Wednesday, March 12, 2014

BAUAW NEWSLETTER: WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12, 2014

 Remembering Iraq 11 Years Later: Then and Now!


On Wednesday, March 19, 2014 CODEPINK, Witness Iraq, and the Peace and Justice Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Church in SF  will hold a panel discussion to commemorate the 11th year anniversary of the war on Iraq titled “Remembering Iraq 11 Years Later: Then and Now.”

The panel  is meant to be an evening of remembering Iraq before, during and after the war and how the current day struggles of Iraqis, inside and outside of the country, continue whether in the form of surviving the violent attacks in the country or surviving life in foreign lands.

A CODEPINK organizer and Iraqi refugee, Farah Muhsin Al Mousawi, will moderate the discussion.

Panelists include:
    •    Inder Comar of Comar Law, a San Francisco attorney representing Sundus Shaker Saleh, an Iraqi refugee and the lead plaintiff in the class action lawsuit against key members of the George W. Bush Administration (Saleh v. Bush)
    •    Aaron Hughes, an Iraq War veteran, artist and activists who is actively involved Warrior Writers Project, The Dirty Canteen, The National Veterans Art Museum, Iraq Veterans Against the War, and The Center for Artistic Activism
    •    Zaid Faransso, an Iraqi refugee and former medical resident at Baghdad’s Medical City

Location:
First Unitarian Universalist Church & Center - MLK Room
1187 Franklin St
San Francisco, CA 94109

RSVP for the event!  
http://calendar-codepink.nationbuilder.com/60200/remembering_iraq_11_years_later_then_and_now
In Justice & Accountability,
CODEPINK SF

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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter

Table of Contents:
A. ARTICLES IN FULL
B. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
D. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.

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A. ARTICLES IN FULL
(Unless otherwise noted)

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1) Snowden Says He Reported N.S.A. Surveillance Concerns Before Leaks
By




2) Border Patrol Instructed to Show Restraint
By




3) The Significance of the Minimum Wage for Women and Families
By LAURA D'ANDREA TYSON





4) Auto Regulators Dismissed Defect Tied to 13 Deaths
By HILARY STOUT, DANIELLE IVORY and
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/business/auto-regulators-dismissed-defect-tied-to-13-deaths.html?hp 




5) When Employees Confess, Sometimes Falsely
By SAUL ELBEIN





6) Little-Known Health Act Fact: Prison Inmates Are Signing Up
By




7) New Spat Emerges in South Africa's Platinum Strike
By REUTERS




8) After Fukushima, Utilities Prepare for Worst
By




9) Is the Wolf a Real American Hero?
By ARTHUR MIDDLETON
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/10/opinion/is-the-wolf-a-real-american-hero.html?ref=us




10) Safety Flaws Found in New Inspections of Factories in Bangladesh
By




11) Medical Groups Question Price of New Hep C Drug
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS




12)  Deciding if Inmates Get to Know How They’ll Be Executed
By




13) California: Migrants Stage Another Border Protest
By





14) The C.I.A. Torture Cover-Up
By




15) How a Court Secretly Evolved, Extending U.S. Spies’ Reach
By and LAURA POITRAS

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/12/us/how-a-courts-secret-evolution-extended-spies-reach.html?ref=us




16) Report Says Medication Use Is Rising for Adults With Attention Disorder
By




17) Ohio Looks at Whether Fracking Led to 2 Quakes
By




18) A Relentless Widening of Disparity in Wealth
By Eduardo Porter




19) Set Free in 1995 Killings, 3 Bronx Men File Suits Alleging Police Misconduct
By




20) Status Quo at Elite New York Schools: Few Blacks and Hispanics
By




21)  Wall Street Bonuses Go Up as the Number of Jobs Goes Down
By WILLIAM ALDEN

























 















 

















 
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1) Snowden Says He Reported N.S.A. Surveillance Concerns Before Leaks
By

WASHINGTON — Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked a trove of documents revealing the agency’s surveillance operations, said he raised his concerns to more than 10 officials, “none of whom took any action to address them,” before he decided to give the documents to journalists.

Mr. Snowden’s comments, in written answers to questions by members of the European Parliament that were released on Friday, amplified previous assertions that he initially tried to raise concerns internally about surveillance collection he believed went too far.

An N.S.A. spokeswoman declined to comment, but the agency has previously said its internal investigation, including interviews with co-workers, found no evidence that he had brought concerns to the attention of anyone.

But in his written testimony, Mr. Snowden insisted that he had, adding that his efforts had elicited two types of responses. Some people, he said, responded with “well-meaning but hushed warnings not to ‘rock the boat’ ” for fear of retaliation like being investigated by the F.B.I. as a suspected leaker.

“Everyone in the intelligence community is aware of what happens to people who report concerns about unlawful but authorized operations,” he wrote.

Other people, he said, told him to “let the issue be someone else’s problem.”

“Even among the most senior individuals to whom I reported my concerns,” he continued, “no one at N.S.A. could ever recall an instance where an official complaint had resulted in an unlawful program being ended, but there was a unanimous desire to avoid being associated with such a complaint in any form.”

The Justice Department has charged Mr. Snowden with violating the Espionage Act. He is living in asylum in Russia. Some of his critics, like the House Intelligence Committee chairman, Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan, have suggested he may be working with the Russian intelligence service, without offering evidence.

In his testimony, Mr. Snowden said he has “no relationship” with the governments of Russia or China, but he acknowledged that he was approached by Russian intelligence officers when he arrived in Moscow. He reiterated his previous claims that he took no documents with him to Russia after turning over archives to several journalists in Hong Kong.

“I didn’t take any documents with me from Hong Kong, and while I’m sure they were disappointed, it doesn’t take long for an intelligence service to realize when they’re out of luck,” he said.

“I would also add, for the record, that the United States government has repeatedly acknowledged that there is no evidence at all of any relationship between myself and the Russian intelligence service,” Mr. Snowden said.

He said that he did not want to stay in Russia but that his efforts to obtain asylum in various countries in Europe had not succeeded, and he blamed diplomatic pressure from the United States.

Mr. Snowden also took issue with the contention by some officials that whistle-blower laws would have protected him if he had gone through official channels. President Obama, for example, has pointed to an executive order he issued that extended protections against retaliation to employees of intelligence agencies, saying, “So there were other avenues available for somebody whose conscience was stirred and thought that they needed to question government actions.”

But Mr. Snowden noted that Mr. Obama’s directive covers only intelligence agency employees, not outside contractors, so “individuals like me were left with no proper channels.”

On Monday, Mr. Snowden is scheduled to appear in a live video feed from Russia at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Tex., to discuss communications privacy issues.


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2) Border Patrol Instructed to Show Restraint
By

WASHINGTON — The Border Patrol on Friday instructed its agents to show restraint when people on the border throw rocks or flee in cars, after a series of fatal shootings by agents provoked outrage from human rights activists and the Mexican government.

“Agents shall not discharge firearms in response to thrown or hurled projectiles” unless they have reason to believe there is “imminent danger of death or serious injury” based on the size or nature of the projectile, the chief of the Border Patrol, Michael J. Fisher, wrote in a memo to his staff.

Mr. Fisher wrote that agents should try to take cover in such situations. The memo also instructed them not to shoot at fleeing vehicles and reiterated a policy that forbids officers to place themselves in the path of moving vehicles — an apparent response to accusations that agents had stood in front of vehicles to justify firing their weapons.

Agents have been assaulted with rocks 1,713 times since 2010 and have responded with deadly force 43 times, resulting in 10 deaths, according to Mr. Fisher.

The memo set out to change the mind-sets of border patrol agents, who often operate in rural settings where cover and backup can be scarce.

“I cannot stress enough how important it is to physically and mentally prepare yourselves, so that when dangerous situations arise, you increase your chances of survivability while limiting unnecessary risk to others,” Mr. Fisher wrote. “It is anticipated that these initial steps will help reduce the likelihood of assaults against our agents.”

The new instructions, which officials said amounted to a clarification rather than a set of new rules, appear to be a response to two major criticisms in an external investigation, commissioned by the Border Patrol in October 2012 and completed early last year by the nonprofit Police Executive Research Forum. The study of 67 instances of force that resulted in 19 deaths on the Southwestern border has not been released, though members of Congress have been briefed on its findings.

Human rights advocates and congressional critics of the Border Patrol questioned how much practical change would result from the instructions, calling them, at best, a positive first step.

“Effectively, this is just the beginning of the process,” said Fernando Garcia, executive director of the Border Network for Human Rights, an immigration advocacy organization, adding that “it looks good on paper, but it also needs to look good while being implemented.”

New recruits are already receiving training to help them keep confrontations from escalating, according to a senior official with the Department of Homeland Security. Veteran agents will be briefed on the new instructions over the next several days and receive more guidance during annual training.

The secretary of homeland security, Jeh Johnson, also released redacted versions of the use-of-force policies that apply to all of his department and specialized policies for two of its agencies, Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“Transparency is essential to the credibility of a law enforcement agency within the communities it operates,” Mr. Johnson said in a statement.

But some critics said it was impossible to assess the agency’s efforts to improve without the release of the independent report.

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3) The Significance of the Minimum Wage for Women and Families

By LAURA D'ANDREA TYSON

Laura D’Andrea Tyson is a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, and headed the Council of Economic Advisers and the National Economic Council under President Clinton.

I want to focus on the impact of the minimum wage on women.

Let’s start with a few statistics. The typical worker earning the minimum wage is not a teenager and is not male. She is an adult woman. Adult women are the single biggest demographic group among minimum wage workers, far outnumbering teenagers of both genders and men of all ages.

Less than half of all workers are women, but they account for 75 percent of workers in the 10 lowest-paid occupations and about 60 percent of minimum wage workers. And most women earning the minimum wage are not teenagers, or wives who can rely on a spouse’s income.

About three-quarters of female minimum wage workers are above the age of 20, and about three-quarters of these women are on their own. Many, of course, are working and taking care of children.

Working families headed by women make up 22 percent of all working families but 39 percent of low-income working families. There are 7.1 million working families with children headed by women, and 58 percent of them are low-income. Sixty-five percent of the children in female-headed working families are low-income. One of every three families that are headed by a woman with no husband present lives in poverty, and about 48 percent of all children in single-parent households headed by women live in poverty. A woman working full time at the current minimum wage earns less than $14,500 annually – more than $4,000 below the poverty line for a mother with two children.

Two-thirds of workers in jobs dependent on tips are women, disproportionately women of color. The tipped minimum wage is only $2.13 an hour and has been frozen for the last 21 years. This isn’t an accident. Until 1991, Congress had always raised the tipped minimum wage in line with the regular minimum wage. Throughout the 1980s, the tipped minimum wage stood at 60 percent of the regular minimum wage. But in 1996, the restaurant industry lobbying association managed to decouple the two rates, and the tipped minimum wage has been frozen in time, falling by more than 40 percent since then.

Many restaurant owners contend that the tipped minimum wage is just a technicality. By law, if an employee’s tips, combined with the employer’s direct wages of at least $2.13 an hour, do not equal the regular minimum wage, the employer is supposed to make up the difference for each hour of work. But often this does not happen.

In low-end restaurants, and even in more upscale places on slow days, many waiters are lucky to end up earning the regular minimum wage. And many restaurants require their servers to share a portion of their tips with other workers, like dishwashers and bus staff. In effect, many waiters end up subsidizing the wages of other workers, for the benefit of their employers.

On top of that, unscrupulous restaurant owners sometimes illegally withhold tip money that flows through credit cards on the pretext of creating a “reserve” for errors by waiters. For a good insight on some of this real-world chicanery, read the Wiser Waitress blog by Gina Deluca – herself a waitress in New Mexico.

The Democrats’ main proposal to raise the minimum wage, sponsored by Representative George Miller of California and Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, aims to fix the problems associated with the tipped minimum wage by setting it at 70 percent of the regular minimum wage and indexing both to inflation.

An even better approach might be to abolish the “tipped” minimum wage altogether, as seven states have done — including California with its large and healthy restaurant industry — and simply require that employers guarantee the regular minimum wage to all their workers. Restaurants already track most of their tip income, because it comes through debit and credit cards, and share this income among their tipped and non-tipped employees.

In addition to the minimum and tipped minimum wage, the income of millions of working women employed in low-wage occupations also depends on two federal tax credits: the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit. The earned income tax credit is a refundable tax credit for low- and moderate-income workers and depends on a taxpayer’s income, number of children and marital status. The child tax credit is a partially refundable tax credit worth up to $1,000 per child. Both credits are available only to people who earn income from work.

In 2012, the earned income tax credit lifted the incomes of almost 5.5 million people above the poverty line, including more than 1.5 million adult women and nearly 3 million children. Together, the earned income tax credit and the refundable child tax credit now support 32 million working families, keeping 10.1 million people of all ages out of poverty, including 5.3 million children.

Taken together, these two tax credits are the biggest and most successful of the federal government’s antipoverty programs next to Social Security, reducing the 2012 poverty rate by three percentage points and the poverty rate for children by 6.7 percentage points.

The earned income tax credit is a hugely important program for women. It has the biggest impact on the labor-force participation rates and the earnings of low-wage single parents with children, and most of these parents are women. Research has consistently found that the earned income tax credit for families with children increases employment, especially among single mothers.

Even in families headed by both parents, women often bear the primary responsibility for raising children. And studies confirm that children in households that receive the earned income tax credit have better health, higher educational attainment and greater earning power through adulthood.

Historically, the earned income tax credit has enjoyed strong bipartisan support in Congress. Many Republicans assert that increasing the generosity of the earned income tax credit, along with extending it to cover more workers, is a more targeted and market-friendly way to fight poverty than an increase in the minimum wage.

Yet, amazingly, some Republicans are now pushing to scale back the earned income tax credit. Representative Dave Camp, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has proposed to replace it with an expansion of the child tax credit as part of his new plan to overhaul the tax code. Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calculates that Mr. Camp’s proposal would cost a mother with two children working full-time at the minimum wage about $2,000 in 2018 compared with current policy.

It’s important to understand that the earned income tax credit is closely intertwined with the minimum wage. Both provide income support to workers at the bottom of the scale. But by increasing the supply of workers, the earned income tax credit pushes wages down and morphs into a back-door subsidy for employers.

Think about it. Suppose you own a store and want to keep wages as low as possible. The availability of the earned income tax credit essentially means that the government is boosting the wages of your employees by as much as several thousand dollars a year. To attract enough workers, you don’t have to pay the full market wage. You can pay less, knowing that the government will make up part of the difference. So the worker ends up sharing part of her tax credit with her employer.

According to a recent study, around 30 cents of every dollar of taxpayer-funded earned income tax credit benefit goes to employers. The minimum wage mitigates this “leakage” effect by limiting the wage reductions that result from an increase in the labor supply.

The minimum wage and the earned income tax credit are complementary policies that help low-wage workers and their families. Both policies are particularly important for women and children. Increasing the minimum wage and the generosity of the earned income tax credit will increase their income and opportunities, strengthen their families, and bolster demand and economic growth.

For ideological reasons that are detached from empirical reality, Republicans in Congress continue to block a much-needed and long overdue increase in the federal minimum wage.

I examined some of the shibboleths against a higher minimum wage back in December, and I won’t repeat the whole case. To sum up briefly: the prevailing view among economists, reinforced by rigorous studies over the last decade, is that a modest increase would boost the wages of millions of workers and have little to no negative effect on employment. A higher minimum wage would also enhance labor productivity, reduce worker turnover and absenteeism, and lower the costs of recruiting and training employees.

Despite the evidence, Congressional Republicans have pounced on a recent estimate by the Congressional Budget Office that raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, as Democrats have proposed, could reduce employment by 0.3 percent, or 500,000 jobs, by the end of 2015. For reasons that have been raised by a variety of experts, I doubt this estimate.

But even if it’s correct, let’s be careful to recognize what the C.B.O. also emphasized: The higher wage would directly benefit 16.5 million workers currently making less than $10.10 an hour, and as many as 8 million additional workers currently earning slightly more, and would lift 900,000 people out of poverty.

Moreover, the C.B.O. acknowledged that with the economy operating far below its potential, raising the minimum wage would increase spending, and that in turn would raise output and boost labor demand. So the net effect on overall employment could be positive.

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4) Auto Regulators Dismissed Defect Tied to 13 Deaths
By HILARY STOUT, DANIELLE IVORY and

Federal safety regulators received more than 260 complaints over the last 11 years about General Motors vehicles that suddenly turned off while being driven, but they declined to investigate the problem, which G.M. now says is linked to 13 deaths and requires the recall of more than 1.6 million cars worldwide.

A New York Times analysis of consumer complaints submitted to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that since February 2003 it received an average of two complaints a month about potentially dangerous shutdowns, but it repeatedly responded that there was not enough evidence of a problem to warrant a safety investigation. The complaints — the most recent of which was filed on Thursday — involved six G.M. models that the automaker is now recalling because of defective ignition switches that can shut off engines and power systems and disable air bags. G.M. said the first recall notices were mailed on Friday to the owners of the vehicles.Many of the complaints detailed frightening scenes in which moving cars suddenly stalled at high speeds, on highways, in the middle of city traffic, and while crossing railroad tracks. A number of the complaints warned of catastrophic consequences if something was not done.

“When the vehicle shuts down, it gives no warning, it just does it,” wrote one driver of a 2005 Chevrolet Cobalt. “I drive my car to and from work praying that it won’t shut down on me while on the freeway.”

Another driver wrote of the same model: “Engine stops while driving — cannot steer nor brake so controlling the car to a safe stop is very dangerous.”

To the mounting complaints, the safety agency sometimes responded with polite but formulaic letters similar to one it sent in December 2010 to Barney Frank, then a congressman from Massachusetts, who had written on behalf of a distraught constituent whose 2006 Cobalt kept stalling. In the letter to Mr. Frank, the agency said it had reviewed its database of complaints to determine if a “safety defect trend” existed. “At this time, there is insufficient evidence to warrant opening a safety defect investigation,” the letter concluded.

Failure to recognize a pattern in individual complaints has been a problem for the safety agency before. In the late 1990s, it was criticized for failing to detect a wave of highway rollovers in Ford Explorers with Firestone tires, a problem that was eventually linked to 271 deaths.

In response, Congress passed a law in 2000 requiring automakers to report to the safety agency any claims they received blaming defects for serious injuries or deaths, so the government would not have to rely only on consumer reports. Since 2003, G.M. has reported at least 78 deaths and 1,581 injuries involving the now-recalled cars, according to a review of agency records. Though the records mention potentially defective components, how many of these records were related to the ignition problem is unclear. Even with that additional information, regulators appear to have overlooked disturbing complaints of engine shutdowns.

“We need to make it clear to both industry members and regulators that adverse events must be immediately reported and analyzed to ensure public safety,” said Representative Diana DeGette of Colorado, a Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The panel’s staff is scheduled to meet with the safety agency on Monday.

The safety agency has repeatedly suggested that it failed to act over the years because of a lack of a critical mass of evidence that suggested a problem beyond isolated incidents.

In a statement emailed to The Times, a spokesman noted that over the last seven years, the agency’s investigations in other cases have resulted in 929 recalls of more than 55 million vehicles. The agency “uses a number of tools and techniques to gather and analyze data and look for trends that warrant a vehicle safety investigation and possibly a recall,” the statement said. The agency said 260 complaints amounts to about .018 percent of the vehicles under recall.

In a telephone interview, Frank Borris, the director of the agency’s office of defects investigation, said that two years ago, the agency began using IBM software to help look for patterns. Judgments are made by “really well-seasoned automotive engineers who leverage a lot of technology and lean on past precedent about when to open, when to close, and when to push for a recall,” Mr. Borris said. “It’s no magic formula.”

The agency’s chief counsel, Kevin Vincent, said that to warrant an investigation, the case must pass a legal test of “unreasonable risk to safety.”

“That term ‘reasonable’ is a legal term, which is very elastic and means a lot of different things in a lot of different contexts,” he said. “Each case is a different fact pattern.”

The recall has thrown G.M. into turmoil just as it was emerging from the shadow of bankruptcy under the leadership of a new chief executive, Mary T. Barra, and as the safety agency stepped up pressure on the company in late February by opening an investigation into the “timeliness” of G.M.’s “defect determination.” Last week the agency sent the company 107 questions, demanding it explain why it had waited so long to recall the vehicles. G.M. officials had known for a decade that the switches could fail.

