Monday, January 04, 2016

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, MONNDAY, JANUARY 3, 2016


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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter

Table of Contents:

A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS

B. ARTICLES IN FULL


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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS



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Chelsea Manning Support Network

Defend Chelsea Manning

Here are two important ways you can support Chelsea:

1. Give the gift of a donation to the Chelsea Manning Defense Fund

Attorneys Nancy Hollander and Vincent Ward are well into the process of preparing for Chelsea's first legal appeal next year. The appeals process has the potential to take decades off Chelsea's 35 year prison sentence. Donate Today!

2. Send her a birthday message:

CHELSEA E. MANNING 89289
1300 N Warehouse Rd
Ft Leavenworth KS 66027-2304
Super secret insider info: Not only are Chelsea Manning shirts and stuff already 50% off in our online store, if you use discount code "chelsea" during check out, you'll get an additional 50% off. That is insane, so please don't tell anyone else, as we can't afford for this news to get out too broadly. Here's the link to the store, just for you Bonnie.

Chelsea honored in Advocate's 40 under 40!

"In blogs, tweets, and handwritten letters from prison, the former Army intelligence specialist is still trying to change the world."
"I often hear and read that many people all over the world consider me a ‘whistleblower’ or a ‘heroine.’ This experience can be a little intimidating at times," she tells The Advocate. "That’s an idea that would be a lot to live up to! I don’t feel like I can live up to the expectations of being a ‘heroine.’ I don’t have any special powers or abilities like a comic book super hero. I actually feel a lot more vulnerable than that. In fact, I am very vulnerable. I just try to be myself, and that’s all I aspire to be.” Read more...

Help us continue to cover
100% of Chelsea's legal fees!

Please donate today!



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When Drone Whistleblowers are Under Attack,

What Do We Do?

STAND UP, FIGHT BACK!



 We honor Stephan, Michael, Brandon and Cian!

These four former ex-drone pilots have courageously spoken out publicly against the U.S. drone assassination program.  They have not been charged with any crime, yet the U.S. government is retaliating against these truth-tellers by freezing all of their bank and credit card accounts.  WE MUST BACK THEM UP!
Listen to them here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43z6EMy8T28

PLEASE HELP THEM:

1.  Sign up on this support network:
         www.facebook.com/events/1502272456740302/

2.  Sign this petition  NOW:
               https://www.change.org/p/barack-obama-congress-attorney-general-loretta-lynch-protect-the-drone-assassination-program-whistleblowers?recruiter=436431670&utm_source=share_for_starters&utm_medium=copyLink

3.  Call and email officials TODAY, listed below and on FB site.

4.  Ask your organization if they would join our network.


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Statement of Support for Drone Whistleblowers
(Code Pink Women for Peace: East Bay, Golden Gate, and S.F. Chapters 11.28.15)

Code Pink Women for Peace support the very courageous actions of four former US drone operators, Michael Haas, Brandon Bryant, Cian Westmoreland, and Stephan Lewis, who have come under increasing attack for disclosing information about “widespread corruption and institutionalized indifference to civilian casualties that characterize the drone program.” As truth tellers, they stated in a public letter to President Obama that the killing of innocent civilians has been one of the most “devastating driving forces for terrorism and destabilization around the world.”* These public disclosures come only after repeated attempts to work privately within official channels failed.

Despite the fact that none of the four has been charged with criminal activity, all had their bank accounts and credit cards frozen. This retaliatory response by our government is consistent with the extrajudicial nature of US drone strikes.

We must support these former drone operators who have taken great risks to stop the drone killing. Write or call your US Senators, your US Representatives, President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, and CIA Director John Brennan demanding that Michael Haas, Brandon Bryant, Cian Westmoreland, and Stephan Lewis be applauded, not punished, for revealing the criminal and extrajudicial nature of drone strikes that has led to so many civilian deaths.

Petition

URGENT: Sign and Share NOW! Drone Whistleblower Protection Petition
https://www.change.org/p/barack-obama-congress-attorney-general-loretta-lynch-protect-the-drone-assassination-program-whistleblowers?recruiter=436431670&utm_source=share_for_starters&utm_medium=copyLink

Contacting your Government
- White House comment line: 202-456-1111
 
- Email President Obama: president@whitehouse.gov and cc info@whitehouse.gov
 
- White House switchboard: 202-456-1414 for telephone numbers of your Senators and Representatives.

- Email your Senators and Representatives:
http://www.house.gov/representatives/
http://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/

-Contact Ashton Carter Secretary of Defense: Go to http://www.defense.gov/About-DoD/Biographies/BiographyView/Article/602689 and select appropriate icon.

- Contact John Brennan, CIA Director: Go to
https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/leadership/john-o-brennan.html and select appropriate icon.

For more information on the 4 Drone Whistleblowers:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1502272456740302/
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43z6EMy8T28
(Must see Democracy Now interview with the 4 drone operators)

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/18/life-as-a-drone-pilot-creech-air-force-base-nevada

*http://thefreethoughtproject.com/drone-pilots-bank-accounts-credit-cards-frozen-feds-exposing-murder/#fqt0crLvckG2OdbD.99

Code Pink Women for Peace: eastbaycodepink@gmail.com



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Save Ashraf Fayadh

Palestinian poet sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia.

Ashraf Fayadh, Palestinian refugee poet and artist living in Saudi Arabia, has been sentenced to death by a Saudi court, on charges of apostasy or abandoning his faith in Islam. The charges appear to be based on his poetry and writing and also maybe a form of retaliation for posting an online video showing Saudi religious police lashing a man in public.

Fayadh is a Palestinian refugee who was born in Saudi Arabia and has become a leading member of the young Saudi art scene. He was arrested in January 2014, his identity documents confiscated, and held for a lengthy period without charge. He was then sentenced to four years in prison and 800 lashes; after he appealed; he was re-tried last month and sentenced to death. He did not have legal representation.

Fayadh is being sentenced to death after having been jailed for more than 22 months in the Saudi city of Abha without clear legal charges beyond “insulting the Godly self” and having “ideas that do not suit the Saudi society.” These charges are based on the complaint of a reader’s interpretation of Fayadh's 2008 poetry collection titled, Instructions Within.

“According to Fayadh’s friends, when the police failed to prove that his poetry was atheist propaganda, they began berating him for smoking and having long hair,” reported the Guardian. Fayadh said his poetry book, Instructions Within, is “just about me being [a] Palestinian refugee…about cultural and philosophical issues. But the religious extremists explained it as destructive ideas against God.”

This is not the first time that Saudi authorities have arrested Ashraf Fayadh. The poet was detained before after a Saudi citizen filed a complaint with the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice accusing Fayadh of having “misguided and misguiding thoughts.” Fayadh was bailed out of jail at the time, only to get arrested again. According to sources close to Fayadh, the poet has been denied both visitation and legal representation rights.

Amnesty international stated, “We condemn these acts of intimidation targeting Ashraf Fayadh as part of a wider campaign inciting hate against writers and using Islam to justify oppression and to crush free speech. We express our solidarity with Fayadh, hoping to increase support for the poet as well as pressure to release him. Our efforts should come together to ensure the proliferation of free speech and personal freedoms. We specifically call on Saudi intellectuals to express solidarity with Fayadh against Takfiris’ intimidation practices meant to silence poets, writers, and artists like him. Let the flag of creativity fly free and remain innovative. Remaining silent towards Fayadh’s detention is an insult to knowledge, literature, culture, and thought as well as to freedom and human rights.”

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network joins the call for the immediate freedom of Ashraf Fayadh. His imprisonment, persecution and death sentence by the Saudi regime reflects the deeply reactionary and far-right role played by the Saudi regime in the region—alongside its close imperial partners in the United States, Canada and Europe—that threatens Palestinian and Arab culture, life, and movements and works to block and suppress any struggle for liberation.

One hundred Arab intellectuals have called for Fayadh’s release and so far over 10, 000 people have signed an AI petition to save his life. Please sign and share the petition. https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Amnesty_international_Save_the_palestinian_poet_and_artist_Ashraf_Fayadh/?tUPvwdb

To take further action:

1. Call the Saudi Embassy in your area and demand freedom for Ashraf Fayadh. In the United States, call 202-342-3800. In Canada, call 613-237-4100. Find the embassy in your country here: http://embassy.goabroad.com/embassies-of/saudi-arabia

2. Protest at the Saudi Embassy in your area for freedom for Ashraf Fayadh. Print signs and materials, and gather outside the Saudi embassy with Palestine rights activists, artists and others to demand his freedom. See the list of Saudi embassies here: http://embassy.goabroad.com/embassies-of/saudi-arabia

3. Contact your government officials. The Saudi regime is a close partner of the United States, Canadian and various European governments. Demand that your government pressure the Saudi regime to release Fayadh. In Canada, Call the office of the Foreign Minister, Stéphane Dion, at 613-996-5789 and demand Canada pressure Saudi Arabia to release Fayadh, or email: stephane.dion@parl.gc.ca. In the U.S., call the White House (202-456-1111) and the U.S. State Department (202-647-9572); demand the U.S. pressure Saudi Arabia to release Fayadh. In the EU, contact your Member of the European Parliament—you can find your MEP here:

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/map.html

Please also write letters, Facebook posts, emails or send Facebook messages to your local politicians, newspapers and friends to publicize this dire case and spread the information about the situation of Ashraf Fayadh.

—Steven Katsineris

Information from Amnesty International, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network and AVAAZ.

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Commute Kevin Cooper's Death Sentence

Sign the Petition:
http://www.savekevincooper.org/pages/petition.php


Urge Gov. Jerry Brown to commute Kevin Cooper's death sentence. Cooper has always maintained his innocence of the 1983 quadruple murder of which he was convicted. In 2009, five federal judges signed a dissenting opinion warning that the State of California "may be about to execute an innocent man." Having exhausted his appeals in the US courts, Kevin Cooper's lawyers have turned to the Inter American Commission on Human Rights to seek remedy for what they maintain is his wrongful conviction, and the inadequate trial representation, prosecutorial misconduct and racial discrimination which have marked the case. Amnesty International opposes all executions, unconditionally.

"The State of California may be about to execute an innocent man." - Judge William A. Fletcher, 2009 dissenting opinion on Kevin Cooper's case

Kevin Cooper has been on death row in California for more than thirty years.

In 1985, Cooper was convicted of the murder of a family and their house guest in Chino Hills. Sentenced to death, Cooper's trial took place in an atmosphere of racial hatred — for example, an effigy of a monkey in a noose with a sign reading "Hang the N*****!" was hung outside the venue of his preliminary hearing.

Take action to see that Kevin Cooper's death sentence is commuted immediately.

Cooper has consistently maintained his innocence.

Following his trial, five federal judges said: "There is no way to say this politely. The district court failed to provide Cooper a fair hearing."

Since 2004, a dozen federal appellate judges have indicated their doubts about his guilt.

Tell California authorities: The death penalty carries the risk of irrevocable error. Kevin Cooper's sentence must be commuted.

In 2009, Cooper came just eight hours shy of being executed for a crime that he may not have committed. Stand with me today in reminding the state of California that the death penalty is irreversible — Kevin Cooper's sentence must be commuted immediately.

In solidarity,

James Clark
Senior Death Penalty Campaigner
Amnesty International USA

News Updates

  • Death Row Stories
    Kevin Cooper's case will be the subject of a new episode of CNN's "Death Row Stories" airing on Sunday, July 26 at 7 p.m. PDT. The program will be repeated at 10 p.m. PDT. The episode, created by executive producers Robert Redford and Alex Gibney, will explore how Kevin Cooper was framed by the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department and District Attorney.Viewers on the east coast can see the program at 10 p.m. EDT and it will be rebroadcast at 1 a.m. EDT on July 27. Viewers in the Central Time zone can see it at 9 p.m. and midnight CDT. Viewers in the Mountain Time zone can see it at 8 p.m. and ll p.m MDT. It will be aired on CNN again during the following week and will also be able to be viewed on CNN's "Death Row Stories" website.
Kevin Cooper: An Innocent Victim of Racist Frame-Up - from the Fact Sheet at: www.freekevincooper.org
 
Kevin Cooper is an African-American man who was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in 1985 for the gruesome murders of a white family in Chino Hills, California: Doug and Peggy Ryen and their daughter Jessica and their house- guest Christopher Hughes. The Ryens' 8 year old son Josh, also attacked, was left for dead but survived.

Convicted in an atmosphere of racial hatred in San Bernardino County CA, Kevin Cooper remains under a threat of imminent execution in San Quentin.  He has never received a fair hearing on his claim of innocence.  In a dissenting opinion in 2009, five federal judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals signed a 82 page dissenting opinion that begins: "The State of California may be about to execute an innocent man." 565 F.3d 581.

There is significant evidence that exonerates Mr. Cooper and points toward other suspects:

  The coroner who investigated the Ryen murders concluded that the murders took four minutes at most and that the murder weapons were a hatchet, a long knife, an ice pick and perhaps a second knife. How could a single person, in four or fewer minutes, wield three or four weapons, and inflict over 140 wounds on five people, two of whom were adults (including a 200 pound ex-marine) who had loaded weapons near their bedsides?

  The sole surviving victim of the murders, Josh Ryen, told police and hospital staff within hours of the murders that the culprits were "three white men." Josh Ryen repeated this statement in the days following the crimes. When he twice saw Mr. Cooper's picture on TV as the suspected attacker, Josh Ryen said "that's not the man who did it."

  Josh Ryen's description of the killers was corroborated by two witnesses who were driving near the Ryens' home the night of the murders. They reported seeing three white men in a station wagon matching the description of the Ryens' car speeding away from the direction of the Ryens' home.

  These descriptions were corroborated by testimony of several employees and patrons of a bar close to the Ryens' home, who saw three white men enter the bar around midnight the night of the murders, two of whom were covered in blood, and one of whom was wearing coveralls.

  The identity of the real killers was further corroborated by a woman who, shortly after the murders were discovered, alerted the sheriff's department that her boyfriend, a convicted murderer, left blood-spattered coveralls at her home the night of the murders. She also reported that her boyfriend had been wearing a tan t-shirt matching a tan t-shirt with Doug Ryen's blood on it recovered near the bar. She also reported that her boyfriend owned a hatchet matching the one recovered near the scene of the crime, which she noted was missing in the days following the murders; it never reappeared; further, her sister saw that boyfriend and two other white men in a vehicle that could have been the Ryens' car on the night of the murders.

