7/19/2023

Bay Area United Against War Newsletter, July 20, 2023

     


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July is LaborFest Month!

LaborFest 2023 schedule is up!

https://laborfest.net

 

Dear Friends of LaborFest,

 

Thank you so much for waiting this year's LaborFest schedule.

Although it's not completed yet, we are finally able to put it up.

 

This year’s schedule includes history walks, poetry, book readings, play, political discussion, and of course the boat ride. This year’s labor history boat ride might be our last one, so please participate and enjoy. The number is limited on the boat.

 

If you noticed anything on our web page which needs to be corrected, please let us know. We are an all-volunteer organization, and any help is welcomed.


If you have social media skills and want to help get publicity out about this festival, please contact us too, and please get this out to other lists you are on. 

 

Lastly, please post photos, videos, and comments on our social media platforms.

 

See you soon,

 

Kazmi Torii

LaborFest Organizing Committee

laborfest@laborfest.net

https://laborfest.net

 

https://www.facebook.com/laborfest1

 

https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/laborfest/?hl=en



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No one is coming to save us, but us.

 

We need visionary politics, collective strategy, and compassionate communities now more than ever. In a moment of political uncertainty, the Socialism Conference—September 1-4, in Chicago—will be a vital gathering space for today’s left. Join thousands of organizers, activists, and socialists to learn from each other and from history, assess ongoing struggles, build community, and experience the energy of in-person gatherings.

 

Featured speakers at Socialism 2023 will include: Naomi Klein, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Robin D.G. Kelley, aja monet, Bettina Love, Olúfẹmi O. Táíwò, Sophie Lewis, Harsha Walia, Dina Gilio-Whitaker, Astra Taylor, Malcolm Harris, Kelly Hayes, Daniel Denvir, Emily Drabinski, Ilya Budraitskis, Dave Zirin, and many more.

 

The Socialism Conference is brought to you by Haymarket Books and dozens of endorsing left-wing organizations and publications, including Jacobin, DSA, EWOC, In These Times, Debt Collective, Dream Defenders, the Autonomous Tenant Union Network, N+1, Jewish Currents, Lux, Verso Books, Pluto Press, and many more. 

 

Register for Socialism 2023 by July 7 for the early bird discounted rate! Registering TODAY is the single best way you can help support, sustain, and expand the Socialism Conference. The sooner that conference organizers can gauge conference attendance, the bigger and better the conference will be!

 

Learn more and register for Socialism 2023

September 1-4, 2023, Chicago

https://socialismconference.org/?utm_source=Jacobin&utm_campaign=54423c5cc0-

 

Attendees are expected to wear a mask (N95, K95, or surgical mask) over their mouth and nose while indoors at the conference. Masks will be provided for those who do not have one.

 

A number of sessions from the conference will also be live-streamed virtually so that those unable to attend in person can still join us.

Copyright © 2023 Jacobin, All rights reserved.

You are receiving these messages because you opted in through our signup form, or at time of subscription/purchase.

 

Our mailing address is:

Jacobin

388 Atlantic Ave

Brooklyn, NY 11217-3399

 

Add us to your address book:

publicity@jacobinmag.com


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How you you can help:

 

1. Host any or all of the Tampa 5 in your city or on your local campus as we conduct a speaking tour around the country

 

2. Sign your organization onto this petition and help us spread the word about the Tampa 5:

 https://peoplespetitions.org/tampa5

 

The Tampa 5 are students and workers who attended a Tampa Bay Students for a Democratic Society protest on March 6th to save diversity programs at the University of South Florida and to oppose Ron DeSantis' anti-education bill, HB999. They were attacked, arrested, and now charged with felonies by the University of South Florida Police Department. Their felonies and potential prison time were doubled by the unelected, DeSantis-appointed state attorney, Susan Lopez, and her underling, Justin Diaz. They now face five to ten years in prison for exercising their right to protest and freedom of speech. The students were suspended and one of the five, the campus worker, Chrisley Carpio, was fired from her job at the university.

 

On June 24th, over 130 attendees of an emergency defense conference founded a new organization: the Emergency Committee to Defend the Tampa 5, which is national in scope. We are embarking on a long-term defense campaign to get the charges dropped and to defend the right to free speech in the state of Florida, and we need your help!

 

Thanks so much for your solidarity and support so far, and we'll see you in the streets!


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Free Julian Assange




Immediate Repeated Action Needed to Free Assange

 

Please call your Congressional Representatives, the White House, and the DOJ. Calls are tallied—they do count.  We are to believe we are represented in this country.  This is a political case, so our efforts can change things politically as well.  Please take this action as often as you can:

 

Find your representatives:

https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member

 

Leave each of your representatives a message individually to: 

·      Drop the charges against Julian Assange

·      Speak out publicly against the indictment and

·      Sign on to Rashida Tlaib's letter to the DOJ to drop the charges: 

           202-224-3121—Capitol Main Switchboard 

 

Leave a message on the White House comment line to 

Demand Julian Assange be pardoned: 

             202-456-1111

             Tuesday–Thursday, 11:00 A.M.–3:00 P.M. EST

 

Call the DOJ and demand they drop the charges against Julian Assange:

             202-353-1555—DOJ Comment Line

             202-514-2000 Main Switchboard 



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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!

FREE HIM NOW!

Write to Mumia at:

Smart Communications/PADOC

Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335

SCI Mahanoy

P.O. Box 33028

St. Petersburg, FL 33733



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Previously Recorded

View on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeIfVB7IykQ

 

 

Featured Speakers:

 

Yuliya Yurchenko, Senior Lecturer at the University of Greenwich and author of Ukraine and the Empire of Capital: From Marketization to Armed Conflict.

 

Vladyslav Starodubstev, historian of Central and Eastern European region, and member of the Ukrainian democratic socialist organization Sotsialnyi Rukh.

 

Kirill Medvedev, poet, political writer, and member of the Russian Socialist Movement.

 

Kavita Krishnan, Indian feminist, author of Fearless Freedom, former leader of the Communist Party of India (ML).