But the Times review of thousands of complaints stored in the agency’s public database raises questions about the agency’s own timeliness. The newspaper analyzed nearly 8,000 complaints about the recalled models to find instances when drivers may have been affected by faulty ignition. The 260-plus total includes only complaints that mentioned a moving car stalling unexpectedly. It does not include the complaints filed about basic ignition problems on these models, like trouble starting or stopping a car’s engine, or failures of the power steering mechanism, even though these could have stemmed from an inadvertent ignition shutdown. People may have filed multiple complaints about the same car.

Greg Martin, a G.M. spokesman, said the company monitors complaints to the N.H.T.S.A. about its vehicles but declined to say how the agency responded to ignition switch complaints.

By the time the agency wrote to Mr. Frank in 2010, it had received more than 170 complaints about unexpected stopping or stalling of the recalled G.M. models, and 35 specifically for the 2006 Cobalt. The Cobalt has been a particularly problematic model for G.M. In 2010, the automaker recalled some of the vehicles for power steering failure, and in December 2005, it told dealers that owners should remove unessential items from key chains.

The expectation of the 2000 law, known as the Tread Act, was that the measure would help government regulators flag trends months or years earlier than they would if they relied on consumer complaints alone. The law was used to punish Toyota for failing to report unintended accelerations; that company paid a civil penalty of $16.4 million under the act. But it does not appear to have helped the government identify problems faster.

Joan Claybrook, who led the safety agency during the Carter administration, said, “The ability to spot trends is a huge issue, and N.H.T.S.A. has not got it under control by any means.”

The safety agency did hire contractors to look into two fatal crashes that killed three teenagers and have since been linked to the ignition problems, after local accident investigators recommended inquiries. Both involved 2005 Chevrolet Cobalts, and in both cases, the contractors found that air bags had not deployed and the cars’ power had shifted into “accessory” mode — essentially the state a parked car is in when occupants want to listen to the radio. In an April 2007 report of the second crash, the contractors cited six complaints in the agency’s database that appeared to match that situation.

Many consumers who approached the agency were met with institutional silence.

“This is a safety issue if there ever was one,” wrote Laura Denti of Toms River, N.J., in a letter both to G.M. customer service and to the safety agency on June 29, 2005, citing three times when her daughter’s new 2005 Cobalt shut down abruptly while in operation. The letter also referred to a previous letter she had sent.

“I don’t recall them ever responding,” Ms. Denti said in an interview last week.Ms. Denti’s daughter Samantha, now 28, described in a separate interview her excitement when her mother leased the car for her. “It was a beautiful car. It was red. It was great,” she said.

But a few months after she got it, she said, the car suddenly died at a busy intersection. “People were swerving and honking. They didn’t expect the car to be there,” she said. Shortly after, on a trip to Tennessee, the car stalled on a highway exit ramp.

Both times, mother and daughter conveyed their alarm to the dealer, demanding an explanation and remedy. Both times, the dealer recommended removing extra keys from the key chain, saying they could jostle the ignition switch into shutting off. After a third stall-out, the Dentis terminated the lease.

“I ended up owing thousands of dollars extra,” Samantha Denti said. “My mom said, ‘We’ll pay. This car is a death trap. We want out of it.’ ”

The recall covers six models from 2003 to 2007: 2005-7 Chevrolet Cobalts; the 2007 Pontiac G5; 2003-7 Saturn Ions; 2006-7 Chevrolet HHRs; 2006-7 Pontiac Solstices and the 2007 Saturn Sky. Both the agency and the company are warning motorists that if they must drive a recalled vehicle, no keys other than the car key should be on the key chain to eliminate potential jostling that could shut down the ignition.

In announcing the recalls, General Motors said the ignition defect may have been responsible for 31 accidents and 13 deaths, but it has declined to disclose the names of those who died or the dates, location or other details of the crashes. The company said it had been “involved in claims and lawsuits” related to the ignition problem, but did not disclose how many settlements had been reached.

“Is my daughter’s name in the 13?” asked Mary Ruddy of Scranton, Pa., in an interview. The safety agency’s database contains at least four complaints from Ms. Ruddy, whose 21-year-old daughter Kelly was killed on Jan. 10, 2010, while driving a 2005 Chevrolet Cobalt. Ms. Ruddy’s complaints were not counted in the review because they did not specify stalling on the road.

In her filings to the agency, the most recent on Feb. 18, Ms. Ruddy said her daughter’s car overturned and rolled, ejecting her onto the highway. “I knew the minute I got the news that my daughter was killed so violently and that it did not involve another car that it had to be a mechanical failure,” she wrote.

In April 2010, she received a recall notice citing failures in the power steering systems of the ’05 Cobalt, and she contacted G.M., which, she said, sent three representatives — an automotive engineer, a man who identified himself as an “accident reconstructionist” and a photographer — to examine the wrecked vehicle and remove its “black box” for data.

Ms. Ruddy said that despite repeated requests, the company had declined to return the black box or share the data, and sent only an “air bag deployment report” that she said was incomprehensible to her and her lawyer.

G.M. said its policy is to return any part, like a black box, to the owner of the vehicle if requested.

She said she had received form letters from the agency saying only that it had received her complaint. “They never called me and never spoke to me.”

“I just want someone to hear me,” she said. “We’ve had no closure. We still have no answers.”


Bill Vlasic, Kitty Bennett and Rebecca Ruiz contributed reporting.


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5) When Employees Confess, Sometimes Falsely
By SAUL ELBEIN

When an AutoZone investigator approached Chris Polston, asking for his help investigating a theft, Mr. Polston was happy to oblige.

He was 20, had worked for AutoZone all through high school in Maryland, and, after graduation, moved to take a job with the chain in Houston. He and his wife had a child on the way, and he thought that AutoZone, the car parts retailer, could be a place to build a career.

That morning in 2010, it all came undone.

According to an account of the day given by Mr. Polston in interviews and in a civil suit against AutoZone, Conrad Castillo, an AutoZone investigator, sat him down in the store’s overstock room between a cinder-block wall and a row of batteries. At first, he said, the investigator was friendly, making small talk about the joys of fatherhood. “He was talking to me as if we’d known each other for 10 years and we were at a barbecue,” Mr. Polston said.

Then Mr. Castillo’s tone changed, Mr. Polston said: Mr. Castillo asked him to sign a statement that said he was not recording their talk. After Mr. Polston signed it, Mr. Castillo accused him of having stolen auto parts. When Mr. Polston denied the accusation, Mr. Castillo insisted. He pointed to a DVD that he said contained proof that Mr. Polston had stolen parts. Mr. Castillo, however, would not let Mr. Polston review the DVD. (In his own testimony, Mr. Castillo, who did not respond to requests for comment, denied showing Mr. Polston a DVD; he said he found Mr. Polston deceptive and hostile.)

It just became a battle between me and him of me saying no and him saying yes, me saying no, him saying yes,” Mr. Polston said. “I told him I had to go; I have to get my wife to work. He said you’re not allowed to leave. He said, if I confessed, he could promise I wouldn’t lose my job, wouldn’t be charged, everything would be O.K.”

After about two hours, Mr. Castillo said he was going to have to call the authorities. Mr. Polston watched him go to a corner of the store and make a call on his cellphone. When Mr. Castillo returned, he asked Mr. Polston if he had anything to add.

Mr. Polston imagined the police arresting him for a theft he had not committed, and having to explain that to his family. “I had to say something to make him shut up,” he said. “He was just drilling and drilling and drilling. I said, look, only thing I didn’t pay for was a candy bar and soda.”

Suddenly, the interrogation was over. Mr. Castillo took Mr. Polston’s keys and escorted him from the store. The next day, he was fired for theft of the candy and soda. Stolen auto parts were not mentioned.

AutoZone is the country’s largest auto-parts retailer, with about 5,000 stores in the United States and Mexico and more than $9 billion in annual sales. A public company with a share price that has more than tripled in the last five years, it has more than 70,000 workers, and every year some steal money or inventory.

Losses from employee theft cost American retailers $16 billion a year, according to the National Retail Security Survey. That number is almost half the amount lost to shoplifting, and the problem can be very hard to stop. “Once an employee is hired, they have keys and access codes,” said Richard C. Hollinger, a professor of criminology and law at the University of Florida, who compiled the survey. “They’re very hard to deter and very hard to catch.” Sometimes, he said, there is hard evidence, like a video, but that is rare. “Mostly what you have is a cash register that’s a couple hundred dollars short and a couple of people who might be suspects,” he said.

And what is to be done with those suspects? Increasingly over the last 20 years, retailers have turned to internal investigations, often using investigators trained in the same interview and interrogation methods as the police. Their job is to ferret out employee thieves and get them to confess. “An admission makes the case much, much stronger,” Mr. Hollinger said.
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But as retailers have used the same methods as the police, they have come under criticism for some of the same unintended results: false confessions.

Retailers don’t think this is a big problem. “Is there a prevalence of false confessions in retail? I’d have to say no,” said Rich Mellor, a recently retired vice president for loss prevention at the National Retail Federation. Loss-prevention people, he said, know that coercion can cost them their jobs and lead to expensive lawsuits.

Because retailers are reluctant to talk to the press, he added, the public generally gets only the former employee’s side of the story, meaning that a lot of cases that seem to be false confessions may not be.

AutoZone did not reply to requests for comment, but lawsuits filed since 2000 have opened a window into how its loss-prevention department operates. Sean Simpson and Charles Moore of the Simpson-Moore law firm in San Diego have represented 10 former AutoZone employees, including Mr. Polston, in lawsuits against the company.

The first was filed in 2001 by Joaquin Robles, an AutoZone employee in San Diego who had helped put store deposits into an armored truck. One day, when the truck arrived at the bank, $820 was missing, and Octavio Jara, a loss-prevention investigator, was sent to speak with him. According to Mr. Robles’s subsequent testimony, Mr. Jara questioned him for nearly three hours, accusing him of stealing the money and telling him that if he would confess, he could keep his job. Otherwise, Mr. Jara would have to call the police.

Eventually, Mr. Robles signed a confession, apologizing for taking the money, which he said he needed to pay family debts. In July 2000, AutoZone fired him, recovering the stolen money from his last paycheck. Two weeks later, the bank found the money. It had been misplaced, not stolen. This did not, however, win Mr. Robles his job back.

Mr. Robles sued AutoZone and Mr. Jara, contending that he had been falsely imprisoned by being detained by his employers. Mr. Simpson and Mr. Moore presented three former AutoZone employees who testified that Mr. Jara had done the same thing to them. (Mr. Jara did not respond to repeated requests for comment.) In a subsequent trial over punitive damages, the lawyers turned to AutoZone’s internal loss-prevention manual to argue that the tactics Mr. Jara had used on Mr. Robles simply followed company policy.

The manual, which the company stopped using after the Robles trial, laid out a script for the standard interview. After taking the suspect to an isolated place and making sure that the conversation wasn’t being recorded, the investigator would make small talk to build rapport. Then he or she would ask questions, like whether the suspect thought that a theft had occurred. An employee who answered, “Yes, it was probably stolen,” was considered more likely to be innocent than one who said, “No, I’m sure it was a mistake.” An employee who slouched in a seat was considered likely to be hiding something.

If the employee was deemed guilty, the manual instructed the investigator to get an admission. First, the investigator would tell the employee that AutoZone knows that he or she is guilty, brushing aside any denials. To make the case appear solid, the manual encouraged using props like “bulging files” or videocassettes.

Next came a process called minimization and rationalization, intended to make it “easier for an AutoZoner to admit wrongdoing.” One common example, which Mr. Robles said Mr. Jara used with him, was to distinguish between need and greed. “Did you take the money to support your family,” the manual encouraged investigators to ask, “or was it for drugs?”

The interrogation system prescribed in AutoZone’s former manual closely follows the dominant methods used throughout the retail industry, as well as by police departments across the country.
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It is based on the Reid Technique, which was invented in the 1930s by Fred E. Inbau, a Northwestern University law professor, and John E. Reid, a Chicago police officer and forensics tinkerer. In 1947, Mr. Reid went into business as a private contractor, selling his services as a professional investigator to police departments across the country and teaching his method. In the early 1980s, two Reid investigators, Douglas E. Wicklander and David E. Zulawski, formed a company to teach the method to the private sector, where their classes are now the industry standard for interview and interrogation training.

Today, Wicklander-Zulawski & Associates, according to its website, provides training to many major American retailers. Several clients that Wicklander lists, including Walmart, United Parcel Service and Costco, are defending against false-confession litigation. (Wicklander-Zulawski, which did not respond to requests for comment, is not a defendant in any of the suits, and it could not be determined what services the company provided these clients or when they were provided.) In addition, class-action lawsuits were filed recently against Home Depot and Macy’s, accusing them of using their loss-prevention departments to coerce confessions from customers suspected of shoplifting.

It’s hard to know how widespread false confessions are. In retailing, “the dirty little secret is that there are no data,” said Saul Kassin, a psychologist at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a specialist in the issue. “As far as I can tell, normal people who sign confessions to thefts they didn’t commit tend to be embarrassed, don’t want to come forward. Cases are more likely to settle quietly.”

Almost since the Reid method was invented, psychologists and lawyers have feared that, if misused, it could prompt innocent people to confess.

In 1966, the Supreme Court, looking at an earlier version of the Reid manual in Miranda v. Arizona, concluded that police interrogations existed only “to subjugate the individual to the will of his examiner.” Without legal protections, the court ruled, no statement could be viewed as made by free choice. These protections, which would become known as the Miranda rights, require the police to remind suspects that they have the right to remain silent and to have a lawyer present.

Despite the Miranda rights, evidence has mounted in the last 20 years that false confessions are more common than one might expect. And the Miranda rights apply only to criminal investigations, not to internal corporate investigations.

When deposed for the Robles trial, Mr. Jara testified that he had obtained admissions in 98 percent of his interviews. According to Dr. Kassin, if Mr. Jara’s numbers are accurate, it is all but certain that he has obtained “a lot of false confessions.” Mr. Jara also testified that he had followed AutoZone policy, which prohibited him from making threats or promises. “You want to gather the facts,” he said. “If they admit to what they’ve done, good. If they don’t, they don’t.”

At trial in San Diego County Superior Court, AutoZone did not contend that Mr. Robles’s confession was true. Instead, the company’s lawyer asserted that Mr. Robles could have left the interview whenever he wanted: Mr. Jara had interviewed him at work, with the door open.

Following standard practice, however, Mr. Robles was kept on the payroll clock during his interview. “How free really was he to get up and leave the workplace, on a workday, during his own shift, without being fired?” asked Dr. Kassin, who testified as an expert at Mr. Robles’s trial. “He was for all practical purposes in custody.”

The jurors agreed. In 2006, they found that AutoZone and Mr. Jara had falsely imprisoned Mr. Robles and used fraud to make him confess. They awarded him $7.5 million; AutoZone appealed, and the damages were reduced to less than $700,000.

After that, Mr. Simpson and Mr. Moore took more cases representing former AutoZone employees who contended that they had been forced into false confessions. Three ended in judgments in the plaintiff’s favor, although AutoZone appealed all of them; two of the appeals are pending but a California appellate court upheld the other judgment against AutoZone last month. In another case, Gomez et al. v. AutoZone, a San Diego County jury found that Mr. Jara had used fraud to get confessions from three employees, but the jury did not award damages. The lawyers have three additional suits in progress against AutoZone, including Mr. Polston’s.

In a 2008 deposition for Gomez v. AutoZone, Elizabeth Rabun, head of AutoZone’s loss-prevention office, testified that her department conducted 2,000 to 3,000 loss-prevention interviews a year. Every loss is investigated, she testified, and virtually every investigation involves an interview. While employees who confess are normally fired, she said the company does not threaten to call the police. “We do not use coercion,” she said.

In a 2013 deposition for the Polston suit, Ms. Rabun testified that the false confessions had prompted AutoZone to make changes. For example, after the Robles verdict, the company stopped using its manual and hired Wicklander-Zulawski to train investigators directly. She testified, however, that the company continues to interview workers while they are clocked in and without a lawyer present. She also testified that AutoZone still forbids the taping of interviews, citing a concern that the tapes could be “manipulated.”

While recording of interrogations is now mandatory for police interrogators in 17 states and the District of Columbia, the first question on AutoZone’s question-and-answer form, filled out by every loss-prevention investigator at the start of an interview, is this: “Do you understand recording this interview is a violation of AutoZone policy?”

Mr. Moore said that means that at AutoZone, “It’s still the Wild West.” Part of the problem, he said, is that once the investigator gets a confession, the investigation generally stops.

In Mr. Polston’s case, the store manager later testified that he had given Mr. Polston the candy bar and soda he was fired for stealing. But Mr. Castillo testified that he never talked to the manager.

Mr. Simpson asked Ms. Rabun in a deposition why Mr. Polston had been interviewed at all — in Texas, workers can be fired without cause, which means that if AutoZone suspected Mr. Polston of theft, it could have fired him without an interview.

“Well,” she said, “I think part of our obligation as an employer is to bring the allegation to the individual that is maybe being accused of wrongdoing and give them a chance to give their side of the story.”

Mr. Moore offers a darker motive, suggesting that AutoZone managers have at times used loss prevention to get confessions from employees it wants to fire for other reasons. In 2010, Mr. Moore and Lawrance A. Bohm, a Sacramento lawyer, won a suit on behalf of Travis Kell, who, after reporting his manager to human resources, accusing the manager of making racist remarks, received a visit from Mr. Jara. According to the lawsuit, the investigator pressed Mr. Kell to admit to falsifying an internal audit. After Mr. Kell admitted only to rushing the audit, he was fired for what AutoZone termed falsification of documents.

At trial, Mr. Moore and Mr. Bohm presented evidence that another loss-prevention manager had falsified the audit to frame Mr. Kell. The jury awarded Mr. Kell $1.4 million in punitive damages. The verdict was upheld, with reduced damages, in California appellate court last month.

Mr. Polston said that after he confessed, falsely, to stealing the candy bar and soda, he went to his car and cried. The worst part, he said, was the sense of betrayal. “It changed my whole perspective about everything,” he said. “I was raised to give trust to people until they broke it. But I’m not going to raise my kids that way. I don’t want them to be blindsided like I was.”

His lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial in July in Harris County District Court in Houston, where he is seeking $300,000 to $400,000 in compensatory and punitive damages. But he says he is not concerned about winning money from AutoZone. He has a good job now, doing collision repair for BMW. What he wants is more subtle, something that he says he was denied by his interrogator.

“This time I’m going to get to say how I feel, without some loss-prevention person talking down to me and belittling me,” he said. “I’m going to get to say my side of the story.”


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6) Little-Known Health Act Fact: Prison Inmates Are Signing Up
By

In a little-noticed outcome of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, jails and prisons around the country are beginning to sign up inmates for health insurance under the law, taking advantage of the expansion of Medicaid that allows states to extend coverage to single and childless adults — a major part of the prison population.

State and counties are enrolling inmates for two main reasons. Although Medicaid does not cover standard health care for inmates, it can pay for their hospital stays beyond 24 hours — meaning states can transfer millions of dollars of obligations to the federal government.

But the most important benefit of the program, corrections officials say, is that inmates who are enrolled in Medicaid while in jail or prison can have coverage after they get out. People coming out of jail or prison have disproportionately high rates of chronic diseases, especially mental illness and addictive disorders. Few, however, have insurance, and many would qualify for Medicaid under the income test for the program — 138 percent of the poverty line — in the 25 states that have elected to expand their programs.

Health care experts estimate that up to 35 percent of those newly eligible for Medicaid under Mr. Obama’s health care law are people with histories of criminal justice system involvement, including jail and prison inmates and those on parole or probation.

“For those newly covered, it will open up treatment doors for them” and potentially save money in the long run by reducing recidivism, said Dr. Fred Osher, director of health systems and services policy for the Council of State Governments Justice Center.

He added that a 2009 study in Washington State found that low-income adults who received treatment for addiction had significantly fewer arrests than those who were untreated.

In Chicago, inmates at the Cook County Jail are being enrolled in Medicaid under the health care law as part of the intake process after they are arrested; the county has submitted more than 4,000 applications for inmates since Jan. 1.

In Colorado, state prisoners are being signed up when they need extended hospitalization; 93 applications for inmates and 149 for parolees have been submitted so far.

In the Portland area, more than 1,200 inmates have been enrolled through the state exchange, Cover Oregon, while Delaware and Illinois expect to start soon.

Devon Campbell-Williams, an inmate serving time for assault in the Multnomah County Inverness Jail in Portland, Ore., applied for Medicaid in January with the help of an eligibility worker hired by the county to enroll inmates. When he gets out of jail in May, he said, he will have health insurance for the first time, coverage that will allow him to get treatment for his ankle, which he broke in 2007 and has been bothered by ever since.