Lacking a motive to ascribe to Mr. Cooper for the crimes, the prosecution claimed that Mr. Cooper, who had earlier walked away from custody at a minimum security prison, stole the Ryens' car to escape to Mexico. But the Ryens had left the keys in both their cars (which were parked in the driveway), so there was no need to kill them to steal their car. The prosecution also claimed that Mr. Cooper needed money, but money and credit cards were found untouched and in plain sight at the murder scene.

The jury in 1985 deliberated for seven days before finding Mr. Cooper guilty. One juror later said that if there had been one less piece of evidence, the jury would not have voted to convict.

The evidence the prosecution presented at trial tying Mr. Cooper to the crime scene has all been discredited…         (Continue reading this document at: http://www.savekevincooper.org/_new_freekevincooperdotorg/TEST/Scripts/DataLibraries/upload/KC_FactSheet_2014.pdf)

     This message from the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal. July 2015

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For Immediate Release – Thursday, October 29, 2015 
Solitary Prisoners' Lawyers Slam CDCR for Sleep Deprivation

Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition

SAN FRANCISCO – Yesterday, lawyers for prisoners in the class action case Ashker v. Brown submitted a letter condemning Pelican Bay prison guards' "wellness checks," which have widely been viewed as sleep deprivation. The letter was submitted to United States Magistrate Judge Nandor Vadas, and calls on the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to put an end to the checks.

Last month, prisoners achieved a historic victory in the settlement of Ashker v. Brown where the indefinite long term solitary confinement was effectively ended in California, with Magistrate Judge Vadas currently monitoring implementation of the settlement terms.

The guards at Pelican bay Security Housing Units have been conducting disruptive cell checks every 30 minutes around the clock for three months, causing prisoners widespread sleep disruption. The process is loud and according to prisoners, "the method and noise from the checks is torture."

Attorneys representing Pelican Bay SHU prisoners have just completed extensive interviews with prisoners who demand that "the every 30-minute checks have to be stopped or people are going to get sick or worse." In addition, they report that regular prison programs have been negatively impacted.

"To sleep is a fundamental human right," said Anne Weills, a member of the prisoners' legal team and one of the attorneys who conducted the interviews with prisoners in Pelican Bay. "To take away such a basic human right amounts to severe torture, adding to the already torturous conditions of being in solitary confinement."

Most prisoners report low energy, exhaustion and fatigue. Most state that they have trouble concentrating. They try to read, but they nod off and/or can't remember what they have read. Their writing is much slower ("I can't think to write"), and describe the constant welfare checks as having a negative impact on their mental state.

While this recent attorney survey was specifically focusing on sleep deprivation and its effects, prisoners volunteered information about the negative impact of these frequent checks: yard policy and practice has reduced access to recreation, access to showers has been reduced, programs and meals are being delayed, and property for those newly transferred to Pelican Bay is still being delayed and withheld.

Sleep deprivation constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Prisoners and their attorneys are demanding that these checks be halted.
--
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org


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UPDATE:

Albert Woodfox, Angola Inmate, Can Be Tried 3rd Time, Court Rules

By ASHLEY SOUTHALL  
NOV. 9, 2015
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/10/us/angola-inmate-can-be-tried-3rd-time.html?ref=us


Free Albert Woodfox!

On June 8, 2015 a federal judge granted Louisiana prisoner Albert Woodfox unconditional release. Albert's conviction had already been overturned three times - most recently in 2013 - yet every time the state has appealed.

Today, Albert is still behind bars after spending four decades in cruel, unjust solitary confinement. He believes that he and fellow prisoners, Herman Wallace and Robert King, were first placed in solitary confinement in retaliation for their activism. All three men were members of the Black Panther Party. Together, they came to be known as the Angola 3.

It is time for the State of Louisiana to stop standing in the way of justice. Call on Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal to ensure Albert's cruel and unjust confinement is not his legacy. Learn more

http://act.amnestyusa.org/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=1839&ea.campaign.id=35593&ea.tracking.id=Country_USA~MessagingCategory_PrisonersandPeopleatRisk&ac=W1506EAIAR2&ea.url.id=414689&forwarded=true

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Amnesty for all those arrested demanding justice for Freddie Gray!

 

Amnesty for ALL those arrested
demanding justice for Freddie Gray!

Sign and distribute the petition to drop the charges!
Spread this effort with #Amnesty4Baltimore

"A riot is the language of the unheard"
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

An estimated 300 people have been arrested in Baltimore in the last two weeks. Many have been brutalized, beaten and pepper-sprayed by police in the streets, and held for days in inhumane conditions. Those arrested include journalists, medics and legal observers.

One individual arrested for property destruction of a police vehicle is now facing life in prison and is being held on $500,000 bail. That's $150,000 more than the officer charged with the murder of Freddie Gray.  

The legal system has made it clear that they care more about broken windows than broken necks; more about a CVS than the lives of Baltimore's Black residents.

They showed no hesitation in arresting Baltimore's protesters and rebels, and sending in the National Guard, but took 19 days to put a single one of the killer cops in handcuffs. This was the outrageous double standard that led to the Baltimore Uprising.

 Sign the petition to drop the charges on all who have been arrested.

Petition to Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake

Download PDF of Petition 

http://www.answercoalition.org/amnesty_for_all_those_arrested_demanding_justice_for_freddie_gray?utm_campaign=baltimore_amn1&utm_medium=email&utm_source=answercoalition

Mayor Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake
City Hall, Room 250,
100 North Holliday St.,
Baltimore, MD 21202

Dear Mayor Rawlings-Blake:

I stand in solidarity with those in Baltimore who are demanding that all charges be dropped against those who rose up against racism, police brutality, oppressive social conditions and delay of justice in the case of Freddie Gray. The whole world now recognizes that were it not for this powerful grassroots movement, in all its forms, there would be no indictment.

It is an outrage that peaceful protesters have been brutalized, beaten and pepper-sprayed by police in the streets, and held for days in inhumane conditions. Those arrested include journalists and legal observers.

Even the youth who are charged with property destruction and looting should be given an amnesty. There is no reason a teenager -- provoked by racists and justifiably angry -- should be facing life in prison for breaking the windows of a police car.

The City of Baltimore should work to rectify the conditions that led to this Uprising, rather than criminalizing those who took action in response to those conditions. Drop the charges now!

Sincerely,
[add your name below]

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MUMIA ABU-JAMAL COURT UPDATE FROM PRISON RADIO

Devastating cross examination
Dateline: 12-23-2015 Scranton PA Federal Court

Day Two of "Abu-Jamal v. Kerestes" had fireworks equal to the opening round on Friday. The arguments for a Preliminary Injunction continued before the U.S. District Court in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

It was a day of dueling doctors, admissions, explosive documents, and first hand testimony, which debated the constitutional right to healthcare while in prison.  The question: does Mumia Abu-Jamal receive life saving new anti viral drugs that cure Hepatitis C? Or will Judge Robert Mariani's federal court allow the Department of Corrections in Pennsylvania to deny any treatment for chronic Hepatitis C - and maintain (a just revealed protocol) that calls for "denying care" and "monitoring imates" while the virus ravages the body causing irreversible organ damage.   

The morning featured vigorous cross examination.  Dr. Joseph Harris, deftly handled Department of Corrections cross, emphasizing this key point: the cure for Hep C is clearly the medical standard of care. And denial of treatment is no treatment for a progressive and infectious disease.

In a last minute addition to the witness list the DOC questioned dermatologist Dr. Schleicher who first treated Mumia's devasting skin condition in Feb. of 2015.  The Department of Corrections through this expert unconvincingly asserted that Mumia's skin condition was unrelated to Hepatitis C, and that his low platelet counts, anemia of chronic disease, abnormal liver function tests, are not caused by Hep C.

At 12:10 of the hearing a withering cross exam by Robert Boyle (Attorney for Abu-Jamal) exposed Schleicher's limited diagnostic acumen, his failure to monitor Mumia's two hospital ICU admissions and the illuiminating fact that he did not follow up on Geisinger Medical Center's recommendation in May for an Hep C viral load test.  He got him to admit that "he did not know much about Hep C". Schleicher has continued to treat Mumia, and it was revealed was unaware that the infectious disease specialist hired by the department of Corrections, Dr. Ramon Gadea, had recommended on September 9th treatment for Hepatitis C in response to Mumia's ongoing ravaged skin. Notably, Dr. Gadea and the onsite doctors at SCI Mahanoy who see Mumia in the infirmary on a weekly basis were not called to testify.  It can be presumed that  their testimony would have been unfavorable to the DOC.
 Standing Up for Mumia

The mid afternoon featured Dr. Suzanne Ross and Dr. Johanna Fernandez.  The value of these two frequent and long term visitors to Mumia was in the compelling details that they provided describing Mumia's injuries, acute sysmptoms, and deteriorating health.  Some examples from the acute period of symptoms in the spring and summer included Mumia's slurred words, elephant skin, scales and bloody cracks in his skin on 90% of his body, extreme weakness, swelling of his limbs, and loss of mental acuity.  When cross-exmamined both Ross and Fernandez were unapologetic, as they expounded on Mumia's innocence, unjust incarceration, and the state's naked attempts to silence him.

As those who know Mumia personally realize, the man just does not complain, and is frankly unable to describe his own vulnerablity.  As such, this testimony was key.  Present through video streaming throughout the proceedings Mumia was, as Dr. Fernandez testified is part of his character, simply stoic.  Before this devastating health crisis, there were only a handful of occasions that he has gone to sick call during 34 years of incarceration.  This might be surprising for a man who is known to the world as a writer and eloquent pubic commentator. 

Key Evidence Exposed

In an explosive revelation: Bret Grote of the Abolitionist Law Center, dissected the testimony of DOC defense witness infirmary administrator, Mr. Steinhart - revealing that there is a written Hep C treatment protocol that was developed this year.  Grote appealed to the judge, and he required that the DOC immediately produce a copy of the document.  Laura Neal, DOC counsel quickly tried to surpress the public release of the document, calling for it to remain under seal.  Overheard in the courtroom, DOC associate defense counsel noted that they did not want this document available publically because it would increase the department's liability in the class action pending for inmate Hep C treatment.  Debate continues Wed morning on whether this document will be sealed.  A Right To Know request  by Prison Radio requesting the document was filed with the state during break requested by the judge so he could read the protocol

On tap: Cross Examination of DOC expert- Dr. Jay Cowan, notoriously head of Riker's Island Medical Center. 

The doctors and lawyers that enforce the PA Department of Corrections policy have got a problem. Healthcare is a constitutional right, even for those who are incarcerated.   Proving that the DOC has been "deliberately indifferent"  the required standard for a preliminary injunction and relief in this case clearly has been met by Abu-Jamal's attorneys.

Please make a contribution to defend Mumia's right to treatment!  

please forward: this video www.bit.ly/curehimnow

Luchando por la justicia y la libertad,

Noelle Hanrahan
Noelle Hanrahan
Director
To give by check:
PO Box 411074
San Francisco, CA
94141

Stock or legacy gifts:
Noelle Hanrahan
(415) 706 - 5222

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CANCEL ALL STUDENT DEBT!

Sign the Petition:

http://cancelallstudentdebt.com/?code=kos


Dear President Obama, Senators, and Members of Congress:


Americans now owe $1.3 trillion in student debt. Eighty-six percent of that money is owed to the United States government. This is a crushing burden for more than 40 million Americans and their families.

I urge you to take immediate action to forgive all student debt, public and private.

American Federation of Teachers
Campaign for America's Future
Courage Campaign
Daily Kos
Democracy for America
LeftAction
Project Springboard
RH Reality Check
RootsAction
Student Debt Crisis
The Nation
Working Families


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Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson
 
Updates from the New "Team Free Lorenzo Johnson":
Thank you all for your relentless effort in the fight against wrongful convictions and your determination to stand behind Lorenzo.

To garner even more support for Lorenzo Johnson, we have been hard at work updating the website and developing an even more formidable and dedicated team. Please take a moment to visit the new site here.

During the month of July, Lorenzo wrote two new articles for The Huffington Post titled "When Prosecutors Deny Justice for the Innocent," and "Hurry Up and Wait for Justice: The Struggle of Innocent Prisoners." In these articles, Lorenzo discusses the flaws in the criminal justice system, which he deems is a "serious problem in this country."

Lastly, Lorenzo has a message to you all.

A Letter from Lorenzo:

July 23, 2015
Dauphin County Prison
Harrisburg, PA

Dear Supporters,

I hope all is well with everyone and your families. As for myself, I'm still on my journey in pursuit of my vindication. Sorry for my website being shut down for a couple of weeks. It was being transferred to a new provider and management. I'm back and will do my best to keep everything up to speed with what's taking place.

I would like to thank ALL of my loyal supporters in the U.S. and in the MANY different counties that have signed on to support my innocence. Thanks for all of the letters, emails, photos, etc. Like I always say, I get energy to carry on and inspiration hearing form you, please stay engaged in my struggle.

As of this moment, nothing has changed, but – the continued delay tactics are constantly being used by my prosecutor, Deputy Attorney General William Stoycos. With the mounting of evidence that supports my innocence and police and prosecution misconduct claims that is steadily piling up, you would think that I would be having a couple of evidentiary hearings on my actual innocence appeal that have been pending since August 5, 2013.

At the time of this writing, I've been moved from SCI-Mahanoy to Dauphin County Prison and locked down for 23 hours and 40 minutes a day. In the 20 minutes I get to come out, I get to take a shower and make a short call. Prosecutor Stoycos had me moved so I can be a witness in his attempt to have my codefendant Corey Walker's attorney removed from representing him. How dare he call into question an attorney who is seeking justice for her client, when prosecutor Stoycos himself violated multiple constitutional rights of mine and Mr. Walker, that led to us being in prison for 20 years and counting.

Prosecutor Stoycos is continuously abusing his power and his endless resources he has at his disposal. He is not tough on crime, he's tough on Innocent Prisoners. Prosecutor Stoycos is doing everything in his power to prevent justice from taking place. I encourage everyone to continue to speak out against my nightmare, invite others to get involved by going to my website and signing my Freedom Petition and whatever else they're willing to do.