 

Bill Fletcher, former President of TransAfrica Forum, former senior staff person at the AFL-CIO, and Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies.

 

Including solidarity statements from among others Barbara Smith, Eric Draitser, Haley Pessin, Ramah Kudaimi, Dave Zirin, Frieda Afary, Jose La Luz, Rob Barrill, and Cindy Domingo.


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Urgent Health Call-In Campaign for Political Prisoner Ed Poindexter

 

Watch the moving video of Ed's Niece and Sister at the April 26, 2023, UN EMLER Hearing in Atlanta: https://youtu.be/aKwV7LQ5iww

 

Ed needs to be released to live the rest of his life outside of prison, with his family! (His niece Ericka is now 52 years old and was an infant when Ed was targeted, stolen from his home, jailed, framed, and railroaded.)

 

Ed Poindexter's left leg was amputated below the knee in early April due to lack of proper medical care. Ed has diabetes and receives dialysis several days a week. He underwent triple bypass heart surgery in 2016.

 

Please support Ed by sending him a letter of encouragement to:

 

Ed Poindexter #27767

Reception and Treatment Center

P.O. Box 22800

Lincoln, NE 68542-2800

 

Ed has a cataract in one eye that makes it difficult for him to read, so please type your letter in 18 point or larger font. The Nebraska Department of Corrections does not plan to allow Ed to have surgery for the cataract because "he has one good eye."

 

WE DEMAND COMPASSIONATE RELEASE FOR ED, WHO IS NOW AN AILING ELDER!

PLEASE CALL:

 

·      Warden Boyd of the Reception and Treatment Center (402-471-2861);

 

·      Warden Wilhelm of the Nebraska State Penitentiary (402-471-3161);

 

·      Governor Pillen, the State of Nebraska Office of the Governor (402-471-2244);

 

·      Director Rob Jeffreys, Nebraska Department of Corrections 402-471-2654;

 

The Nebraska Board of Pardons

(Email: ne.pardonsboard@nebraska.gov).

 

Please sustain calls daily through May 30th, 2023, for this intensive campaign, and thereafter as you can.

 

[Any relief for Ed will be announced via email and social media.]

 

Sample Message:

 

“I'm calling to urge that Ed Poindexter, #27767, be given immediate compassionate release.

 

“In April 2023, Ed's niece and brother found out that Ed’s leg had been amputated earlier in the month. And it happened without notice to Ed’s family! This was all within the ‘skilled nursing facility’ at the Reception and Treatment Center, which specializes in behavioral issues and suicide watch, and is not primarily a rehab medical unit.

 

“Ed is on dialysis several days per week and is wheelchair bound, and is not able to shower or change without a lot more direct support than he is currently getting.

 

“The Nebraska Department of Corrections admits that their facilities are severely overcrowded and understaffed.

 

“I join Ed’s family in demanding that Ed be given Compassionate Release, and that he be immediately released to hospice at home.”

 

Warden: Taggart Boyd

Reception and Treatment Center

P.O. Box 22800

Lincoln, NE 68542-2800

Phone: 402-471-2861

Fax: 402-479-6100

 

Warden Michelle Wilhelm

Nebraska State Penitentiary

Phone: 402-471-3161

4201 S 14th Street

Lincoln, NE 68502

 

Governor Jim Pillen

Phone: 402-471-2244

PO Box 94848

Lincoln, NE 68509-4848

https://governor.nebraska.gov/contact-governor

 

Rob Jeffreys

Director, Nebraska Department of Corrections

Phone: 402-471-2654

PO Box 94661

Lincoln, Nebraska 68509

 

Nebraska Board of Pardons

PO Box 95007

Lincoln, Nebraska 68509

Email: ne.pardonsboard@nebraska.gov

 

You can read more about Ed Poindexter at:

https://www.thejerichomovement.com/profile/poindexter-ed


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Updates From Kevin Cooper 

March 23, 2023 

Dear Friends and Comrades, 

This is Kevin Cooper writing and sending this update to you in 'Peace & Solidarity'. First and foremost I am well and healthy, and over the ill effect(s) that I went through after that biased report from MoFo, and their pro prosecution and law enforcement experts. I am back working with my legal team from Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP.

'We' have made great progress in refuting all that those experts from MoFo came up with by twisting the truth to fit their narrative, or omitting things, ignoring, things, and using all the other tactics that they did to reach their conclusions. Orrick has hired four(4) real experts who have no questionable backgrounds. One is a DNA attorney, like Barry Scheck of the innocence project in New York is for example. A DNA expert, a expect to refute what they say Jousha Ryen said when he was a child, and his memory. A expect on the credibility of MoFo's experts, and the attorney's at Orrick are dealing with the legal issues.

This all is taking a little longer than we first expected it to take, and that in part is because 'we' have to make sure everything is correct in what we have in our reply. We cannot put ourselves in a situation where we can be refuted... Second, some of our experts had other things planned, like court cases and such before they got the phone call from Rene, the now lead attorney of the Orrick team. With that being said, I can say that our experts, and legal team have shown, and will show to the power(s) that be that MoFo's DNA expert could not have come to the conclusion(s) that he came to, without having used 'junk science'! They, and by they I mean my entire legal team, including our experts, have done what we have done ever since Orrick took my case on in 2004, shown that all that is being said by MoFo's experts is not true, and we are once again having to show what the truth really is.

Will this work with the Governor? Who knows... 'but' we are going to try! One of our comrades, Rebecca D.   said to me, 'You and Mumia'...meaning that my case and the case of Mumia Abu Jamal are cases in which no matter what evidence comes out supporting our innocence, or prosecution misconduct, we cannot get a break. That the forces in the so called justice system won't let us go. 'Yes' she is correct about that sad to say...

Our reply will be out hopefully in the not too distant future, and that's because the people in Sacramento have been put on notice that it is coming, and why. Every one of you will receive our draft copy of the reply according to Rene because he wants feedback on it. Carole and others will send it out once they receive it. 'We' were on the verge of getting me out, and those people knew it, so they sabotaged what the Governor ordered them to do, look at all the evidence as well as the DNA evidence. They did not do that, they made this a DNA case, by doing what they did, and twisted the facts on the other issues that they dealt with.   'more later'...