“It’s going to mean a lot,” Mr. Campbell-Williams said, adding that in the past, “I just went to the hospital, that was really about it.”

Opponents of the Affordable Care Act say that expanding Medicaid has further burdened an already overburdened program, and that allowing enrollment of inmates only worsens the problem. They also contend that while shifting inmate health care costs to the federal government may help states’ budgets, it will deepen the federal deficit. And they assert that allowing newly released inmates to receive Medicaid could present new public relations problems for the Affordable Care Act.

“There can be little doubt that it would be controversial if it was widely understood that a substantial proportion of the Medicaid expansion that taxpayers are funding would be directed toward convicted criminals,” said Avik Roy, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative policy group.

Language in the health care law also allows private insurance plans purchased through state exchanges to cover health care for people who are in jail awaiting trial, even in states that have not expanded Medicaid. But few prisoners have incomes high enough to afford the plans, even with federal subsidies, and most state and county correction systems are not yet set up to benefit from that coverage.

In the past, states and counties have paid for almost all the health care services provided to jail and prison inmates, who are guaranteed such care under the Eighth Amendment. According to a report by the Pew Charitable Trusts, 44 states spent $6.5 billion on prison health care in 2008. In Ohio, health care for prisoners cost $225 million in 2010 and accounted for 20 percent of the state’s corrections budget. Extended hospital stays — treatment for cancer or heart attacks or lengthy psychiatric hospitalizations, for example — are particularly expensive.

Stuart Hudson, managing director of health care for Ohio’s Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, said his department, which plans to start enrolling inmates in Medicaid when they have been in the hospital for 24 hours, expects to save $18 million a year through the practice, “although it’s hard to know for sure, because there’s other eligibility factors we have to keep in mind.”

Nancy Griffith, Multnomah County’s director of corrections health, said the county expected to save an estimated $1 million annually in hospital expenses by enrolling eligible inmates and passing the costs to the federal government.More money could be saved over the long term, she added, if connecting newly released inmates to services helps to keep them out of jail and reduces visits to emergency rooms, the most expensive form of care.

“The ability for us to be able to call up a treatment provider and say, ‘We have this person we want to refer to you and guess what, you can actually get payment now,’ changes the lives of these people,” Ms. Griffith said.

Rick Raemisch, executive director of Colorado’s Department of Corrections, said that billing Medicaid for hospital care would save “several million dollars” each year. But as important, he said, was the chance to coordinate care for prisoners after their release.

About 70 percent of prison inmates in the state have problems with addiction, he said, and 34 percent suffer from mental illness.

Without health coverage, inmates leave prison with 30 days’ worth of medication and are then mostly left to their own devices.

“If they go off their medication, oftentimes it can once again lead to more criminal activity,” Mr. Raemisch said. “So by keeping them medicated and keeping them mentally healthy, it really helps us in our re-entry efforts.”

It costs far more to keep an inmate in prison than to provide treatment outside. Yet most health care experts agree that health coverage alone is not enough to keep chronic offenders on track.

As essential as health insurance is for people trying to put together their lives after being incarcerated, the challenge of getting them into treatment, when they often did not have housing or jobs, was “a whole other kettle of fish,” said Bradley Brockmann, executive director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights in Providence, R.I. He is an author on articles in a collection on the topic in the March issue of The Journal of Health Affairs.

“The potential for this is so huge,” he said, “and it will take a lot more than just getting returning prisoners their Medicaid cards.”

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7) New Spat Emerges in South Africa's Platinum Strike
By REUTERS

JOHANNESBURG — A public spat emerged on Monday between South Africa's labour mediator and the Chamber of Mines over the former's handling of talks to end an almost seven-week strike in the platinum sector, further dashing hopes of any breakthrough.

There are no scheduled talks between the two sides. The squabbling between the group representing the producers and the state mediator makes it doubtful that any government-brokered negotiations will get off the ground again soon.

Tens of thousands of members of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) downed tools on January 23 in a strike over wages at the world's top platinum producers - Anglo American Platinum, Impala Platinum and Lonmin - hitting 40 percent of global output.

Last Wednesday the wage talks collapsed and the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA), the government mediator, said the two sides remained too far apart and needed time "to reflect on their respective positions".

Elize Strydom, the chief negotiator for the country's Chamber of Mines who has been spearheading the talks on behalf of the platinum producers, told the Sunday Times newspaper the CCMA's commissioners had shown an "absolute lack of economic acumen" when it came to the talks.

"Senior commissioners of the CCMA need to understand economics, otherwise you cannot be a negotiator, let alone a facilitator or mediator," she told the newspaper.

The CCMA hit back on Monday, saying it was calling on the chamber to retract Strydom's comments or face unspecified consequences.

"We are concerned that it will impair the trust relations key to mediation," it said.

Officials from the Chamber of Mines could not immediately be reached for comment.

AMCU last week softened its stance for the first time, saying it now wanted staggered increases to bring the basic entry wage to 12,500 rand ($1,200) a month in three years' time, more than double current levels, instead of immediately.

The companies, however, say they are sticking to their latest offer of increases of up to 9 percent on the grounds they cannot afford any more given rising costs and depressed prices for the precious metal used for emissions-capping catalytic converters in automobiles.

Platinum's spot price leapt last Wednesday to six-month highs over $1,480 (889.96 pounds) an ounce but the price reaction to the strike has generally been fairly muted as traders have bet that ample above-ground stocks will keep the market supplied.

As the stoppage becomes increasingly protracted, however, there may be a rethink on this front.

The economic costs of the strike are mounting and with general elections just two months away it is an unwanted distraction for President Jacob Zuma and the ruling African National Congress.

Employees have lost earnings of more than 3.4 billion rand to the strike and it has cost the companies so far 7.7 billion rand in revenue, according to a tally updated almost every second on the Chamber of Mines' website.

(Editing by Dale Hudson)

 

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8) After Fukushima, Utilities Prepare for Worst
By

PEACH BOTTOM, Pa. — Stored near the twin nuclear reactors here, safely above the flood level of the Susquehanna River, is a gleaming new six-wheel pickup truck with a metal blade on the front that can plow away debris from an earthquake or other disaster. Attached to the back is a trailer that carries a giant diesel-powered pump that can deliver 500 gallons of water a minute.

If the operators at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan had owned such equipment when the tsunami struck three years ago Tuesday, they might have staved off disaster, plant operators say.

Now, here at the Peach Bottom nuclear plant, which has the same design as Fukushima Daiichi, engineers and technicians are busy applying such lessons, preparing for a worst-case scenario even worse than the plant’s designers envisioned in the 1970s.

“After Fukushima, we have to ask, what if we were wrong?” said Michael Pacilio, Exelon’s chief nuclear officer, showing off the truck and other purchases.

Exelon operates 17 of the 100 commercial power reactors in this country, and expects to spend $400 million to $500 million in post-Fukushima upgrades.

The truck — there are three of them here — is one of many such changes. And there are a lot of other purchases, inspired by trips by Mr. Pacilio and his counterparts to the stricken Fukushima plants. These include simple gear like army-style cots, buckets with seats that can be used as latrines, generators on wheelbarrow-like carts that resemble the ones sold at home improvement stores, and portable lighting.

If the experience at Fukushima taught anything, it was that if an earthquake or flood strikes, the reactors may have to cope with only what is on hand, at least for the first few hours.

But outside help may also be needed. Going up soon at a building near the FedEx hub in Memphis, and at a site near an airport in Phoenix, are industry depots, each with five “kits” including pumps, hoses and other emergency gear, 20 truck trailers comprising a single kit, deliverable to any reactor in the country within 24 hours.

The whole industry, despite using vastly different reactor designs, has devised a standard for hose fittings, pump types and other basic backup equipment.

It is an unusual level of coordination for a fragmented industry.

Many of the changes to hardware built into the plant, like pipes and cables, will be made this spring and fall, when reactors around the country shut down for refueling. Plumbers and electricians will swarm over the reactors’ innards to allow the new portable hardware to work. Plumbers will install connection points where emergency pumps could force water into critical spots if the permanent pumps failed because of loss of electricity, as happened at Fukushima Daiichi after the tsunami, leading to the triple meltdown. Electricians will create connections where portable generators could be used.

“Fukushima woke up the world nuclear industry, not just the U.S.,” said the chairwoman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Allison M. Macfarlane, in an interview. “It woke everybody up and said: ‘Hey, you didn’t even think about these different issues happening. You never thought about an earthquake that could create a tsunami that would swamp your emergency diesel generators and leave you without power for an extended period. You never planned for more than one reactor going down at a site, you have to think about that now.’ ”

At Peach Bottom, though, the plant’s designers did prepare for some situations, like a flood. Plant officials here proudly show off the “submarine doors,” at the entry to the emergency diesel generators. These open with a turn of a giant crank, like an old bank vault, and would let the diesel generators continue running even if the river’s water level somehow rose 20 feet. Diesel fuel tanks, which sat in front of the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi and were washed away by the tsunami, are buried here and would continue to function if submerged.

Still, big fixes are needed.

Even before Fukushima, the United States Geological Survey updated its earthquake risk estimate for the eastern and central United States, and the nuclear plants have until the end of this month to say whether the new estimates predict a ground motion above what they are designed for.

Several are also reanalyzing for flood risk, including the chance of failure of an upstream dam. At Peach Bottom, tour guides show off a series of gray boxes that played a crucial, and tragic, role at Fukushima: these are the electrical devices that eventually move valves, power motors or perform other essential functions. At Fukushima, all were flooded with seawater, rendering them useless even if the plant still had electricity. Here, they are too high to flood, engineers say.

But there were other vulnerabilities exposed by Fukushima, and reducing them will take time because most of the work cannot be done while the plant is running. In the design used at Peach Bottom, the area immediately surrounding the reactor is pumped full of nitrogen during operations, so no one could breathe in that space.

But the reactors are seldom shut. To get more work out of the reactors — the goal is to run them 94 or 95 percent of the hours of the year — they are loaded with enriched fuel so that they need to shut down only once every two years for refueling.

With some decisions yet to be made on what exactly the American reactors should do, government officials say that the improvements could stretch out 10 years beyond the accident, which occurred in March 2011.

A major change will be to improve the vents that are supposed to allow excess steam and hydrogen to escape early in an accident, when there is very little radioactive material in the gas to be vented. Plants like Peach Bottom already have them, but running them without electricity would be difficult. Making them more reliable is a priority, but will take time.

David Lochbaum, who has worked at several plants of the Peach Bottom and Fukushima design and is now with the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group generally critical of nuclear safety, pointed out, “If an accident occurred tomorrow that the reliable hardened vent would have solved, it makes it hard to explain.”

Mr. Lochbaum praised the overall strategy, which is to have a plant be able to cope with loss of power for 72 hours, until, as he put it, “the cavalry comes over the hill” with more equipment from the emergency supply depots, delivered by truck, barge or, if necessary, helicopter. But heavy reliance on human operators to run into the plant and use muscle on a variety of parts that are normally operated remotely by electricity could be a problem if the area is filled with steam or radiation, he said. Failing to operate the parts could make it “a suicide mission,” he said.

The Fukushima improvements are being introduced into a highly structured environment. In the control room, when an operator announces an update, the others will all turn to that person and say, “listening,” and raise a hand. The supervisor gives a command, the operator repeats it, and the supervisor confirms he has heard the repetition.

Even if the threat seems remote, the industry and the regulators feel an urgency.

Mother Nature hit Fukushima harder than the designers expected, and they had to cope with trouble at more than one reactor at a time, two surprises that could hit an American plant, said Dr. Macfarlane of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. With that experience in the rear view mirror, “Woe unto us if we don’t respond properly,” she said.


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9) Is the Wolf a Real American Hero?
By ARTHUR MIDDLETON
FOR a field biologist stuck in the city, the wildlife dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History are among New York’s best offerings. One recent Saturday, I paused by the display for elk, an animal I study. Like all the dioramas, this one is a great tribute. I have observed elk behavior until my face froze and stared at the data results until my eyes stung, but this scene brought back to me the graceful beauty of a tawny elk cow, grazing the autumn grasses.

As I lingered, I noticed a mother reading an interpretive panel to her daughter. It recounted how the reintroduction of wolves in the mid-1990s returned the Yellowstone ecosystem to health by limiting the grazing of elk, which are sometimes known as “wapiti” by Native Americans. “With wolves hunting and scaring wapiti from aspen groves, trees were able to grow tall enough to escape wapiti damage. And tree seedlings actually had a chance.” The songbirds came back, and so did the beavers. “Got it?” the mother asked. The enchanted little girl nodded, and they wandered on.

This story — that wolves fixed a broken Yellowstone by killing and frightening elk — is one of ecology’s most famous. It’s the classic example of what’s called a “trophic cascade,” and has appeared in textbooks, on National Geographic centerfolds and in this newspaper. Americans may know this story better than any other from ecology, and its grip on our imagination is one of the field’s proudest contributions to wildlife conservation. But there is a problem with the story: It’s not true.

We now know that elk are tougher, and Yellowstone more complex, than we gave them credit for. By retelling the same old story about Yellowstone wolves, we distract attention from bigger problems, mislead ourselves about the true challenges of managing ecosystems, and add to the mythology surrounding wolves at the expense of scientific understanding.

The idea that wolves were saving Yellowstone’s plants seemed, at first, to make good sense. Many small-scale studies in the 1990s had shown that predators (like spiders) could benefit grasses and other plants by killing and scaring their prey (like grasshoppers). When, soon after the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone, there were some hints of aspen and willow regrowth, ecologists were quick to see the developments through the lens of those earlier studies. Then the media caught on, and the story blew up.

However, like all big ideas in science, this one stimulated follow-up studies, and their results have been coming in. One study published in 2010 in the journal Ecology found that aspen trees hadn’t regrown despite a 60 percent decline in elk numbers. Even in areas where wolves killed the most elk, the elk weren’t scared enough to stop eating aspens. Other studies have agreed. In my own research at the University of Wyoming, my colleagues and I closely tracked wolves and elk east of Yellowstone from 2007 to 2010, and found that elk rarely changed their feeding behavior in response to wolves.

Why aren’t elk so afraid of the big, bad wolf? Compared with other well-studied prey animals — like those grasshoppers — adult elk can be hard for their predators to find and kill. This could be for a few reasons. On the immense Yellowstone landscape, wolf-elk encounters occur less frequently than we thought. Herd living helps elk detect and respond to incoming wolves. And elk are not only much bigger than wolves, but they also kick like hell.

The strongest explanation for why the wolves have made less of a difference than we expected comes from a long-term, experimental study by a research group at Colorado State University. This study, which focused on willows, showed that the decades without wolves changed Yellowstone too much to undo. After humans exterminated wolves nearly a century ago, elk grew so abundant that they all but eliminated willow shrubs. Without willows to eat, beavers declined. Without beaver dams, fast-flowing streams cut deeper into the terrain. The water table dropped below the reach of willow roots. Now it’s too late for even high levels of wolf predation to restore the willows.

A few small patches of Yellowstone’s trees do appear to have benefited from elk declines, but wolves are not the only cause of those declines. Human hunting, growing bear numbers and severe drought have also reduced elk populations. It even appears that the loss of cutthroat trout as a food source has driven grizzly bears to kill more elk calves. Amid this clutter of ecology, there is not a clear link from wolves to plants, songbirds and beavers.

Still, the story persists. Which brings up the question: Does it actually matter if it’s not true? After all, it has bolstered the case for conserving large carnivores in Yellowstone and elsewhere, which is important not just for ecological reasons, but for ethical ones, too. It has stimulated a flagging American interest in wildlife and ecosystem conservation. Next to these benefits, the story can seem only a fib. Besides, large carnivores clearly do cause trophic cascades in other places.

But by insisting that wolves fixed a broken Yellowstone, we distract attention from the area’s many other important conservation challenges. The warmest temperatures in 6,000 years are changing forests and grasslands. Fungus and beetle infestations are causing the decline of whitebark pine. Natural gas drilling is affecting the winter ranges of migratory wildlife. To protect cattle from disease, our government agencies still kill many bison that migrate out of the park in search of food. And invasive lake trout may be wreaking more havoc on the ecosystem than was ever caused by the loss of wolves.

When we tell the wolf story, we get the Yellowstone story wrong.Perhaps the greatest risk of this story is a loss of credibility for the scientists and environmental groups who tell it. We need the confidence of the public if we are to provide trusted advice on policy issues. This is especially true in the rural West, where we have altered landscapes in ways we cannot expect large carnivores to fix, and where many people still resent the reintroduction of wolves near their ranchlands and communities.

This bitterness has led a vocal minority of Westerners to popularize their own myths about the reintroduced wolves: They are a voracious, nonnative strain. The government lies about their true numbers. They devastate elk herds, spread elk diseases, and harass elk relentlessly — often just for fun.

All this is, of course, nonsense. But the answer is not reciprocal myth making — what the biologist L. David Mech has likened to “sanctifying the wolf.” The energies of scientists and environmental groups would be better spent on pragmatic efforts that help people learn how to live with large carnivores. In the long run, we will conserve ecosystems not only with simple fixes, like reintroducing species, but by seeking ways to mitigate the conflicts that originally caused their loss.

I recognize that it is hard to see the wolf through clear eyes. For me, it has happened only once. It was a frigid, windless February morning, and I was tracking a big gray male wolf just east of Yellowstone. The snow was so soft and deep that it muffled my footsteps. I could hear only the occasional snap of a branch.

Then suddenly, a loud “yip!” I looked up to see five dark shapes in a clearing, less than a hundred feet ahead. Incredibly, the wolves hadn’t noticed me. Four of them milled about, wagging and playing. The big male stood watching, and snarled when they stumbled close. Soon, they wandered on, vanishing one by one into the falling snow.

That may have been the only time I truly saw the wolf, during three long winters of field work. Yet in that moment, it was clear that this animal doesn’t need our stories. It just needs us to see it, someday, for what it really is.


Arthur Middleton is a postdoctoral fellow at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

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10) Safety Flaws Found in New Inspections of Factories in Bangladesh
By

Nearly a year after a factory building collapsed in Bangladesh, killing more than 1,100 workers, engineering teams sponsored by Western retailers have been rigorously inspecting that country’s garment industry, resulting in at least two temporary closings because of safety problems.

The inspection reports on the first 10 factories, which were released Tuesday and contain an unusual level of detail, found that some factories lacked adequate fire doors, did not have required sprinkler systems and had dangerously high weight loads on several floors.

The announced inspections were done through the Bangladesh Accord Foundation, a group of 150 clothing brands and retailers from more than 20 countries that plans to inspect 1,500 Bangladesh garment factories by early September.

“Our inspection program is in full swing,” said Brad Loewen, the group’s chief safety inspector. “It’s big news that we’re in full flight.”

The program has 38 teams of international engineers, who, with Bangladeshi engineers and technicians, plan to inspect 250 factories each month, doing fire, electrical and structural inspections on each.

The inspections released Tuesday found a lack of fire alarms, a requirement for better enclosure of electrical cables and a need to improve maintenance procedures for items like electrical wiring. The inspections, done in November and December, do not highlight any problems as extreme as the those that caused the collapse last spring of the Rana Plaza factory.

“The inspection reports contain an unprecedented level of detail and set a new standard in transparency and credibility,” said Jyrki Raina, general secretary of IndustriALL Global Union, a labor federation that played a major role in setting up the accord.

At Alif Textiles, the inspectors found that the boiler rooms as well as storage areas holding combustible materials were not separated by fireproof construction. The inspectors said the seven-story building, in Dhaka, did not have an automatic sprinkler system and that the factory’s fire alarm system was manual, was not loud enough and would sound only on individual floors and not throughout the building.

The inspectors found materials stored on the exit stairs. The report said that collapsible, concertina gates with locks were at exits, though it noted that the gates were open and unlocked during the inspection. Several emergency lights were burned out at exit stairs.

The inspectors said that an automatic sprinkler system needed to be installed within three months — an upgrade expected to cost about $100,000. And it called for numerous other fixes within three months and some others within six months.

The first wave of inspections focused on buildings with at least five floors that have multiple factories, followed by other buildings with five or more floors or with multiple factories.

The inspection reports are sent to the factory owner, the Western brands that use the factory and worker representatives at the factory. They were to come up with remediation plans, to be published on the accord’s website within six weeks of the inspection.

“Exits are always a big issue,” Mr. Loewen said. “Usually they have lockable gates across them — they have to be removed. The stairwells have to be separated from the factory floor with fire doors. It’s very common that they need to install fire doors.”