On a positive note, I just enrolled in warehouse management trade and started on July 13th. Unfortunately, you're only allowed to miss a couple of days and Prosecutor Stoycos had me temporarily transferred on July 14th … It's extremely hard on Lifers to get into these trades due to the fact that Lifers are placed at the back of the list of ALL vocational classes. I try to further my education every chance I get, so when I do come home, I will be certified in different work.

The month of the hearing has come and left, without me being brought to the courthouse … I'm one of MANY innocent prisoners who endures this non-stop madness in our pursuit of Justice and Freedom. Now that my webpage is almost caught up to speed, I promise prompt updates and as everyone knows that contacted me directly, I personally reply to those in the states and out of the country. For those who can make a financial contribution, everything counts. Take care and let's continue to fight until we achieve Freedom, Justice, and Equality for all innocent prisoners.

"The Pain Within"

Free the Innocent
Lorenzo "Cat" Johnson

[Note: Lorenzo has since been transferred back to SCI Mahanoy and can be reached at his usual address.]

Thank you all for reading this message and please take the time to visit the new website and contribute to Lorenzo's campaign for freedom!

Write: Lorenzo Johnson
            DF 1036
            SCI Mahanoy
            301 Morea Rd.
            Frackville, PA 17932

 Email: Through JPay using the code:
              Lorenzo Johnson DF 1036 PA DOC
                                     or
              Directly at LorenzoJohnson17932@gmail.com

Have a wonderful day!
- The Team to Free Lorenzo Johnson


freelorenzojohnson.org

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Join the Fight to Free Rev. Pinkney!

Click HERE to view in browser

http://www.iacenter.org/prisoners/freepinkney-1-28-15/


On December 15, 2014 the Rev. Edward Pinkney of Benton Harbor, Michigan was thrown into prison for 2.5 to 10 years. This 66-year-old leading African American activist was tried and convicted in front of an all-white jury and racist white judge and prosecutor for supposedly altering 5 dates on a recall petition against the mayor of Benton Harbor.

The prosecutor, with the judge's approval, repeatedly told the jury "you don't need evidence to convict Mr. Pinkney." And ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE WAS EVER PRESENTED THAT TIED REV. PINKNEY TO THE 'ALTERED' PETITIONS. Rev. Pinkney was immediately led away in handcuffs and thrown into Jackson Prison.

This is an outrageous charge. It is an outrageous conviction. It is an even more outrageous sentence! It must be appealed.

With your help supporters need to raise $20,000 for Rev. Pinkney's appeal.

Checks can be made out to BANCO (Black Autonomy Network Community Organization). This is the organization founded by Rev. Pinkney.  Mail them to: Mrs. Dorothy Pinkney, 1940 Union Street, Benton Harbor, MI 49022.

Donations can be accepted on-line at bhbanco.org – press the donate button.

For information on the decade long campaign to destroy Rev. Pinkney go to bhbanco.org and workers.org(search "Pinkney").

We urge your support to the efforts to Free Rev. Pinkney!Ramsey Clark – Former U.S. attorney general,
Cynthia McKinney – Former member of U.S. Congress,
Lynne Stewart – Former political prisoner and human rights attorney
Ralph Poynter – New Abolitionist Movement,
Abayomi Azikiwe – Editor, Pan-African News Wire<
Larry Holmes – Peoples Power Assembly,
David Sole – Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice
Sara Flounders – International Action Center

MESSAGE FROM REV. PINKNEY

I am now in Marquette prison over 15 hours from wife and family, sitting in prison for a crime that was never committed. Judge Schrock and Mike Sepic both admitted there was no evidence against me but now I sit in prison facing 30 months. Schrock actually stated that he wanted to make an example out of me. (to scare Benton Harbor residents even more...) ONLY IN AMERICA. I now have an army to help fight Berrien County. When I arrived at Jackson state prison on Dec. 15, I met several hundred people from Detroit, Flint, Kalamazoo, and Grand Rapids. Some people recognized me. There was an outstanding amount of support given by the prison inmates. When I was transported to Marquette Prison it took 2 days. The prisoners knew who I was. One of the guards looked me up on the internet and said, "who would believe Berrien County is this racist."

Background to Campaign to free Rev. Pinkney

Michigan political prisoner the Rev. Edward Pinkney is a victim of racist injustice. He was sentenced to 30 months to 10 years for supposedly changing the dates on 5 signatures on a petition to recall Benton Harbor Mayor James Hightower.

No material or circumstantial evidence was presented at the trial that would implicate Pinkney in the purported5 felonies. Many believe that Pinkney, a Berrien County activist and leader of the Black Autonomy Network Community Organization (BANCO), is being punished by local authorities for opposing the corporate plans of Whirlpool Corp, headquartered in Benton Harbor, Michigan.

In 2012, Pinkney and BANCO led an "Occupy the PGA [Professional Golfers' Association of America]" demonstration against a world-renowned golf tournament held at the newly created Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course on the shoreline of Lake Michigan. The course was carved out of Jean Klock Park, which had been donated to the city of Benton Harbor decades ago.

Berrien County officials were determined to defeat the recall campaign against Mayor Hightower, who opposed a program that would have taxed local corporations in order to create jobs and improve conditions in Benton Harbor, a majority African-American municipality. Like other Michigan cities, it has been devastated by widespread poverty and unemployment.

The Benton Harbor corporate power structure has used similar fraudulent charges to stop past efforts to recall or vote out of office the racist white officials, from mayor, judges, prosecutors in a majority Black city. Rev Pinkney who always quotes scripture, as many Christian ministers do, was even convicted for quoting scripture in a newspaper column. This outrageous conviction was overturned on appeal. We must do this again!

To sign the petition in support of the Rev. Edward Pinkney, log on to: tinyurl.com/ps4lwyn.

Contributions for Rev. Pinkney's defense can be sent to BANCO at Mrs Dorothy Pinkney, 1940 Union St., Benton Harbor, MI 49022

Or you can donate on-line at bhbanco.org.

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COURAGE TO RESIST

 http://couragetoresist.org/

New Action--write letters to DoD officials requesting clemency for Chelsea!

Secretary of the Army John McHugh

President Obama has delegated review of Chelsea Manning's clemency appeal to individuals within the Department of Defense.

Please write them to express your support for heroic WikiLeaks' whistle-blower former US Army intelligence analyst PFC Chelsea Manning's release from military prison.

It is important that each of these authorities realize the wide support that Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning enjoys worldwide. They need to be reminded that millions understand that Manning is a political prisoner, imprisoned for following her conscience. While it is highly unlikely that any of these individuals would independently move to release Manning, a reduction in Manning's outrageous 35-year prison sentence is a possibility at this stage.

Take action TODAY – Write letters supporting Chelsea's clemency petition to the following DoD authorities:

Secretary of the Army John McHugh

101 Army Pentagon

Washington, DC 20310-0101

The Judge Advocate General

2200 Army Pentagon

Washington, DC 20310-2200

Army Clemency and Parole Board

251 18th St, Suite 385

Arlington, VA 22202-3532

Directorate of Inmate Administration

Attn: Boards Branch

U.S. Disciplinary Barracks

1301 N. Warehouse Road

Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027-2304

Suggestions for letters send to DoD officials:

The letter should focus on your support for Chelsea Manning, and especially why you believe justice will be served if Chelsea Manning's sentence is reduced.  The letter should NOT be anti-military as this will be unlikely to help.

A suggested message: "Chelsea Manning has been punished enough for violating military regulations in the course of being true to her conscience.  I urge you to use your authorityto reduce Pvt. Manning's sentence to time served."  Beyond that general message, feel free to personalize the details as to why you believe Chelsea deserves clemency.

Consider composing your letter on personalized letterhead -you can create this yourself (here are templates and some tips for doing that).

A comment on this post will NOT be seen by DoD authorities–please send your letters to the addresses above

This clemency petition is separate from Chelsea Manning's upcoming appeal before the US Army Court of Criminal Appeals next year, where Manning's new attorney Nancy Hollander will have an opportunity to highlight the prosecution's—and the trial judge's—misconduct during last year's trial at Ft. Meade, Maryland.

Help us continue to cover 100% of Chelsea's legal fees at this critical stage!


Courage to Resist
484 Lake Park Ave. #41
Oakland, CA 94610
510-488-3559
couragetoresist.org


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B. ARTICLES IN FULL


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1) FOIA Request Shows Govt Lied About Lead in Water, Knowingly Poisoning Countless Children
Instead of keeping children safe from toxic chemicals, Michigan officials repeatedly lied about the safety of their drinking water.
By Andrew Emett
December 25, 2015
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/foia-request-shows-govt-lied-about-lead-water-knowingly-poisoning-countless?akid=13812.229473.PevXNV&rd=1&src=newsletter1047977&t=18

Flint, MI — After filing a FOIA request, a Virginia Tech professor recently discovered Michigan state officials knew the city of Flint’s water supply was giving children lead poisoning while falsely assuring residents that the water was safe. Although the government had been aware of the increased levels of lead poisoning since July, they continued to lie to the public until a Flint pediatrician published a study in September that found lead exposure in children had doubled citywide and nearly tripled in high-risk areas.

Agreeing to temporarily switch from Detroit’s water supply to the Flint River in April 2014, residents in the city of Flint immediately noticed their tap water appeared cloudy while emitting a pungent odor. After testing the water supply on August 14, 2014, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) discovered the water tested positive for fecal coliform bacteria, also known as E. coli. Although the city issued several boil advisories to kill the bacteria, the CDC has found that heating or boiling water only increases the lead concentration in the water.

In an interview with Michigan Radio on September 6, Virginia Tech Professor Marc Edwards warned that preliminary tests revealed serious levels of lead in Flint’s water supply. Refuting the university’s findings, MDEQ spokesman Brad Wurfel stated, “The samples don’t match the testing that we’ve been doing in the same kind of neighborhoods all over the city for the past year. With these kind of numbers, we would have expected to be seeing a spike somewhere else in the other lead monitoring that goes on in the community.”

State officials continued telling the public that the water supply was safe until a team of researchers led by Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha reported an alarming increase in childhood lead poisoning later that month. But on Monday, Prof. Edwards revealed that government officials had known the water supply was contaminated since July. According to a series of memos and emails obtained through a FOIA request, Edwards revealed the director of DHHS and the office of Gov. Rick Snyder both received data between July and September documenting the recent spike in kids suffering from lead poisoning.

According to the World Health Organization, “lead affects children’s brain development resulting in reduced intelligence quotient (IQ), behavioral changes such as shortening of attention span and increased antisocial behavior, and reduced educational attainment. Lead exposure also causes anemia, hypertension, renal impairment, immunotoxicity and toxicity to the reproductive organs. The neurological and behavioral effects of lead are believed to be irreversible.”

Earlier this week, Edwards wrote, “After missing warning signs of spiking childhood lead poisoning that occurred a few months after switching to a corrosive river water source in 2014, outside pressure forced officials at the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to closely scrutinize their data in July 2015. They discovered scientifically conclusive evidence of an anomalous increase in childhood lead poisoning in summer 2014 immediately after the switch in water sources, but stood by silently as Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) officials repeatedly and falsely stated that no spike in blood lead levels (BLL) of children had occurred.”

Although Flint finally reconnected to Detroit’s water supply on October 16, Flint Mayor Karen Weaver declared a state of emergency on December 14. Referring to the contamination as a “manmade disaster,” Mayor Weaver expressed concern that the increased levels of lead poisoning in Flint’s children will result in “learning disabilities and the need for special education and mental health services and an increase in the juvenile justice system.”

Instead of keeping children safe from toxic chemicals, Michigan officials repeatedly lied about the safety of their drinking water even though they knew it was poisoned. Last month, the parents of these children and other Flint residents filed a class-action lawsuit against the governor and over a dozen other public officials responsible for failing an entire city. Unfortunately, no amount of money can compensate for the needless loss of a child’s developmental abilities. 
 
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2) Cleveland Grand Jury Declines to Indict Cops Who Shot Tamir Rice
By Liz Fields
December 28, 2015 
https://news.vice.com/article/breaking-cleveland-grand-jury-declines-to-indict-cops-who-shot-tamir-rice?utm_source=vicenewsemail

The Cuyahoga County prosecutor's office announced on Monday that a Cleveland grand jury will not bring charges against either of the officers involved in the fatal shooting of a 12-year-old boy by a Cleveland police officer in November of 2014.

A grand jury for weeks has been hearing testimony into the shooting of Tamir Rice within seconds after police arrived at a park next to a Cleveland recreation center in response to reports of a suspect with a gun. Rice died the next day.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty said at a press conference on Monday that the shooting was "a perfect storm of human error," but that it was "indisputable" that Rice appeared to be drawing a gun from his waistband — even if it was a toy weapon.

"Simply put, given this perfect storm of human error, mistakes and miscommunications by all involved that day, the evidence did not indicate criminal conduct by police," McGinty said.

The morning of the shooting on November 22, 2014, officers were dispatched to respond to a 911 call reporting someone who had been seen in the area with a weapon. The caller noted that the weapon was "probably fake," but the police dispatcher handling the call did not relay this last detail.

The rookie officer who fired the shots at Rice, 27-year-old Timothy Loehmann, said in a statement to the grand jury in December that he believed his life was in danger at the time. Loehmann responded to the park along with Officer Frank Garmbach — a 47-year-old police veteran who was behind the wheel of the police cruiser and serving as Loehmann's training officer.

In the statement, Loehmann said he assumed Rice was roughly 18 years old and 185 pounds. He said that he saw Rice's hand move toward his waist, and that he continued to yell "show me your hands" as the officers approached the boy.

Related: The Cleveland Cop Who Fatally Shot Tamir Rice Finally Speaks Out

"I was focused on the subject. Even when he was reaching into his waistband, I didn't fire. I was yelling the command 'show me your hands,'" Loehmann claimed.

The officer said he had very little time as he exited his vehicle. Fearing that Rice was an active shooter and that he and his partner were in danger, he discharged two fatal shots.

Footage of the shooting shows that Loehmann drew and fired his gun within two seconds of the patrol car pulling directly up to Rice, leaving in doubt the number of times he could have shouted orders to Rice, who was seemingly been given little chance to comply. Attorneys for Rice's family have repeatedly denied the officers' claims that the boy received sufficient warning before they opened fire.