In Struggle & Solidarity,

March 28, 2023

"Today is March 28, 2023

I spoke to Rene, the lead attorney. He hopes to have our reply [to the Morrison Forster report] done by April 14 and sent out with a massive Public Relations blast.

He said that the draft copy, which everyone will see, should be available April 10th. 

I will have a visit with two of the attorneys to go over the draft copy and express any concerns I have with it.

MoFo ex-law enforcement “experts” are not qualified to write what they wrote or do what they did.

Another of our expert reports has come in and there are still two more that we’re waiting for—the DNA report and Professor Bazelon’s report on what an innocence investigation is and what it is not. We are also expecting a report from the Innocence Network. All the regional Innocence Projects (like the Northern California Innocence Project) in the country belong to the Innocence Network.

If MoFo had done the right thing, I would be getting out of here, but because they knew that, somewhere along the line they got hijacked, so we have to continue this fight but we think we can win."


An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:

Mr. Kevin Cooper

C-65304. 4-EB-82

San Quentin State Prison

San Quentin, CA 94974

 

Background on Kevin's Case

Orrick

January 14, 2023


Kevin Cooper has suffered imprisonment as a death row inmate for more than 38 years for a gruesome crime he did not commit. We are therefore extremely disappointed by the special counsel’s report to the Board of Parole Hearings and disagree strongly with its findings.  Most fundamentally, we are shocked that the governor seemingly failed to conduct a thorough review of the report that contains many misstatements and omissions and also ignores the purpose of a legitimate innocence investigation, which is to independently determine whether Mr. Cooper’s conviction was a product of prosecutorial misconduct. The report failed to address that critical issue. The evidence when viewed in this light reveals that Kevin Cooper is innocent of the Ryen/Hughes murders, and that he was framed by the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department. 

 

The special counsel’s investigation ordered by Governor Newsom in May 2021 was not properly conducted and is demonstrably incomplete. It failed to carry out the type of thorough investigation required to explore the extensive evidence that Mr. Cooper was wrongfully convicted. Among other things, the investigation failed to even subpoena and then examine the files of the prosecutors and interview the individuals involved in the prosecution. For unknown reasons and resulting in the tragic and clearly erroneous conclusion that he reached, the special counsel failed to follow the basic steps taken by all innocence investigations that have led to so many exonerations of the wrongfully convicted. 

 

In effect the special counsel’s report says: the Board of Parole Hearings can and will ignore Brady violations, destruction of exculpatory evidence, planted evidence, racial prejudice, prosecutorial malfeasance, and ineffective assistance of trial counsel; since I conclude Cooper is guilty based on what the prosecution says, none of these Constitutional violations matter or will be considered and we have no obligation to investigate these claims.

 

Given that (1) we have already uncovered seven prosecutorial violations of Brady v. Maryland during Mr. Cooper’s prosecution, (2) one of the likely killers has confessed to three different parties that he, rather than Mr. Cooper, was involved in the Ryen/Hughes murders, and (3) there is significant evidence of racial bias in Mr. Cooper’s prosecution, we cannot understand how Mr. Cooper was not declared wrongfully convicted.  The special counsel specifically declined to address ineffective assistance of counsel at the trial or the effect of race discrimination.  We call on the governor to follow through on his word and obtain a true innocence investigation.


Anything But Justice for Black People

Statement from Kevin Cooper concerning recent the decision on his case by Morrison Forrester Law Firm

In 2020 and 2022 Governor Newsom signed in to law the “Racial Justice Act.” This is because the California legislature, and the Governor both acknowledged that the criminal justice system in California is anything but justice for Black people.

On May 28th, 2021, Governor signed an executive order to allow the law firm of Morrison Forrester (MoFo) to do an independent investigation in my case which included reading the trial and appellant transcripts, my innocence claims, and information brought to light by the 9th circuit court of appeals, as well as anything else not in the record, but relevant to this case.

So, Mr. Mark McDonald, Esq, who headed this investigation by Morrison Forrester and his associates at the law firm, went and did what was not part of Governor Newsom’s order, and they did this during the length of time that they were working on this case, and executive order. They worked with law enforcement, current and former members of the L.A. Sheriff’s department, and other law enforcement-type people and organizations.

Law enforcement is the first part of this state’s criminal justice system. A system that both the California legislature, and the Governor acknowledge to be racist, and cannot be trusted to tell the truth, will present, and use false evidence to obtain a conviction, will withhold material exculpatory evidence, and will do everything else that is written in those two racial justice act bills that were signed into law.

So, with the active help of those pro-police, pro-prosecutor, pro-death penalty people working on this case to uphold my bogus conviction we cannot be surprised about the recent decision handed down by them in this case.

While these results are not true but based on the decisions made in 1983 and 1984 by the San Bernardino County district attorney’s office, these 2023 results were not reached by following the executive orders of Governor Newsom.

They ignored his orders and went out to make sure that I am either executed or will never get out of prison.

Governor Newsom cannot let this stand because he did not order a pro-cop or pro-prosecutor investigation, he ordered an independent investigation.

We all know that in truth, law enforcement protects each other, they stand by each other, no matter what city, county, or state that they come from. This is especially true when a Black man like me states that I was framed for murder by law enforcement who just happened to be in the neighboring county.

No one should be surprised about the law enforcement part in this, but we must be outraged by the law firm Morrison Forrester for being a part of this and then try to sell it as legitimate. We ain’t stupid and everyone who knows the truth about my case can see right through this bullshit.

I will continue to fight not only for my life, and to get out of here, but to end the death penalty as well. My entire legal team, family and friends and supporters will continue as well. We have to get to the Governor and let him know that he cannot accept these bogus rehashed results.