Another common problem was that many factories do not satisfy the accord’s requirement that sprinklers be installed on every floor of a factory building that is 75 feet or higher.

One factory owner in Bangladesh praised the inspections, saying, “No doubt, they have gone through many details, very intensively.” He added, “It is good. It can shake up the mind-set.” He spoke only on the condition of anonymity, fearing other factory owners might get angry at him because many are dismayed with the accord and inspections.

He said this should improve factory quality in Bangladesh and also create a more level playing field among factories. He predicted that some factories could face major renovation expenses, since many do not have any sprinkler system at all.

Softex, a Bangladeshi sweater maker that supplies the French retailer Auchan, temporarily closed this week after the accord’s inspectors discovered serious structural problems at the factory, a move that resulted in the layoff of more than 3,000 workers. Labor unions criticized Softex for not paying the workers’ wages while repairs are done, while Bangladeshi factory owners have called on the Western brands to help pay the wages.

At the Viyellatex factory in Dhaka, the fire inspectors cited 23 problems. Among them were that two of the three exit stairways discharged inside the building rather than outside. The inspectors found that large electric equipment was not separated by fireproof construction and that the smoke detector system did not provide automatic alarm protection. Notification was done only by manual alarm.

If an inspection uncovers critical problems, accord officials must notify the government of Bangladesh and request that the factory be closed. A panel of four engineers as well as government, business and labor leaders must meet within 48 hours to review the decision. Closed factories cannot be reopened unless the four engineers unanimously agree to it.

Most of the accord’s signers are European brands, including H&M, Benetton and Inditex, but several Asian and Australian ones have signed as well as a few United States companies, including Abercrombie & Fitch and PVH, the parent company of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger.

The accord was formed in response to intense consumer pressure after not just the Rana Plaza collapse but the November 2012 fire at the Tazreen garment factory in Bangladesh, which killed 112 workers.

According to the reports, the structural inspectors found urgent problems at several factory buildings. At the Fashion Island factory, they found cracks in beams and urgently recommended, “All loads, including equipment, garments and personnel, at each floor level, including ground floor, are to be reduced.”

At Grameen Knitwear, the inspectors found what they called “uncontrolled heavy loading” on the second and third floors. They voiced concerns about the facade’s brickwork and “the stability system for lateral loading.” And at Rio Fashion Wear, the inspectors also found heavy loads on the eighth floor, resulting in some cracking on the floor below.

Gap, Walmart, Target and nearly two dozen other North American retailers have formed a separate group that seeks to improve safety at apparel factories in Bangladesh.

That group, called the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, said it has inspected 365 factories of the 830 it says its members use in Bangladesh.



Jim Yardley contributed reporting.

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11) Medical Groups Question Price of New Hep C Drug
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON — An innovative hepatitis C drug that was only recently hailed as a breakthrough treatment is facing skepticism from some health care providers, as they consider whether it is worth the $1,000-a-pill price set by manufacturer Gilead Sciences Inc.

A panel of California medical experts voted Monday that Gilead's Sovaldi represents a "low value" treatment, considering its cost compared with older drugs for the blood-borne virus.

The vote was part of a broader review of new hepatitis C drugs by the California Technology Assessment Forum, an insurance industry-affiliated group that assesses the costs and effectiveness of new medical treatments. The group is expected to issue a final report next month on Sovaldi and another new hepatitis C drug, Olysio from Johnson & Johnson.

Doctors have long sought more effective, palatable treatments for hepatitis C, the liver-destroying virus carried by an estimated 3 million to 4 million Americans. Until late last year, the standard treatments required taking up to 12 pills a day, alongside injections that can cause flu-like symptoms, an approach which only cured about 75 percent of patients.

Gilead Sciences' drug, launched in December, was quickly embraced by physicians based on its once-a-day pill regimen and increased effectiveness, curing between 80 and 90 percent of patients.

But some patients groups and health providers are beginning to question the cost of that benefit.

In Janaury, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation urged state Medicaid providers to deny coverage for the drug until Gilead agrees to lower the price. The group, which provides HIV testing and prevention services, argues that Sovaldi's price "will unnecessarily drive up health care costs and limit access to potentially lifesaving care."

"AHF believes that the price Gilead is charging for Sovaldi is not remotely justified. For one, it is exponentially more expensive than medications for other severe chronic conditions." The group notes that Sovaldi costs 1,100 percent more than Gilead's most expensive HIV drug, Stribild, which costs $80 per pill.

About 25 percent of people with HIV infection are also infected with hepatitis C. And patients with both viruses are more likely to be enrolled in Medicaid, the state-federal health plan for the poor.

In a review released ahead of Monday's meeting, the California Technology Assessment Forum estimated that replacing currently used hepatitis C drugs with Gilead's Sovaldi would raise California drug costs between $18 and $29 billion per year, including both government and private insurer costs.

Gilead has said that the drug's costs will be recouped over the long term as fewer patients suffer liver failure and transplant complications. But the California group's assessment concludes that even after 20 years, reduced health care spending on hepatitis complications would only cover about two-thirds of the Sovaldi's upfront costs.

At Monday's meeting the panel of experts from California universities and hospitals voted that Sovaldi and J&J's Olysio are superior medical treatments to older therapies from Merck & Co Inc. and Vertex Pharmaceuticals. But considering their costs and benefits, a majority of panelists said that both of the new drugs deliver a "low value." Olysio costs about $66,000 for one course of treatment.

The experts recommended the drugs should be used only for patients with severe hepatitis complications, such as liver cirrhosis.

The California Technology Assessment Forum was funded for more than 50 years by California Blue Shield but was recently incorporated into the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, a Boston-based research group funded by insurers, drugmakers and academic institutions. The group's board of directors includes executives from Blue Shield of California, Avalere Health, UnitedHealth Group and the Pacific Business Group on Health.

Gilead Sciences did not send a representative to Monday's meeting, but a company spokeswoman noted that it offers financial assistance to patients who cannot afford the drug and related insurance costs.

"Over time, we expect that treatment guidelines and the medical science will be what guides the discussion around treatment for a very serious liver disease — not the potential short-term budget impact," said Cara Miller, in a statement. The company has noted that many private insurers are already covering the drug under their formularies.

Wall Street analysts estimate Sovaldi could garner sales of up to $8 billion this year alone, which would make it among the best-selling pharmaceutical products in the world.

A spokesman for J&J's Janssen Pharmaceuticals said the panel's vote and conversation recognized Olysio "as an important treatment option for patients living with chronic hepatitis C."


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12)  Deciding if Inmates Get to Know How They’ll Be Executed
By

WASHINGTON — The capital justice system is in turmoil, with drug shortages leading states to use secret and suspect chemicals to execute condemned inmates.

“We’ve never seen so many changes and so many troubles in getting these drugs,” said Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham and a leading authority on methods of execution. “The states are more secret than they’ve ever been. And it’s a much riskier process than it’s ever been.”

In a little-noticed dissent last month, three Supreme Court justices suggested that it was time for their court to resolve the crucial threshold question: Are death row inmates entitled to know how the government means to kill them?

That information is a “state secret,” prison officials say. But it is hard to see how death row inmates can argue that a given method of execution violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment if they are barred from knowing what the method is.

The dissent, written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Feb. 25, was only a sentence long. It said that she, along with Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, would have granted a stay of execution to a condemned inmate in Missouri so the court could consider whether to hear his appeal “in the ordinary course.” The inmate, Michael A. Taylor, was executed hours later, just after midnight.

The dissent was, in truth, pretty cryptic. But Justice Ginsburg tipped her hand with one phrase, saying a hard look at the case was needed “for reasons well stated” by Judge Kermit E. Bye of the federal appeals court in St. Louis. Judge Bye had filed a statement when he failed to persuade his court to stop Mr. Taylor’s execution.

“Missouri has again, at the eleventh hour, amended its procedure and again is using a shadow pharmacy hidden behind the hangman’s hood,” Judge Bye wrote. He was referring to compounding pharmacies, which are lightly regulated and could be, he said, “nothing more than a high school chemistry class.”

The issue will return to the Supreme Court in coming weeks, in cases from Missouri and Louisiana.

The inmates in those cases will have to overcome what Michael Dorf, a law professor at Cornell, has called the court’s skepticism of “opportunistic” capital litigation, including “challenges to a particular method of execution by lawyers who believe that all methods are unconstitutional.”

But Professor Denno said the problems are authentic. “It’s not just a ruse created by abolitionists,” she said.

In January, executions in two states seemed to go awry. An Oklahoma inmate’s last words, 12 seconds after he was injected with lethal chemicals, were: “I feel my whole body burning.” A week later, an Ohio inmate “struggled, made guttural noises, gasped for air and choked for about 10 minutes before succumbing to a new, two-drug execution method,” according to The Columbus Dispatch.

In light of those developments, what the new challenges are asking for is modest. They want information to use in making their arguments, which may well fail.

“Either this is unreasonably painful or it’s not,” said Elizabeth Unger Carlyle, who represents a group of death row inmates in Missouri. They have asked the Supreme Court for help after Judge Bye’s court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, erected what they say is a perverse hurdle.

Before the inmates can be told what chemicals the state means to use to kill them, the court said, they must first propose an acceptable alternative method for their own executions.

That macabre requirement creates “a severe and darkly ironic conflict” for lawyers, according to a supporting brief in the case, Zink v. Lombardi, No. 13-8435.

“The principal goal of any lawyer representing a death row client is to prevent his client’s execution,” said the brief, filed by a law school clinic at Yale called the Ethics Bureau. The appeals court, it said, “would require the lawyer to actively advocate for a particular means of achieving his client’s death in the course of attempting to avert it.”In a Supreme Court filing last week, Missouri officials said that requiring death row inmates to specify how they were to be executed was contemplated by the Supreme Court in its 2008 decision in Baze v. Rees, which upheld Kentucky’s use of what was then the standard three-drug mixture used in most executions.

The state’s argument is plausible, partly because the decision is tough to understand. “Baze was so splintered that none of its seven opinions garnered more than three votes,” Professor Denno noted in an article called “Lethal Injection Chaos Post-Baze,” which is to be published in May in The Georgetown Law Journal.

The Missouri case is not the only one awaiting the Supreme Court’s attention. A second one, Sepulvado v. Jindal, No. 13-892, presents an even more straightforward question.

It was filed by Christopher Sepulvado, a Louisiana prisoner, and it asked the Supreme Court to decide whether due process “entitles a condemned inmate with timely notice of the method by which he will be executed.”

Louisiana responded that it had told Mr. Sepulvado all he needed to know. It was not sure what drugs it meant to use, it said, but it had supplied him with various possibilities, by name if not provenance.

But a fast-changing menu, Mr. Sepulvado’s lawyers say, is not a protocol.

It is true that prison officials face challenges. Drug shortages and boycotts have made it difficult to obtain lethal chemicals, and medical codes of ethics forbid help from those most competent to administer them.

I asked Professor Denno what states committed to the death penalty should do.

“We have a method,” she said. “It’s the firing squad. It’s the only method where we have people who are trained to kill that way.”

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13) California: Migrants Stage Another Border Protest
By


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14) The C.I.A. Torture Cover-Up
By

It was outrageous enough when two successive presidents papered over the Central Intelligence Agency’s history of illegal detention, rendition, torture and fruitless harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects. Now the leader of the Senate intelligence committee, Dianne Feinstein, has provided stark and convincing evidence that the C.I.A. may have committed crimes to prevent the exposure of interrogations that she said were “far different and far more harsh” than anything the agency had described to Congress.

Ms. Feinstein delivered an extraordinary speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday in which she said the C.I.A. improperly searched the computers used by committee staff members who were investigating the interrogation program as recently as January.

Beyond the power of her office and long experience, Ms. Feinstein’s accusations carry an additional weight and credibility because she has been a reliable supporter of the intelligence agencies and their expanded powers since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 (sometimes too reliable).

On Tuesday, the C.I.A. director, John Brennan, denied hacking into the committee’s computers. But Ms. Feinstein said that in January, Mr. Brennan acknowledged that the agency had conducted a “search” of the computers. She said the C.I.A.’s inspector general had referred the matter to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution. “Besides the constitutional implications,” of separation of powers, she said, “the C.I.A.’s search may also have violated the Fourth Amendment, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, as well as Executive Order 12333, which prohibits the C.I.A. from conducting domestic searches or surveillance.”

Ms. Feinstein’s speech detailed the lengths to which the C.I.A. had gone to hinder the committee’s investigation, which it began in 2009 after senators learned the agency had destroyed videotapes of the interrogations under President George W. Bush. Under President Obama, prosecutors exonerated the officials who ordered those tapes destroyed.

Ms. Feinstein said that when Senate staff members reviewed thousands of documents describing those interrogations in 2009, they found that the C.I.A.’s leadership seriously misled the committee when it described the interrogations program to the panel in 2006, “only hours before President Bush disclosed the program to the public.”

The interrogations included a variety of brutal methods, some of which — waterboarding in particular — were unequivocally torture.

When the Senate staff compiled a still undisclosed 6,300-page report, it described these acts and also concluded that the C.I.A. had falsely claimed that torture and other brutality produced useful intelligence. The report has been going through the snail’s pace review and declassification process since December 2012. The C.I.A. disputed some of its findings. But Ms. Feinstein publicly confirmed on Tuesday that an internal review by the C.I.A. had reached conclusions similar to those in the Senate staff report.

Ms. Feinstein said that staff members found the drafts among the documents that the C.I.A. had made available to the committee. She said she did not know whether the drafts were put there inadvertently, or by a whistle-blower. The Senate’s possession of the documents was entirely legal, she said.

She dismissed the acting C.I.A. general counsel’s claim that the Senate staffers had hacked agency computers as intimidation. The counsel, she noted, was a lawyer and then chief lawyer for the interrogations division and is “mentioned by name more than 1,600 times in our study.”

The Justice Department now has a criminal investigation to conduct, but the C.I.A. internal review and the Senate report must be released. Ms. Feinstein called on President Obama to make public the Senate report, which he has supported doing in the past. She said that this would “ensure that an un-American, brutal program of detention and interrogation will never again be considered or permitted.”

The lingering fog about the C.I.A. detentions is a result of Mr. Obama’s decision when he took office to conduct no investigation of them. We can only hope he knows that when he has lost Dianne Feinstein, he has no choice but to act in favor of disclosure and accountability.

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15) How a Court Secretly Evolved, Extending U.S. Spies’ Reach
By and LAURA POITRAS
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/12/us/how-a-courts-secret-evolution-extended-spies-reach.html?ref=us

 WASHINGTON — Ten months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the nation’s surveillance court delivered a ruling that intelligence officials consider a milestone in the secret history of American spying and privacy law. Called the “Raw Take” order — classified docket No. 02-431 — it weakened restrictions on sharing private information about Americans, according to documents and interviews.

The administration of President George W. Bush, intent on not overlooking clues about Al Qaeda, had sought the July 22, 2002, order. It is one of several still-classified rulings by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court described in documents provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor.

Previously, with narrow exceptions, an intelligence agency was permitted to disseminate information gathered from court-approved wiretaps only after deleting irrelevant private details and masking the names of innocent Americans who came into contact with a terrorism suspect. The Raw Take order significantly changed that system, documents show, allowing counterterrorism analysts at the N.S.A., the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. to share unfiltered personal information.The leaked documents that refer to the rulings, including one called the “Large Content FISA” order and several more recent expansions of powers on sharing information, add new details to the emerging public understanding of a secret body of law that the court has developed since 2001. The files help explain how the court evolved from its original task — approving wiretap requests — to engaging in complex analysis of the law to justify activities like the bulk collection of data about Americans’ emails and phone calls.

“These latest disclosures are important,” said Steven Aftergood, the director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. “They indicate how the contours of the law secretly changed, and they represent the transformation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court into an interpreter of law and not simply an adjudicator of surveillance applications.”

The Raw Take order appears to have been the first substantial demonstration of the court’s willingness after Sept. 11 to reinterpret the law to expand government powers. N.S.A. officials included it as one of three court rulings on an internal timeline of key developments in surveillance law from 1972 to 2010, deeming it a historic event alongside once-secret 2004 and 2006 rulings on bulk email and call data.

A half-dozen current and former officials defended the order as lawful and reasonable, saying it allowed the government to best use its experts on Al Qaeda — wherever they worked — to find nuggets of intelligence hidden in hours of phone calls or volumes of emails. They also noted that the agencies receiving the data must still apply privacy protections after evaluating Americans’ information. An N.S.A. spokeswoman declined to comment about the ruling.

Still, Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, argued that the easing of privacy protections mandated by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 increased the risk of abuse and should not be a secret.

“The framers of FISA intended to narrowly restrict the ability of the government to disseminate this information because it has a very low standard enabling access to communications,” he said. “If the FISA court removed those safeguards, it obviously raises questions about compliance with the intent of the act.”
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The number of Americans whose unfiltered personal information has been shared among agencies is not clear. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the court has approved about 1,800 FISA orders each year authorizing wiretaps or physical searches — which can involve planting bugs in homes or offices, or copying hard drives — inside the United States. But the government does not disclose how many people had their private conversations monitored as a result.Other Americans whose international phone calls and emails were swept up in the N.S.A.’s warrantless wiretapping program after it was legalized in 2007 might have increased those numbers. After Congress amended the surveillance act to authorize the program, the court allowed raw sharing of personal information from it, too, according to leaked and declassified documents.

The new disclosures come amid a debate over whether the surveillance court, which hears arguments only from the Justice Department, should be restructured for its evolving role. Proposals include overhauling how judges are selected to serve on it and creating a public advocate to provide adversarial arguments when the government offers complex legal analysis for expanding its powers.

Easing Barriers

The Bush administration sought the Raw Take order as it was trying to lower various bureaucratic barriers that impeded counterterrorism specialists across the government from working together.

Timothy Edgar, a Brown University visiting professor who worked at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and at the White House from 2006 to 2013, said that after the Sept. 11 attacks “there was a big movement to make sure sharing took place early on and at a tactical level.”

“Without the ability to have a small group of people that would be able to share intelligence at an earlier stage, at a raw stage,” he added, “it was hard to cooperate at a more technical level.”

Some efforts took place in public. In May 2002, the surveillance court rejected a request to dismantle a “wall” that inhibited criminal prosecutors from working closely with intelligence investigators using FISA surveillance; that fall, a review court overturned the ruling. Meanwhile, the administration was also pushing in private to get around obstacles to sharing information among intelligence agencies. Congress had enacted FISA after revelations about decades of abuses of surveillance undertaken in the name of national security — like the F.B.I.’s taping of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s extramarital affairs and its sharing of the information with the Kennedy White House. The law required agencies to “minimize” private information about Americans — deleting data that is irrelevant for intelligence purposes before providing it to others.

Exceptions had been narrow, like when an agency needed decoding or translating help from a counterpart. The Justice Department’s 2002 motion — formally called “In Re Electronic Surveillance and Physical Search of International Terrorist Groups, Their Agents, and Related Targets” — argued that the court could interpret that exception more permissively.

People familiar with the request said it cited passages from a 1978 report by the House Intelligence Committee that explained what lawmakers intended the original FISA bill to mean.

One section says that when information has not yet been examined and another agency is going to perform that task, minimization requirements are not yet in effect. Another explains that lawmakers intended that “a significant degree of latitude be given in counterintelligence and counterterrorism cases” regarding the retention or sharing of information “between and among counterintelligence components of the government.”

Justice Department officials argued that those passages showed that it would be consistent with congressional intent to allow wider sharing of unevaluated, unminimized information among analysts at the N.S.A., the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. The court agreed, granting the order.

Current and former officials said only trained analysts with a need to see the raw information may access it. Still, Jameel Jaffer, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, noted that the government had cited stringent minimization rules to justify FISA surveillance as complying with the Constitution.

“It seems that at the same time the government has been touting the minimization requirements to the public, it’s been trying behind closed doors to weaken those requirements,” he said.The newly disclosed documents also refer to a decision by the court called Large Content FISA, a term that has not been publicly revealed before. Several current and former officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Large Content FISA referred to sweeping but short-lived orders issued on Jan. 10, 2007, that authorized the Bush administration to continue its warrantless wiretapping program.

The Bush administration had sought a ruling to put the program, which had been exposed by The New York Times, on a firmer legal footing. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales disclosed a week after the decision that a judge had issued “innovative” and “complex” orders bringing the program under the surveillance court’s authority. But when they came up for renewal that April, another surveillance court judge balked and began requiring cumbersome paperwork, prompting the administration to seek a legislative solution, an intelligence official later explained.The documents do not explicitly say the Large Content FISA orders were the January 2007 decisions but are consistent with that explanation.