In the footage of the incident, Rice appears alone in a gazebo. It is unclear why the officers did not stop the car some distance from Rice and use it as cover as they identified themselves, rather than suddenly pull up the car to within feet of him. Both officers declined to be interviewed by investigators, but provided unsworn written testimony that was presented to grand jurors on Tuesday.

After the shooting, four minutes passed before an FBI agent responded to the scene and attempted to administer first aid to Rice as the officers stood idly by.

The grainy footage also shows cops rushing to restrain Rice's 14-year-old sister as she attempted to check on her sibling. One officer pushed the girl to the ground and handcuffed her as she screamed, "My baby brother, they killed my baby brother," according to a lawsuit filed by Rice's family.

Related: Prosecutor Stirs Controversy by Releasing Analysis of Tamir Rice Shooting Video

In response to that suit, the city issued a 41-page court filing claiming that Rice was to blame for his own death because he failed to "avoid injury."

McGinty's office released two reports from law enforcement experts who said that the officers' actions during the shooting were "reasonable," and a third report that provided a frame-by-frame analysis of the surveillance video with notes detailing how it appeared as though Rice was reaching for his waistband. Rice's family questioned the validity of these reports and expressed outrage over their release.

A lawyer for Rice's family issued a statement on Monday expressing disappointment — but not surprise — with the grand jury's decision. The family accused McGinty of "abusing and manipulating the grand jury process to orchestrate a vote against indictment," and said the way the prosecutor handled the case added to their grief. They previously requested a special prosecutor, which was denied.

The statement also urged any protesters rallying against the grand jury decision to do so "peacefully and democratically."

A federal civil rights lawsuit filed by the family against the two officers and the city of Cleveland is still pending.

Reuters contributed to this report.


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3) The E.U. Migrant Crisis, Told in 2 Startling Numbers
By CELESTINE BOHLEN


PARIS — The European Union’s struggle to deal with migration can be bluntly told in two numbers: More than one million people have made their way to Europe this year, according to the International Organization for Migration, and 190 have been formally relocated.The disparity is a potent reminder of how migration has strained the European Union’s political will, its unity and its resources.

People on the front lines of this monumental undertaking are asking for patience. The question for the European Union, which has pledged to relocate 160,000 people over the next two years, is whether patience is enough.

“This is supposed to pick up rapidly, hopefully,” said Eugenio Ambrosi, regional director of the organization’s European regional office. “The machine is like a diesel. It takes time to get it started.”The migrant crisis has been on European front pages for several years. Before the crowds at the borders in the Balkans or at Greek ports, there was the steady stream of boats full of migrants arriving in Sicily; before that, there was the camp at Calais, in northern France, popularly known as “the jungle,” from where migrants try to cross the Channel to England.

Two months ago, the French government finally announced a program to relieve the pressure in Calais and move migrants to 70 reception centers elsewhere in France.

Christian Salomé, who heads a local charity, L’Auberge des Migrants, said it was too early to precisely quantify the flow of people out of the Calais camp, but he estimated that the population of the jungle had dropped to 5,000 from 6,000 since October.

But resettling the migrants is not easy. According to the newspaper Le Monde, of 23 migrants who were relocated in November from Calais to a reception center in the city of Langres, about 180 miles southeast of Paris, only 15 remain, bored, unoccupied and frustrated by bureaucracy.

Of those who left, some may have headed back to Calais, according to migrants interviewed by Le Monde.

“Whether they stay at the centers depends on many factors — the quality of the personnel, the human warmth that they find,” Mr. Salomé said in a telephone interview.

For migrants who came to Calais in the hopes of moving on to England, relocation to provincial towns in France is probably not a long-term solution. Many will keep trying to reach countries where they can expect a quicker response to their asylum request, better hopes for a job or a chance to rejoin relatives.

According to Mr. Ambrosi, migrants are well aware of the widely varying approaches to handling asylum requests among European countries, as well as the different chances of finding work. Not surprisingly, they go where they feel they are most wanted.

“Each of the E.U. states has its own policy, and its own mechanism, and the asylum seekers know this situation very well,” he said.

Until the European Union adopts a uniform policy on migration, he said, the burden on the “welcoming” countries will increase, further straining tensions with their more reluctant neighbors and among their own populations.

France, which has committed to accepting 30,000 of the 160,000 migrants from the “front-line” states of Greece and Italy, has been trying to do its share, but the pace is slow: Some 900 migrants are expected to be formally settled here by the end of January, according to the Ministry of the Interior.

Meanwhile, more migrants are continuing to arrive in Europe, requiring additional donations from the International Organization for Migration’s 162 member countries. The organization has seen its operational budget for Greece triple since 2014.

“We are advancing towards a more uniformed response,” Mr. Ambrosi said. “We are going in the right direction, but time is of the essence.”


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4) Cleveland Officer Will Not Face Charges in Tamir Rice Shooting Death
By and

CLEVELAND — A grand jury declined on Monday to charge a Cleveland patrolman who fatally shot a 12-year-old boy holding a pellet gun, capping more than a year of investigation into a case that added to national outrage over white officers killing African-Americans.In announcing the decision, Timothy J. McGinty, the Cuyahoga County prosecutor, said he had recommended that the grand jurors not bring charges in the killing of the boy, Tamir Rice, who was playing with the gun outside a recreation center in November 2014.Mr. McGinty said the fatal encounter had been a tragedy and a “perfect storm of human error, mistakes and miscommunications.” But he said that enhancement of video from the scene had made it “indisputable” that Tamir, who was black, was drawing the pellet gun from his waistband when he was shot, either to hand it over to the officers or to show them that it was not a real firearm. He said that there was no reason for the officers to know that, and that the officer who fired, Timothy Loehmann, had a reason to fear for his life.

The case began when a caller to 911 said a male was pointing a gun at people in a Cleveland park. The caller added that the gun was “probably fake,” and that the person waving it was “probably a juvenile.” But those caveats were not relayed to Officer Loehmann or his partner, Frank Garmback, who was driving the patrol car. Officer Loehmann, who is white, opened fire within seconds of arriving at the park. Officer Garmback was also spared any charges.

The shooting in Cleveland came just two days before a grand jury in Missouri declined to indict a white police officer in Ferguson who fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old. The Ferguson case became one of a series of police killings that drew protests — in New York, Baltimore, North Charleston, S.C., and other cities — by demonstrators denouncing the way the police treat African-Americans.

Though some officers have been charged this year for on-duty killings, in cities including Cincinnati and Baltimore, others have not. Mr. McGinty said that no matter how tragic the circumstances involving Tamir’s death, the law gives the benefit of the doubt to officers who must make split-second decisions.

Tamir’s family and protesters had criticized the approach of the prosecutor throughout the investigation, which took more than 13 months. The Cleveland police initially investigated the case, then the county sheriff’s office conducted its own inquiry. Mr. McGinty’s office released the results of the sheriff’s investigation in June, and months later presented the case to a grand jury.

“It has been clear for months now that Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty was abusing and manipulating the grand jury process to orchestrate a vote against indictment,” lawyers for Tamir Rice’s family said Monday in a statement. “Even though video shows the police shooting Tamir in less than one second, Prosecutor McGinty hired so-called expert witnesses to try to exonerate the officers and tell the grand jury their conduct was reasonable and justified.”

City and state officials urged calm. In a statement, Gov. John R. Kasich, a Republican presidential candidate, said that he understood “how this decision will leave many people asking themselves if justice was served,” but urged residents not to “give in to anger and frustration and let it divide us.”

A steady wind and cold rain Monday night drove away a small group of demonstrators who had gathered at the park where Tamir was fatally shot. Mementos were left at a makeshift memorial there throughout the day, including dozens of teddy bears, plastic flowers and small wooden crosses. The rain and wind extinguished candles that had been lit in the boy’s memory.

At a news conference after the prosecutor’s announcement, Mayor Frank Jackson expressed condolences to the Rice family and said the city would begin an administrative review of the shooting now that the grand jury’s work was finished. Mr. Jackson said meaningful changes to the Division of Police had been made since Tamir’s death, including efforts to give officers first-aid training and provide basic medical kits in police cars.

“This has caused the city of Cleveland, with the loss of a child at the hands of a police officer, to do a lot of soul searching,” Mr. Jackson said. “And in the midst of that soul searching we have made some changes.”

“All this is designed to better ensure that an incident like this will never happen again,” he added.

Police Chief Calvin Williams said Officers Loehmann and Garmback would remain on restricted duty until the administrative review was completed. He said the review would look at whether department policies were violated during the encounter, including the actions of the call taker and dispatcher, the shooting itself, and the aftermath. “We’ll look at the incident from start to finish,” Chief Williams said, and consider discipline if violations are found.

As with many police killings this year, outrage was sparked by what was caught on camera. Grainy surveillance video, which circulated widely online, showed Officer Garmback pulling the police cruiser within a few feet of Tamir and Officer Loehmann stepping out of the car and almost immediately firing his gun. Tamir died hours later.

Mr. McGinty noted that the officers had never been told that the original caller suggested the gun might be a fake. “Had the officers been aware of these qualifiers, the training officer who was driving might have approached the scene with less urgency,” said Mr. McGinty, who said the officers could not be penalized for what they did not know. “Lives may not have been put at stake.”

Matthew Meyer, an assistant prosecutor, said that it was difficult to tell the difference between the pellet gun and a real one because the orange safety tip was missing, and that the guns otherwise look the same from a distance. Prosecutors also said that Tamir looked large for his age, and that the neighborhood has a history of violence, and that other officers have been killed nearby.

Mr. McGinty said: “The death of Tamir Rice was an absolute tragedy. It was horrible, unfortunate and regrettable. But it was not, by the law that binds us, a crime.”

Mr. McGinty defended his decision to publicly release a series of expert reports he commissioned before the grand jury announcement, saying they made for a transparent process that allowed the public to reach informed conclusions. Those reports found that Officer Loehmann acted reasonably in shooting Tamir, but the Rice family commissioned its own outside reports that reached the opposite conclusion.

Mr. McGinty said he had called Tamir’s mother to tell her of the grand jury’s actions and that it had been a “tough conversation.” He said he “appreciated the sincere emotion and concern of all citizens” but asked the community to “respect the process.” He said Tamir’s family may yet find some redress in civil courts.

Some people, however, were outraged. Representative Marcia Fudge, a Democrat whose district includes part of Cleveland, said Monday that she believed the grand jury process was a “miscarriage of justice” and that Mr. McGinty should step down.

“I didn’t get all of the information from the grand jury. They may have come up with the right decision,” Ms. Fudge said. “But all of the process around it makes all of us question the fairness. This is just outrageous that a case would take that long.”Neither Officer Garmback nor Officer Loehmann has spoken publicly about the shooting, though both men read statements to grand jurors about their actions that day. Officer Loehmann told the grand jury that he fired out of fear for his safety after Tamir reached into his waistband and grabbed the pellet gun, which he believed to be real.

Tamir’s family has questioned Officer Loehmann’s account, and has sued the city and both officers in federal court.

Since Tamir’s death, questions have been raised about Officer Loehmann’s qualifications and about the Cleveland police’s standards on the use of force. Records show that Officer Loehmann resigned from another Ohio police department after a “dangerous loss of composure” during firearms training. The Cleveland police did not review that department’s personnel file before offering him a job.

For years, the Cleveland police have been criticized for being too aggressive in their use of force, and for broader failures in management, record keeping and training. In May, the city agreed to a sweeping consent decree with the Justice Department that required changes in how officers use and report force, and placed the police under the supervision of an independent monitor.

Mr. McGinty presents evidence in all fatal police encounters to a grand jury, but some activists have questioned the fairness of the process, and have noted that indictments are generally unlikely unless one is sought by a prosecutor.

In the Rice case, family lawyers have said for months that they have little confidence that Mr. McGinty wanted the officers charged. The lawyers have called for a special prosecutor in the case and have asked the Justice Department to investigate.

Justice Department officials said Monday that they would “continue our independent review of this matter, assess all available materials and determine what actions are appropriate, given the strict burdens and requirements imposed by applicable federal civil rights laws.”

Expecting protests in the days ahead, Cleveland officials said they were prepared to allow peaceful demonstrations.

“There have already been plans for a response, both at an immediate level and a long protracted struggle,” said the Rev. Jawanza Colvin, the pastor of a Cleveland church who signed the affidavits this year seeking the officers’ arrests.

But Mr. Colvin said Monday’s outcome had long been anticipated.

“The fact that we are not surprised,” he said, “is in and of itself an indictment of the culture of the criminal justice system.”




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5) Star Wars and the Death of American Cinema
by

‘Star Wars’ is a simple story, simply told, of good versus evil, light versus darkness, and freedom versus tyranny. In other words it is the story of America’s struggle to preserve democracy and civilization in a world beset by evil and ‘evildoers’.

Movies and political propaganda have long walked hand in hand. Indeed if ever a medium was suited to propaganda it is the medium of cinema. And if ever an industry could be credited with creating an alternate reality so pervasive it has managed to convince generations of Americans and others around the world that up is down, black is white, and left is right, that industry is Hollywood.

George Lucas, the creator of a Star Wars franchise which, including this latest installment, has churned out seven movies since the original appeared in 1977, is along with Steven Spielberg a child of the reaction to the American counter-culture of the sixties and early seventies.

Though both products of the sixties – a decade in which culture and the arts, particularly cinema, was at the forefront of resistance to the US military industrial complex – Lucas and Spielberg came to prominence in the mid 1970s with movies which rather than attack or question the establishment, instead embraced its role as both protector and arbiter of the nation’s morals. The curtain began to come down on the most culturally vital and exciting and cerebral period of American cinema – responsible for producing such classics as ‘Bonnie and Clyde’, ‘MASH’, ‘The Last Detail’, ‘The French Connection’, ‘The Wild Bunch’, ‘Taxi Driver’, ‘Apocalypse Now’ – with Spielberg’s ‘Jaws’ in 1975, followed in 1977 by Lucas’s ‘Star Wars’. The former frightened America, while the latter made it feel good about itself again.

Both movies together spawned the high concept blockbuster, wherein audiences were invited to feel rather than to think, allowing them to suspend disbelief and escape reality instead of sharing the experience of confronting it via stories in which alienated characters expressed the angst, frustration, anger, and disaffection which they themselves were experiencing in their own lives, thus inducing a sense of solidarity.

