom, but Johnson is even more
determined as his PA state court appeal continues.
Increased
public support and protest is needed. The fight for Lorenzo Johnson’s freedom
is not only a fight for this courageous man and family. The fight for Lorenzo
Johnson is also a fight for all the innocent others who have been framed and
are sitting in the slow death of prison. The PA Attorney General is directly
pursuing the charges against Lorenzo, despite the evidence of his innocence and
the corruption of the police. Free Lorenzo Johnson, Now!
—Rachel
Wolkenstein, Esq.
October 25, 2013
For
more on the federal court and PA state court legal filings.
Hear
Mumia’s latest commentary, “Cat Cries”
Go
to: www.FreeLorenzoJohnson.org for more information, to sign the petition, and
how to help.
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SAVE
CCSF!
Posted
on August 25, 2013
Cartoon
by Anthonty Mata for CCSF Guardsman
DOE
CAMPAIGN
We
are working to ensure that the ACCJC’s authority is not renewed by the
Department of Education this December when they are up for their 5-year
renewal. Our campaign made it possible for over 50 Third Party Comments to be
sent to the DOE re: the ACCJC. Our next step in this campaign is to send a
delegation from CCSF to Washington, D.C. to give oral comments at the hearing
on December 12th. We expect to have an array of forces aligned on the other
side who have much more money and resources than we do.
So
please support this effort to get ACCJC authority revoked!
LEGAL
CAMPAIGN
Save
CCSF members have been meeting with Attorney Dan Siegel since last May to
explore legal avenues to fight the ACCJC. After much consideration, and
consultation with AFT 2121’s attorney as well as the SF City Attorney’s office,
Dan has come up with a legal strategy that is complimentary to what is already
being pursued. In fact, AFT 2121’s attorney is encouraging us to go forward.
The
total costs of pursuing this (depositions, etc.) will be substantially more
than $15,000. However, Dan is willing to do it for a fixed fee of $15,000. He
will not expect a retainer, i.e. payment in advance, but we should start
payments ASAP. If we win the ACCJC will have to pay our costs.
PLEASE
HELP BOTH OF THESE IMPORTANT EFFORTS!
Checks
can be made out to Save CCSF Coalition with “legal” in the memo line and sent
to:
Save
CCSF Coalition
2132
Prince St.
Berkeley, CA 94705
Or
you may donate online: http://www.gofundme.com/4841ns
http://www.saveccsf.org/
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16 Years in Solitary Confinement Is Like a "Living Tomb"
American
Civil Liberties Union petition to end long-term solitary confinement:
California
Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard: We stand with the prisoners on hunger
strike. We urge you to comply with the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in
America’s Prisons 2006 recommendations regarding an end to long-term solitary
confinement.
In
California, hundreds of prisoners have been held in solitary for more than a
decade – some for infractions as trivial as reading Machiavelli's "The
Prince."
Gabriel
Reyes describes the pain of being isolated for at least 22 hours a day for the
last 16 years:
“Unless
you have lived it, you cannot imagine what it feels like to be by yourself,
between four cold walls, with little concept of time…. It is a living tomb …’ I
have not been allowed physical contact with any of my loved ones since 1995…I
feel helpless and hopeless. In short, I am being psychologically tortured.”
That’s
why over 30,000 prisoners in California began a hunger strike – the biggest the
state has ever seen. They’re refusing food to protest prisoners being held for
decades in solitary and to push for other changes to improve their basic
conditions.
California
Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard has tried to dismiss the strikers and
refuses to negotiate, but the media pressure is building through the strike. If
tens of thousands of us take action, we can help keep this issue in the
spotlight so that Secretary Beard can’t ignore the inhumane treatment of
prisoners.
Sign
the petition urging Corrections Secretary Beard to end the use of long-term
solitary confinement.
Solitary
is such an extreme form of punishment that a United Nations torture rapporteur
called for an international ban on the practice except in rare occasions.
Here’s why:
The
majority of the 80,000 people held in solitary in this country are severely
mentally ill or because of a minor infraction (it’s a myth that it’s only for
violent prisoners)
Even
for people with stable mental health, solitary causes severe psychological
reactions, often leading people to attempt suicide
It
jeopardizes public safety because prisoners held in solitary have a harder time
reintegrating into society.
And
to add insult to injury, the hunger strikers are now facing retaliation – their
lawyers are being restricted from visiting and the strikers are being punished.
But the media continues to write about the hunger strike and we can help keep
the pressure on Secretary Beard by signing this petition.
Sign
the petition urging Corrections Secretary Beard to end the use of long-term
solitary confinement.
Our
criminal justice system should keep communities safe and treat people fairly.
The use of solitary confinement undermines both of these goals – but little by
little, we can help put a stop to such cruelty.
Thank
you,
Anthony
for the ACLU Action team
P.S.
The hunger strikers have developed five core demands to address their basic
conditions, the main one being an end to long-term solitary confinement. They
are:
-End
group punishment – prisoners say that officials often punish groups to address
individual rule violations
-Abolish
the debriefing policy, which is often demanded in return for better food or
release from solitary
-End
long-term solitary confinement
-Provide
adequate and nutritious food
-Expand
or provide constructive programming and privileges for indefinite SHU inmates
Sources
“Solitary
- and anger - in California's prisons.” Los Angeles Times July 13, 2013
“Pelican
Bay Prison Hunger-Strikers' Stories: Gabriel Reyes.” TruthOut July 9, 2013
“Solitary
confinement should be banned in most cases, UN expert says.” UN News October
18, 2011
"Stop
Solitary - Two Pager" ACLU.org
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What
you Didn't know about NYPD's Stop and Frisk program !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rfJHx0Gj6ys#at=990
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Egypt:
The Next President -- a little Egyptian boy speaks his remarkable mind!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeDm2PrNV1I
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Wealth
Inequality in America
[This
is a must see to believe video...bw]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QPKKQnijnsM
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Read
the transcription of hero Bradley Manning's 35-page statement explaining why he
leaked "state secrets" to WikiLeaks.