Two classification guides say that the N.S.A. used the orders during a transition to the enactment of the Protect America Act, an August 2007 law in which Congress legalized the program. It was replaced with the FISA Amendments Act in 2008.

The government has never provided details about the court’s reasoning in pronouncing the program lawful. But the orders are also mentioned in a classified draft of an N.S.A. inspector general report that Mr. Snowden disclosed, which calls them “Foreign Content” and “Domestic Content” orders. The report cites a legal theory that reinterpreted a key word in the original FISA — the “facility” against which the court may authorize spying because a terrorism suspect is using it.

Facilities had meant phone numbers or email addresses, but a judge accepted an argument that they could instead be the gateways connecting the American communications network to the world, because Qaeda militants were probably among the countless people using those switches. Privacy protections would be applied afterward, the report said.

Asked about Large Content FISA orders, Vaneé Vines, an N.S.A. spokeswoman, said: “Since the enactment of the Protect America Act and the FISA Amendments Act, all collection activities that come within the scope of those statutes have been conducted pursuant to those statutes.”

The Raw Take order, back in 2002, also relaxed limits on sharing private information about Americans with foreign governments. The bar was higher for sharing with outsiders: Raw information was not provided, and even information deemed relevant about a terrorism issue required special approval.

Under procedures described in a 1984 report, only the attorney general could authorize such dissemination. But on Aug. 20, 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft, citing the recent order, secretly issued new procedures allowing the N.S.A. to provide information to foreign governments without his clearance.

“If the proposed recipient(s) of the dissemination have a history of human rights abuses, that history should be considered in assessing the potential for economic injury, physical harm, or other restriction of movement, and whether the dissemination should be made,” he wrote.

Access within the N.S.A. to raw FISA information was initially limited to its headquarters at Fort Meade, Md. But in 2006, the N.S.A. expanded sharing to specialists at its code-breaking centers in Hawaii, Texas and Georgia. Only those trained would obtain access, but a review demonstrated that wider sharing had already increased risks. A document noted that the agency was mixing two types of FISA information, each subject to different court-imposed rules, along with other records, and “it is possible that there are already FISA violations resulting from the way data has been stored in these databases.”

The sharing of raw information continued to expand after the enactment of the FISA Amendments Act. On Sept. 4, 2008, the court issued an opinion, which remains secret but was cited in another opinion that has been declassified, approving minimization rules for the new law. A video explaining the new rules to N.S.A. employees noted that “C.I.A. and F.B.I. can have access to unminimized data in many circumstances.”

A footnote in a now-declassified October 2011 opinion shows that the N.S.A. did not share one category of raw data: emails intercepted at network switches, as opposed to those gathered from providers like Yahoo. For technical reasons, the switch tactic intercepts tens of thousands of purely domestic and unrelated emails annually.

Around early 2012, the court approved the expansion of sharing to a fourth agency, the National Counterterrorism Center, a clearinghouse for terrorism threat information. A May 2012 document says the “fact that NCTC is in receipt of raw or unminimized FISA information” is classified at a level reserved for data whose disclosure would “cause serious damage” to national security.

Intelligence officials, when pressed, offered no rationale for why public knowledge of the court’s interpretation of legal limits on sharing information met that standard.


Charlie Savage reported from Washington, and Laura Poitras from Berlin.
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16) Report Says Medication Use Is Rising for Adults With Attention Disorder
By

The number of young American adults taking medications for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder nearly doubled from 2008 to 2012, according to a report to be released Wednesday by the nation’s largest prescription drug manager.

The drug manager, Express Scripts, which processes prescriptions for 90 million Americans, also found that almost one in 10 adolescent boys were taking medications for the disorder, usually stimulants such as Adderall or Concerta.

Some experts said the report provided the clearest evidence to date that the disorder is being diagnosed and treated with medication in children far beyond reasonable rates, and that steeply rising diagnoses among adults might portend similar problems. These drugs can temper hallmark symptoms like severe inattention and hyperactivity but also carry risks like sleep deprivation, appetite suppression and, more rarely, addiction and hallucinations.

In examining actual prescriptions filled, the report also strongly corroborated data from several government surveys that many prominent mental health experts had discredited for relying on parents’ recollections of their children’s health care.

“It’s hard to dismiss the data in this report,” said Brooke Molina, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and one of the disorder’s leading researchers. “There are limitations with every study, but it’s hard to do anything here but conclude that we have a continually forward-marching increase.”

Dr. Lawrence Diller, a behavioral pediatrician in Walnut Creek, Calif., said that he hoped the Express Scripts report would extinguish questions of how many children are taking A.D.H.D. medications, and direct attention toward possible solutions.

“How long will experts’ heads remain in the sand on this epidemic?” Dr. Diller said.

Express Scripts, which is based in St. Louis, said it analyzed a nationally representative sample of 400,000 people ages 4 to 64 who filled at least one prescription for an A.D.H.D. medication from 2008 to 2012.

Medications included stimulants like Adderall and Concerta, as well as newer nonstimulant formulations such as Strattera. Express Scripts reported that the number of American adults receiving prescriptions for A.D.H.D. drugs had risen 53 percent, to an estimated 2.6 million in 2012 from 1.7 million in 2008. Use among young adults ages 26 to 34 almost doubled, to 640,000 from 340,000, during the four years.

Several mental health experts ascribed the steep rises among adults to better medical and societal understanding that the disorder affects more than just children. Some studies estimate that about 10 million adults have it, suggesting that medication use still has plenty of room to grow.

“We still know that a majority of adults with A.D.H.D. are untreated,” said Dr. Lenard A. Adler, director of the adult A.D.H.D. program at NYU Langone Medical Center.

Paula Rudofsky, a 56-year-old resident of Chappaqua, N.Y., was among the adults who received a diagnosis of the disorder and began taking Adderall in 2010. “We always felt that it was something for children,” she said. “It’s almost a relief to be told there’s something you can do to help.”

Express Scripts reported that use of medication among children, already much higher than among adults, rose less — about 19 percent over the four years — but still reached levels that many experts found troublesome.

In 2012, 5.7 percent of all children ages 4 to 18 were being prescribed A.D.H.D. medications, 7.8 percent of boys and 3.5 percent of girls. (More boys receive the diagnosis because they tend to appear more hyperactive.) Among adolescents 12 to 18, however, the rates reached 9.3 percent of boys and 4.4 percent of girls.

Adjusting for age ranges and insurance coverage, these rates and others confirm those reported last year by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention through its telephone survey of 76,000 parents nationwide. While some onlookers said those data demonstrated overmedication of the condition in children, most influential experts dismissed the evidence as lacking scientific rigor.

An article published by the American Medical Association stated that such studies “overestimate true prevalence” of A.D.H.D. diagnoses, while Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN reported, “There’s not a lot of value in these studies.”

In an interview last year, Dr. Peter Jensen, then of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., said: “Single-question surveys based on yes-no parent report are notoriously inaccurate. You simply can’t make scientific statements based on them.” In a follow-up interview on Tuesday, Dr. Jensen said that the C.D.C. survey probably was more accurate than he originally thought.

The agency had conducted similar surveys since 2003, to similar skepticism. In reporting prescriptions actually filled, however, the Express Scripts report strongly supported the C.D.C.’s data as accurate, Dr. Molina and Dr. Diller said.

Susanna Visser, the C.D.C.’s lead epidemiologist for the disorder since 2006, said that experts’ consistently discrediting the agency’s survey data over many years had cost the public not just understanding of the issue but also the consideration of possible solutions.

Children’s inattention can be caused by many factors beyond A.D.H.D. — inadequate sleep, anxiety and more — that stimulants not only do not address, but can also exacerbate. Improper prescriptions for stimulants have fueled the sharing and selling of pills, particularly among high school and college students who use them to improve focus and perhaps achieve better grades.

A Partnership at Drugfree.org study last year reported that almost one in 10 teenagers admitted having misused or abused stimulants, with that number believed to be higher in high-pressure schools.

“It’s difficult to respond to the patterns that we see if the patterns in diagnosis and medication are not taken seriously,” Dr. Visser said, adding that she was not involved in the Express Scripts report. “We need to look at these patterns as a whole public health need in order to appropriately respond, and not snipe over the prevalence estimates.”

Dr. Visser pointed to increasing evidence that young adults are abusing stimulants as well, with significant health costs. A report last year by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration found that emergency room visits related to nonmedical use of stimulants among adults tripled from 2005 to 2010, to more than 22,000.

Dr. Adler said that those signs need to be heeded as increasing numbers of adults visit their doctors for A.D.H.D. evaluations.

“As we move forward, we want to make sure that people who have the disorder get the prescription,” he said. “And that people who don’t have the disorder don’t.”


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17) Ohio Looks at Whether Fracking Led to 2 Quakes
By

Ohio officials said Tuesday that an oil and gas well near the site of two small earthquakes was undergoing hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, when the quakes occurred.

The State Department of Natural Resources ordered work halted at the well and six others in Poland Township, near the Pennsylvania border, on Monday after the two earthquakes earlier in the day. The quakes, of magnitude 2.6 and 3.0, caused no damage or injuries but were felt in nearby towns.

The department said it acted “out of an abundance of caution” to suspend the operation by Hilcorp Energy, a large independent oil and gas producer based in Houston. It is the only such operator in the area, which is about 15 miles southeast of Youngstown.

Mark Bruce, a spokesman for the department, said it was too early to determine whether drilling operations induced the earthquakes. “What we’re focusing on now is getting all the data from the company,” he said. “We’ll examine it first and decide next steps after that.”

But Mr. Bruce said one of the affected wells had been undergoing fracking to release oil and gas. In fracking, large amounts of water, sand and chemicals are pumped into a well to break up the rock — in this case, a formation known as the Utica shale — to free hydrocarbons.

Over the past decade, shale oil and gas production has been linked to earthquakes in Ohio, Arkansas, Oklahoma and other states, and in several countries. In most cases, however, the quakes were tied to disposal wells, in which wastewater from oil and gas production is injected under pressure into permeable rock formations. The water is thought to alter pressures underground and unclamp old faults, allowing them to slip.

There have been only a few instances — in British Columbia, England and south-central Oklahoma — in which the fracking itself was thought to have induced quakes large enough to be felt.

Mr. Bruce said there were no disposal wells in the area where the quakes occurred Monday.

A disposal well in Youngstown was permanently shut in 2012 after it was linked to a series of quakes that began there three years ago, and no new disposal wells have been allowed within five miles of the site.

Hilcorp Energy said it was cooperating with the state investigation. “We are not aware of any evidence to connect our operations to these events,” the company said in a statement, pointing out that other wells had been drilled in the Utica shale in Ohio in recent years without a problem.

A spokesman for the company said drilling of the wells in Poland Township, at an old landfill, had begun in 2012. The wells were in various stages of completion, he said, and only one was producing oil and gas. They were drilled to a depth of about 1.5 miles and then extended horizontally for about a mile through the shale.

That depth is the same recorded for the first quake Monday by the United States Geological Survey, although depth measurements for earthquakes are often only approximate. The first quake, of magnitude 3.0, occurred around 2:30 a.m., followed by the 2.6-magnitude quake nine hours later. Preliminary analysis showed they were centered within several thousand feet of the wells. The smaller quake was estimated to have originated about three miles underground.

During the series of quakes in Youngstown in 2011 and 2012, state officials called in geoscientists to analyze the quake data and study the geology of the area.


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18) A Relentless Widening of Disparity in Wealth
By Eduardo Porter

What if inequality were to continue growing years or decades into the future? Say the richest 1 percent of the population amassed a quarter of the nation’s income, up from about a fifth today. What about half?

To believe Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, this future is not just possible. It is likely.

In his bracing “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” which hit bookstores on Monday, Professor Piketty provides a fresh and sweeping analysis of the world’s economic history that puts into question many of our core beliefs about the organization of market economies.

His most startling news is that the belief that inequality will eventually stabilize and subside on its own, a long-held tenet of free market capitalism, is wrong. Rather, the economic forces concentrating more and more wealth into the hands of the fortunate few are almost sure to prevail for a very long time.

It is possible to slow, or even reverse, the trend, if political leaders like President Obama, who proposed that income inequality was the “defining challenge of our time,” really push.

“Political action can make this go in the other direction,” Professor Piketty told me. But he also adds that history does not offer much hope that political action will, in fact, turn the tide: “Universal suffrage and democratic institutions have not been enough to make the system react.”

Professor Piketty’s description of inexorably rising inequality probably fits many Americans’ intuitive understanding of how the world works today. But it cuts hard against the grain of economic orthodoxy that prevailed throughout the second half of the 20th century and still holds sway today. It was shaped during the early years of the Cold War by the Belorussian-born American economist Simon Kuznets.

Painstakingly assembling data from tax returns, Mr. Kuznets estimated that between 1913, when the income tax was first introduced in the United States, and shortly after the end of World War II in 1948, the slice of the nation’s income absorbed by the richest 10 percent of Americans declined sharply, to about a third, from a little under half.

What if inequality were to continue growing years or decades into the future? Say the richest 1 percent of the population amassed a quarter of the nation’s income, up from about a fifth today. What about half?

To believe Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, this future is not just possible. It is likely.

In his bracing “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” which hit bookstores on Monday, Professor Piketty provides a fresh and sweeping analysis of the world’s economic history that puts into question many of our core beliefs about the organization of market economies.

His most startling news is that the belief that inequality will eventually stabilize and subside on its own, a long-held tenet of free market capitalism, is wrong. Rather, the economic forces concentrating more and more wealth into the hands of the fortunate few are almost sure to prevail for a very long time.

It is possible to slow, or even reverse, the trend, if political leaders like President Obama, who proposed that income inequality was the “defining challenge of our time,” really push.

“Political action can make this go in the other direction,” Professor Piketty told me. But he also adds that history does not offer much hope that political action will, in fact, turn the tide: “Universal suffrage and democratic institutions have not been enough to make the system react.”

Professor Piketty’s description of inexorably rising inequality probably fits many Americans’ intuitive understanding of how the world works today. But it cuts hard against the grain of economic orthodoxy that prevailed throughout the second half of the 20th century and still holds sway today. It was shaped during the early years of the Cold War by the Belorussian-born American economist Simon Kuznets.

Painstakingly assembling data from tax returns, Mr. Kuznets estimated that between 1913, when the income tax was first introduced in the United States, and shortly after the end of World War II in 1948, the slice of the nation’s income absorbed by the richest 10 percent of Americans declined sharply, to about a third, from a little under half.


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19) Set Free in 1995 Killings, 3 Bronx Men File Suits Alleging Police Misconduct
By

Three Bronx men who were set free last year after spending nearly 18 years in prison for two murders they say they did not commit are suing New York City and the two lead police detectives on the case, accusing them of deliberately using tainted or false evidence.

The lawsuits, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan on Tuesday, stem from the 1995 murders of a Federal Express executive, Denise Raymond, and a cabdriver, Baithe Diop. The killings, which took place in the Soundview neighborhood in the Bronx three days apart, were thought to be related.Seven people were indicted in the two murders and six were convicted. But the convictions began to come apart in 2012, when an investigator with the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan obtained confessions from two former gang members who said they had killed Mr. Diop. In 2013, the Bronx district attorney’s office acknowledged problems with evidence used to tie defendants to the murder of Ms. Raymond. The indictments in both cases were vacated, and those imprisoned were freed.

The lawsuits claim that the detectives, Michael Donnelly and Thomas Aiello, improperly conducted identifications of suspects, coerced false statements from witnesses, provided nonpublic details to witnesses to bolster false accounts, failed to follow up on leads and hid evidence. The suits also cite a key prosecution witness who later recanted.

“When you’re innocent and you’re in prison knowing that you didn’t commit this crime, the pain is double,” said Carlos Perez, who, along with Michael Cosme and Devon Ayers, filed the lawsuits against the city. “It hurt me emotionally, it hurt me psychologically; many times I cried.”

A spokesman for the Police Department did not reply to a request for comment. Spokesmen for the New York City Law Department and the Bronx district attorney’s office declined to comment, with the district attorney’s office citing the pending litigation.

Similar suits were filed recently by Cathy Watkins and Eric Glisson, who were also convicted of killing Mr. Diop, and were freed in 2012; and by the estate of Israel Vasquez, who was convicted of killing Ms. Raymond but freed in 2007 by an appeals panel. City lawyers asked a judge to dismiss the Vasquez case last year, rejecting all assertions of wrongdoing by the detectives and saying that the witness’s recantation was not credible.

Mr. Perez’s lawsuit states that Detectives Donnelly and Aiello ignored certain leads. For instance, the suit asserts, the detectives did not interview a man who had pawned a bracelet bearing Ms. Raymond’s initials. And, the suit said, they did not pursue records from Mr. Diop’s cellphone, which had been stolen after his killing and used to call an apartment where the men who later admitted killing him, Jose Rodriguez and Gilbert Vega, were living.

That failure left the two “free to continue committing violent crimes in the Bronx for years,” the suit says, adding that Mr. Rodriguez had been involved in a shooting in 1997 that killed two people during a Thanksgiving football game between residents of two public housing complexes.

“This case is particularly egregious,” said Elizabeth Saylor, a lawyer at the firm Emery Celli Brinckerhoff and Abady, which is representing Mr. Perez, Mr. Cosme and the estate of Mr. Vasquez. “Six people were incarcerated for 100 years in this case because of the detectives’ misconduct.”

Because no physical evidence linked any defendant to either killing, the prosecution relied heavily on witnesses. Among them was Kim Alexander, who testified that she had seen another man, Charles McKinnon, arguing with Ms. Raymond as she left work the day before she was killed.

Detective Aiello picked up security video tapes from the building where Ms. Raymond worked, then wrote in a report that he had viewed the material “with negative results,” causing a prosecutor to state in court that there was “nothing” on the tapes.

Later, however, it turned out that a tape showed Ms. Raymond but not Mr. McKinnon, undermining the prosecution’s contention that an argument between the two had led to a murder plot. Judge William C. Donnino said that the failure to turn over the tape was “serious,” adding that it contained “evidence that is arguably favorable to the defense.”

Another prosecution witness was Cathy Gomez, a teenager who could not read or write English. In 1995, Ms. Gomez signed a detailed statement that provided a basis for later courtroom testimony saying that Mr. Cosme had displayed a silver-colored revolver, given her a blow-by-blow account of killing Mr. Diop, then shown her a phone that he said had come from Mr. Diop’s car. But in 2012 Ms. Gomez said that Detective Donnelly had written the statement and that she had signed it without knowing what it said. “Nothing’s true in there,” she told a lawyer representing Mr. Glisson, according to a transcript of a videotaped interview.

Mr. Perez has always maintained his innocence.“This whole case was fabricated,” he told Judge Donnino. “I’ve been framed by a ruthless crooked homicide cop.”


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20) Status Quo at Elite New York Schools: Few Blacks and Hispanics
By

Seven black students have been offered a chance to start classes at Stuyvesant High School in September, two fewer than received offers last year. For Hispanics, the number has dropped to 21 from 24.

According to data released on Tuesday, the racial demographics for incoming students at eight of the city’s nine specialized schools, where black and Hispanic students have long been underrepresented, has remained stagnant, prompting Mayor Bill de Blasio to call again for increasing diversity at the schools.

The eight schools have a single-test admittance policy that critics have called racially discriminatory.

“These schools are the jewels in the crown for our public school system,” Mr. de Blasio said at a news conference addressing criminal justice issues.

He added: “This is a city blessed with such diversity. Our schools, especially our particularly exceptional schools, need to reflect that diversity.”Three of the most renowned schools, Stuyvesant, the Bronx High School of Science and Brooklyn Tech, have a combined enrollment of more than 10,000 students. Stuyvesant has an enrollment of about 3,300. A total of 952 students were offered seats for its freshman class.

At the news conference, Mr. de Blasio expressed optimism that a deal with Albany could be forged, though he has not put forth any specific legislative proposals. He did, however, raise the notion of ensuring that a wider range of students can prepare for the admittance test.

The numbers disclosed by the Education Department showed that of the 28,000 students citywide who took the Specialized High School Admissions Test, 5,701 of them were offered seats. Although 70 percent of the city’s public school students are black and Hispanic, blacks were offered 5 percent of the overall seats and Hispanics 7 percent — the same as a year ago. Asians were offered 53 percent of the seats, compared with 50 percent a year ago; whites were offered 26 percent of seats, compared with 24 percent a year ago.