It was the era of the anti-hero, main characters for whom the system and conformity was the enemy, and who ploughed their own furrow regardless of the consequences. The questioning of authority and its received truths reflected a country whose young and not so young were hungry for radical change. The war in Vietnam, Watergate, the black civil rights and nationalist movements had shaken up American society and, with it, its culture and cultural references.

But by the mid seventies, with the end of the Vietnam War, and with the counter culture running out of steam, the time had arrived to box up all that alienation, anger and rebelliousness and allow the mythology of the American dream and democracy to reassert its dominance.

In his peerless history of this vital period of American cinema – ‘Easy Riders, Raging Bulls’ – author and cultural critic Peter Biskind writes:
“Beyond its impact on movie marketing and merchandising, Star Wars had a profound effect on the culture. It benefited from the retrenchment of the Carter [President Jimmy Carter] years, the march to the center that followed the end of the Vietnam War.”
This march to the center became a march to the right under Reagan, which manifested in Hollywood as artistic and cultural stagnation, wherein directors such as Spielberg and Lucas became less concerned with story and character and more focused on spectacle. Bigger, louder and richer was the mantra as two dimensional characters and plotlines that your average ten year old with a set of crayons and an imagination could come up with predominated.
Biskind writes:
“Lucas knew that genres and cinematic conventions depend on consensus, the web of shared assumptions that had been sundered in the ‘60s. He was recreating and reaffirming these values, and Star Wars, with its Manichean moral fundamentalism, its white hats and black hats, restored the luster to threadbare values like heroism and individualism.”
In this latest Star Wars movie, directed by J J Abrams, Lucas makes do with a writing credit after selling the franchise to Disney in 2012 for $4.05 billion. Yes you read that right; he sold it for $4.05 billion. That kind of money will buy you a lot of light sabres.

Disney and Abrams have reached back in time in order to refresh the franchise, returning it to its roots with the return of Han Solo (Harrison Ford), Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), and the old iconic favourites Chewbacca and R2D2. For Star Wars buffs there’s even the return of Han Solo’s iconic spaceship the Millennium Falcon. The movie’s antagonist, its Darth Vader, is named Kylo Ren, played by Vladimir Putin…sorry Adam Driver. With this character lies the one interesting twist in the plot. Mind, having said that, we’re talking ‘interesting’ relative to the rest of the plot. We’re not talking Roman Polanski and ‘Chinatown’ here.

There are also major roles in the movie for two relative unknowns, both British: Rey, through whose eyes the narrative unfolds, is played by Daisy Ridley, while Finn is played by John Boyega.

For all the hype surrounding its release, and the rave reviews it has garnered, the latest instalment of the long running and inordinately successful Star Wars franchise – ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ – is so embarrassingly and toe-curlingly clichéd it’s impossible to walk out afterwards without limping.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the movie is not the battle of good versus evil it portrays but the fact that Harrison Ford was reportedly paid 76 times more than newcomer Daisy Ridley to star in it. The 73 year old’s financial package comprised an upfront fee in the region of $20 million plus 0.5 percent of the movie’s gross earnings, which are projected to reach a whopping $1.9 billion.

It is proof that the story of America is not good versus evil or light versus darkness at all. It is instead the story of the super rich versus everybody else.

John Wight is the author of a politically incorrect and irreverent Hollywood memoir – Dreams That Die – published by Zero Books. He’s also written five novels, which are available as Kindle eBooks. You can follow him on Twitter at @JohnWight1


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6) Alarm Spreads in Brazil Over a Virus and a Surge in Malformed Infants
By

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — A little-known virus spread by mosquitoes is causing one of the most alarming health crises to hit Brazil in decades, officials here warn: thousands of cases of brain damage, in which babies are born with unusually small heads.Many pregnant women across Brazil are in a panic. The government, under withering criticism for not acting sooner, is urging them to take every precaution to avoid mosquito bites. One official even suggested that women living in areas where mosquitoes are especially prevalent postpone having children.

“If she can wait, then she should,” said Claudio Maierovitch, director of the department of surveillance of communicable diseases at Brazil’s health ministry.

The alarm stems from a huge surge in babies with microcephaly (my-kroh-SEF-uh-lee), a rare, incurable condition in which their heads are abnormally small. Brazilian officials have registered at least 2,782 cases this year, compared with just 147 in 2014 and 167 the year before.At least 40 of the infants have recently died, and some Brazilian researchers warn that cases could multiply in the months ahead. Those babies who survive may face impaired intellectual development for the rest of their lives.

Brazilian researchers say that an obscure mosquito-borne virus that made its way to the country only recently — Zika — is to blame for the sudden increase in brain damage among infants.

But other virologists caution that more testing is needed to prove the dangerous link between the virus and brain damage, leaving the full extent of the threat to the country, and the hemisphere, unclear.

“Why this may have happened in Brazil and not elsewhere is at this stage difficult to answer,” said Alain Kohl, a virologist at the University of Glasgow who studies Zika.

“Perhaps it was never properly registered in other areas, or the situation in Brazil is indeed different,” he added, citing the possibility that the link between Zika and microcephaly could be related to particular strains of the virus.

The Zika virus has already reached several countries in Latin America, including Mexico, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that it could spread in parts of the United States as well. There have already been cases diagnosed in the United States, in travelers who visited affected countries, and the C.D.C. expects these instances to increase.

“I cried for a month when I learned how God is testing us,” said Gleyse Kelly da Silva, 27, a toll road attendant in the city of Recife in northeast Brazil, describing how an ultrasound exam had detected microcephaly in the seventh month of her pregnancy with her daughter, Maria Giovanna, born in October.

Just a few months earlier, Ms. da Silva had sought medical attention after experiencing some of Zika’s symptoms: fever, joint pain and a red rash.

“I had never heard of Zika or microcephaly,” said Ms. da Silva, the mother of three other children. “Now I just pray that my daughter can endure life with this misfortune.”

No one knows precisely when the Zika virus made the leap to Brazil from its place of origin in Africa. Some researchers say it could have arrived during the 2014 World Cup, when Brazil welcomed travelers from around the globe. Others think the virus may have come during a canoe race weeks later, when paddlers from French Polynesia, the site of a recent Zika outbreak, arrived in Rio de Janeiro.

Researchers, alert to the rapid increase in cases, say that Zika’s spread to Brazil reflects how easily viruses are jumping from one part of the planet to another.

They are particularly worried that the disease is wreaking havoc in a region where the population has not encountered it before, and that climate change may be allowing viruses like Zika to thrive in new domains.

The Brazilian government has stopped short of officially advising women not to get pregnant, but confusion and fear are spreading along with the virus.

“The situation is incredibly frightening,” said Andreza Mireli Silva, 22, a worker in a shoe factory in Sergipe State in northeast Brazil who is seven months pregnant. She said she was trying to avoid mosquito bites by wearing long pants despite the heat of the Southern Hemisphere summer and applying insect repellent every three hours.

Zika, named for the forest in Uganda where scientists discovered it in the 1940s, often goes unnoticed in the people it infects and was not considered especially life-threatening before spreading to Brazil. But the advance of the virus here is focusing scrutiny on the resilience of a worrisome pest: Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that carries Zika and other diseases, among them yellow fever and chikungunya.

“Brazil offers the ideal conditions for Zika to spread so quickly,” said Ana Maria Bispo de Filippis, a leader of the research team that has linked Zika to microcephaly. The country, she added, has “a susceptible population in which the majority of people never had contact with the disease.”

Before Zika’s arrival, Brazil was already grappling with a much deadlier epidemic of dengue, another virus transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes. Brazil had nearly 1.6 million cases of dengue in 2015, according to estimates from the health ministry, up from 569,000 in 2014. At least 839 people have died from dengue in Brazil this year, an 80 percent increase from the previous year. Some health officials say that changes in weather and rainfall may be behind the surge.

Brazil waged war on the Aedes aegypti mosquito for decades during the 20th century before a vaccine was developed for yellow fever. Health agents deployed across the country to destroy habitats like water barrels and other open water sources where the mosquitoes thrive. The authorities even declared victory against the pest in 1955.

But the mosquito re-emerged in Brazil in the late 1960s, outpacing eradication campaigns. Now, at a time when President Dilma Rousseff’s beleaguered government is under fire over corruption, an economic crisis and its handling of the surge in dengue cases, the spread of Zika is unleashing even more criticism.

After virologists identified a Zika outbreak in May in northeast Brazil, the health minister at the time, Arthur Chioro, played down the discovery.

“Zika virus doesn’t worry us,” he told reporters, calling it a “benign disease.”

After that dismissive response, public health experts say that the political upheaval in Brazil — in which Ms. Rousseff is fighting impeachment proceedings — weakened efforts to respond to Zika. Ms. Rousseff overhauled her cabinet in October, dismissing various ministers from her own Workers Party, including Mr. Chioro.

In doing so, she ceded more power to the centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, or P.M.D.B., which controls both houses of Congress. While Zika was raging, she named as her health minister Marcelo Castro, a psychiatrist from that party who stopped practicing medicine years ago to focus on his own business interests and politics.

“The health minister, a politician dedicated to the business of ranching, has a profile that’s the opposite of what’s required to lead the effort to deal with microcephaly,” Ligia Bahia, a specialist on Brazil’s public health system at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, said in a column in the newspaper O Globo.

Researchers warn that they are only just starting to understand Zika’s impact on Brazil and the potential for it to spread t other countries in the Americas. The federal authorities do not yet have a precise estimate on the number of Zika cases because reporting such figures is not compulsory.

Some researchers emphasize the role that climate change may play in Zika’s spread. As temperatures increase in some areas, they argue, mosquitoes can multiply more quickly, potentially enhancing their collective ability to transmit diseases.

Additionally, increased precipitation in some areas creates places where mosquitoes can breed. And droughts, like those that recently afflicted parts of Brazil, can cause people to hoard water in containers, providing additional mosquito habitats.

“The mosquito is exquisitely adapted to human hosts, living in close proximity to humans and feeding repeatedly,” said Maria Diuk-Wasser, a scholar at Columbia University.

Neither the Zika outbreak in Latin America nor its possible link to microcephaly in infants has led to changes in travel advice from the C.D.C. or the Pan-American Health Organization, the regional office of the World Health Organization.

Because Zika is spread by the same mosquito species linked to dengue and chikungunya, both agencies are sticking with the advice they gave for those outbreaks: that all travelers, including pregnant women, do everything they can to avoid mosquito bites, like using insect repellent day and night, wearing long pants and long sleeves, and staying in places that are screened and air-conditioned.

Paula Moura contributed reporting from São Paulo, and Vinod Sreeharsha from Rio de Janeiro. Donald G. McNeil Jr. contributed from New York


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7) More Police Officers Facing Charges, but Few See Jail
By and
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/30/us/more-police-officers-facing-charges-but-few-see-jail.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront

What was once a rarity has now become increasingly common: police officers facing criminal charges in the deaths of civilians. In Albuquerque, two officers will stand trial in the death of a homeless man. In Cincinnati, a campus police officer has been charged in the fatal shooting of a man during a traffic stop. In Chicago, where a video captured the death of Laquan McDonald at the hands of the police, an officer was charged with murder.

But even as high-profile police shootings have attracted more scrutiny over the past year, one thing remains clear: The law gives the police the benefit of the doubt.

That was the case on Monday, when a grand jury declined to indict two Cleveland police officers in the death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice.

The local prosecutor said the shooting of the boy as he played with a toy gun in a park was tragic but not criminal.The prosecutor, Timothy J. McGinty, outlined his reasoning in a 70-page report that catalogs the many legal obstacles to bringing criminal charges against an officer. Though the Rice family and others criticized the report as biased toward law enforcement, many experts agreed that the law was on his side when he recommended against indictment.

And even as the number of police officers facing charges has notably risen, driven by video evidence and a national debate over law enforcement tactics, convictions have proved as elusive as ever.

In November, a Pennsylvania jury acquitted Officer Lisa Mearkle, who shot an unarmed man in the back after he fled a traffic stop for an expired inspection sticker. In December, a jury deadlocked in the trial of the first of six Baltimore police officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray. The judge declared a mistrial.

Such legal realities leave a wide gap between an unnecessary police shooting and a criminal one, a gap that, barring a new Supreme Court ruling on police use of force, must be filled by better policies, training, accountability and supervision, experts say.

“These are important policy discussions that need to be addressed,” said Philip M. Stinson, a criminal justice professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio and a former police officer. “We have a problem with police subculture. We have a problem with poor training, lack of training. Many police departments have cut in-service training because of budget cuts. Many departments used to send everybody every month, but now they don’t have the money to do that.”

Despite heavy sanctions, like millions paid out in settlements over police mistakes, police departments have resisted change, Mr. Stinson said. “But it’s gotten to the point now where people of all walks of life are paying attention. We’ve gotten to a tipping point.”

William Johnson, the executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, had a broader view of how to bridge the gap.

“The anger on the part of protesters is misguided if it’s focused on the grand jury,” he said. “If they want change, what they need to look at is training, on the part of officers, but also training on the part of the community to understand how the criminal justice system does work. And also in, I don’t know how to put it, but common sense on the part of the public.”

He pointed out that Tamir Rice had a realistic-looking toy gun, and that in the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014, forensic evidence supported the police officer’s account that Mr. Brown had gone for the officer’s gun during a scuffle. Later that year, a grand jury declined to indict that officer, Darren Wilson, and shortly afterward, Daniel Pantaleo, the officer whose chokehold caused the death of Eric Garner in Staten Island, also was not indicted by a grand jury.

This year, 18 police officers were charged in fatal on-duty shootings, compared with an average of fewer than five a year over the preceding decade, according to Mr. Stinson’s research. That does not include the six officers indicted in the nonshooting death of Mr. Gray. Of the 18, 11 of the cases involved some sort of video evidence, Mr. Stinson said, adding, “In some of these cases, I don’t think the officers would have been charged without it.”

The new zeal to indict officers is far from universal. In Florida, it has been more than two decades since an officer was indicted on a charge of using deadly force. In Houston, an investigation by The Houston Chronicle found that the last officer charged in a shooting was in 2004.