March
1, 2013
Alternet
The
statement was read by Pfc. Bradley Manning at a providence inquiry for his
formal plea of guilty to one specification as charged and nine specifications
for lesser included offenses. He pled not guilty to 12 other specifications.
This rush transcript was taken by journalist Alexa O'Brien at Thursday's
pretrial hearing and first appeared on Salon.com.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/bradley-mannings-surprising-statement-court-details-why-he-made-his-historic?akid=10129.229473.UZvQfK&rd=1&src=newsletter802922&t=7
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You
Have the Right to Remain Silent: NLG Guide to Law Enforcement Encounters
Posted
1 day ago on July 27, 2012, 10:28 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt
Occupy
Wall Street is a nonviolent movement for social and economic justice, but in
recent days disturbing reports have emerged of Occupy-affiliated activists
being targeted by US law enforcement, including agents from the FBI and
Department of Homeland Security. To help ensure Occupiers and allied activists
know their rights when encountering law enforcement, we are publishing in full
the National Lawyers Guild's booklet: You Have the Right to Remain Silent. The
NLG provides invaluable support to the Occupy movement and other activists –
please click here to support the NLG.
We
strongly encourage all Occupiers to read and share the information provided
below. We also recommend you enter the NLG's national hotline number
(888-654-3265) into your cellphone (if you have one) and keep a copy handy.
This information is not a substitute for legal advice. You should contact the
NLG or a criminal defense attorney immediately if you have been visited by the
FBI or other law enforcement officials. You should also alert your relatives,
friends, co-workers and others so that they will be prepared if they are
contacted as well.
You
Have the Right to Remain Silent: A Know Your Rights Guide for Law Enforcement
Encounters
What
Rights Do I Have?
Whether
or not you're a citizen, you have rights under the United States Constitution.
The Fifth Amendment gives every person the right to remain silent: not to
answer questions asked by a police officer or government agent. The Fourth
Amendment restricts the government's power to enter and search your home or
workplace, although there are many exceptions and new laws have expanded the
government's power to conduct surveillance. The First Amendment protects your
right to speak freely and to advocate for social change. However, if you are a
non-citizen, the Department of Homeland Security may target you based on your
political activities.
Standing
Up For Free Speech
The
government's crusade against politically-active individuals is intended to
disrupt and suppress the exercise of time-honored free speech activities, such
as boycotts, protests, grassroots organizing and solidarity work. Remember that
you have the right to stand up to the intimidation tactics of FBI agents and
other law enforcement officials who, with political motives, are targeting
organizing and free speech activities. Informed resistance to these tactics and
steadfast defense of your and others' rights can bring positive results. Each
person who takes a courageous stand makes future resistance to government oppression
easier for all. The National Lawyers Guild has a long tradition of standing up
to government repression. The organization itself was labeled a
"subversive" group during the McCarthy Era and was subject to FBI
surveillance and infiltration for many years. Guild attorneys have defended
FBI-targeted members of the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement,
and the Puerto Rican independence movement. The NLG exposed FBI surveillance,
infiltration and disruption tactics that were detailed during the 1975-76
COINTELPRO hearings. In 1989 the NLG prevailed in a lawsuit on behalf of
several activist organizations, including the Guild, that forced the FBI to
expose the extent to which it had been spying on activist movements. Under the
settlement, the FBI turned over roughly 400,000 pages of its files on the
Guild, which are now available at the Tamiment Library at New York University.
What
if FBI Agents or Police Contact Me?
What
if an agent or police officer comes to the door?
Do
not invite the agents or police into your home. Do not answer any questions.
Tell the agent that you do not wish to talk with him or her. You can state that
your lawyer will contact them on your behalf. You can do this by stepping
outside and pulling the door behind you so that the interior of your home or
office is not visible, getting their contact information or business cards and
then returning inside. They should cease questioning after this. If the agent
or officer gives a reason for contacting you, take notes and give the
information to your attorney. Anything you say, no matter how seemingly
harmless or insignificant, may be used against you or others in the future.
Lying to or misleading a federal agent is a crime. The more you speak, the more
opportunity for federal law enforcement to find something you said (even if not
intentionally) false and assert that you lied to a federal officer.
Do
I have to answer questions?
You
have the constitutional right to remain silent. It is not a crime to refuse to
answer questions. You do not have to talk to anyone, even if you have been
arrested or are in jail. You should affirmatively and unambiguously state that
you wish to remain silent and that you wish to consult an attorney. Once you
make the request to speak to a lawyer, do not say anything else. The Supreme
Court recently ruled that answering law enforcement questions may be taken as a
waiver of your right to remain silent, so it is important that you assert your
rights and maintain them. Only a judge can order you to answer questions. There
is one exception: some states have "stop and identify" statutes which
require you to provide identity information or your name if you have been
detained on reasonable suspicion that you may have committed a crime. A lawyer
in your state can advise you of the status of these requirements where you
reside.
Do
I have to give my name?
As
above, in some states you can be detained or arrested for merely refusing to
give your name. And in any state, police do not always follow the law, and
refusing to give your name may make them suspicious or more hostile and lead to
your arrest, even without just cause, so use your judgment. Giving a false name
could in some circumstances be a crime.
Do
I need a lawyer?
You
have the right to talk to a lawyer before you decide whether to answer
questions from law enforcement. It is a good idea to talk to a lawyer if you
are considering answering any questions. You have the right to have a lawyer
present during any interview. The lawyer's job is to protect your rights. Once
you tell the agent that you want to talk to a lawyer, he or she should stop
trying to question you and should make any further contact through your lawyer.
If you do not have a lawyer, you can still tell the officer you want to speak to
one before answering questions. Remember to get the name, agency and telephone
number of any investigator who visits you, and give that information to your
lawyer. The government does not have to provide you with a free lawyer unless
you are charged with a crime, but the NLG or another organization may be able
to help you find a lawyer for free or at a reduced rate.
If
I refuse to answer questions or say I want a lawyer, won't it seem like I have
something to hide?