In Albany, Assemblyman Karim Camara, a Democrat from Brooklyn, is redrafting a bill he introduced in 2011 to change admissions policies at the high schools. As before, the bill seeks to give the city power over admissions, but he said the revised bill would specify what other admissions criteria should be used.

 

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21)  Wall Street Bonuses Go Up as the Number of Jobs Goes Down
By WILLIAM ALDEN


Updated, 11:04 a.m. | On Wall Street, profits are down and the number of workers is shrinking.

But bonuses continue to grow larger.

Cash bonuses paid to Wall Street employees in New York City rose 15 percent on average last year, to $164,530, according to estimates released on Wednesday by Thomas P. DiNapoli, the state comptroller. That was the biggest average bonus since 2007, the year before the financial crisis struck.

Over all, workers in the financial industry in the city made an estimated $26.7 billion in bonuses last year, a number that, again, was the highest level since the crisis. The bonus figures encompass everyone from the low-ranking employee to the chief executive, so high payouts to top managers can bring up the average.

That bonuses went up amid a challenging environment for the banks reflects a cardinal rule of Wall Street: Firms are willing to pay big for the top talent. This held true even as profits overall fell 30 percent to $16.7 billion, according to the comptroller’s report.

The cash haul included payments that had been granted in previous years. This was because Wall Street firms, since the crisis, have sought to keep a temporary lid on costs by deferring a portion of cash compensation. Some of this cash that had been withheld is being paid out for 2013, making bonuses larger than they otherwise might be.

The comptroller’s estimate of bonuses is based on income tax withholding data, and it does not include stock options or deferred compensation for which taxes have not yet been withheld.

While Wall Street bonuses have raised eyebrows in Washington in recent years, they are an important ingredient in the industry’s pay, often making up the bulk of these workers’ compensation.

From the perspective of the city, which had expected bonuses to go down, the increase is welcome news, bolstering a major source of tax revenue. Mr. DiNapoli estimated that the higher bonuses could translate into $100 million in tax revenue for the city in the current fiscal year above what had been anticipated.

A range of businesses in New York — from restaurants to luxury real estate — pin their fortunes to Wall Street pay. While the financial industry makes up just 5 percent of jobs in the city, those jobs account for 22 percent of the city’s wages, Mr. DiNapoli said.

“Wall Street is one of the key economic indicators and engines for our city and our state,” he said at a conference in Manhattan on Wednesday. “We certainly know that the impact of the Great Recession was felt profoundly in the securities industry here in the city.”

The aftershocks of that difficult period continue to be felt. Banks grappled with challenging markets last year, in part because of uncertainty over the Federal Reserve’s extraordinary economic stimulus program. On top of that, bank profits were dented by a barrage of legal issues stemming from the crisis.

The number of jobs in finance declined slightly last year, as firms sought to keep costs in check. The industry employed 165,200 people as of last December, a decline of 1.2 percent from the prior year and the second straight year of declines.

Wall Street compensation continues to dwarf the pay in other industries. The Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal-leaning research group, said on Wednesday that the $26.7 billion in bonuses would be enough to more than double the pay of the 1.1 million full-time minimum wage workers in the United States.

The average pay of Wall Street employees, including salary and bonuses, was $360,700 in 2012, the last year for which data are available — more than five times higher than in the rest of the private sector, according to the comptroller’s report.

For New York, the recovery in Wall Street pay translated into higher tax revenue. The city collected an estimated $3.8 billion in taxes last year from the securities industry, nearly 27 percent higher than in 2012, Mr. DiNapoli said. The industry accounted for 8.5 percent of the city’s tax revenue.

And yet, Wall Street continues to face challenges, even with the increase in bonuses. After past economic downturns, the securities industry “is what led us out of a tough economic time,” Mr. DiNapoli said.

“That has not been the case with our current recovery,” he said.



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B. EVENTS AND ACTIONS

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Remembering Iraq 11 Years Later: Then and Now!


On Wednesday, March 19, 2014 CODEPINK, Witness Iraq, and the Peace and Justice Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Church in SF  will hold a panel discussion to commemorate the 11th year anniversary of the war on Iraq titled “Remembering Iraq 11 Years Later: Then and Now.”

The panel  is meant to be an evening of remembering Iraq before, during and after the war and how the current day struggles of Iraqis, inside and outside of the country, continue whether in the form of surviving the violent attacks in the country or surviving life in foreign lands.

A CODEPINK organizer and Iraqi refugee, Farah Muhsin Al Mousawi, will moderate the discussion.

Panelists include:
    •    Inder Comar of Comar Law, a San Francisco attorney representing Sundus Shaker Saleh, an Iraqi refugee and the lead plaintiff in the class action lawsuit against key members of the George W. Bush Administration (Saleh v. Bush)
    •    Aaron Hughes, an Iraq War veteran, artist and activists who is actively involved Warrior Writers Project, The Dirty Canteen, The National Veterans Art Museum, Iraq Veterans Against the War, and The Center for Artistic Activism
    •    Zaid Faransso, an Iraqi refugee and former medical resident at Baghdad’s Medical City

Location:
First Unitarian Universalist Church & Center - MLK Room
1187 Franklin St
San Francisco, CA 94109

RSVP for the event!  
http://calendar-codepink.nationbuilder.com/60200/remembering_iraq_11_years_later_then_and_now
In Justice & Accountability,
CODEPINK SF

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C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND
ONGOING CAMPAIGNS


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Next Tuesday marks the end of the first year in office for South Korea's President Park, Geun-hye.

On that day, South Korea's trade union confederation (the KCTU) will be holding a nationwide "people's strike" together with broader social movements including organisations of peasants, the urban poor, small shop keepers, students, and youth.

They'll be marching under the slogan "After one year under Park's Government, we cannot stand it anymore!"

Human and trade union rights have been attacked and democracy in the country has been undermined since Park came to power.

Organising strikes in President Park's Korea is increasingly dangerous.  Harsh repression is becoming the norm.  Unions are under attack.

The Korean Teachers Union has been de-registered and the Korean Government Employees Union refused registration. Union buildings have been raided. There are eleven trade union leaders behind bars at the moment, some of them still awaiting trial, some already convicted.  Four have just been bailed for trial later.

In solidarity with the 15 union leaders in prison or on bail, and with the KCTU, the global trade union movement is calling for the release of all imprisoned trade unionists.

That's why the International Trade Union Confederation has launched this new campaign on LabourStart:

http://www.labourstartcampaigns.net/show_campaign.cgi?c=2183&src=lsmm

It will take you less than one minute to show your support for our brothers and sisters on the front lines in the fight for democracy in Korea.

Once you've signed the campaign, please don't stop there -- spread the word in your union and workplace.

I know that we can count on your support.

Thank you!

Eric Lee

P.S. There's been a major show of support for Canadian workers on strike since September 2013 at Crown Holdings. The Toronto and York Region Labour Council has voted to boycott Carnival, whose CEO is board member of Crown.  Have you supported this campaign yet?  Please do so and spread the word.
Copyright © 2014 LabourStart, All rights reserved.
http://www.labourstart.org
Our mailing address is:
LabourStart
Unit 168, Lee Valley Technopark
Ashley Road, Tottenham
London, England N17 3LN
United Kingdom

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AN URGENT FUNDRAISER FOR LYNNE STEWART'S MEDICAL NEEDS CONTINUES
http://lynnestewart.org/

LYNNE STEWART HAS JUST BEEN DENIED MEDICAL BENEFITS. SHE CAN'T RE-APPLY UNTIL JULY! SHE IS IN URGENT NEED OF OUR HELP NOW!

Because of a determined people’s movement, Lynne is finally home with her family. But she has urgent medical needs and costs. Lynne’s Stage 4 breast cancer spread a year ago to both lungs, back, bones and lymph nodes. Now 74, she has lost weight and has trouble breathing; doctors estimate her lifespan at 12 months. Lynne will soon begin treatment requiring her to pay deductibles and co-payments. To boost the odds, she’ll use a special diet, vitamins, and other healing methods – some costly and none covered by insurance.
Lynne’s spirit is indomitable – help her fight to survive!

“I fought lions, I fought tigers, and I’m not going to let cancer get me,” Stewart said.

Lynne has always come to the aid of those who needed her. Now it’s our turn to stand by Lynne.

SEND LYNNE A DONATION TO:

On line at:

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/lynne-stewart-s-medical-fund

Or by USPS to:

Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
  1070 Dean Street?
  Brooklyn, New York 11216



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Tell Maj. Gen. Buchanan why Chelsea
deserves to be free!


PVT Chelsea Manning has served nearly four years in prison, yet she’s showing a remarkable spirit of persistence. She is unjustly imprisoned, but not defeated. With plans to enroll in a prelaw/political science university program, and a legal name change underway, she continues planning for her future and working to fulfill her dreams. She is determined to make the best of her situation. However, we know she could contribute more to the world if she was free.
Please write a letter to Convening Authority Major General Buchanan today urging him to reduce Chelsea’s sentence!
We began collecting letters to include in PVT Manning’s clemency packet last fall. We expected that the military would finalize her record of trial last December, and that she could then submit her application to Maj. Gen. Buchanan by the end of 2013. Just like so many times before, however, the military’s process has slowed Chelsea’s ability to defend her rights. Defense attorney David Coombs now estimates that it will be at least another month before the clemency application can be submitted.
Want to make sure decision-makers know why you believe Chelsea deserves to go free? If you haven’t done so yet, please write a short letter to Maj. Gen. Buchanan. Hundreds of people have already submitted letters for us to use, including Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and award-winning author Alice Walker.
As Alice Walker wrote:
Private Manning was the one soldier willing to speak out against what he thought was wrong. When others silently followed orders, Manning could not. Pvt. Manning is a humanist, meaning he sees humanity before nationality, and values human life above all else. When he released documents to WikiLeaks in 2010, he wanted the American people, and the world, to judge for themselves if the U.S. military was properly valuing human life in Iraq and Afghanistan. As taxpayers who fund that military, we deserve that opportunity.
Learn now how you can write a letter to be included in Chelsea Manning’s official application for clemency!
Please share this information to friends and community leaders, urging them to add their voice to this important effort before it's too late.
http://www.privatemanning.org/pardonpetition



Help us continue to cover 100%
of Pvt. Manning's legal fees! Donate today.
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38591


COURAGE TO RESIST
http://couragetoresist.org
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610
510-488-3559

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Only an Innocent Man Would Voluntarily Return
to Prison to Fight Against his Life Sentence
and For Exoneration —
That Courageous Man is Lorenzo Johnson.

The PA Attorney General’s Office Agrees to Investigate New Facts and Witnesses —
  Send Your Message Now to PA AG
Kathleen Kane: Dismiss the Charges!
Free Lorenzo Johnson!

On January 29, 2014 Lorenzo Johnson’s attorney, Michael Wiseman, met with representatives of PA Attorney General Kathleen Kane to discuss the new evidence of Lorenzo Johnson’s innocence contained in legal filings now pending in the Pennsylvania courts. This includes affidavits confirming Johnson’s presence in New York City at the time of the Harrisburg murder and the identity of the actual killers, as well as police and prosecutorial misconduct.

Attorney Wiseman said Kane’s office promised to investigate these new facts in order to assess whether they merit the relief that Lorenzo Johnson seeks in his PCRA petition.

Speaking to AP reporter Mary Claire Dale on February 11, 2014 Wiseman said, “We believe the witnesses we presented to them are credible, and give a coherent version of the events. I take them at their word, that they’re going to do a straightforward, honest review.”  Kane spokesman Joe Peters confirmed the meeting to AP “but said the office won’t comment on the new evidence until the court filing,” (referring to the March 31, 2014 date for the AG’s response to Johnson’s October 2013 court filing).

It is the Office of the PA Attorney General that is responsible for the false prosecution of Lorenzo Johnson from trial through appeals. And just a few months ago, the Attorney General’s office opposed a federal petition based on this new evidence saying there was no prima facie claim for relief. This resulted in the denial of Lorenzo Johnson’s Motion to File a Second Writ of Habeas Corpus in the federal court.

On December 18, 2013 a press conference called by the Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson protested these actions of the PA Attorney General and delivered petitions demanding dismissal of the charges and immediate freedom for Lorenzo. Tazza, Lorenzo’s wife, declared, “1,000 signatures means we are not in this alone…I won't stop until he’s home. There is nothing and no one that can stop me from fighting for what’s right.”

This is Lorenzo Johnson’s second fight for his innocence and freedom. In January 2012, after 16 years of court battles to prove his innocence, a federal appeals court held his sentence was based on insufficient evidence – a judicial acquittal. Lorenzo was freed from prison. But after a petition filed by the PA Attorney General the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated Lorenzo Johnson’s conviction and he was re-incarcerated to continue serving a life sentence without parole for a murder he did not commit.

This innocent man drove himself back to prison in June 2012—after less than five months of freedom—leaving his new wife and family, construction job and advocacy on behalf of others wrongfully convicted. The reason Lorenzo Johnson voluntarily returned to prison? Because he is innocent and fighting for full vindication.

In the words of Lorenzo Johnson, “A second is too long to be in prison when you are Innocent, so eighteen years … is Intolerable.”

Add your voices and demand again: Dismiss the charges against Lorenzo Johnson. Free Lorenzo NOW!

 SIGN LORENZO JOHNSON'S FREEDOM PETITION

CONTRIBUTE TO HELP TAZZA AND THE OTHER FAMILY MEMBERS VISIT LORENZO AND STAY IN CONTACT!


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

 Email: Lorenzo Johnson through JPAY.com code:
              Lorenzo Johnson DF 1036 PA DOC


 www.FreeLorenzoJohnson.org

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End Drone Killing, Drone Surveillance and Global 
Militarization 
United National Antiwar Coalition Call for Spring Days of
 Action 2014

Today we issue an international call for Spring Days of Action—2014, a coordinated campaign in April and May to end drone killings, drone surveillance and global militarization.

The campaign will focus on drone bases, drone research facilities and test sites and drone manufacturers.

The campaign will provide information on:

1. The suffering of tens-of-thousands of people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Gaza who are under drone attack, documenting the killing, the wounding and the devastating impact of constant drone surveillance on community life.

2. How attack and surveillance drones have become a key element in a massive wave of surveillance, clandestine military attacks and militarization generated by the United States to protect a global system of manufacture and oil and mineral exploitation that is creating unemployment and poverty, accelerating the waste of nonrenewable resources and contributing to environmental destruction and global warming.

In addition to cases in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia, we will examine President Obama’s “pivot” into the Asia-Pacific, where the United States has already sold and deployed drones in the vanguard of a shift of 60 percent of its military forces to try to control China and to enforce the planned Trans-Pacific Partnership. We will show, among other things, how this surge of “pivot” forces, greatly enabled by drones, and supported by the U.S. military-industrial complex, will hit every American community with even deeper cuts in the already fragile social programs on which people rely for survival. In short, we will connect drones and militarization with “austerity” in America.

3. How drone attacks have effectively destroyed international and domestic legal protection of the rights to life, privacy, freedom of assembly and free speech and have opened the way for new levels of surveillance and repression around the world, and how, in the United States, increasing drone surveillance, added to surveillance by the National Security Agency and police, provides a new weapon to repress black, Hispanic, immigrant and low-income communities and to intimidate Americans who are increasingly unsettled by lack of jobs, economic inequality, corporate control of politics and the prospect of endless war.

We will discuss how the United States government and corporations conspire secretly to monitor U.S. citizens and particularly how the Administration is accelerating drone surveillance operations and surveillance inside the United States with the same disregard for transparency and law that it applies to other countries, all with the cooperation of the Congress.

The campaign will encourage activists around the world to win passage of local laws that prohibit weaponized drones and drone surveillance from being used in their communities as well as seeking national laws to bar the use of weaponized drones and drone surveillance.

The campaign will draw attention to the call for a ban on weaponized drones by RootsAction.org that has generated a petition with over 80,000 signers:

http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=6180

And to efforts by the Granny Peace Brigade (New York City), KnowDrones.org and others to achieve an international ban on both weaponized drones and drone surveillance.

The campaign will also urge participation in the World Beyond War movement.
The following individuals and organizations endorse this Call: 
Lyn Adamson, Co-chair, Canadian Voice of Women for Peace; Dennis Apel, Guadalupe Catholic Worker, California; Judy Bello, Upstate NY Coalition to Ground the Drones & End the Wars; Medea Benjamin, Code Pink; Leah Bolger, Former National President, Veterans for Peace; Canadian Voice of Women for Peace; Sung-Hee Choi, Gangjeong Village International Team, Jeju, Korea; Chelsea C. Faria, Graduate student, Yale Divinity School; Promoting Enduring Peace; Sandy Fessler, Rochester (NY) Against War; Joy First; Bruce K. Gagnon, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space; Holly Gwinn Graham, Singer/songwriter, Olympia, WA; Regina Hagen, Darmstaedter Friedensforum, Germany; Kathy Kelly, Voices for Creative Nonviolence; Malachy Kilbride; Marilyn Levin and Joe Lombardo, Co-Coordinators, United National Antiwar Coalition; Tamara Lorincz, Halifax Peace Coalition, Canada; Nick Mottern, KnowDrones.org; Agneta Norberg, Swedish Peace Council; Pepperwolf, Director, Women Against Military Madness; Lindis Percy, Coordinator, Campaign for the Accountability of American; Bases CAAB UK; Mathias Quackenbush, San Francisco, CA; Lisa Savage, Code Pink, State of Maine; Janice Sevre-Duszynska; Wolfgang Schlupp-Hauck, Friedenswerkstatt Mutlangen, Germany; Cindy Sheehan; Lucia Wilkes Smith, Convener, Women Against Military Madness (WAMM),  Ground; Military Drones Committee; David Soumis, Veterans for Peace; No Drones Wisconsin; Debra Sweet, World Can’t Wait; David Swanson, WarisACrime.org; Brian Terrell, Voices for Creative Nonviolence; United National Antiwar Coalition; Veterans for Peace; Dave Webb, Chair, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (UK); Curt Wechsler, Fire John Paki Wieland, Northampton (MA) Committee to Stop War(s); Loring Wirbel, Citizens for Peace in Space (Colorado Springs, CO); Women Against Military Madness; Ann Wright, Retired U.S. Army colonel and former diplomat; Leila Zand, Fellowship of Reconciliation.
United National Antiwar Coalition
UNACpeace@gmail.com
UNAC
P.O. Box 123
Delmar, NY 12054
518-227-6947
www.unacpeace.org

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Sireen Khudairy Appeal Update.

Sireen Khudairy was arrested again at 4am on Tuesday 7th January 2014. According to reports she has been taken to Huwwara military point. When the Israeli army took her from her home they didn't show any papers to her or the person she was with.

This follows eight months of harassment of this 24-year-old Palestinian woman who is a teacher, activist and supporter of the non-violent action against the Israeli occupation. She was previously imprisoned from May to July 2013, and has been subjected to frequent harassment ever since. See further details at:

http://freesireen.wordpress.com

Please help by contacting your Embassies urgently to demand her release and spread her appeal widely. Follow updates on:

https://www.facebook.com/FreeSireenKhudiri?ref=hl

Please contact us to let us know any action you take. We will pass this information on to her family. Thanks for your solidarity and support.  

Steven Katsineris, January 2014
 
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U.S. Court of Appeals Rules Against Lorenzo Johnson’s
New Legal Challenge to His Frame-up Conviction!
Demand the PA Attorney General Dismiss the Charges!
Free Lorenzo Johnson, Now!

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit denied Lorenzo Johnson’s motion to file a Second Habeas Corpus Petition. The order contained the outrageous declaration that Johnson hadn’t made a “prima facie case” that he had new evidence of his innocence. This not only puts a legal obstacle in Johnson’s path as his fight for freedom makes its way (again) through the state and federal courts—but it undermines the newly filed Pennsylvania state appeal that is pending in the Court of Common Pleas.

Stripped of  “legalese,” the court’s October 15, 2013 order says Johnson’s new evidence was not brought into court soon enough—although it was the prosecution and police who withheld evidence and coerced witnesses into lying or not coming forward with the truth! This, despite over fifteen years and rounds of legal battles to uncover the evidence of government misconduct. This is a set-back for Lorenzo Johnson’s renewed fight for his freedom, but Johnson is even more determined as his PA state court appeal continues.

Increased public support and protest is needed. The fight for Lorenzo Johnson’s freedom is not only a fight for this courageous man and family. The fight for Lorenzo Johnson is also a fight for all the innocent others who have been framed and are sitting in the slow death of prison. The PA Attorney General is directly pursuing the charges against Lorenzo, despite the evidence of his innocence and the corruption of the police. Free Lorenzo Johnson, Now!