MoFo and their pro-prosecution and pro-police friends did not even deal with, or even acknowledge the constitutional violations in my case. They did not mention the seven Brady violations which meant the seven pieces of material exculpatory evidence were withheld from my trial attorney and the jury, and the 1991 California Supreme court that heard and upheld this bogus conviction. Why, one must ask, did they ignore these constitutional violations and everything that we proved in the past that went to my innocence?

Could it be that they just didn’t give a damn about the truth but just wanted to uphold this conviction by any means necessary?

No matter their reasons, they did not do what Governor Gavin Newsom ordered them to do in his May 28, 2021, executive order and we cannot let them get away with this.

I ask each and every person who reads this to contact the Governor’s office and voice your outrage over what MoFo did, and demand that he not accept their decision because they did not do what he ordered them to do which was to conduct an independent investigation!

In Struggle and Solidarity

From Death Row at San Quentin Prison,

Kevin Cooper

 

Call California Governor Newsom:

1-(916) 445-2841

Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish, 

press 6 to speak with a representative and

wait for someone to answer 

(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)


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Ruchell is imprisoned in California, but it is important for the CA governor and Attorney General to receive your petitions, calls, and emails from WHEREVER you live! 

 

SIGN THE PETITION: bit.ly/freeruchell

 

SEND DIGITAL LETTER TO CA GOV. NEWSOM: bit.ly/write4ruchell

 

Call CA Governor Newsom:

CALL (916) 445-2841

Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish, 

press 6 to speak with a representative and

wait for someone to answer (Mon. - Fri., 9 AM - 5 PM PST / 12PM - 8PM EST)

 

Call Governor Newsom's office and use this script: 

 

"Hello, my name is _______ and I'm calling to encourage Governor Gavin Newsom to commute the sentence of prisoner Ruchell Magee #A92051 #T 115, who has served 59 long years in prison. Ruchell is 83 years old, so as an elderly prisoner he faces health risks every day from still being incarcerated for so long. In the interests of justice, I am joining the global call for Ruchell's release due to the length of his confinement and I urge Governor Newsom to take immediate action to commute Ruchell Magee's sentence."

 

Write a one-page letter to Gov Gavin Newsom:

Also, you can write a one-page letter to Governor Gavin Newsom about your support for Ruchell and why he deserves a commutation of his sentence due to his length of confinement (over 59 years), his age (83), and the health risks of an elderly person staying in California’s prisons. 

 

YOUR DIGITAL LETTER can be sent at bit.ly/write4ruchell

 

YOUR US MAIL LETTER can be sent to:

Governor Gavin Newsom

1303 10th Street, Suite 1173

Sacramento, CA 95814

 

Email Governor Newsom

GOV.CA.GOV/CONTACT

 

Navigation: 

Under "What is your request or comment about?", select "Clemency - Commutation of Sentence" and then select "Leave a comment". The next page will allow you to enter a message, where you can demand:

 

Commute the sentence of prisoner Ruchell Magee #A92051 #T 115, who has served 59 long years in prison. 

He was over-charged with kidnapping and robbery for a dispute over a $10 bag of marijuana, a substance that is legal now and should’ve never resulted in a seven-years-to-life sentence.  Ruchell is 83 years old, so as an elderly prisoner he faces health risks every day from still being incarcerated for so long.

 

Write to District Attorney Gascon

District Attorney George Gascon

211 West Temple Street, Suite 1200

Los Angeles, CA 90012

 

Write a one-page letter to D.A. George Gascon requesting that he review Ruchell’s sentence due to the facts that he was over-charged with kidnapping and robbery for a dispute over a $10 bag of marijuana, a substance that is legal now and should’ve never resulted in a seven-years-to-life sentence. Ruchell’s case should be a top priority because of his age (83) and the length of time he has been in prison (59 years).

 

·      Visit www.freeruchellmagee.org to learn more! Follow us @freeruchellmagee on Instagram!

·      Visit www.facebook.com/freeruchellmagee or search "Coalition to Free Ruchell Magee" to find us on Facebook!

·      Endorse our coalition at:

·      www.freeruchellmagee.org/endorse!

·      Watch and share this powerful webinar on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u5XJzhv9Hc

 

WRITE TO RUCHELL MAGEE

Ruchell Magee

CMF - A92051 - T-123

P.O. Box 2000

Vacaville, CA 95696

 

Write Ruchell uplifting messages! Be sure to ask questions about his well-being, his interests, and his passions. Be aware that any of his mail can be read by correctional officers, so don’t use any violent, explicit, or demoralizing language. Don’t use politically sensitive language that could hurt his chances of release. Do not send any hard or sharp materials.

 

~Verbena

of Detroit Shakur Squad

 

The Detroit Shakur Squad holds zoom meetings every other Thursday. We educate each other and organize to help free our Elder Political Prisoners. Next meeting is Thurs, Jan 12, 2022.  Register to attend the meetings at tinyurl.com/Freedom-Meeting


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The writers' organization PEN America is circulating this petition on behalf of Jason Renard Walker, a Texas prisoner whose life is being threatened because of his exposés of the Texas prison system. 


See his book, Reports from within the Belly of the Beast; available on Amazon at:

https://www.amazon.com/Reports-Within-Belly-Beast-Department-ebook/dp/B084656JDZ/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

Petition: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/protect-whistleblowers-in-carceral-settings


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Sign the petition:

https://dontextraditeassange.com/petition/


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Tell Congress to Help #FreeDanielHale

 

I’m pleased to announce that last week our client, Daniel Hale, was awarded the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence. The “Corner-Brightener Candlestick” was presented to Daniel’s friend Noor Mir. You can watch the online ceremony here.

As it happens, this week is also the 20th anniversary of the first drone assassination in Yemen. From the beginning, the drone assassination program has been deeply shrouded in secrecy, allowing U.S. officials to hide significant violations of international law, and the American Constitution. In addition to the lives directly impacted by these strikes, the program has significantly eroded respect for international law and thereby puts civilians around the world in danger.

Daniel Hale’s revelations threw a beam of light into a very dark corner, allowing journalists to definitively show that the government's official narrative was a lie. It is thanks to the great personal sacrifice of drone whistleblowers like Hale that public understanding has finally begun to catch up to reality.