Even with indictments, juries will remain reluctant to convict police officers absent evidence of malice, said Eugene O’Donnell, a former officer and prosecutor who now teaches at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. “Tremendous incompetence, the worst kind of training, disregard for people is really not enough,” he said. “You’re going to have to go beyond that because the police are different.”

Some jurors in police cases have later made a distinction between determining whether the officer should have fired and deciding — as the law instructs — whether the officer could reasonably have feared bodily harm. In the case of Officer Mearkle in Pennsylvania, the victim lay on the ground as ordered, but did not keep his hands in full view, a video of the shooting shows.

But convictions or no, Professor O’Donnell said, the intense scrutiny brought on by a wave of activism after the shooting of Mr. Brown, followed by this year’s string of indictments, has caused “seismic changes” in policing.

“You can absolutely be sure there’s an impact on the everyday work the police do,” he said. “This is reminding the police that they should only be using deadly force as a last resort.”

“It’s an imperfect way to fix the system, the criminalization of people,” he added. “In a way, we’re doing bottom-up reform instead of top-down reform. We’re finding egregious endings and working from there instead of proactively saying the police system is part of the criminal justice system and consequently is broken. The political sector hopes that the conversation will end there, at the bottom or close to the bottom.”

Cleveland recently agreed to overhaul its police department after a Department of Justice investigation found a pattern and practice of excessive force. The department now places a first aid kit in every squad car and offers first aid training. Tamir lay unaided by the police for several minutes after he was shot.

But at a news conference Tuesday, Mayor Frank Jackson and Police Chief Calvin Williams spoke not of policy changes, but of a top-to-bottom review of the Rice shooting to determine whether and how much to discipline the two officers, the 911 operator and the dispatcher. The 911 caller who reported the gun said that it might be a toy and that the suspect was probably a child, but that information was not relayed to the officers.

“If the facts show that there was wrongdoing on the part of the officers, procedurally, policy-wise, we will take care of that,” Chief Williams said. “If those facts don’t bear that out, it will go that way.”

Mr. Jackson declined to comment on the grand jury’s decision, but said repeatedly that the public had lost confidence in the justice system.

“There is what they believe to be a lack of fairness, a lack of justice in the system and the way in which it prosecutes or reviews these kinds of cases,” he said. “And people are very upset about it. And I believe legitimately and rightly so.”
 


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8) Debt and the Racial Wealth Gap
By PAUL KIEL

IF you are black, you’re far more likely to see your electricity cut, more likely to be sued over a debt, and more likely to land in jail because of a parking ticket.It is not unreasonable to attribute these perils to discrimination. But there’s no question that the main reason small financial problems can have such a disproportionate effect on black families is that, for largely historical reasons rooted in racism, they have far smaller financial reserves to fall back on than white families.

The most recent federal survey in 2013 put the difference in net worth between the typical white and black family at $131,000. That’s a big number, but here’s an even more troubling statistic: About one-quarter of African-American families had less than $5 in reserve. Low-income whites had about $375.

Any setback, from a medical emergency to the unexpected loss of hours at work, can be devastating. It means that harsh punishments for the failure to pay small debts harm black families inordinately. Sometimes, the consequence is jail. Other times, electricity is cut, or wages garnished.

The modern roots of the racial wealth gap can be traced back to the post-World War II housing boom, when federal agencies blocked loans to black Americans, locking them out of the greatest wealth accumulation this country has ever experienced. More recently, the bursting of the housing bubble and subsequent recession slammed minorities. In 2013, the median wealth of white households was 13 times the median wealth of black households, the widest gap since 1989.

Earlier this year, my colleague Annie Waldman and I took a close look at debt-collection lawsuits in three major American cities. We expected to see a pattern driven by income, with collectors and credit card lenders suing people most often in lower-income areas.

But income was just half the story. Even accounting for income, the rate of court judgments from these lawsuits was twice as high in mostly black communities as it was in mostly white ones. In some neighborhoods in Newark and St. Louis, we found more than one judgment for every four residents over a five-year period. Many were families who, knocked off their feet by medical bills or job loss or other problems, had simply been unable to recover.

When debts turn into court judgments, plaintiffs gain the power to collect by cleaning out bank accounts and seizing wages. Federal and state laws generally don’t protect anyone but the poorest debtors, and because judgments are valid for a decade or more, the threat of garnishment can linger for years. The paycheck from that new job may suddenly be slashed and savings may disappear.

Sometimes the consequence of not having the money to pay a bill is immediate: The power goes out. In a 2009 national survey of lower-income households by the federal Energy Information Administration, 9 percent of blacks reported having their electricity disconnected in the previous year because they had been unable to pay. For whites, the number was less than 4 percent, according to an analysis of the survey by the National Consumer Law Center.

And sometimes the consequence of unmanageable debt is to fall further into debt. In a 2013 Federal Reserve survey, about three times as many blacks reported taking out a high-interest payday loan in the previous year as did whites at the same income level. Desperate consumers turn to these loans as a way to catch up on bills, but often get tripped up by unaffordable interest payments.

When combined with discriminatory policing practices, the effect of the asset gap is to magnify the racial disparity. In its report on the Ferguson, Mo., Police Department, the Justice Department found that officers disproportionately stopped and ticketed black citizens. For a “manner of walking” violation, it was $302; for “high grass and weeds,” $531.

Blacks accounted for about 67 percent of Ferguson’s population and around 85 percent of the municipal court cases. But the numbers were even more lopsided when it came to the harshest consequences. Blacks accounted for 92 percent of the cases where an arrest warrant had been issued to compel payment.

And this wasn’t a problem only in Ferguson. Earlier this year, the American Civil Liberties Union sued DeKalb County, Ga., which includes part of Atlanta, for jailing citizens over unpaid court fines and unpaid fees charged by a for-profit company that runs probation services for the government. About 55 percent of DeKalb County’s population is black, but the A.C.L.U. found that nearly all probationers jailed for failure to pay those fines and fees were black.

The racial wealth gap “creates this cyclical effect,” said Nusrat Choudhury, an A.C.L.U. attorney. An unpaid speeding ticket may result in a suspended driver’s license, which may lead to a more severe violation. Unable to pay their fines, black defendants become more crushingly entangled in debt.

Cori Winfield, a single mother in St. Louis, got caught up in this cycle.

After she was unable to keep up the payments on a subprime auto loan she took out in 2009, the car was repossessed the next year, but the consequences didn’t stop there. Because the debt continued to be bloated by interest charges, the lender began garnishing her wages in 2012. The garnishment continues today. Because she was unable to repay, she will end up paying far more than she owed in the first place.Making matters worse for Ms. Winfield, while her wages were being garnished, she was arrested for driving with a license that had been suspended because she had failed to pay a speeding ticket. She ended up spending a weekend in jail and having to pay the cost of bail.

Ms. Winfield has a decent clerical job, earning about $30,000 a year. But she lives month to month. When hit with an unexpected expense, she is left reeling.

Her vulnerability is typical. In a recent survey by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the typical black household earning between $25,000 and $50,000 reported having emergency savings of $400. The typical white household in that range had $2,100.

Black families were much more likely to report difficulty in recovering from a financial setback or to have fallen behind on a bill in the past year. This financial insecurity extended up the income scale. Of black households with income between $50,000 and $85,000, 30 percent said they had been unable to pay a bill. By contrast, only white households with incomes below $25,000 reported similar trouble paying bills; 31 percent said they had fallen behind.

What can be done? The best place to start is by identifying practices that are particularly damaging to black communities, and then fixing them.

In Missouri, for example, the attorney general recently proposed a series of reforms for debt-collection lawsuits to ensure that the underlying debt was valid and that lawyers’ fees were not excessive. Collection-industry trade groups supported the proposal.

Lawmakers in Missouri and other states could go further and reduce the amount of income subject to garnishment. In most states (New York and New Jersey are exceptions), defendants can lose a quarter of their post-tax income, a big hit for even middle-income families.

Bank accounts are afforded even less protection, allowing collectors to seize funds without limit. It’s a nonsensical system that restricts how much of a worker’s paycheck a collector can seize, but allows collectors to take the entire amount once that check is deposited. Setting even a small dollar amount as automatically off limits to collectors would be a substantial improvement.

Changes like that benefit everyone, but they particularly help black families. Policy makers should pay attention. Making it easier to recover from small setbacks can make a big difference in people’s lives.

Paul Kiel is a consumer finance reporter for ProPublica. This is part of its series on debt collection.


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9) Let’s Rethink Our Homeless Shelters
By CHRISTINE C. QUINN

MORE than 57,000 New Yorkers will sleep in a shelter tonight. In this city of glistening wealth, they lack a permanent place to call home. Thousands more suffer outside the shelter system; they are on the streets, bracing for the bitter cold ahead.

Many in the system are women and children — families comprise two-thirds of those in shelters. Nine of 10 homeless families are led by women, many of whom have fled domestic violence. Nearly a third of these women are employed. But their low-wage jobs leave them unable to afford the city’s skyrocketing rents.

At Win, the nonprofit I lead, we serve the women and children who are the forgotten face of homelessness in New York. They are mothers and grandmothers and aunts and sisters. They work long hours and make sacrifices few of us can fathom, all to give their children and grandchildren a chance to tap the well of dignity inside each of us and break the cycle of homelessness. They are our neighbors, our fellow New Yorkers. Yet, all too often, we fall short of treating and housing New York’s homeless thoughtfully and with care.

Three weeks ago, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a 90-day comprehensive review of city services for the homeless, and a laudable new initiative, Home-Stat, to combat street homelessness. This is an important step to address some of the most visible manifestations of our homelessness crisis. But more is needed.

New York has a different agency or office that focuses on just about every challenge homeless families face. Yet little is done to coordinate these services toward the goal of providing permanent housing.

Nearly all of those in our shelters are eligible for city-funded housing vouchers. But the agency that oversees cash assistance, which includes vouchers, and job-readiness efforts, the Human Resources Administration, is not the one in charge of shelters. Shelters are instead run by the Department of Homeless Services.

We need to combine those two agencies. Until the mid-1990s, services for the homeless were under the purview of the human resources commissioner, and they should be again. This change would be a recognition that homelessness is not an isolated problem; it interacts with, and is a consequence of, a maelstrom of factors — unaffordable rents, insufficient job training, lack of accessible child care, untreated mental illness and substance abuse, and too few stable work opportunities.

Our current shelter system is a hodgepodge of repurposed manufacturing sites and rickety apartment buildings. In the past 20 years, only one new shelter in the system — Win’s facility on Glenwood Road in Brooklyn — has been built with families in mind. We need to reimagine our shelters — and, yes, open new ones — so that they can offer the holistic services that are critical to equipping homeless families with the skills and treatment they need.

Shelters should have free on-site G.E.D. preparation classes and exams. They should offer vocational training programs and job placement support, targeting growth industries where well-paying jobs are most likely to be available. The city could further help by partnering with companies and labor unions to create paths to economic security.

Some of these shelters should be built under the same roof as permanent housing and community spaces, to provide a continuum of care and a connection with the neighborhood as well as to leverage existing community resources.

Opening new shelters will put thousands of affordable apartments back on the market. For years, the city has rented apartments and even paid for hotel rooms as temporary shelter units. These apartments and hotel rooms are scattered throughout the city, leaving the homeless without on-site access to support services. The city pays landlords more than someone with a rental voucher can pay, which only exacerbates New York’s already severe housing shortage. More than 3,000 homeless families are housed in apartments that could be permanent homes.

Adding quality, integrated shelter capacity and forcing landlords to put up “for rent” signs on these scattered apartments will make more units affordable to working families. This should be a core piece of the mayor’s aggressive housing plan.

Another critical focus area is the aftercare services that help families move from shelters to permanent housing. The city has an effective model in Brooklyn, Home to Stay, which provides customized care that gradually decreases in intensity as families become more independent. It should be scaled citywide.

We need to learn from what works — and eliminate what does not, including a web of rules, regulations and laws that run counter to the interests of the homeless. For example, domestic violence survivors who seek refuge in an emergency shelter should not be uprooted and moved elsewhere after 180 days. This counterproductive policy makes no sense. We should change it.

Homelessness is among our city’s most daunting challenges, but it is not intractable. To work with homeless women and children is to be inspired by the grit of mothers who strive daily to improve their kids’ circumstances.

They will never accept that better is impossible. Neither can we.

Christine C. Quinn is president and chief executive officer of Win (formerly Women in Need).


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10) Many See I.R.S. Fines as More Affordable Than Insurance
By

WASHINGTON — Clint Murphy let the deadline for getting health insurance by the new year pass without a second thought.

Mr. Murphy, an engineer in Sulphur Springs, Tex., estimates that under the Affordable Care Act, he will face a fine of $1,800 for going uninsured in 2016. But in his view, paying that penalty is worth it if he can avoid buying an insurance policy that costs $2,900 or more. All he has to do is stay healthy.

“I don’t see the logic behind that, and I’m just not going to do it,” said Mr. Murphy, 45, who became uninsured in April after leaving a job with health benefits to pursue contract work. “The fine is still going to be cheaper.”

Two years after the Affordable Care Act began requiring most Americans to have health insurance, 10.5 million who are eligible to buy coverage through the law’s new insurance exchanges were still uninsured this fall, according to the Obama administration.

That number appears to be shrinking: Administration officials said last month that about 2.5 million new customers had bought insurance through HealthCare.gov, the federal exchange serving 38 states, since open enrollment began on Nov. 1. The number of new enrollees is 29 percent higher than last year at this time, suggesting that the threat of a larger penalty may be motivating more people to get covered.

But plenty of healthy holdouts remain, and their resistance helps explain why insurers are worried about the financial viability of the exchanges over time. They say they sorely need more healthy customers to balance out the costs of covering the sicker, older people who have flocked to exchange plans.

People, like Mr. Murphy, who earn too much to qualify for federal subsidies that defray the cost of coverage may be most likely to opt out. A recent analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that more than seven million people who are eligible for exchange coverage would pay less in penalties than for the least expensive insurance available to them. More than half would not qualify for subsidies, the analysis found.

Ben Wakana, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said people would still be better off buying insurance.

“We understand some people may be thinking through their choice of coverage, but going without health insurance is a serious gamble that can be catastrophic if wrong,” Mr. Wakana said.