Anything
you say to law enforcement can be used against you and others. You can never
tell how a seemingly harmless bit of information might be used or manipulated
to hurt you or someone else. That is why the right not to talk is a fundamental
right under the Constitution. Keep in mind that although law enforcement agents
are allowed to lie to you, lying to a government agent is a crime. Remaining
silent is not. The safest things to say are "I am going to remain
silent," "I want to speak to my lawyer," and "I do not consent
to a search." It is a common practice for law enforcement agents to try to
get you to waive your rights by telling you that if you have nothing to hide
you would talk or that talking would "just clear things up." The fact
is, if they are questioning you, they are looking to incriminate you or someone
you may know, or they are engaged in political intelligence gathering. You
should feel comfortable standing firm in protection and defense of your rights
and refusing to answer questions.
Can
agents search my home or office?
You
do not have to let police or agents into your home or office unless they have
and produce a valid search warrant. A search warrant is a written court order
that allows the police to conduct a specified search. Interfering with a
warrantless search probably will not stop it and you might get arrested. But
you should say "I do not consent to a search," and call a criminal
defense lawyer or the NLG. You should be aware that a roommate or guest can
legally consent to a search of your house if the police believe that person has
the authority to give consent, and your employer can consent to a search of
your workspace without your permission.
What
if agents have a search warrant?
If
you are present when agents come for the search, you can ask to see the
warrant. The warrant must specify in detail the places to be searched and the
people or things to be taken away. Tell the agents you do not consent to the
search so that they cannot go beyond what the warrant authorizes. Ask if you
are allowed to watch the search; if you are allowed to, you should. Take notes,
including names, badge numbers, what agency each officer is from, where they
searched and what they took. If others are present, have them act as witnesses
to watch carefully what is happening. If the agents ask you to give them
documents, your computer, or anything else, look to see if the item is listed
in the warrant. If it is not, do not consent to them taking it without talking
to a lawyer. You do not have to answer questions. Talk to a lawyer first.
(Note: If agents present an arrest warrant, they may only perform a cursory
visual search of the premises to see if the person named in the arrest warrant
is present.)
Do
I have to answer questions if I have been arrested?
No.
If you are arrested, you do not have to answer any questions. You should
affirmatively and unambiguously state that you wish to assert your right to
remain silent. Ask for a lawyer right away. Do not say anything else. Repeat to
every officer who tries to talk to or question you that you wish to remain
silent and that you wish to speak to a lawyer. You should always talk to a
lawyer before you decide to answer any questions.
What
if I speak to government agents anyway?
Even
if you have already answered some questions, you can refuse to answer other
questions until you have a lawyer. If you find yourself talking, stop. Assert
that you wish to remain silent and that you wish to speak to a lawyer.
What
if the police stop me on the street?
Ask
if you are free to go. If the answer is yes, consider just walking away. If the
police say you are not under arrest, but are not free to go, then you are being
detained. The police can pat down the outside of your clothing if they have
reason to suspect you might be armed and dangerous. If they search any more
than this, say clearly, "I do not consent to a search." They may keep
searching anyway. If this happens, do not resist because you can be charged
with assault or resisting arrest. You do not have to answer any questions. You
do not have to open bags or any closed container. Tell the officers you do not
consent to a search of your bags or other property.
What
if police or agents stop me in my car?
Keep
your hands where the police can see them. If you are driving a vehicle, you
must show your license, registration and, in some states, proof of insurance.
You do not have to consent to a search. But the police may have legal grounds
to search your car anyway. Clearly state that you do not consent. Officers may
separate passengers and drivers from each other to question them, but no one
has to answer any questions.
What
if I am treated badly by the police or the FBI?
Write
down the officer's badge number, name or other identifying information. You
have a right to ask the officer for this information. Try to find witnesses and
their names and phone numbers. If you are injured, seek medical attention and
take pictures of the injuries as soon as you can. Call a lawyer as soon as
possible.
What
if the police or FBI threaten me with a grand jury subpoena if I don't answer
their questions?
A
grand jury subpoena is a written order for you to go to court and testify about
information you may have. It is common for the FBI to threaten you with a
subpoena to get you to talk to them. If they are going to subpoena you, they
will do so anyway. You should not volunteer to speak just because you are
threatened with a subpoena. You should consult a lawyer.
What
if I receive a grand jury subpoena?
Grand
jury proceedings are not the same as testifying at an open court trial. You are
not allowed to have a lawyer present (although one may wait in the hallway and
you may ask to consult with him or her after each question) and you may be asked
to answer questions about your activities and associations. Because of the
witness's limited rights in this situation, the government has frequently used
grand jury subpoenas to gather information about activists and political
organizations. It is common for the FBI to threaten activists with a subpoena
in order to elicit information about their political views and activities and
those of their associates. There are legal grounds for stopping
("quashing") subpoenas, and receiving one does not necessarily mean
that you are suspected of a crime. If you do receive a subpoena, call the NLG
National Hotline at 888-NLG-ECOL (888-654-3265) or call a criminal defense
attorney immediately.
The
government regularly uses grand jury subpoena power to investigate and seek
evidence related to politically-active individuals and social movements. This
practice is aimed at prosecuting activists and, through intimidation and
disruption, discouraging continued activism.
Federal
grand jury subpoenas are served in person. If you receive one, it is critically
important that you retain the services of an attorney, preferably one who
understands your goals and, if applicable, understands the nature of your
political work, and has experience with these issues. Most lawyers are trained
to provide the best legal defense for their client, often at the expense of
others. Beware lawyers who summarily advise you to cooperate with grand juries,
testify against friends, or cut off contact with your friends and political
activists. Cooperation usually leads to others being subpoenaed and
investigated. You also run the risk of being charged with perjury, a felony,
should you omit any pertinent information or should there be inconsistencies in
your testimony.
Frequently
prosecutors will offer "use immunity," meaning that the prosecutor is
prohibited from using your testimony or any leads from it to bring charges
against you. If a subsequent prosecution is brought, the prosecutor bears the
burden of proving that all of its evidence was obtained independent of the
immunized testimony. You should be aware, however, that they will use anything
you say to manipulate associates into sharing more information about you by
suggesting that you have betrayed confidences.