As the Sam Adams Associates note:

 “Mr. Hale was well aware of the cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment to which other courageous officials have been subjected — and that he would likely suffer the same. And yet — in the manner of his famous ancestor Nathan Hale — he put his country first, knowing what awaited him at the hands of those who serve what has become a repressive Perpetual War State wreaking havoc upon much of the world.”


We hope you’ll join the growing call to pardon or commute Hale’s sentence. U.S. citizens can contact your representatives here.

Happy new year, and thank you for your support!

Jesselyn Radack
Director
Whistleblower & Source Protection Program (WHISPeR)
ExposeFacts

Twitter: @JesselynRadack

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Laws are created to be followed

by the poor.

Laws are made by the rich

to bring some order to exploitation.

The poor are the only law abiders in history.

When the poor make laws

the rich will be no more.

 

—Roque Dalton Presente!

(May 14, 1935 – Assassinated May 10, 1975)[1]



[1] Roque Dalton was a Salvadoran poet, essayist, journalist, political activist, and intellectual. He is considered one of Latin America's most compelling poets.

Poems: 

http://cordite.org.au/translations/el-salvador-tragic/

About: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roque_Dalton



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A Plea for the Compassionate Release of 

Leonard Peltier

Self Portrait by Leonard Peltier

Video at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWdJdODKO6M&feature=youtu.be


Sign our petition urging President Biden to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier.

 

https://www.freeleonardpeltier.com/petition

 

Email: contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info

Address: 116 W. Osborne Ave. Tampa, Florida 33603



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The Moment

By Margaret Atwood*

 

The moment when, after many years 

of hard work and a long voyage 

you stand in the centre of your room, 

house, half-acre, square mile, island, country, 

knowing at last how you got there, 

and say, I own this, 

 

is the same moment when the trees unloose 

their soft arms from around you, 

the birds take back their language, 

the cliffs fissure and collapse, 

the air moves back from you like a wave 

and you can't breathe. 

 

No, they whisper. You own nothing. 

You were a visitor, time after time 

climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming. 

We never belonged to you. 

You never found us. 

It was always the other way round.

 

*Witten by the woman who wrote a novel about Christian fascists taking over the U.S. and enslaving women. Prescient!


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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression

https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/

 

Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests. 

 

The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page. 

 

Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.

 

Emergency Hotlines

If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities. 

 

State and Local Hotlines

If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for: 

 

Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312

San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org

Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963

National Hotline

If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:

 

National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811


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Articles

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1) Is ‘Yo’ the Gender-Neutral Pronoun You’ve Been Looking For?

By John McWhorter, July 19, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/19/opinion/language-gender-pronoun-baltimore.html
In black type against a yellow background, the words “Heesh,” “Ze” and “They” are crossed out and followed by “Yo.”
Pablo Delcan

I am in the middle of writing a book on pronouns in English. My focus this time out is on standard English rather than nonstandard English, since one of my recent books was about Black English. However, again and again I am struck that the most dynamic, “Who’da thunk it?” developments in pronouns are in the Englishes beyond the standard.

 

Indeed, I increasingly think that if we are to be a linguistically informed people, our education should include instruction in how nonstandard varieties of English are often more complex than standard varieties. Although they are often presumed to be simpler — in a word, dumber — than standard English, the opposite is often true. Nonstandard variations can be sophisticated solutions to the problems that inevitably reside in English, as in any language. One example I am thinking of is a relatively new and unheralded gender-neutral pronoun that has emerged in, of all places, Baltimore.

 

Gender-neutral pronouns are a thorny topic in English. In Finnish, for example, “hän” is a genderless pronoun. Legions of languages have words like that. But in English, a truly accepted gender-neutral pronoun has been a holy grail for generations. Past attempts have included kludges like “heesh” (popularized by A.A. Milne), and modern proposals such as “ze.” These deliberately invented pronouns typically only catch on in limited circles, however. This is because people are especially conservative about pronouns, which are used so frequently that they are especially deep-seated in our linguistic consciousness. To accept a new pronoun is to change the way we roll, as it were. One prefers not to.

 

This is why the most successful gender-neutral pronoun has always been “they.” Its generic usage, as in, “Each student knows what they must do,” has been criticized as incorrect for centuries — while simultaneously being used freely by even the most prestigious writers since the Middle Ages. And of late there is the usage of a gender-neutral “they” to refer to a specific, rather than generic, person: “Ariella got straight A’s, and they’re so proud.”

 

As practical as this use of “they” is in giving a pronoun to those disinclined to the gender binary — I wrote about it here — it challenges many beyond a certain age. My guess (and hope) is that it will become ever more entrenched as the decades pass, especially as tweens and teens often use it effortlessly. However, I also suspect that we are in for at least a few decades of fruitless resistance against the new “they,” with many insisting that it is somehow logic incarnate that “they” must be plural. This, despite the fact that in German, “sie” means both “she” and “they,” and no one bats an eye. But I digress!

 

Linguists shrug that an option such as “they” is the best we can do, because our conservative nature regarding pronouns means that new usages can only come from the set of them that we already have. But this is not precisely true. Rather, this limitation operates in the standard language, over which judgments about what is “right” and “logical” reign eternally, conditioning a sense that language is something frozen on a page.

 

But in language varieties less policed, language change can happen the way it wants to, and new pronouns can come from the darnedest places. In the Black English of younger Black people in Baltimore, for instance, a new gender-neutral pronoun arose in the 2000s, as reported in an article by Elaine Stotko and Margaret Troyer. Of all things, the pronoun is “yo.”

 

Not “you,” but “yo.”

 

Not “yo” in place of “your,” as in “yo books.” Not “yo” as in “Yo! I’m over here!” And not “yo” as in the one appended after a sentence to solicit agreement: “That sure was loud, yo!”