Many holdouts have made their decisions after meticulously comparing the cost of insurance premiums and deductibles with paying for doctor appointments, lab tests and prescriptions themselves. For some healthy people, the combined cost of premiums and deductibles, which can exceed $10,000, makes the penalty seem a better deal.

For 2016 and beyond, the penalty will be $695 per adult or 2.5 percent of household income, up from $325 per adult or 2 percent of household income last year.

Susan Reardon, 61, of Kalamazoo, Mich., said she was leaning toward going uninsured this year. She calculated that she would have to spend more than $12,000, including premiums of nearly $500 a month and a $6,850 deductible, to get anything beyond preventive benefits from the cheapest exchange plan available to her.

Ms. Reardon, whose husband is old enough to be covered by Medicare, said she would rather pay out of pocket for the drugs she takes for fibromyalgia and the handful of doctor appointments she tends to need each year.

If something catastrophic happens, she said, “I feel like it’s better just to die.”

As for the tax penalty, which could approach $1,500 for her?

“Come and get me,” Ms. Reardon said.

In 2014, the first year the law was in effect, about 7.5 million Americans paid a penalty for going without insurance, at an average of $200, according to preliminary data from the Internal Revenue Service. An additional 12 million received exemptions, most because they were poor enough to have the penalty waived. People are exempt from the fine if the least expensive plan available to them through the online exchanges costs more than about 8 percent of their household income.

The Kaiser analysis found the average fine would be $661 per household for going uninsured in 2015 and $969 for 2016. For most people, the fine comes out of their tax refund.

Mr. Murphy’s problem with the exchange plans is not affordability, he said. He could pay the $243 a month that the cheapest available plan would cost, and even the $6,750 annual deductible. It is more that he dislikes his options: all health maintenance organizations that do not allow customers to go out of their network except in emergencies.

As for insurance policies sold outside the exchange, he did not explore them because, he said, “I just don’t see the point.”

“I’m just going on the hope that nothing bad is going to show up until I get a full-time position somewhere or there’s better choices,” he said.

For Tim Fescoe, a visual effects artist in Culver City, Calif., the problem with his health plan was that it seemed too bare-boned. That plan from Covered California, his state exchange, cost $455 a month for himself and his wife in 2014. But they dropped the plan, which had a $6,000 deductible for each spouse, and went uninsured last year.

“It literally covered zero medical expenses,” Mr. Fescoe said.

They are re-enrolling his wife, Wendy, 26, who may try to have a baby soon. But Mr. Fescoe, 37, said he was happier paying for doctors and drugs out of pocket than dealing with an insurance company.

“It would work better if everyone signed up,” he acknowledged. “But you’re asking a bunch of people to basically just give money into the system when they have an option not to.”

Some holdouts described going to great lengths to ensure that their gamble of not buying insurance paid off.

“I live very, very scarily carefully,” said Alexandra Mitchell, 53, a paralegal in Dallas who said she had been uninsured for six years because she found her options unaffordable. She swims daily to stay in good shape. “I leave my house; I go to work; I go to the pool; I go home.”

Rachel Kulus, 46, opts to keep antibiotics in her medicine cabinet rather than buy health insurance through the California exchange.

“I do not believe it serves the public good to entrench private insurance programs that put actual care out of reach for those they purport to serve,” she said.

Ms. Kulus, who works for a small marketing firm outside San Diego, paid about $300 a month for an exchange plan. But when she injured her back and wanted physical therapy, she was offended to learn she would have to pay for it in full because of her plan’s $6,000 deductible.

“I just went on YouTube and tried to figure it out on my own,” she said. She added that her auto insurance included personal injury protection, so “anything catastrophic will hopefully happen in the car.”

Ms. Kulus estimates that she will pay a penalty of $750 for flouting the individual mandate last year, and $950 in 2016.

“I know I’m not alone in this,” she said.




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11) Militiamen Occupy Oregon Wildlife Office in Protest of Ranchers’ Prison Terms
By LIAM STACK

A group of activists and militiamen protesting the federal prosecution of two ranchers occupied a remote federal building in the rural southeastern corner of Oregon, the authorities said.

The building seized by the group houses the offices of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, and is operated by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, about 30 miles southeast of Burns, in Harney County.

The occupation began after a demonstration in support of Dwight Hammond, 73, and his son Steven Hammond, 46, who were to report to California prison after a federal judge ruled that the sentences they had served for arson were not long enough under federal law.

Among the occupiers were Ammon and Ryan Bundy, two sons of Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher who became a symbol of anti-government sentiment in 2014, according to The Oregonian.

A lawyer for the Hammonds said, however, they did not welcome the Bundys’ help, according to The Associated Press.“Neither Ammon Bundy nor anyone within his group/organization speak for the Hammond family,” the lawyer, W. Alan Schroeder, wrote to David Ward, the Harney County sheriff.

An email to the sheriff seeking comment was not immediately returned.

In a video posted to Facebook on Thursday, Ammon Bundy called on the members of “different militia groups” to participate in the protest on Saturday.

“This is not a time to stand down,” he said. “It is a time to stand up and come to Harney County. We need your help and we are asking for it.”

The Hammonds admitted they lit fires in 2001 and 2006, but said it had been to protect their property from wildfires and invasive plant species, The A.P. said. They were convicted three years ago, and the father served three months in prison, while the son served one year.

The Harney County Sheriff’s Department said the Oregon State Police was handling the incident. Beth Anne Steele, a spokeswoman for the F.B.I. in Portland, said the agency was “aware” of the situation, but declined to comment further.

The Bundys have been organizing opposition to the government case against the Hammonds on social media in recent weeks, which they described as a tyrannical use of federal authority.

“We’re out here because the people have been abused long enough,” Ammon Bundy said in a separate video posted to Facebook on Saturday.

He called the prosecution of the Hammonds “a symptom of a very huge, egregious problem” that he described as a battle over land and resources between the federal government and “the American people.”

“The people cannot survive without their land and resources,” he said. “We cannot have the government restricting the use of that to the point that it puts us in poverty.”

Mr. Bundy described the federal building as “the people’s facility, owned by the people” and said his group was occupying it to take “a hard stand against this overreach, this taking of the people’s land and resources.”

He said the group would remain there indefinitely and told an interviewer that he hoped more supporters would join them. “We have a facility that we can house them in,” he said, referring to the occupied building.

“We pose no threat to anybody,” Mr. Bundy said. “There is no person that is physically harmed by what we are doing.” He added that if law enforcement officials “bring physical harm to us, they will be doing it only for a facility or a building.”

However, in an interview with The Oregonian earlier on Saturday evening, Mr. Bundy and his brother said they would not rule out violence if law enforcement officers attempted to remove them from the building.

“The facility has been the tool to do all the tyranny that has been placed upon the Hammonds,” Ammon Bundy told the newspaper. He said he planned to remain in the building for “years.”

Cliven Bundy previously galvanized conservative critics of the federal government after a standoff with agents from the Bureau of Land Management, who attempted to confiscate cattle he had illegally grazed on federal land since 1993.


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12)  Michael Pollan: What You Should Eat to Be Healthy
A new documentary helps consumers navigate a food system complicated by globalization and industrialization.
By Cole Mellino / Eco Watch
January 1, 2016
http://www.alternet.org/food/michael-pollan-what-you-should-eat-be-healthy?akid=13845.229473.kBHxLN&rd=1&src=newsletter1048309&t=7

A new documentary from Kikim Media based on Michael Pollan’s bestselling book, In Defense of Food, helps consumers navigate a food system complicated by globalization and industrialization.

“I’ve been writing about the food system for a very long time,” Pollan said in the trailer for the new film. “But what I kept hearing from readers was ‘yeah yeah yeah, you told me where the food comes from and how the animals live and everything, but what I want to know is what should I eat.'”

In the film, Pollan attempts to answer that very question: What should I eat to be healthy? He addresses what he has called the “American paradox: the more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become.”

We’re consuming “edible food-like substances” rather than actual food, Pollan said. By actual food, he means the food people ate for thousands of years before we became dependent on processed foods.

“You don’t have to be a scientist to know how to eat,” said Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition at New York University. “Just go around the outside of the supermarket and pick up fruits, vegetables and meat, and stay out of the processed foods, because they’re fun to eat once in a while, but they shouldn’t be daily fare.”

From Tanzania to Peru to U.S. grocery stores, Pollan helps eaters find their way through the barrage of faulty nutritional science and misleading marketing claims. He advocates for a more simplified approach to eating, one based on common sense and old-fashioned wisdom. Using a more holistic approach to medicine, Pollan focuses on the macro level (eating whole foods) rather than the micro level (seeking out particular nutrients).

The film covers everything from the latest science on omega-3s and -6s, to sugar’s effect on the body and why we crave it so badly. Pollan unpacks nutritional guidelines and investigates the benefits of a plant-based diet, and the crucial role your gut plays in your overall health.

Pollan is well known for his simple food rules—he’s even got an entire book devoted to the topic. In this film, Pollan says the solution to America’s health crisis is undeniably simple: Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants.

For years, Pollan has advocated for a climate-friendly diet built on regenerative organic agriculture—also known as carbon farming—in which soils are a carbon sink rather than a source of carbon pollution. He argues that this diet is not only essential for a healthy planet, but also essential for human health. “Four of the top 10 things that will kill you are chronic diseases linked to diet,” Pollan explains in the trailer.

So if you’re planning to set weight loss resolutions this New Year’s or are seeking a low-impact diet (which, by the way, makes you a climatarian), then be sure to watch Pollan’s new documentary. It will air on PBS at 9 p.m. ET Wednesday and premier at the Mill Valley Film Festival in October 2016.
Cole Mellino is a writer based in Cleveland, Ohio, where he covers news for EcoWatch.
 

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13) Supreme Court, in Recusal Case, May Find Itself Looking Inward
By  
JAN. 4, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/05/us/politics/supreme-court-in-recusal-case-may-find-itself-looking-inward.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0

WASHINGTON — Not long after he took office as Philadelphia’s district attorney in 1986, Ronald D. Castille made a handwritten note on a subordinate’s memorandum. “Approved to proceed on the death penalty,” Mr. Castille wrote, in neat cursive script, authorizing prosecutors to seek the execution of a young murderer named Terrance Williams.

Later, when Mr. Castille was running for a seat on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, he said he was reluctant to take a firm public position on the death penalty, fearing it would require his recusal from all capital cases.

“I can certainly say I sent 45 people to death row as district attorney of Philadelphia,” he told a legal newspaper in 1993, adding that voters “sort of get the hint.” Mr. Williams was the first of those 45.Mr. Castille won the election and served on the State Supreme Court for 21 years, the last seven as chief justice. One of his final acts, about two weeks before he retired at the end of 2014, was to join a unanimous decision reinstating Mr. Williams’s death sentence.

Next month, the United States Supreme Court will hear arguments about whether Mr. Castille should have disqualified himself from hearing Mr. Williams’s appeal, given his involvement in the prosecution.

The case, Williams v. Pennsylvania, No. 15-5040, puts the justices in a ticklish spot, as the best arguments against recusal are grounded in their own practices. Individual justices decide for themselves whether their recusal is warranted, just as Mr. Castille had.

That is the right approach, Mr. Castille said last week. “The individual involved should make the decision,” he said. “We leave it up to the individual conscience of the justice.”

In declining to recuse himself from other capital cases over the years, Mr. Castille pointed to the examples of two members of the United States Supreme Court, Justices William H. Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia.

In 1972, Justice Rehnquist, a former Justice Department official, issued a statement justifying his participation in a decision about Army surveillance of domestic political groups even though he had defended the spying program in congressional testimony and had criticized the lawsuit when he was a government lawyer.

In 2004, Justice Scalia explained that he could vote on a case involving the official conduct of Vice President Dick Cheney despite the fact that the two had gone duck hunting together.

Similarly, Mr. Castille said last week, there was no reason for him to recuse himself. “I didn’t try the case,” he said. “I wasn’t really involved in the case except as the leader of the office.”

Moreover, the decision to seek death was straightforward, he said. “This guy had a previous homicide,” Mr. Castille said. “That’s the easiest one, where they have a history of violent crime.”

Mr. Williams committed his first murder when he was 17. A jury spared his life after hearing evidence that he had been sexually abused by the man he killed.

In the second case, by contrast, Mr. Williams testified that he had not known the victim, a 56-year-old man named Amos Norwood, and had not been involved in the murder. In fact, Mr. Williams and a friend, both 18, had robbed Mr. Norwood and beat him to death with a tire iron.

The trial prosecutor said that Mr. Williams had killed Mr. Norwood “for no other reason but that a kind man offered him a ride home.”

In 2012, reviewing one of Mr. Williams’s many challenges to his death sentence, a state trial judge said there was another reason: As in the first case, there was evidence that Mr. Williams’s victim had abused him and other juveniles.

The judge, M. Teresa Sarmina of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, said prosecutors in Mr. Castille’s office had failed to turn over evidence of the abuse to Mr. Williams’s lawyer, and she vacated the death sentence. That is the ruling Mr. Castille voted to reverse in 2014. In a concurrence, he called Judge Sarmina’s conduct “lawless.”

Last week, Mr. Castille said that Mr. Williams had known the truth but had chosen to lie on the witness stand.

“He was actually a male prostitute,” Mr. Castille said of Mr. Williams. “He was prostituting himself for money. This guy he killed was not the most upstanding individual, but he still took the guy’s life.”

“It’s nothing that was kept from the defense,” Mr. Castille said. “If anything, he kept it from his attorney.”

That is one way to look at it. Here is another, set out in a supporting brief from the American Civil Liberties Union: “Amos Norwood was a middle-aged sexual predator who preyed on teenage boys like Terry Williams,” starting when he was 13. “In exchange for sex, he would give the boys money, food, housing and other gifts.”

“While Williams of course knew of his own past dealings with Norwood and other men,” the brief also said, “it is no surprise that he would not have disclosed such deeply intimate and traumatic events to an attorney he barely knew.”

The vote in the Williams case in 2014 was unanimous, which suggests that the dispute over whether Mr. Castille should have recused himself is academic.

But Mr. Williams’s supporters say he was entitled to an entirely unbiased tribunal, and they point to social science literature demonstrating that group decision making can be powerfully affected by one participant’s strongly held views.