In
front of a grand jury you can "take the Fifth" (exercise your right
to remain silent). However, the prosecutor may impose immunity on you, which
strips you of Fifth Amendment protection and subjects you to the possibility of
being cited for contempt and jailed if you refuse to answer further. In front
of a grand jury you have no Sixth Amendment right to counsel, although you can
consult with a lawyer outside the grand jury room after each question.
What
if I don't cooperate with the grand jury?
If
you receive a grand jury subpoena and elect to not cooperate, you may be held
in civil contempt. There is a chance that you may be jailed or imprisoned for
the length of the grand jury in an effort to coerce you to cooperate. Regular
grand juries sit for a basic term of 18 months, which can be extended up to a
total of 24 months. It is lawful to hold you in order to coerce your
cooperation, but unlawful to hold you as a means of punishment. In rare
instances you may face criminal contempt charges.
What
If I Am Not a Citizen and the DHS Contacts Me?
The
Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) is now part of the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) and has been renamed and reorganized into: 1. The
Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS); 2. The Bureau of Customs
and Border Protection (CBP); and 3. The Bureau of Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE). All three bureaus will be referred to as DHS for the
purposes of this pamphlet.
?
Assert your rights. If you do not demand your rights or if you sign papers
waiving your rights, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may deport you
before you see a lawyer or an immigration judge. Never sign anything without
reading, understanding and knowing the consequences of signing it.
?
Talk to a lawyer. If possible, carry with you the name and telephone number of
an immigration lawyer who will take your calls. The immigration laws are hard
to understand and there have been many recent changes. DHS will not explain
your options to you. As soon as you encounter a DHS agent, call your attorney.
If you can't do it right away, keep trying. Always talk to an immigration
lawyer before leaving the U.S. Even some legal permanent residents can be
barred from returning.
Based
on today's laws, regulations and DHS guidelines, non-citizens usually have the
following rights, no matter what their immigration status. This information may
change, so it is important to contact a lawyer. The following rights apply to
non-citizens who are inside the U.S. Non-citizens at the border who are trying
to enter the U.S. do not have all the same rights.
Do
I have the right to talk to a lawyer before answering any DHS questions or
signing any DHS papers?
Yes.
You have the right to call a lawyer or your family if you are detained, and you
have the right to be visited by a lawyer in detention. You have the right to
have your attorney with you at any hearing before an immigration judge. You do
not have the right to a government-appointed attorney for immigration
proceedings, but if you have been arrested, immigration officials must show you
a list of free or low cost legal service providers.
Should
I carry my green card or other immigration papers with me?
If
you have documents authorizing you to stay in the U.S., you must carry them
with you. Presenting false or expired papers to DHS may lead to deportation or
criminal prosecution. An unexpired green card, I-94, Employment Authorization
Card, Border Crossing Card or other papers that prove you are in legal status
will satisfy this requirement. If you do not carry these papers with you, you
could be charged with a crime. Always keep a copy of your immigration papers
with a trusted family member or friend who can fax them to you, if need be.
Check with your immigration lawyer about your specific case.
Am
I required to talk to government officers about my immigration history?
If
you are undocumented, out of status, a legal permanent resident (green card
holder), or a citizen, you do not have to answer any questions about your
immigration history. (You may want to consider giving your name; see above for
more information about this.) If you are not in any of these categories, and
you are being questioned by a DHS or FBI agent, then you may create problems
with your immigration status if you refuse to provide information requested by
the agent. If you have a lawyer, you can tell the agent that your lawyer will
answer questions on your behalf. If answering questions could lead the agent to
information that connects you with criminal activity, you should consider
refusing to talk to the agent at all.
If
I am arrested for immigration violations, do I have the right to a hearing
before an immigration judge to defend myself against deportation charges?
Yes.
In most cases only an immigration judge can order you deported. But if you
waive your rights or take "voluntary departure," agreeing to leave
the country, you could be deported without a hearing. If you have criminal
convictions, were arrested at the border, came to the U.S. through the visa
waiver program or have been ordered deported in the past, you could be deported
without a hearing. Contact a lawyer immediately to see if there is any relief
for you.
Can
I call my consulate if I am arrested?
Yes.
Non-citizens arrested in the U.S. have the right to call their consulate or to
have the police tell the consulate of your arrest. The police must let your
consulate visit or speak with you if consular officials decide to do so. Your
consulate might help you find a lawyer or offer other help. You also have the
right to refuse help from your consulate.
What
happens if I give up my right to a hearing or leave the U.S. before the hearing
is over?
You
could lose your eligibility for certain immigration benefits, and you could be
barred from returning to the U.S. for a number of years. You should always talk
to an immigration lawyer before you decide to give up your right to a hearing.
What
should I do if I want to contact DHS?
Always
talk to a lawyer before contacting DHS, even on the phone. Many DHS officers
view "enforcement" as their primary job and will not explain all of
your options to you.
What
Are My Rights at Airports?
IMPORTANT
NOTE: It is illegal for law enforcement to perform any stops, searches,
detentions or removals based solely on your race, national origin, religion,
sex or ethnicity.
If
I am entering the U.S. with valid travel papers can a U.S. customs agent stop
and search me?
Yes.
Customs agents have the right to stop, detain and search every person and item.
Can
my bags or I be searched after going through metal detectors with no problem or
after security sees that my bags do not contain a weapon?
Yes.
Even if the initial screen of your bags reveals nothing suspicious, the
screeners have the authority to conduct a further search of you or your bags.
If
I am on an airplane, can an airline employee interrogate me or ask me to get
off the plane?
The
pilot of an airplane has the right to refuse to fly a passenger if he or she
believes the passenger is a threat to the safety of the flight. The pilot's decision
must be reasonable and based on observations of you, not stereotypes.
What
If I Am Under 18?
Do
I have to answer questions?
No.
Minors too have the right to remain silent. You cannot be arrested for refusing
to talk to the police, probation officers, or school officials, except in some
states you may have to give your name if you have been detained.