 

This “yo” is a straightforward, gender-neutral third-person pronoun — basically “heesh,” but not as ridiculous sounding. “Yo was tuckin’ in his shirt!” is an example Stotko and Troyer documented. This “yo” did not mean “you,” because the reference was certainly not to someone tucking in someone else’s shirt. A female teacher was handing out papers, and someone remarked — not to the teacher herself — “Yo handin’ out papers.” Someone else used “Yo is a clown” to describe a third party.

 

Wrap your head around it, and you can see this pronoun is pretty awesome. The interjection “Yo!” has been retooled, so that what started as a way of calling someone has become a way of calling out — i.e., pointing out — someone. The new “yo” means, in its way, “the one whom one ‘yo’s.” And it applies to no gender in particular. Baltimore Black English achieved what mainstream English never has: a gender-neutral pronoun that doesn’t force some other pronoun to moonlight in a new role.

 

Standard English’s inventory of pronouns is actually rather impoverished compared to many nonstandard Englishes. It is this way with languages worldwide: Nonstandard variants tend to be more complicated, but the complications are processed simply as “quaint.” Black English — and not only Black English — also has “y’all,” which saves “you” from doing double duty as singular and plural. (I’ve written about that, too.) Likewise, many rural dialects of English in Britain still distinguish between a singular “thou” and a plural “you.” Standard Danish has two genders, but some dialects have three. In Western dialects of Flemish, the word “yes” is conjugated: It has a different ending depending on whether you mean “Yes, I did,” “Yes, we did” or “Yes, she did.”

 

Standard language unites us. But with nonstandard language, nothing — no dictionaries, no tut-tutting by experts — pulls it back from doing what it wants to do. It tends to be built out compared to standard language, “buff” as it were. It should be common knowledge that such variations are of interest not merely because of the cultures they represent but also because of their sheer grammatical intricacy.

 

Standard English has to settle for stretching limited resources, with “you” referring to any number of people and “they” increasingly called upon to do the same to an extent it never had to before. Modern English gives “you” and “they” a workout unknown in all but a few of the world’s languages. But if you want to know what human speech is typically like, with pronouns sharing duties among a good bunch of alternatives, you have to look to the nonstandard Englishes — that is, the ones we are told are “not the real language.”

 

John McWhorter (@JohnHMcWhorter) is an associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University. He is the author of “Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter: Then, Now and Forever” and, most recently, “Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America.”


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2) The Overlooked Reason Our Health Care System Crushes Patients

By Chavi Karkowsky, July 20, 2023

Dr. Karkowsky is a maternal-fetal medicine physician in New York City.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/20/opinion/healthcare-bureaucracy-medical-delays.html

An illustration of a person entangled by towering weeds, unable to reach a source of light.

Oyow


Several years ago, I was called urgently to our small obstetric triage unit because a pregnant patient was very sick. At the beginning of her third trimester, she had come in with back pain and a 103-degree fever. Her heart was racing, her blood pressure was dangerously low, and her oxygen levels were barely normal. In sentences broken by gasps for air, she told us her belly was tightening every few minutes — painful contractions, three months before their time.

 

Our team was concerned about pyelonephritis, a kidney infection that can develop from a urinary tract infection and can progress quickly to sepsis or even septic shock.

 

Within minutes, a team was swarming the triage bay — providing oxygen, applying the fetal heart rate and contraction monitor, placing IVs. I called the neonatal intensive care unit, in case labor progressed, to prepare for a very preterm baby. In under an hour, we had over a dozen people, part of a powerful medical system, working to get her everything she might need.

 

Breathing quickly behind her oxygen mask, my patient explained that she had noticed symptoms of a urinary tract infection about four days ago; she had gone to her doctor the next day and had gotten an antibiotics prescription. But the pharmacy wouldn’t fill it — something about her insurance, or a mistake with her record. She tried calling her doctor’s office, but it was the weekend, and she couldn’t get through. She read on the internet to drink water and cranberry juice, so she kept trying that. She called 9-1-1 in the middle of the night when she woke up and felt as if she couldn’t breathe.

 

This is the story of our medical system — quick, massive, powerful, able to assemble a team in under an hour and willing to spend thousands of dollars when a patient is sick.

 

This is also the story of a medical system that didn’t think my patient was worth a $12 medication to prevent any of this from happening.

 

This patient’s story is a result of the space between the care that providers want to give and the care that the patient actually receives. That space is full of barriers — tasks, paperwork, bureaucracy. Each is a point where someone can say no. This can be called the administrative burden of health care. It’s composed of work that is almost always boring but sometimes causes tremendous and unnecessary human suffering.

 

The administrative burden includes many of the chores we all hate: calling doctor’s offices, lining up referrals, waiting in the emergency room, sorting out bills from a recent surgery, checking on prescription refills.

 

On a recent average Wednesday, I saw several patients who had been unable to get crucial supplies or medications, or who missed appointments because of administrative burden. One had taken a precious morning off from work to ferry documents between a Medicaid office and her pharmacy to prove that she did not, in fact, have alternate insurance, and therefore her diabetic supplies should be covered. A pack of glucose test strips had cost her a small co-pay — and likely most of a day’s lost wages. That’s still cheaper than a hospital stay for a diabetic coma, depending on who’s paying.

 

There’s a general sense that all that unpaid labor required to get medical care is increasing. This is in part because as health costs spiral upward, health plans have tried to find incentives to steer treatment to reduce costs. These incentives can be a crucial part of managing costs in a country that spends about twice as much on health care, as a percent of its economy, as other high-income countries.

 

Sometimes administrative burden is a result of a good-faith effort to assist patients. For instance, a well-meaning rule by medical leadership to try to best utilize clinic resources can add delays for some patients. Sometimes a pharmacy wants to help a patient avoid a large bill, but doing so requires a long back-and-forth with clinic staff and the insurance company.

 

At the same time, creating administrative burden is a time-honored tactic for insurance companies. “When you’re trying to incentivize things, and you don’t want to push up the dollar cost, you can push up the time cost,” said Andrew Friedson, the director of health economics at the Milken Institute.