—Rachel Wolkenstein, Esq.
   October 25, 2013

For more on the federal court and PA state court legal filings.
Hear Mumia’s latest commentary, “Cat Cries”
Go to: www.FreeLorenzoJohnson.org for more information, to sign the petition, and how to help.
 
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PUSH CHELSEA'S JAILERS TO RESPECT HER IDENTITY
Call and write Ft Leavenworth today and tell them to honor Manning's wishes around her name and gender:
Call: (913) 758-3600


Write to:
Col. Sioban Ledwith, Commander
U.S. Detention Barracks
1301 N Warehouse Rd
Ft. Leavenworth KS 66027

Private Manning has been an icon both for the government transparency movement and LGBTQ activists because of her fearlessness and acts of conscience. Now, as she begins serving her sentence, Chelsea has asked for help with legal appeals, family visits, education, and support for undergoing gender transition. The latter is a decision she’s made following years of experiencing gender dysphoria and examining her options. At a difficult time in her life, she joined the military out of hope–the hope that she could use her service to save lives, and also the hope that it would help to suppress her feelings of gender dysphoria. But after serving time in Iraq, Private Manning realized what mattered to her most was the truth, personal as well as political, even when it proved challenging.

Now she wants the Fort Leavenworth military prison to allow her access to hormone replacement therapy which she has offered to pay for herself, as she pursues the process to have her name legally changed to ‘Chelsea Elizabeth Manning.’

To encourage the prison to honor her transgender identity, we’re calling on progressive supporters and allies to contact Fort Leavenworth officials demanding they acknowledge her requested name change immediately. Currently, prison officials are not required to respect Chelsea’s identity, and can even refuse to deliver mail addressed to the name ‘Chelsea Manning.’ However, it’s within prison administrators’ power to begin using the name ‘Chelsea Manning’ now, in advance of the legal name change which will most likely be approved sometime next year. It’s also up to these officials to approve Private Manning’s request for hormone therapy.
Call: (913) 758-3600


Write to:
Col. Sioban Ledwith, Commander
U.S. Detention Barracks
1301 N Warehouse Rd
Ft. Leavenworth KS 66027

Tell them: “Transgender rights are human rights! Respect Private Manning’s identity by acknowledging the name ‘Chelsea Manning’ whenever possible, including in mail addressed to her, and by allowing her access to appropriate medical treatment for gender dysphoria, including hormone replacement therapy (HRT).”

While openly transgender individuals are allowed to serve in many other militaries around the world, the US military continues to deny their existence. Now, by speaking up for Chelsea’s right to treatment, you can support one brave whistleblower in her personal struggle, and help set an important benchmark for the rights of transgender individuals everywhere. (Remember that letters written with focus and a respectful tone are more likely to be effective.) Feel free to copy this sample letter.

Earlier this year, the Private Manning Support Network won the title of most “absolutely fabulous overall contingent” at the San Francisco Pride Parade, the largest celebration of its kind for LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning) people nationwide. Over one thousand people marched for Private Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning in that parade, to show LGBTQ community pride for the Iraq War’s most well-known whistleblower.

Help us continue to cover 100%
of Pvt. Manning's legal fees! Donate today.
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38591

COURAGE TO RESIST
http://couragetoresist.org
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610
510-488-3559
 

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 SAVE CCSF!


Two campaigns that need funds – Please donate!
Posted on August 25, 2013

Cartoon by Anthonty Mata for CCSF Guardsman

DOE CAMPAIGN
We are working to ensure that the ACCJC’s authority is not renewed by the Department of Education this December when they are up for their 5-year renewal. Our campaign made it possible for over 50 Third Party Comments to be sent to the DOE re: the ACCJC. Our next step in this campaign is to send a delegation from CCSF to Washington, D.C. to give oral comments at the hearing on December 12th. We expect to have an array of forces aligned on the other side who have much more money and resources than we do.
So please support this effort to get ACCJC authority revoked!

LEGAL CAMPAIGN
Save CCSF members have been meeting with Attorney Dan Siegel since last May to explore legal avenues to fight the ACCJC. After much consideration, and consultation with AFT 2121’s attorney as well as the SF City Attorney’s office, Dan has come up with a legal strategy that is complimentary to what is already being pursued. In fact, AFT 2121’s attorney is encouraging us to go forward.
The total costs of pursuing this (depositions, etc.) will be substantially more than $15,000. However, Dan is willing to do it for a fixed fee of $15,000. He will not expect a retainer, i.e. payment in advance, but we should start payments ASAP. If we win the ACCJC will have to pay our costs.

PLEASE HELP BOTH OF THESE IMPORTANT EFFORTS!
Checks can be made out to Save CCSF Coalition with “legal” in the memo line and sent to:
Save CCSF Coalition
2132 Prince St.
Berkeley, CA 94705
Or you may donate online:  http://www.gofundme.com/4841ns

http://www.saveccsf.org/
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16 Years in Solitary Confinement Is Like a "Living Tomb"

American Civil Liberties Union petition to end long-term solitary confinement:
California Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard: We stand with the prisoners on hunger strike. We urge you to comply with the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons 2006 recommendations regarding an end to long-term solitary confinement.

In California, hundreds of prisoners have been held in solitary for more than a decade – some for infractions as trivial as reading Machiavelli's "The Prince."

Gabriel Reyes describes the pain of being isolated for at least 22 hours a day for the last 16 years:

“Unless you have lived it, you cannot imagine what it feels like to be by yourself, between four cold walls, with little concept of time…. It is a living tomb …’ I have not been allowed physical contact with any of my loved ones since 1995…I feel helpless and hopeless. In short, I am being psychologically tortured.”

That’s why over 30,000 prisoners in California began a hunger strike – the biggest the state has ever seen. They’re refusing food to protest prisoners being held for decades in solitary and to push for other changes to improve their basic conditions.

California Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard has tried to dismiss the strikers and refuses to negotiate, but the media pressure is building through the strike. If tens of thousands of us take action, we can help keep this issue in the spotlight so that Secretary Beard can’t ignore the inhumane treatment of prisoners.

Sign the petition urging Corrections Secretary Beard to end the use of long-term solitary confinement.

Solitary is such an extreme form of punishment that a United Nations torture rapporteur called for an international ban on the practice except in rare occasions. Here’s why:

The majority of the 80,000 people held in solitary in this country are severely mentally ill or because of a minor infraction (it’s a myth that it’s only for violent prisoners)
Even for people with stable mental health, solitary causes severe psychological reactions, often leading people to attempt suicide
It jeopardizes public safety because prisoners held in solitary have a harder time reintegrating into society.

And to add insult to injury, the hunger strikers are now facing retaliation – their lawyers are being restricted from visiting and the strikers are being punished. But the media continues to write about the hunger strike and we can help keep the pressure on Secretary Beard by signing this petition.

Sign the petition urging Corrections Secretary Beard to end the use of long-term solitary confinement.

Our criminal justice system should keep communities safe and treat people fairly. The use of solitary confinement undermines both of these goals – but little by little, we can help put a stop to such cruelty.

Thank you,
Anthony for the ACLU Action team
P.S. The hunger strikers have developed five core demands to address their basic conditions, the main one being an end to long-term solitary confinement. They are:

-End group punishment – prisoners say that officials often punish groups to address individual rule violations

-Abolish the debriefing policy, which is often demanded in return for better food or release from solitary

-End long-term solitary confinement

-Provide adequate and nutritious food

-Expand or provide constructive programming and privileges for indefinite SHU inmates

Sources
“Solitary - and anger - in California's prisons.” Los Angeles Times July 13, 2013
“Pelican Bay Prison Hunger-Strikers' Stories: Gabriel Reyes.” TruthOut July 9, 2013
“Solitary confinement should be banned in most cases, UN expert says.” UN News October 18, 2011
"Stop Solitary - Two Pager" ACLU.org
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What you Didn't know about NYPD's Stop and Frisk program !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rfJHx0Gj6ys#at=990

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Egypt: The Next President -- a little Egyptian boy speaks his remarkable mind!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeDm2PrNV1I

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Wealth Inequality in America

[This is a must see to believe video...bw]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QPKKQnijnsM

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Read the transcription of hero Bradley Manning's 35-page statement explaining why he leaked "state secrets" to WikiLeaks.

March 1, 2013

Alternet

The statement was read by Pfc. Bradley Manning at a providence inquiry for his formal plea of guilty to one specification as charged and nine specifications for lesser included offenses. He pled not guilty to 12 other specifications. This rush transcript was taken by journalist Alexa O'Brien at Thursday's pretrial hearing and first appeared on Salon.com.

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/bradley-mannings-surprising-statement-court-details-why-he-made-his-historic?akid=10129.229473.UZvQfK&rd=1&src=newsletter802922&t=7

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You Have the Right to Remain Silent: NLG Guide to Law Enforcement Encounters

Posted 1 day ago on July 27, 2012, 10:28 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

Occupy Wall Street is a nonviolent movement for social and economic justice, but in recent days disturbing reports have emerged of Occupy-affiliated activists being targeted by US law enforcement, including agents from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security. To help ensure Occupiers and allied activists know their rights when encountering law enforcement, we are publishing in full the National Lawyers Guild's booklet: You Have the Right to Remain Silent. The NLG provides invaluable support to the Occupy movement and other activists – please click here to support the NLG.

We strongly encourage all Occupiers to read and share the information provided below. We also recommend you enter the NLG's national hotline number (888-654-3265) into your cellphone (if you have one) and keep a copy handy. This information is not a substitute for legal advice. You should contact the NLG or a criminal defense attorney immediately if you have been visited by the FBI or other law enforcement officials. You should also alert your relatives, friends, co-workers and others so that they will be prepared if they are contacted as well.

You Have the Right to Remain Silent: A Know Your Rights Guide for Law Enforcement Encounters

What Rights Do I Have?

Whether or not you're a citizen, you have rights under the United States Constitution. The Fifth Amendment gives every person the right to remain silent: not to answer questions asked by a police officer or government agent. The Fourth Amendment restricts the government's power to enter and search your home or workplace, although there are many exceptions and new laws have expanded the government's power to conduct surveillance. The First Amendment protects your right to speak freely and to advocate for social change. However, if you are a non-citizen, the Department of Homeland Security may target you based on your political activities.

Standing Up For Free Speech

The government's crusade against politically-active individuals is intended to disrupt and suppress the exercise of time-honored free speech activities, such as boycotts, protests, grassroots organizing and solidarity work. Remember that you have the right to stand up to the intimidation tactics of FBI agents and other law enforcement officials who, with political motives, are targeting organizing and free speech activities. Informed resistance to these tactics and steadfast defense of your and others' rights can bring positive results. Each person who takes a courageous stand makes future resistance to government oppression easier for all. The National Lawyers Guild has a long tradition of standing up to government repression. The organization itself was labeled a "subversive" group during the McCarthy Era and was subject to FBI surveillance and infiltration for many years. Guild attorneys have defended FBI-targeted members of the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement, and the Puerto Rican independence movement. The NLG exposed FBI surveillance, infiltration and disruption tactics that were detailed during the 1975-76 COINTELPRO hearings. In 1989 the NLG prevailed in a lawsuit on behalf of several activist organizations, including the Guild, that forced the FBI to expose the extent to which it had been spying on activist movements. Under the settlement, the FBI turned over roughly 400,000 pages of its files on the Guild, which are now available at the Tamiment Library at New York University.

What if FBI Agents or Police Contact Me?

What if an agent or police officer comes to the door?

Do not invite the agents or police into your home. Do not answer any questions. Tell the agent that you do not wish to talk with him or her. You can state that your lawyer will contact them on your behalf. You can do this by stepping outside and pulling the door behind you so that the interior of your home or office is not visible, getting their contact information or business cards and then returning inside. They should cease questioning after this. If the agent or officer gives a reason for contacting you, take notes and give the information to your attorney. Anything you say, no matter how seemingly harmless or insignificant, may be used against you or others in the future. Lying to or misleading a federal agent is a crime. The more you speak, the more opportunity for federal law enforcement to find something you said (even if not intentionally) false and assert that you lied to a federal officer.

Do I have to answer questions?

You have the constitutional right to remain silent. It is not a crime to refuse to answer questions. You do not have to talk to anyone, even if you have been arrested or are in jail. You should affirmatively and unambiguously state that you wish to remain silent and that you wish to consult an attorney. Once you make the request to speak to a lawyer, do not say anything else. The Supreme Court recently ruled that answering law enforcement questions may be taken as a waiver of your right to remain silent, so it is important that you assert your rights and maintain them. Only a judge can order you to answer questions. There is one exception: some states have "stop and identify" statutes which require you to provide identity information or your name if you have been detained on reasonable suspicion that you may have committed a crime. A lawyer in your state can advise you of the status of these requirements where you reside.

Do I have to give my name?

As above, in some states you can be detained or arrested for merely refusing to give your name. And in any state, police do not always follow the law, and refusing to give your name may make them suspicious or more hostile and lead to your arrest, even without just cause, so use your judgment. Giving a false name could in some circumstances be a crime.

Do I need a lawyer?

You have the right to talk to a lawyer before you decide whether to answer questions from law enforcement. It is a good idea to talk to a lawyer if you are considering answering any questions. You have the right to have a lawyer present during any interview. The lawyer's job is to protect your rights. Once you tell the agent that you want to talk to a lawyer, he or she should stop trying to question you and should make any further contact through your lawyer. If you do not have a lawyer, you can still tell the officer you want to speak to one before answering questions. Remember to get the name, agency and telephone number of any investigator who visits you, and give that information to your lawyer. The government does not have to provide you with a free lawyer unless you are charged with a crime, but the NLG or another organization may be able to help you find a lawyer for free or at a reduced rate.

If I refuse to answer questions or say I want a lawyer, won't it seem like I have something to hide?

Anything you say to law enforcement can be used against you and others. You can never tell how a seemingly harmless bit of information might be used or manipulated to hurt you or someone else. That is why the right not to talk is a fundamental right under the Constitution. Keep in mind that although law enforcement agents are allowed to lie to you, lying to a government agent is a crime. Remaining silent is not. The safest things to say are "I am going to remain silent," "I want to speak to my lawyer," and "I do not consent to a search." It is a common practice for law enforcement agents to try to get you to waive your rights by telling you that if you have nothing to hide you would talk or that talking would "just clear things up." The fact is, if they are questioning you, they are looking to incriminate you or someone you may know, or they are engaged in political intelligence gathering. You should feel comfortable standing firm in protection and defense of your rights and refusing to answer questions.

Can agents search my home or office?

You do not have to let police or agents into your home or office unless they have and produce a valid search warrant. A search warrant is a written court order that allows the police to conduct a specified search. Interfering with a warrantless search probably will not stop it and you might get arrested. But you should say "I do not consent to a search," and call a criminal defense lawyer or the NLG. You should be aware that a roommate or guest can legally consent to a search of your house if the police believe that person has the authority to give consent, and your employer can consent to a search of your workspace without your permission.

What if agents have a search warrant?

If you are present when agents come for the search, you can ask to see the warrant. The warrant must specify in detail the places to be searched and the people or things to be taken away. Tell the agents you do not consent to the search so that they cannot go beyond what the warrant authorizes. Ask if you are allowed to watch the search; if you are allowed to, you should. Take notes, including names, badge numbers, what agency each officer is from, where they searched and what they took. If others are present, have them act as witnesses to watch carefully what is happening. If the agents ask you to give them documents, your computer, or anything else, look to see if the item is listed in the warrant. If it is not, do not consent to them taking it without talking to a lawyer. You do not have to answer questions. Talk to a lawyer first. (Note: If agents present an arrest warrant, they may only perform a cursory visual search of the premises to see if the person named in the arrest warrant is present.)

Do I have to answer questions if I have been arrested?

No. If you are arrested, you do not have to answer any questions. You should affirmatively and unambiguously state that you wish to assert your right to remain silent. Ask for a lawyer right away. Do not say anything else. Repeat to every officer who tries to talk to or question you that you wish to remain silent and that you wish to speak to a lawyer. You should always talk to a lawyer before you decide to answer any questions.

What if I speak to government agents anyway?

Even if you have already answered some questions, you can refuse to answer other questions until you have a lawyer. If you find yourself talking, stop. Assert that you wish to remain silent and that you wish to speak to a lawyer.

What if the police stop me on the street?

Ask if you are free to go. If the answer is yes, consider just walking away. If the police say you are not under arrest, but are not free to go, then you are being detained. The police can pat down the outside of your clothing if they have reason to suspect you might be armed and dangerous. If they search any more than this, say clearly, "I do not consent to a search." They may keep searching anyway. If this happens, do not resist because you can be charged with assault or resisting arrest. You do not have to answer any questions. You do not have to open bags or any closed container. Tell the officers you do not consent to a search of your bags or other property.

What if police or agents stop me in my car?

Keep your hands where the police can see them. If you are driving a vehicle, you must show your license, registration and, in some states, proof of insurance. You do not have to consent to a search. But the police may have legal grounds to search your car anyway. Clearly state that you do not consent. Officers may separate passengers and drivers from each other to question them, but no one has to answer any questions.

What if I am treated badly by the police or the FBI?

Write down the officer's badge number, name or other identifying information. You have a right to ask the officer for this information. Try to find witnesses and their names and phone numbers. If you are injured, seek medical attention and take pictures of the injuries as soon as you can. Call a lawyer as soon as possible.

What if the police or FBI threaten me with a grand jury subpoena if I don't answer their questions?

A grand jury subpoena is a written order for you to go to court and testify about information you may have. It is common for the FBI to threaten you with a subpoena to get you to talk to them. If they are going to subpoena you, they will do so anyway. You should not volunteer to speak just because you are threatened with a subpoena. You should consult a lawyer.

What if I receive a grand jury subpoena?

Grand jury proceedings are not the same as testifying at an open court trial. You are not allowed to have a lawyer present (although one may wait in the hallway and you may ask to consult with him or her after each question) and you may be asked to answer questions about your activities and associations. Because of the witness's limited rights in this situation, the government has frequently used grand jury subpoenas to gather information about activists and political organizations. It is common for the FBI to threaten activists with a subpoena in order to elicit information about their political views and activities and those of their associates. There are legal grounds for stopping ("quashing") subpoenas, and receiving one does not necessarily mean that you are suspected of a crime. If you do receive a subpoena, call the NLG National Hotline at 888-NLG-ECOL (888-654-3265) or call a criminal defense attorney immediately.

The government regularly uses grand jury subpoena power to investigate and seek evidence related to politically-active individuals and social movements. This practice is aimed at prosecuting activists and, through intimidation and disruption, discouraging continued activism.

Federal grand jury subpoenas are served in person. If you receive one, it is critically important that you retain the services of an attorney, preferably one who understands your goals and, if applicable, understands the nature of your political work, and has experience with these issues. Most lawyers are trained to provide the best legal defense for their client, often at the expense of others. Beware lawyers who summarily advise you to cooperate with grand juries, testify against friends, or cut off contact with your friends and political activists. Cooperation usually leads to others being subpoenaed and investigated. You also run the risk of being charged with perjury, a felony, should you omit any pertinent information or should there be inconsistencies in your testimony.

Frequently prosecutors will offer "use immunity," meaning that the prosecutor is prohibited from using your testimony or any leads from it to bring charges against you. If a subsequent prosecution is brought, the prosecutor bears the burden of proving that all of its evidence was obtained independent of the immunized testimony. You should be aware, however, that they will use anything you say to manipulate associates into sharing more information about you by suggesting that you have betrayed confidences.

In front of a grand jury you can "take the Fifth" (exercise your right to remain silent). However, the prosecutor may impose immunity on you, which strips you of Fifth Amendment protection and subjects you to the possibility of being cited for contempt and jailed if you refuse to answer further. In front of a grand jury you have no Sixth Amendment right to counsel, although you can consult with a lawyer outside the grand jury room after each question.

What if I don't cooperate with the grand jury?

If you receive a grand jury subpoena and elect to not cooperate, you may be held in civil contempt. There is a chance that you may be jailed or imprisoned for the length of the grand jury in an effort to coerce you to cooperate. Regular grand juries sit for a basic term of 18 months, which can be extended up to a total of 24 months. It is lawful to hold you in order to coerce your cooperation, but unlawful to hold you as a means of punishment. In rare instances you may face criminal contempt charges.

What If I Am Not a Citizen and the DHS Contacts Me?