What
if I am detained?
If
you are detained at a community detention facility or Juvenile Hall, you
normally must be released to a parent or guardian. If charges are filed against
you, in most states you are entitled to counsel (just like an adult) at no
cost.
Do
I have the right to express political views at school?
Public
school students generally have a First Amendment right to politically organize
at school by passing out leaflets, holding meetings, etc., as long as those
activities are not disruptive and do not violate legitimate school rules. You
may not be singled out based on your politics, ethnicity or religion.
Can
my backpack or locker be searched?
School
officials can search students' backpacks and lockers without a warrant if they
reasonably suspect that you are involved in criminal activity or carrying drugs
or weapons. Do not consent to the police or school officials searching your property,
but do not physically resist or you may face criminal charges.
Disclaimer
This
booklet is not a substitute for legal advice. You should contact an attorney if
you have been visited by the FBI or other law enforcement officials. You should
also alert your relatives, friends, co-workers and others so that they will be
prepared if they are contacted as well.
NLG
National Hotline for Activists Contacted by the FBI
888-NLG-ECOL
(888-654-3265)
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Free
Mumia NOW!
Prisonradio.org
Write
to Mumia:
Mumia
Abu-Jamal AM 8335
SCI
Mahanoy
301
Morea Road
Frackville,
PA 17932
FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Rachel Wolkenstein
August
21, 2011 (917) 689-4009
MUMIA
ABU-JAMAL ILLEGALLY SENTENCED TO
LIFE
IMPRISONMENT WITHOUT PAROLE!
FREE
MUMIA NOW!
www.FreeMumia.com
http://blacktalkradionetwork.com/profiles/blogs/mumia-is-formally-sentenced-to-life-in-prison-w-out-hearing-he-s
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"A
Child's View from Gaza: Palestinian Children's Art and the Fight Against
Censorship"
book
https://www.mecaforpeace.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=25
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WITNESS
GAZA
http://www.witnessgaza.com/
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The
Battle Is Still On To
FREE
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL!
The
Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO
Box 16222 • Oakland CA 94610
www.laboractionmumia.org
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KEVIN
COOPER IS INNOCENT! FREE KEVIN COOPER!
Reasonable
doubts about executing Kevin Cooper
Chronicle
Editorial
Monday,
December 13, 2010
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/13/EDG81GP0I7.DTL
Death
penalty -- Kevin Cooper is Innocent! Help save his life from San Quentin's
death
row!
http://www.savekevincooper.org/
http://www.savekevincooper.org/pages/essays_content.html?ID=255
URGENT
ACTION APPEAL
-
From Amnesty International USA
17
December 2010
Click
here to take action online:
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&\
b=2590179&template=x.ascx&action=15084
To
learn about recent Urgent Action successes and updates, go to
http://www.amnestyusa.org/iar/success
For
a print-friendly version of this Urgent Action (PDF):
http://www.amnestyusa.org/actioncenter/actions/uaa25910.pdf
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Short
Video About Al-Awda's Work
The
following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's
work
since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown
on
Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l
Al-Awda
Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected
over
the past nine years.
Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurl
Support
Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!
Al-Awda,
The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial
support
to carry out its work.
To
submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go to
http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html
and
follow the simple instructions.
Thank
you for your generosity!
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D.
VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.:
[Some
of these videos are embeded on the BAUAW website:
http://bauaw.blogspot.com/
or bauaw.org ...bw]
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Prison vs School: The Tour
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogmtAQlp9HI
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Checkpoint - Jasiri X
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq6Y6LSjulU
Published on Jan 28, 2014
"Checkpoint" is based on the
oppression and discrimination Jasiri X witnessed firsthand during his
recent trip to Palestine and Israel "Checkpoint" is produced by Agent of
Change, and directed by Haute Muslim. Download "Checkpoint" at https://jasirix.bandcamp.com/track/ch....
Follow Jasiri X at https://twitter.com/jasiri_x
LYRICS
Journal of the hard times tales from the dark side
Evidence of the settlements on my hard drive
Man I swear my heart died at the end of that car ride
When I saw that checkpoint welcome to apartheid
Soldiers wear military green at the checkpoint
Automatic guns that's machine at the checkpoint
Tavors not m16s at the checkpoint
Fingers on the trigger you'll get leaned at the checkpoint
Little children grown adults or teens at the checkpoint
All ya papers better be clean at the checkpoint
You gotta but your finger on the screen at the checkpoint
And pray that red light turns green at the check point
If Martin Luther King had a dream of the checkpoint
He wake with loud screams from the scenes at the checkpoint
It's Malcolm X by any means at the check point
Imagine if you daily routine was the checkpoint
Separation walls that's surrounding the checkpoint
On top is barbwire like a crown on the checkpoint
Better have ya permits if your found at the checkpoint
Gunmen on the tower aiming down at the checkpoint
The idea is to keep you in fear of the checkpoint
You enter through the cage in the rear of the checkpoint
It feels like prison on a tier at the check point
I'd rather be anywhere but here at this checkpoint
Nelson Mandela wasn't blind to the check point
He stood for free Palestine not a check point
Support BDS don't give a dime to the checkpoint
This is international crime at the checkpoint
Arabs get treated like dogs at the checkpoint
Cause discrimination is the law at the checkpoint
Criminalized without a cause at the checkpoint
I'm just telling you what I saw at the checkpoint
Soldiers got bad attitudes at the checkpoint
Condescending and real rude at the checkpoint
Don't look em in they eyes when they move at the checkpoint
They might strip a man or woman nude at the checkpoint
Soldiers might blow you out of ya shoes at the checkpoint
Gas you up and then light the fuse at the checkpoint
Everyday you stand to be accused at the checkpoint
Each time your life you could lose at the checkpoint
If Martin Luther King had a dream of the checkpoint
He wake with loud screams from the scenes at the checkpoint
It's Malcolm X by any means at the check point
Imagine if you daily routine was the checkpoint