Mr. Castille rejected that line of thinking. “I’ve read the argument that one judge can sway all the other judges,” he said. “That’s not really accurate. The people on our court are all very independent-minded. They might have swayed me. Who knows?”
 


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14) Economists Take Aim at Wealth Inequality
By

SAN FRANCISCO — When pundits and presidential candidates talk about inequality and the tiny sliver of the population whose fortunes have soared, they often drop names like Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Sheldon Adelson and Mark Zuckerberg.

But those are just the most visible members of a larger but less-talked-about cadre of the big winners in today’s economy. This group consists of roughly 250,000 Americans who mainly populate the executive offices and managerial suites of major companies and financial institutions, along with a smattering of top law firms, hedge funds and other elite aeries.

These people — the top one-quarter of 1 percent of the country’s employed population — have enjoyed explosive gains in income and wealth in recent decades, even as salaries and wages stagnated for the typical American worker.“You hear about C.E.O.s, entertainers, athletes and hedge funders, but that’s the tip of the iceberg,” said Nicholas A. Bloom, a professor of economics at Stanford who is finishing a paper examining the underlying dynamics of income inequality. “It’s a much, much bigger group and they are outpacing everyone else.”

Like those of many of his peers who are presenting new research at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association, which began here on Sunday and ends on Tuesday, Mr. Bloom’s findings are bringing to light fresh perspectives on why income inequality is growing and how it is reshaping the national and global economy.

While the much-talked-about 1 percent is doing just fine, the supersize gains are taking place even further up the income ladder, according to what Mr. Bloom and four colleagues found by examining 35 years of data from the Social Security Administration.

The phenomenon is not limited to Wall Street or the big banks — manufacturers rewarded their top executives every bit as generously as did firms in the finance, insurance and real estate sectors. And this pattern is being repeated in countries where the political landscape is quite different from that of the United States, like Sweden, Germany and Britain.

“This is a truly global phenomenon, and I don’t know any serious economist who would deny inequality has gone up,” said Mr. Bloom, a native of Britain whose politics veer toward a laissez-faire approach and the Conservative Party there. “The debate is over the magnitude, not the direction.”

The economic association’s meeting is something of a barometer of what concerns economists most, drawing more than 13,000 attendees from the ranks of academia, as well as research groups and the private sector. And in panels, research presentations and speeches, what was once mainly a preoccupation of ivory tower Marxists and other players on the margins of the profession is taking center stage.

“In the last few years, there’s been a huge change in the mainstream of the profession,” said Steven Fazzari, an economics professor at Washington University in St. Louis who first came to the conference as a job-hunting graduate student in 1982. “The issue of income inequality was a backwater in the economics field, and it was largely ignored.”

At the same time, there’s a growing consensus among economists of all ideological stripes that inequality is growing — in the United States and abroad — even if the usual political fault lines appear when the discussion turns to the consequences of the trend and whether new public policies are needed to address it.

“It’s pretty much indisputable that the percentage of income being earned by the top 1 percent, or the top quarter of 1 percent, is going up,” said Richard H. Thaler, the association’s president.

“It was true five years ago, but it was not as widely recognized,” said Mr. Thaler, a behavioral economist who teaches at the University of Chicago. “As with climate change, scientific consensus takes a while to build.”

And, to borrow language from an economic seminar, there’s also a striking correlation between the emergence of income inequality as an issue here and the near-rock-star status accorded a handful of once-obscure experts on the subject inside and outside academia.

The best known of these is Thomas Piketty, whose 700-page tome, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” became an improbable best-seller in 2014 and made the French academic a media superstar.

Emmanuel Saez, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who has collaborated with Mr. Piketty, won a MacArthur “genius” grant in 2010. Raj Chetty of Stanford, who has looked closely at economic mobility, also received a MacArthur grant and has presented findings to Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush and Obama administration officials.

“There are definitely fashions in the field,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. “As much as most economists might hate to acknowledge it, there’s no way you can’t respond to Piketty’s success.”

Anticipated presentations at the economic association meeting include new findings from David Autor, an influential M.I.T. economist, on the links between college performance and increased financial aid as well as research by Enrico Moretti of Berkeley into how state tax increases prompt the highest earners to move to lower-tax locations.

For all the intense focus on the roots and extent of income inequality today, most academics are leery of any easy solution. At the same time, they acknowledge that their traditional tools are inadequate for the task.

“There’s no reason the free market will solve this,” Mr. Bloom said.

He believes inequality is being magnified by technological change and what’s known as skills bias, where workers with a particular expertise reap the biggest reward. Neither is amenable to quick fixes.

In Professor Bloom’s new paper, which he wrote with David J. Price, a Stanford graduate student, and three other economists — Jae Song, Fatih Guvenen and Till von Wachter — the top quarter of 1 percent of Americans appears to be pulling away from the rest.

For workers at this threshold, who earn at least $640,000 annually, their salaries rose 96 percent from 1981 to 2013, after taking account of inflation.

The trend was especially pronounced among the most successful enterprises in the American economy, creating a divergence between the highest-paid people at companies that employ more than 10,000 people and the rest of the work force. In this rarefied circle, overall pay jumped 140 percent versus a 5 percent drop for the typical employee at these corporate behemoths.

The split in compensation between executives and everyone else was much less pronounced at smaller companies, according to the research by Mr. Bloom and his colleagues. At these firms, between 1981 and 2013, top salaries rose 49 percent, while median pay rose 30 percent.

In addition, Mr. Bloom and his team also found a sharp divergence between pay at the most successful companies and also-rans in the same field — think Apple versus BlackBerry. The highest-paid workers cluster at the winners, heightening income disparities in the overall work force.

Mr. Bloom traces the outsize gains to large grants of stock and options to top workers at big companies, with their fortunes rising in line with the performance of the stock market.

“There used to be a premium for working at a big company, even in a lower-level job,” he said. “That’s not true anymore. The people who have really suffered are lower-level employees at big companies.”


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15) Takata Emails Show Brash Exchanges About Data Tampering
By DANIELLE IVORY and


When Honda Motor Company said two months ago that it would no longer use Takata as supplier for its airbags, the automaker said that testing data on the airbags had been “misrepresented and manipulated.”

Now, newly obtained internal emails suggest the manipulation was both bold and broad, involving open exchanges among Takata employees in Japan and the United States.

“Happy Manipulating!!!” an airbag engineer, Bob Schubert, wrote in one email dated July 6, 2006, in a reference to results of airbag tests. In another, he wrote of changing the colors or lines in a graphic “to divert attention” from the test results and “to try to dress it up.”

The emails were among documents unsealed recently as part of a personal injury lawsuit against Takata and obtained by The New York Times. Takata said in a statement that the exchanges concerned only the formatting of data and were unrelated to defective airbags that are under recall.Takata’s airbags, which can explode when they deploy, have been linked to eight deaths in the United States and more than 100 serious injuries and have prompted the recalls of almost 20 million vehicles. Regulators have said that millions more airbag inflaters may need to be recalled unless the company can prove that the propellant they use — ammonium nitrate — is safe.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration imposed a $70 million penalty on the Japanese supplier, also citing data manipulation, in November, on the day that Honda dropped Takata as a supplier of its driver and passenger airbags.

The emails referred to the testing of airbag inflaters, which contain the propellant. Some Takata airbag inflaters can shatter, sending shrapnel flying into the car’s cabin.

Honda would not comment on whether the emails were examples of Takata’s misrepresentations. The automaker said that it had reached its conclusions after reviewing millions of internal Takata documents. But four airbag experts asked by The New York Times to review the emails said that the emails suggested an effort to misrepresent testing data.

“To have these kinds of offhand remarks shows that this is a systemic issue at Takata,” said Mark Lillie, a former Takata engineer and whistle-blower.

Takata’s practice of manipulating airbag test results dates to at least 2000, just as the company began to introduce a new type inflater.

At first, the American engineers appeared to raise concerns about data manipulation.

An internal report prepared by American employees in November 2000, for example, details discrepancies in airbag test results sent to Honda earlier in the year. In several instances, “pressure vessel failures,” or airbag ruptures, were reported to Honda as normal airbag deployments, the report said.

Then in January 2005, Mr. Schubert alerted a colleague in a memo that he had been “repeatedly exposed to the Japanese practice of altering data presented to the customer,” adding that such conduct was described at Takata as “the way we do business in Japan.”

In the memo, Mr. Schubert warned that while the fudging of the data had initially not changed the fundamental conclusions of the data, the practice had “gone beyond all reasonable bounds and now most likely constitutes fraud.”

“I cannot, in good conscience, fail to report these issues to you,” Mr. Schubert said, according to the memo.

But a year later, Mr. Schubert was urging his colleagues to manipulate the test data, the newly obtained emails suggest.

Specifically, the emails point to concern about tests conducted at an elevated temperature, the experts consulted by The Times said. Together with moisture, high temperatures are known to make ammonium nitrate more volatile.

In response to Mr. Schubert’s invitation — “Happy Manipulating!!!” — a colleague appeared to be more cautious. “If you think I’m going to manipulate, you really should try and get to know me better,” he insisted. Yet he offered: “I would be willing to deviate for running slightly high” in tests at higher temperatures.

“Hey, I manipulated,” Mr. Schubert responded. The objective, he said, was to help disguise that some of the inflaters performed differently from the rest — a dynamic referred to as “bimodal distribution.”

“I showed all the data together, which helped disguise the bimodal distribution,” Mr. Schubert wrote. “Nothing wrong with that. All the data is there. Every piece,” he added. But then he suggested using “thick and thin lines to try and dress it up, or changing colors to divert attention.”

In a statement, Takata said that the emails were not examples of manipulation.

“Mr. Schubert is referring to the formatting of a presentation, not to changing data, and the emails in question are completely unrelated to the current airbag inflater recalls,” the statement said. “In fact, as has previously been reported, Mr. Schubert played a significant role in raising concerns about the past testing data issues referenced in the settlement with N.H.T.S.A. in early November — issues that will not be tolerated or repeated.”

Takata previously said that it did not dispute assertions that it had manipulated test data but that any manipulation had been unrelated to the recalls. Mr. Schubert did not respond to a request for comment; in the past, he has referred all questions to Takata.

A spokesman for Honda, Chris Martin, reiterated that the automaker was “aware of evidence that suggests that Takata misrepresented and manipulated test data.” But he declined to comment specifically on the documents and said that Honda, which has been Takata’s biggest customer, would be in a better position to comment, once a third-party audit of Takata’s test data, requested by the carmaker in November, was complete. Takata is also the subject of a criminal investigation by the Justice Department.

Chris Caruso, an engineer for General Motors and its parts supplier Delphi from 1979 to 2006, said that a bimodal distribution showed the parts being tested were not consistent — generally a requirement for meeting quality standards for automotive safety products.

Mr. Caruso, who now works as a safety consultant in litigation involving airbag issues, including lawsuits against Takata, said that bimodal distribution should result in the rejection of parts by the purchaser.

“Clearly they are saying the data is not good, but if they can manipulate it, they can make it at least appear to be good data,” he said. “This is really bad.”

Linda Rink, a former senior staff scientist for Autoliv, another airbag manufacturer, and a longtime consultant for airbag manufacturers including Takata, cautioned that a bimodal distribution did not necessarily mean that the part in question was unsafe. And it was unclear from the emails whether the data in this instance was directly related to propellant problems or inflater fragmentation, she said.

Still, she said that any obfuscation of test results was a serious concern.

“If they would disguise inflater data sent to the customer, there is a serious problem with ethics within that company,” Ms. Rink said. “Having a bimodal distribution requires an explanation and a root-cause analysis, not a cover-up.”

The documents were unsealed as part of a lawsuit brought by a Florida woman who was paralyzed after her Takata airbag deployed aggressively during an accident in her 2001 Honda Civic in June 2014.

“Takata engineers knew of the dangers of manipulating test data,” said Ted Leopold, the lead plaintiff lawyer in the case. “The only thing they did not know was the names of the individuals who were going to be injured or killed, and the date it was going to happen.”


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16) What if the Oregon Protesters Were Black or Muslim? Debate Ensues
By KATIE ROGERS



The Oregon protest at a federal wildlife refuge has reignited an already intense debate on social media about policing, race and terrorism.

On Saturday, an armed group of antigovernment protesters occupied a remote federal wildlife refuge in Oregon and warned that they would not leave without a fight. The authorities have held back from attempting to stop the protest.

On social media, that led quickly to questions about a double standard, particularly from liberals and the left, who asked: What if the armed men were Muslim or black? They predicted the authorities would have been more forceful.

Many or all of the protesters appear to be white. It was unclear what religion they are, but at least one has made reference to a prominent Mormon figure. For its part, the Mormon church on Monday condemned the armed building seizure and said it could “in no way be justified on a scriptural basis.”

Some wondered why the news media and the authorities were not calling the takeover a form of terrorism. People used the hashtags #YallQaeda, #YeeHawd, and #VanillaISIS to challenge a widely held perception that terrorism applies only to crimes carried about by minorities and non-Christians.

The leader of the armed group in Oregon is Ammon Bundy, the son of Cliven Bundy, a rancher in Nevada who in 2014 engaged in an armed standoff with federal officials, gaining the support of leaders in the conservative movement, then losing it after declaring that black Americans would be better off as slaves.

Still, many conservatives on Twitter criticized the debate, and said it was a step too far to call the men terrorists, and pushed back against memes that perpetuated stereotypes about white people.

Others objected to the criticism of the lack of force used by the authorities by drawing comparisons to past deadly standoffs between the federal authorities and armed groups that harbor antigovernment sentiments.

“Worth recalling lessons of Waco and Ruby Ridge before suggesting FBI should simply go to war with Oregon militiamen,” an observer wrote on Twitter on Sunday.

In February 1993, a gun battle erupted in Waco, Tex., between federal authorities and members of a religious sect called the Branch Davidians. The fighting resulted in the deaths of four federal agents and half a dozen members of the sect. That was followed by a 51-day standoff and another confrontation that left dozens more people dead. All told, at least 82 Branch Davidians died. A third of those killed were children.

A year earlier, a confrontation in northern Idaho between the authorities and Randall Weaver, a white separatist, led to the fatal shooting of his wife and son. A federal marshal was also killed during the conflict, which came after an 11-day standoff. In 1995, the government awarded $3.1 million to Mr. Weaver.







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