 

Administrative burden can work as a technique to keep costs down. However, part of the problem, Dr. Friedson said, is that we don’t count the burden to patients, and so it doesn’t factor into policy decisions. There’s nobody measuring the time spent on the phone plus lost wages plus complications from delayed care for every single patient in the United States. A recent study co-written by Michael Anne Kyle, a research fellow at Harvard Medical School, found that about a quarter of insured adults reported their care was delayed or missed entirely because of administrative tasks.

 

This burden falls most heavily on those who can least afford it: vulnerable people like cancer patients, those with complex medical conditions or those with a chronically ill child. I’ve observed that this burden splits along racial, ethnic and socio-economic lines. These tasks are more difficult for those who have hourly jobs, who don’t speak English as their first language or who can’t read complex documents easily. For many Medicaid patients, even just getting or staying enrolled in their insurance coverage can create hours of extra work that delay care.

 

For some patients, such delays will lead to serious consequences — and increased costs for the entire system. For my patient, the days of waiting for an antibiotic turned her easily treatable U.T.I. into a more serious infection that required a prolonged hospitalization and could have given us a very preterm baby, with attendant lifelong costs. That’s clearly not the way to save money.

 

There are some possible solutions. Dr. Kyle raised the idea of simplifying the paperwork that health care requires, for example, requiring all companies to use a universal form for medication approvals.

 

Another idea would be to follow the lead of private insurance companies that in rare cases provide a care coordinator to some patients with certain high-expense diagnoses such as cancer. One day, there could be a coordinator within the medical system who could act as a guide through the administrative maze. However, this work isn’t easily billable — reimbursement for care coordination and filling out forms is more difficult and less lucrative than for things such as delivering babies and performing ultrasounds, though the time spent may be the same and the necessity just as acute. Until this work is more universally billable, there will be limited support for this solution.

 

One of the first steps to any comprehensive solution would be a true accounting of the costs of administrative burden. Maybe we in the medical system do have to start counting up the hours patients and providers spend on the phone, in waiting rooms and filling out forms. That would be difficult: It’s not a metric the health care industry is used to evaluating. But it’s not harder than doing the work itself, as patients do.

 

My patient with the kidney infection stayed in the hospital for several days of IV antibiotics. Her vital signs improved and her contractions stopped. On her day of discharge, she asked us to hold off on taking out her IV. She was willing to initiate her discharge only once she had her outpatient prescriptions, those antibiotic pills, in her possession. She said that she trusted us, the medical team in the hospital. She felt we had saved her life and kept her baby safe. She just wasn’t sure she could trust the rest of the system to do the same.


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3) When Children Are Bought and Sold

By Nicholas Kristof, July 19. 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/19/opinion/legalization-sex-trade.html
 Melanie Thompson in a red tank top and silver hoop earrings and necklaces. She looks to the side while in front of a red background.
Thompson worries that efforts to decriminalize the sex trade will make it easier for pimps to exploit vulnerable people. Credit...Jenica Heintzelman for The New York Times

More than a decade ago, I met a scared 15-year-old who was trying to recover her life after having been kidnapped by a pimp and sold for sex.

 

Melanie Thompson recalled the day her life changed: She and two other girls in New York City ran into some older boys who invited them to hang out. The girls did so, the boys provided alcohol, Melanie blacked out — and she says she woke up to being raped. She told me how a pimp then locked her with another girl in an abandoned house, and she had a new job: having sex with strangers against her will.

 

She was 13.

 

When we spoke two years later, she was in a residential program for formerly trafficked girls. She was thoughtful, charming and fond of poetry, but I wondered if she would be able to rebuild her life. Then I lost track of her, until a message arrived from her this spring. We met, and she filled me in on her bumpy journey — and her campaign against what she sees as misguided liberalism that would legalize pimping.

 

Melanie spent years in foster care after I met her. There’s no doubt that some foster care parents are outstanding, but overall, America’s foster care system is a disgrace. Only about half of foster children finish high school; perhaps 4 percent earn a B.A. By several estimates, a majority of trafficked girls have been in foster care or some other part of the child welfare system.

 

That was Melanie’s world. She says she was trafficked again, leaving her teenage years a blur of trauma. The sex trade left a mark on her and made it difficult to relate to other high school students, she said.

 

“You feel like damaged goods,” she recalled. “You also internalize the shame people put on you.”

 

After attending five high schools, she finally graduated at age 19. A path opened when she interned with the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, a nonprofit in New York.

 

Taina Bien-Aimé, the executive director of the coalition, was swept away. “She’s an extraordinary human being, very determined, ambitious, smart, focused,” Bien-Aimé told me. So she hired Melanie, who is now the outreach and advocacy coordinator for the coalition.

 

Meanwhile, Melanie earned her B.A. in gender studies. In college, she often found herself the odd woman out. In classes, there would be discussions of the sex trade, with affluent students or professors speaking of sex work for consenting adults as empowering, while that did not remotely ring true for Melanie. Her situation as a trafficked child was of course different, for there was no consent and she recalled nothing but abuse. But her life in the world of commercial sex left her convinced that lines were more blurred than outsiders understood and that there wasn’t much empowerment going on even among adults; it was largely about vulnerable people being exploited.

 

That disconnect is now her focus. There is a drive in blue states, including New York, to decriminalize the entire sex trade, giving a green light to pimping and brothel-keeping. Melanie argues for something closer to the model in Sweden and Norway, which do not arrest prostitutes (instead offering them social services) but do prosecute pimps and johns. While frankly no legal approach works all that well, Sweden has promoted its approach internationally as a way to reduce trafficking. Maine has just become the first state in America to adopt that Nordic approach.

 

Melanie, now 27, warns that the result of full decriminalization, including allowing pimps and brothels, would be more trafficking of victims who are overwhelmingly Black and brown, or coming out of foster care, or L.G.B.T.Q. youth or others who are marginalized. Indeed, one large global study found that legalization is associated with more trafficking, not less.

 

Clearly there is a slice of the commercial sex trade that is consensual, another that is nonconsensual, and other elements that are more murky. In other contexts where there’s a significant power imbalance and vulnerability, such as relationships between bosses and interns, we tend to apply bans because of the potential for predation.