At the airport in Tel Aviv is a checkpoint
They pulled over our taxi at the checkpoint
Passport visa ID at the checkpoint
Soldiers going all through my things at the checkpoint
Said I was high risk security at the checkpoint
Because of the oppression I see at the checkpoint
Occupation in the 3rd degree at the checkpoint
All a nigga wanna do is leave fuck a checkpoint
Follow Jasiri X at https://twitter.com/jasiri_x
LYRICS
Journal of the hard times tales from the dark side
Evidence of the settlements on my hard drive
Man I swear my heart died at the end of that car ride
When I saw that checkpoint welcome to apartheid
Soldiers wear military green at the checkpoint
Automatic guns that's machine at the checkpoint
Tavors not m16s at the checkpoint
Fingers on the trigger you'll get leaned at the checkpoint
Little children grown adults or teens at the checkpoint
All ya papers better be clean at the checkpoint
You gotta but your finger on the screen at the checkpoint
And pray that red light turns green at the check point
If Martin Luther King had a dream of the checkpoint
He wake with loud screams from the scenes at the checkpoint
It's Malcolm X by any means at the check point
Imagine if you daily routine was the checkpoint
Separation walls that's surrounding the checkpoint
On top is barbwire like a crown on the checkpoint
Better have ya permits if your found at the checkpoint
Gunmen on the tower aiming down at the checkpoint
The idea is to keep you in fear of the checkpoint
You enter through the cage in the rear of the checkpoint
It feels like prison on a tier at the check point
I'd rather be anywhere but here at this checkpoint
Nelson Mandela wasn't blind to the check point
He stood for free Palestine not a check point
Support BDS don't give a dime to the checkpoint
This is international crime at the checkpoint
Arabs get treated like dogs at the checkpoint
Cause discrimination is the law at the checkpoint
Criminalized without a cause at the checkpoint
I'm just telling you what I saw at the checkpoint
Soldiers got bad attitudes at the checkpoint
Condescending and real rude at the checkpoint
Don't look em in they eyes when they move at the checkpoint
They might strip a man or woman nude at the checkpoint
Soldiers might blow you out of ya shoes at the checkpoint
Gas you up and then light the fuse at the checkpoint
Everyday you stand to be accused at the checkpoint
Each time your life you could lose at the checkpoint
If Martin Luther King had a dream of the checkpoint
He wake with loud screams from the scenes at the checkpoint
It's Malcolm X by any means at the check point
Imagine if you daily routine was the checkpoint
At the airport in Tel Aviv is a checkpoint
They pulled over our taxi at the checkpoint
Passport visa ID at the checkpoint
Soldiers going all through my things at the checkpoint
Said I was high risk security at the checkpoint
Because of the oppression I see at the checkpoint
Occupation in the 3rd degree at the checkpoint
All a nigga wanna do is leave fuck a checkpoint
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Exceptional
art from the streets of Oakland:
Oakland
Street Dancing
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
NYC
RESTAURANT WORKERS DANCE & SING FOR A WAGE HIKE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_s8e1R6rG8&feature=player_embedded
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On
Gun Control, Martin Luther King, the Deacons of Defense and the history of
Black Liberation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzYKisvBN1o&feature=player_embedded
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Fukushima
Never Again
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU-Z4VLDGxU
"Fukushima,
Never Again" tells the story of the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdowns in
north east Japan in March of 2011 and exposes the cover-up by Tepco and the
Japanese government.
This
is the first film that interviews the Mothers Of Fukushima, nuclear power
experts and trade unionists who are fighting for justice and the protection of
the children and the people of Japan and the world. The residents and citizens
were forced to buy their own geiger counters and radiation dosimeters in order
to test their communities to find out if they were in danger.
The
government said contaminated soil in children's school grounds was safe and
then
when
the people found out it was contaminated and removed the top soil, the
government and TEPCO refused to remove it from the school grounds.
It
also relays how the nuclear energy program for "peaceful atoms" was brought
to Japan under the auspices of the US military occupation and also the criminal
cover-up of the safety dangers of the plant by TEPCO and GE management which
built the plant in Fukushima. It also interviews Kei Sugaoka, the GE nulcear
plant inspector from the bay area who exposed cover-ups in the safety at the
Fukushima plant and was retaliated against by GE. This documentary allows the
voices of the people and workers to speak out about the reality of the disaster
and what this means not only for the people of Japan but the people of the
world as the US government and nuclear industry continue to push for more new
plants and government subsidies. This film breaks
the
information blockade story line of the corporate media in Japan, the US and
around the world that Fukushima is over.
Production
Of Labor Video Project
P.O.
Box 720027
San
Francisco, CA 94172
www.laborvideo.org
lvpsf@laborvideo.org
For
information on obtaining the video go to:
www.fukushimaneveragain.com
(415)282-1908
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1000
year of war through the world
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiG8neU4_bs&feature=share
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Anatomy
of a Massacre - Afganistan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6BnRc11aug&feature=player_embedded
Afghans
accuse multiple soldiers of pre-meditated murder
To
see more go to http://www.youtube.com/user/journeymanpictures
Follow
us on Facebook (http://goo.gl/YRw42) or Twitter
(http://www.twitter.com/journeymanvod)
The
recent massacre of 17 civilians by a rogue US soldier has been shrouded in
mystery.
But through unprecedented access to those involved, this report
confronts
the accusations that Bales didn't act alone.
"They
came into my room and they killed my family". Stories like this are common
amongst
the survivors in Aklozai and Najiban. As are the shocking accusations
that
Sergeant Bales was not acting alone. Even President Karzai has announced
"one
man can not do that". Chief investigator, General Karimi, is suspicious
that
despite being fully armed, Bales freely left his base without raising
alarm.
"How come he leaves at night and nobody is aware? Every time we have
weapon
accountability and personal accountability." These are just a few of the
questions
the American army and government are yet to answer. One thing however
is
very clear, the massacre has unleashed a wave of grief and outrage which
means
relations in Kandahar will be tense for years to come: "If I could lay my
hands
on those infidels, I would rip them apart with my bare hands."
A
Film By SBS
Distributed
By Journeyman Pictures
April
2012
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Photo
of George Zimmerman, in 2005 photo, left, and in a more recent photo.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/04/02/us/the-events-leading-to-the-sooti\
ng-of-trayvon-martin.html?hp
SPD
Security Cams.wmv
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WWDNbQUgm4&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Kids
being put on buses and transported from school to "alternate
locations" in
Terror
Drills
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFia_w8adWQ
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Private
prisons,
a
recession resistant investment opportunity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIGLDOxx9Vg
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Attack
Dogs used on a High School Walkout in MD, Four Students Charged With
"Thought
Crimes"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wafMaML17w
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Common
forms of misconduct by Law Enforcement Officials and Prosecutors
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViSpM4K276w&feature=related
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Organizing
and Instigating: OCCUPY - Ronnie Goodman
http://arthazelwood.com/instigator/occupy/occupy-birth-video.html
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Rep
News 12: Yes We Kony
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68GbzIkYdc8
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
The
New Black by The Mavrix - Official Music Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4rLfja8488
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Japan
One Year Later
http://www.onlineschools.org/japan-one-year-later/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
The
CIA's Heart Attack Gun
http://www.brasschecktv.com/videos/assassination-studies/the-cias-heart-attack-g\
un-.html
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
The
Invisible American Workforce
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/8/5/new_expos_tracks_alec_private_prison
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Labor
Beat: NATO vs The 1st Amendment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbQxnb4so3U
For
more detailed information, send us a request at mail@laborbeat.org.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
The
Battle of Oakland
by
brandon jourdan plus
http://vimeo.com/36256273
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Officers
Pulled Off Street After Tape of Beating Surfaces
By
ANDY NEWMAN
February
1, 2012, 10:56 am
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/officers-pulled-off-street-after-ta\
pe-of-beating-surfaces/?ref=nyregion
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
This
is excellent! Michelle Alexander pulls no punches!
Michelle
Alexander, Author of The New Jim Crow, speaks about the political
strategy
behind
the War on Drugs and its connection to the mass incarceration of Black
and
Brown people in the United States.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P75cbEdNo2U&feature=player_embedded
If
you think Bill Clinton was "the first black President" you need to
watch this
video
and see how much damage his administration caused for the black community
as
a result of his get tough attitude on crime that appealed to white swing
voters.
This
speech took place at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem on January 12,
2012.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
FREE
BRADLEY MANNING
http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/national-call-in-for-bradley
I
received the following reply from the White House November 18, 2011 regarding
the
Bradley Manning petition I signed:
"Why
We Can't Comment on Bradley Manning
"Thank
you for signing the petition 'Free PFC Bradley Manning, the accused
WikiLeaks
whistleblower.' We appreciate your participation in the We the People
platform
on WhiteHouse.gov.
The
We the People Terms of Participation explain that 'the White House may
decline
to address certain procurement, law enforcement, adjudicatory, or
similar
matters properly within the jurisdiction of federal departments or
agencies,
federal courts, or state and local government.' The military justice
system
is charged with enforcing the Uniform Code of
Military
Justice. Accordingly, the White House declines to comment on the
specific
case raised in this petition...
That's
funny! I guess Obama didn't get this memo. Here's what Obama said about
Bradley:
BRADLEY
MANNING "BROKE THE LAW" SAYS OBAMA!
"He
broke the law!" says Obama about Bradley Manning who has yet to even be
charged,
let alone, gone to trial and found guilty. How horrendous is it for the
President
to declare someone guilty before going to trial or being charged with
a
crime! Justice in the U.S.A.!
Obama
on FREE BRADLEY MANNING protest... San Francisco, CA. April 21, 2011-
Presidential
remarks on interrupt/interaction/performance art happening at
fundraiser.
Logan Price queries Barack after org. FRESH JUICE PARTY political
action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfmtUpd4id0&feature=youtu.be
Release
Bradley Manning
Almost
Gone (The Ballad Of Bradley Manning)
Written
by Graham Nash and James Raymond (son of David Crosby)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAYG7yJpBbQ&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Julian
Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVGqE726OAo&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
School
police increasingly arresting American students?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl-efNBvjUU&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
FYI:
Nuclear
Detonation Timeline "1945-1998"
The
2053 nuclear tests and explosions that took place between 1945 and 1998 are
plotted
visually and audibly on a world map.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9lquok4Pdk&feature=share&mid=5408
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
We
Are the 99 Percent
We
are the 99 percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to
choose
between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are
suffering
from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay
and
no rights, if we're working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1
percent
is getting everything. We are the 99 percent.
Brought
to you by the people who occupy wall street. Why will YOU occupy?
OccupyWallSt.org
Occupytogether.org
wearethe99percentuk.tumblr.com
http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
We
Are The People Who Will Save Our Schools
YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFAOJsBxAxY
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
In
honor of the 75th Anniversary of the 44-Day Flint Michigan sit-down strike at
GM
that began December 30, 1936:
According
to Michael Moore, (Although he has done some good things, this clip
isn't
one of them) in this clip from his film, "Capitalism a Love Story,"
it was
Roosevelt
who saved the day!):
"After
a bloody battle one evening, the Governor of Michigan, with the support
of
the President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, sent in the National
Guard.
But the guns and the soldiers weren't used on the workers; they were
pointed
at the police and the hired goons warning them to leave these workers
alone.
For Mr. Roosevelt believed that the men inside had a right to a redress
of
their grievances." -Michael Moore's 'Capitalism: A Love Story'
-
Flint Sit-Down Strike http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8x1_q9wg58
But
those cannons were not aimed at the goons and cops! They were aimed straight
at
the factory filled with strikers! Watch what REALLY happened and how the
strike
was really won!