 

The push in recent years to allow pimping seems odd to me, because elsewhere we liberals are alert to the potential for exploitation. We bar work among consenting adults if it’s performed for less than the minimum wage, for example, and we block consensual high-risk work like using window-washing platforms without many safeguards.

 

Commercial sex is more dangerous than window-washing or almost any other job, and Melanie scoffs at the view that pimps are business partners of women selling sex. “I never touched the money,” she told me. “And if you got caught trying to stash anything, it was not good for you.”

 

We have made strides in empowering affluent, educated women and girls, with Title IX, #MeToo and more female lawyers, doctors and board members. But some of the most vulnerable girls in America, those in foster care, have benefited much less.

 

I fear that if this well-meaning push for full decriminalization proceeds, the winners will be pimps and the losers will be some of America’s most vulnerable young people. There are many other Melanies out there who need help, and we risk throwing them to the wolves.


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4) Britain’s Most Famous Landlord, the King, Made $34 Million From Rising Rents

Rents are rising across Britain, and the nation’s most famous landlord was no exception. He received about $34 million from his real estate portfolio.

By Jane Bradley, Published July 18, 2023

Updated July 19, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/18/world/europe/king-charles-rent-increases-income.html
The king and queen of the United Kingdom, wearing their crowns, wave from a balcony festooned in red and gold.
King Charles and Queen Camilla on the balcony at Buckingham Palace on the day of the king’s coronation, in May. Credit...Andrew Testa for The New York Times

Rents in the United Kingdom are rising at a record pace, a trend that helped the nation’s most famous landlord, King Charles III, make a big payday.

 

Charles received 26.2 million pounds, or about $34.3 million, this year from his vast property empire, known as the Duchy of Lancaster. Charles inherited the estate when his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, died last fall.

 

The 45,000-acre estate is roughly the size of Washington D.C. and generates millions of dollars a year in rental income, without paying corporation taxes like most businesses in Britain are obliged to. (Charles voluntarily pays an undisclosed amount of tax on his private income).

 

The Duchy recently published its first records since Charles took the throne. They show that he has weathered the financial woes faced by his nation, raking in a bigger private income than his mother ever did.

 

Those profits came in part thanks to increased rents on tenants living on royal land. The Duchy also saw increased earnings from commercial properties. The accounts give an early insight into how, as king, Charles is running his financial empire.

 

How much did he make? And what’s a duchy?

 

A duchy is a territory traditionally governed by a duke or duchess. The Duchy of Lancaster is a $1 billion real estate portfolio tasked with making money for whoever holds the throne. The monarch uses these funds to support the extended royal family.

 

Charles’s private income from the Duchy was £26.2 million, about £2 million more than his mother last made. Charles has fewer family members to support than his mother did.

 

This money is separate from the annual £86 million (around $112 million) taxpayer-funded Sovereign Grant, which pays for most official royal expenses.

 

So, the duchy raised rents?

 

Yes. Records show that the Duchy raised rents by 3 percent over the last fiscal year, which is just below the pace of private rental increases that have contributed to a cost-of-living crisis.

 

Private rents are increasing at their fastest rate on record across the United Kingdom, though the official figures only go back to 2016. The Duchy’s rent hikes accounted for an extra £8.2 million for the royal coffers. The Duchy said that “refurbishment and restoration” had led to “improved rental values.”

 

Of course, Charles is not a typical landlord. He does not rely on rental income to pay his home mortgage or household bills.

 

What does this tell us about Charles?

 

Charles ascended to the throne at a time when millions of British residents cannot afford their living expenses. Standards of living are falling as wages fail to keep pace with rising housing and food costs.

 

The king appeared to be sharply aware of this when, after his mother’s passing, royal sources began telling the British media that Charles envisioned a “slimmed-down monarchy.”

 

The latest Duchy of Lancaster figures show no notable signs of cost-cutting in Charles’ private estate. Operating costs increased 40 percent as the Duchy hired more staff and gave its chief executive a pay rise to £275,000.

 

This is in keeping with the ambitious business-focused strategy he had as prince, when he ran the Duchy of Cornwall, a separate real estate portfolio now handed to his son William.

 

Charles brought two executives from the Duchy of Cornwall along with him after he inherited his mother’s estate. Several senior money-managers who worked with Charles during his time at the Duchy of Cornwall told The New York Times that Charles opposed outsourcing and preferred to keep the estate in the hands of a trusted group of insiders.

 

Some of the changes to the Duchy of Lancaster have been planned for as long as a decade, said Paul Clarke, who served as the Duchy’s chief executive for almost 13 years until 2013.

 

Royal observers have noted for years that Charles was unlikely to shift his business-driven strategy as king.

 

“Will the longest standing royal heir in British history really want to downsize his inheritance when he at last gains the crown?” the historian and royal commentator David McClure wrote in his book, “The Queen’s True Worth.”

 

How important is the Duchy?

 

The Duchies are the main sources of private income for the royal family. But they represent a small fraction of the family’s estimated $28 billion fortune, which includes the monarch’s closely-guarded personal wealth, real estate assets under the Crown Estate, the Sovereign Grant from the government, and Buckingham and Kensington palaces.

 

The royal family has long fought to keep its wealth a secret. Some historians have described the family as more secretive than the intelligence services.

 

Mr. Clarke, the former Duchy chief executive, described his hiring process as a “cat and mouse” game, where he had to sign a nondisclosure agreement to even discuss the job and wasn’t told who he might be working for.

 

Newton Investment Management and Stanhope Capital manage most of the duchy’s financial investments, which are kept closely guarded. Two former partners told The New York Times that the Duchy placed no restrictions on investments — just “give me a good return,” one said. Charles, though, did discourage environmentally unfriendly moves such as investing directly in oil companies.

 

Royals do not have to explain how they spend the private income they take from the duchies. When Charles was 4, for example, he began receiving £209,000 (in today’s value) from his estate. In a letter to civil servants, the Duchy of Cornwall only said the money was for his “maintenance and education.”


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