'With
babies & banners' -- 75 years since the 44-day Flint sit-down strike
http://links.org.au/node/2681
--Inspiring
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
HALLELUJAH
CORPORATIONS (revised edition).mov
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws0WSNRpy3g
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
ONE
OF THE GREATEST POSTS ON YOUTUBE SO FAR!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8C-qIgbP9o&feature=share&mid=552
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
ILWU
Local 10 Longshore Workers Speak-Out At Oakland Port Shutdown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JUpBpZYwms
Uploaded
by laborvideo on Dec 13, 2011
ILWU
Local 10 longshore workers speak out during a blockade of the Port of
Oakland
called for by Occupy Oakland. Anthony Levieges and Clarence Thomas rank
and
file members of the union. The action took place on December 12, 2011 and
the
interview took place at Pier 30 on the Oakland docks.
For
more information on the ILWU Local 21 Longview EGT struggle go to
http://www.facebook.com/groups/256313837734192/
For
further info on the action and the press conferernce go to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz3fE-Vhrw8&feature=youtu.be
Production
of Labor Video Project www.laborvideo.org
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
UC
Davis Police Violence Adds Fuel to Fire
By
Scott Galindez, Reader Supported News
19
November 11
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/275-42/8485-uc-davis-police-violence-add\
s-fuel-to-fire
UC
Davis Protestors Pepper Sprayed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AdDLhPwpp4&feature=player_embedded
Police
PEPPER SPRAY UC Davis STUDENT PROTESTERS!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuWEx6Cfn-I&feature=player_embedded
Police
pepper spraying and arresting students at UC Davis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmJmmnMkuEM&feature=player_embedded
*---------*
UC
Davis Chancellor Katehi walks to her car
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CZ0t9ez_EGI#!
Occupy
Seattle - 84 Year Old Woman Dorli Rainey Pepper Sprayed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTIyE_JlJzw&feature=related
*---------*
THE
BEST VIDEO ON "OCCUPY THE WORLD"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S880UldxB1o
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Shot
by police with rubber bullet at Occupy Oakland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0pX9LeE-g8&feature=player_embedded
*---------*
Copwatch@Occupy
Oakland: Beware of Police Infiltrators and Provocateurs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrvMzqopHH0
*---------*
Occupy
Oakland 11-2 Strike: Police Tear Gas, Black Bloc, War in the Streets
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Tu_D8SFYck&feature=player_embedded
*----*
Quebec
police admitted that, in 2007, thugs carrying rocks to a peaceful protest
were
actually undercover Quebec police officers:
POLICE
STATE Criminal Cops EXPOSED As Agent Provocateurs @ SPP Protest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoiisMMCFT0&feature=player_embedded
*----*
Quebec
police admit going undercover at montebello protests
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAfzUOx53Rg&feature=player_embedded
G20:
Epic Undercover Police Fail
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrJ7aU-n1L8&feature=player_embedded
*----*
WHAT
HAPPENED IN OAKLAND TUESDAY NIGHT, OCTOBER 25:
Occupy
Oakland Protest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlPs-REyl-0&feature=player_embedded
Cops
make mass arrests at occupy Oakland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R27kD2_7PwU&feature=player_embedded
Raw
Video: Protesters Clash With Oakland Police
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpO-lJr2BQY&feature=player_embedded
Occupy
Oakland - Flashbangs USED on protesters OPD LIES
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqNOPZLw03Q&feature=player_embedded
KTVU
TV Video of Police violence
http://www.ktvu.com/video/29587714/index.html
Marine
Vet wounded, tear gas & flash-bang grenades thrown in downtown
Oakland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMUgPTCgwcQ&feature=player_embedded
Tear
Gas billowing through 14th & Broadway in Downtown Oakland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU4Y0pwJtWE&feature=player_embedded
Arrests
at Occupy Atlanta -- This is what a police state looks like
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YStWz6jbeZA&feature=player_embedded
*---------*
Labor
Beat: Hey You Billionaire, Pay Your Fair Share
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY8isD33f-I
*---------*
Voices
of Occupy Boston 2011 - Kwame Somburu (Paul Boutelle) Part I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA48gmfGB6U&feature=youtu.be
Voices
of Occupy Boston 2011 - Kwame Somburu (Paul Boutelle) Part II
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjKZpOk7TyM&feature=related
*---------*
#Occupy
Wall Street In Washington Square: Mohammed Ezzeldin, former occupier of
Egypt's
Tahrir Square Speaks at Washington Square!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziodsFWEb5Y&feature=player_embedded
*---------*
#OccupyTheHood,
Occupy Wall Street
By
adele pham
http://vimeo.com/30146870
*---------*
Live
arrest at brooklyn bridge #occupywallstreet by We are Change
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yULSI-31Pto&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
FREE
THE CUBAN FIVE!
http://www.thecuban5.org/wordpress/index.php
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmS4kHC_OlY&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
One
World One Revolution -- MUST SEE VIDEO -- Powerful and beautiful...bw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE3R1BQrYCw&feature=player_embedded
"When
injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty." Thomas Jefferson
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Japan:
angry Fukushima citizens confront government (video)
Posted
by Xeni Jardin on Monday, Jul 25th at 11:36am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVuGwc9dlhQ&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Labor
Beat: Labor Stands with Subpoenaed Activists Against FBI Raids and Grand
Jury
Investigation of antiwar and social justice activists.
"If
trouble is not at your door. It's on it's way, or it just left."
"Investigate
the Billionaires...Full investigation into Wall Street..." Jesse
Sharkey,
Vice
President,
Chicago Teachers Union
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSNUSIGZCMQ
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Coal
Ash: One Valley's Tale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E7h-DNvwx4&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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unsubscribe go to: bauaw2003-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
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2) Protesters march against Renzi labor reforms in Rome
"taly's overall employment rate is one of the lowest in the euro zone, at 55.7 percent in August, and joblessness among young people is running at a record-high 44.2 percent."
Sat Oct 25, 2014 10:47am EDT
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/25/us-italy-demonstration-idUSKCN0IE0AV20141025?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews
5) Report Reveals Wider Tracking of Mail in U.S.
10) Ecuador: Tortoise Species Is Saved
12) $2.25 Million Settlement for Family of Rikers Inmate Who Died in Overheated Cell
BY Dan Barry
14) U.N. Panel Warns of Dire Effects From Lack of Action Over Global Warming