The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) is now part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and has been renamed and reorganized into: 1. The Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS); 2. The Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP); and 3. The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). All three bureaus will be referred to as DHS for the purposes of this pamphlet.

? Assert your rights. If you do not demand your rights or if you sign papers waiving your rights, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may deport you before you see a lawyer or an immigration judge. Never sign anything without reading, understanding and knowing the consequences of signing it.

? Talk to a lawyer. If possible, carry with you the name and telephone number of an immigration lawyer who will take your calls. The immigration laws are hard to understand and there have been many recent changes. DHS will not explain your options to you. As soon as you encounter a DHS agent, call your attorney. If you can't do it right away, keep trying. Always talk to an immigration lawyer before leaving the U.S. Even some legal permanent residents can be barred from returning.

Based on today's laws, regulations and DHS guidelines, non-citizens usually have the following rights, no matter what their immigration status. This information may change, so it is important to contact a lawyer. The following rights apply to non-citizens who are inside the U.S. Non-citizens at the border who are trying to enter the U.S. do not have all the same rights.

Do I have the right to talk to a lawyer before answering any DHS questions or signing any DHS papers?

Yes. You have the right to call a lawyer or your family if you are detained, and you have the right to be visited by a lawyer in detention. You have the right to have your attorney with you at any hearing before an immigration judge. You do not have the right to a government-appointed attorney for immigration proceedings, but if you have been arrested, immigration officials must show you a list of free or low cost legal service providers.

Should I carry my green card or other immigration papers with me?

If you have documents authorizing you to stay in the U.S., you must carry them with you. Presenting false or expired papers to DHS may lead to deportation or criminal prosecution. An unexpired green card, I-94, Employment Authorization Card, Border Crossing Card or other papers that prove you are in legal status will satisfy this requirement. If you do not carry these papers with you, you could be charged with a crime. Always keep a copy of your immigration papers with a trusted family member or friend who can fax them to you, if need be. Check with your immigration lawyer about your specific case.

Am I required to talk to government officers about my immigration history?

If you are undocumented, out of status, a legal permanent resident (green card holder), or a citizen, you do not have to answer any questions about your immigration history. (You may want to consider giving your name; see above for more information about this.) If you are not in any of these categories, and you are being questioned by a DHS or FBI agent, then you may create problems with your immigration status if you refuse to provide information requested by the agent. If you have a lawyer, you can tell the agent that your lawyer will answer questions on your behalf. If answering questions could lead the agent to information that connects you with criminal activity, you should consider refusing to talk to the agent at all.

If I am arrested for immigration violations, do I have the right to a hearing before an immigration judge to defend myself against deportation charges?

Yes. In most cases only an immigration judge can order you deported. But if you waive your rights or take "voluntary departure," agreeing to leave the country, you could be deported without a hearing. If you have criminal convictions, were arrested at the border, came to the U.S. through the visa waiver program or have been ordered deported in the past, you could be deported without a hearing. Contact a lawyer immediately to see if there is any relief for you.

Can I call my consulate if I am arrested?

Yes. Non-citizens arrested in the U.S. have the right to call their consulate or to have the police tell the consulate of your arrest. The police must let your consulate visit or speak with you if consular officials decide to do so. Your consulate might help you find a lawyer or offer other help. You also have the right to refuse help from your consulate.

What happens if I give up my right to a hearing or leave the U.S. before the hearing is over?

You could lose your eligibility for certain immigration benefits, and you could be barred from returning to the U.S. for a number of years. You should always talk to an immigration lawyer before you decide to give up your right to a hearing.

What should I do if I want to contact DHS?

Always talk to a lawyer before contacting DHS, even on the phone. Many DHS officers view "enforcement" as their primary job and will not explain all of your options to you.

What Are My Rights at Airports?

IMPORTANT NOTE: It is illegal for law enforcement to perform any stops, searches, detentions or removals based solely on your race, national origin, religion, sex or ethnicity.

If I am entering the U.S. with valid travel papers can a U.S. customs agent stop and search me?

Yes. Customs agents have the right to stop, detain and search every person and item.

Can my bags or I be searched after going through metal detectors with no problem or after security sees that my bags do not contain a weapon?

Yes. Even if the initial screen of your bags reveals nothing suspicious, the screeners have the authority to conduct a further search of you or your bags.

If I am on an airplane, can an airline employee interrogate me or ask me to get off the plane?

The pilot of an airplane has the right to refuse to fly a passenger if he or she believes the passenger is a threat to the safety of the flight. The pilot's decision must be reasonable and based on observations of you, not stereotypes.

What If I Am Under 18?

Do I have to answer questions?

No. Minors too have the right to remain silent. You cannot be arrested for refusing to talk to the police, probation officers, or school officials, except in some states you may have to give your name if you have been detained.

What if I am detained?

If you are detained at a community detention facility or Juvenile Hall, you normally must be released to a parent or guardian. If charges are filed against you, in most states you are entitled to counsel (just like an adult) at no cost.

Do I have the right to express political views at school?

Public school students generally have a First Amendment right to politically organize at school by passing out leaflets, holding meetings, etc., as long as those activities are not disruptive and do not violate legitimate school rules. You may not be singled out based on your politics, ethnicity or religion.

Can my backpack or locker be searched?

School officials can search students' backpacks and lockers without a warrant if they reasonably suspect that you are involved in criminal activity or carrying drugs or weapons. Do not consent to the police or school officials searching your property, but do not physically resist or you may face criminal charges.

Disclaimer

This booklet is not a substitute for legal advice. You should contact an attorney if you have been visited by the FBI or other law enforcement officials. You should also alert your relatives, friends, co-workers and others so that they will be prepared if they are contacted as well.

NLG National Hotline for Activists Contacted by the FBI

888-NLG-ECOL

(888-654-3265)

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Free Mumia NOW!

Prisonradio.org

Write to Mumia:

Mumia Abu-Jamal AM 8335

SCI Mahanoy

301 Morea Road

Frackville, PA 17932

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Rachel Wolkenstein

August 21, 2011 (917) 689-4009

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL ILLEGALLY SENTENCED TO

LIFE IMPRISONMENT WITHOUT PAROLE!

FREE MUMIA NOW!

www.FreeMumia.com

http://blacktalkradionetwork.com/profiles/blogs/mumia-is-formally-sentenced-to-life-in-prison-w-out-hearing-he-s



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"A Child's View from Gaza: Palestinian Children's Art and the Fight Against

Censorship" book

https://www.mecaforpeace.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=25

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Justice for Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace: Decades of isolation in Louisiana

state prisons must end

Take Action -- Sign Petition Here:

http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/justice-for-albert-woodfox-and-herm\

an-wallace

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WITNESS GAZA

http://www.witnessgaza.com/

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Write to Bradley

http://bradleymanning.org/donate

View the new 90 second "I am Bradley Manning" video:

I am Bradley Manning

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-P3OXML00s

Courage to Resist

484 Lake Park Ave. #41

Oakland, CA 94610

510-488-3559

couragetoresist.org

"A Fort Leavenworth mailing address has been released for Bradley Manning:

Bradley Manning 89289

830 Sabalu Road

Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027

The receptionist at the military barracks confirmed that if someone sends

Bradley Manning a letter to that address, it will be delivered to him."

http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/update-42811

This is also a Facebook event

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=207100509321891#!/event.php?eid=2071005093\

21891

Courage to Resist needs your support

Please donate today:

https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590

"Soldiers sworn oath is to defend and support the Constitution. Bradley Manning

has been defending and supporting our Constitution." --Dan Ellsberg, Pentagon

Papers whistle-blower

Jeff Paterson

Project Director, Courage to Resist

First US military service member to refuse to fight in Iraq

Please donate today.

https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590

P.S. I'm asking that you consider a contribution of $50 or more, or possibly

becoming a sustainer at $15 a month. Of course, now is also a perfect time to

make a end of year tax-deductible donation. Thanks again for your support!

Please click here to forward this to a friend who might also be interested in

supporting GI resisters.

http://ymlp.com/forward.php?id=lS3tR&e=bonnieweinstein@yahoo.com

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The Battle Is Still On To

FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL!

The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal

PO Box 16222 • Oakland CA 94610

www.laboractionmumia.org

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KEVIN COOPER IS INNOCENT! FREE KEVIN COOPER!

Reasonable doubts about executing Kevin Cooper

Chronicle Editorial

Monday, December 13, 2010

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/13/EDG81GP0I7.DTL

Death penalty -- Kevin Cooper is Innocent! Help save his life from San Quentin's

death row!

http://www.savekevincooper.org/

http://www.savekevincooper.org/pages/essays_content.html?ID=255

URGENT ACTION APPEAL

- From Amnesty International USA

17 December 2010

Click here to take action online:

http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&\

b=2590179&template=x.ascx&action=15084

To learn about recent Urgent Action successes and updates, go to

http://www.amnestyusa.org/iar/success

For a print-friendly version of this Urgent Action (PDF):

http://www.amnestyusa.org/actioncenter/actions/uaa25910.pdf

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Short Video About Al-Awda's Work

The following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's

work since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown

on Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l

Al-Awda Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected

over the past nine years.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurl

Support Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!

Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial

support to carry out its work.

To submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go to

http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html

and follow the simple instructions.

Thank you for your generosity!

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D. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.:

[Some of these videos are embeded on the BAUAW website:

http://bauaw.blogspot.com/ or bauaw.org ...bw]

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Checkpoint - Jasiri X 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq6Y6LSjulU



Published on Jan 28, 2014
"Checkpoint" is based on the oppression and discrimination Jasiri X witnessed firsthand during his recent trip to Palestine and Israel "Checkpoint" is produced by Agent of Change, and directed by Haute Muslim. Download "Checkpoint" at https://jasirix.bandcamp.com/track/ch....

Follow Jasiri X at https://twitter.com/jasiri_x

LYRICS
Journal of the hard times tales from the dark side
Evidence of the settlements on my hard drive
Man I swear my heart died at the end of that car ride
When I saw that checkpoint welcome to apartheid
Soldiers wear military green at the checkpoint
Automatic guns that's machine at the checkpoint
Tavors not m16s at the checkpoint
Fingers on the trigger you'll get leaned at the checkpoint
Little children grown adults or teens at the checkpoint
All ya papers better be clean at the checkpoint
You gotta but your finger on the screen at the checkpoint
And pray that red light turns green at the check point

If Martin Luther King had a dream of the checkpoint
He wake with loud screams from the scenes at the checkpoint
It's Malcolm X by any means at the check point
Imagine if you daily routine was the checkpoint

Separation walls that's surrounding the checkpoint
On top is barbwire like a crown on the checkpoint
Better have ya permits if your found at the checkpoint
Gunmen on the tower aiming down at the checkpoint
The idea is to keep you in fear of the checkpoint
You enter through the cage in the rear of the checkpoint
It feels like prison on a tier at the check point
I'd rather be anywhere but here at this checkpoint
Nelson Mandela wasn't blind to the check point
He stood for free Palestine not a check point
Support BDS don't give a dime to the checkpoint
This is international crime at the checkpoint
Arabs get treated like dogs at the checkpoint
Cause discrimination is the law at the checkpoint
Criminalized without a cause at the checkpoint
I'm just telling you what I saw at the checkpoint
Soldiers got bad attitudes at the checkpoint
Condescending and real rude at the checkpoint
Don't look em in they eyes when they move at the checkpoint
They might strip a man or woman nude at the checkpoint
Soldiers might blow you out of ya shoes at the checkpoint
Gas you up and then light the fuse at the checkpoint
Everyday you stand to be accused at the checkpoint
Each time your life you could lose at the checkpoint

If Martin Luther King had a dream of the checkpoint
He wake with loud screams from the scenes at the checkpoint
It's Malcolm X by any means at the check point
Imagine if you daily routine was the checkpoint

At the airport in Tel Aviv is a checkpoint
They pulled over our taxi at the checkpoint
Passport visa ID at the checkpoint
Soldiers going all through my things at the checkpoint
Said I was high risk security at the checkpoint
Because of the oppression I see at the checkpoint
Occupation in the 3rd degree at the checkpoint
All a nigga wanna do is leave fuck a checkpoint

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Exceptional art from the streets of Oakland:

Oakland Street Dancing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQRRnAhmB58

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqH9s5mwTEY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atyTZ8prhCg

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NYC RESTAURANT WORKERS DANCE & SING FOR A WAGE HIKE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_s8e1R6rG8&feature=player_embedded

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On Gun Control, Martin Luther King, the Deacons of Defense and the history of Black Liberation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzYKisvBN1o&feature=player_embedded

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Fukushima Never Again

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU-Z4VLDGxU

"Fukushima, Never Again" tells the story of the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdowns in north east Japan in March of 2011 and exposes the cover-up by Tepco and the Japanese government.

This is the first film that interviews the Mothers Of Fukushima, nuclear power experts and trade unionists who are fighting for justice and the protection of the children and the people of Japan and the world. The residents and citizens were forced to buy their own geiger counters and radiation dosimeters in order to test their communities to find out if they were in danger.

The government said contaminated soil in children's school grounds was safe and then

when the people found out it was contaminated and removed the top soil, the government and TEPCO refused to remove it from the school grounds.

It also relays how the nuclear energy program for "peaceful atoms" was brought to Japan under the auspices of the US military occupation and also the criminal cover-up of the safety dangers of the plant by TEPCO and GE management which built the plant in Fukushima. It also interviews Kei Sugaoka, the GE nulcear plant inspector from the bay area who exposed cover-ups in the safety at the Fukushima plant and was retaliated against by GE. This documentary allows the voices of the people and workers to speak out about the reality of the disaster and what this means not only for the people of Japan but the people of the world as the US government and nuclear industry continue to push for more new plants and government subsidies. This film breaks

the information blockade story line of the corporate media in Japan, the US and around the world that Fukushima is over.

Production Of Labor Video Project

P.O. Box 720027

San Francisco, CA 94172

www.laborvideo.org

lvpsf@laborvideo.org

For information on obtaining the video go to:

www.fukushimaneveragain.com

(415)282-1908


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1000 year of war through the world

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiG8neU4_bs&feature=share

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Anatomy of a Massacre - Afganistan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6BnRc11aug&feature=player_embedded

Afghans accuse multiple soldiers of pre-meditated murder

To see more go to http://www.youtube.com/user/journeymanpictures

Follow us on Facebook (http://goo.gl/YRw42) or Twitter

(http://www.twitter.com/journeymanvod)

The recent massacre of 17 civilians by a rogue US soldier has been shrouded in

mystery. But through unprecedented access to those involved, this report

confronts the accusations that Bales didn't act alone.

"They came into my room and they killed my family". Stories like this are common

amongst the survivors in Aklozai and Najiban. As are the shocking accusations

that Sergeant Bales was not acting alone. Even President Karzai has announced

"one man can not do that". Chief investigator, General Karimi, is suspicious

that despite being fully armed, Bales freely left his base without raising

alarm. "How come he leaves at night and nobody is aware? Every time we have

weapon accountability and personal accountability." These are just a few of the

questions the American army and government are yet to answer. One thing however

is very clear, the massacre has unleashed a wave of grief and outrage which

means relations in Kandahar will be tense for years to come: "If I could lay my

hands on those infidels, I would rip them apart with my bare hands."

A Film By SBS

Distributed By Journeyman Pictures

April 2012

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Photo of George Zimmerman, in 2005 photo, left, and in a more recent photo.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/04/02/us/the-events-leading-to-the-sooti\

ng-of-trayvon-martin.html?hp

SPD Security Cams.wmv

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WWDNbQUgm4&feature=player_embedded

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Kids being put on buses and transported from school to "alternate locations" in

Terror Drills

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFia_w8adWQ

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Private prisons,

a recession resistant investment opportunity

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIGLDOxx9Vg

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Attack Dogs used on a High School Walkout in MD, Four Students Charged With

"Thought Crimes"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wafMaML17w

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Common forms of misconduct by Law Enforcement Officials and Prosecutors

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViSpM4K276w&feature=related

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Organizing and Instigating: OCCUPY - Ronnie Goodman

http://arthazelwood.com/instigator/occupy/occupy-birth-video.html

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Rep News 12: Yes We Kony

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68GbzIkYdc8

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The New Black by The Mavrix - Official Music Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4rLfja8488

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Japan One Year Later

http://www.onlineschools.org/japan-one-year-later/

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The CIA's Heart Attack Gun

http://www.brasschecktv.com/videos/assassination-studies/the-cias-heart-attack-g\

un-.html

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The Invisible American Workforce

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/8/5/new_expos_tracks_alec_private_prison

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Labor Beat: NATO vs The 1st Amendment

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbQxnb4so3U

For more detailed information, send us a request at mail@laborbeat.org.


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The Battle of Oakland

by brandon jourdan plus

http://vimeo.com/36256273

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Officers Pulled Off Street After Tape of Beating Surfaces

By ANDY NEWMAN

February 1, 2012, 10:56 am

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/officers-pulled-off-street-after-ta\

pe-of-beating-surfaces/?ref=nyregion

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This is excellent! Michelle Alexander pulls no punches!

Michelle Alexander, Author of The New Jim Crow, speaks about the political

strategy

behind the War on Drugs and its connection to the mass incarceration of Black

and Brown people in the United States.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P75cbEdNo2U&feature=player_embedded

If you think Bill Clinton was "the first black President" you need to watch this

video and see how much damage his administration caused for the black community

as a result of his get tough attitude on crime that appealed to white swing

voters.

This speech took place at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem on January 12,

2012.

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FREE BRADLEY MANNING

http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/national-call-in-for-bradley

I received the following reply from the White House November 18, 2011 regarding

the Bradley Manning petition I signed:

"Why We Can't Comment on Bradley Manning

"Thank you for signing the petition 'Free PFC Bradley Manning, the accused

WikiLeaks whistleblower.' We appreciate your participation in the We the People

platform on WhiteHouse.gov.

The We the People Terms of Participation explain that 'the White House may

decline to address certain procurement, law enforcement, adjudicatory, or

similar matters properly within the jurisdiction of federal departments or

agencies, federal courts, or state and local government.' The military justice

system is charged with enforcing the Uniform Code of

Military Justice. Accordingly, the White House declines to comment on the

specific case raised in this petition...

That's funny! I guess Obama didn't get this memo. Here's what Obama said about

Bradley:

BRADLEY MANNING "BROKE THE LAW" SAYS OBAMA!

"He broke the law!" says Obama about Bradley Manning who has yet to even be

charged, let alone, gone to trial and found guilty. How horrendous is it for the

President to declare someone guilty before going to trial or being charged with

a crime! Justice in the U.S.A.!

Obama on FREE BRADLEY MANNING protest... San Francisco, CA. April 21, 2011-

Presidential remarks on interrupt/interaction/performance art happening at

fundraiser. Logan Price queries Barack after org. FRESH JUICE PARTY political

action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfmtUpd4id0&feature=youtu.be

Release Bradley Manning

Almost Gone (The Ballad Of Bradley Manning)

Written by Graham Nash and James Raymond (son of David Crosby)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAYG7yJpBbQ&feature=player_embedded

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Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVGqE726OAo&feature=player_embedded

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School police increasingly arresting American students?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl-efNBvjUU&feature=player_embedded

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FYI:

Nuclear Detonation Timeline "1945-1998"

The 2053 nuclear tests and explosions that took place between 1945 and 1998 are

plotted visually and audibly on a world map.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9lquok4Pdk&feature=share&mid=5408

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We Are the 99 Percent

We are the 99 percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to

choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are

suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay

and no rights, if we're working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1

percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent.

Brought to you by the people who occupy wall street. Why will YOU occupy?

OccupyWallSt.org

Occupytogether.org

wearethe99percentuk.tumblr.com

http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/

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We Are The People Who Will Save Our Schools

YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFAOJsBxAxY

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In honor of the 75th Anniversary of the 44-Day Flint Michigan sit-down strike at

GM that began December 30, 1936:

According to Michael Moore, (Although he has done some good things, this clip

isn't one of them) in this clip from his film, "Capitalism a Love Story," it was

Roosevelt who saved the day!):

"After a bloody battle one evening, the Governor of Michigan, with the support

of the President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, sent in the National

Guard. But the guns and the soldiers weren't used on the workers; they were

pointed at the police and the hired goons warning them to leave these workers

alone. For Mr. Roosevelt believed that the men inside had a right to a redress

of their grievances." -Michael Moore's 'Capitalism: A Love Story'

- Flint Sit-Down Strike http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8x1_q9wg58

But those cannons were not aimed at the goons and cops! They were aimed straight

at the factory filled with strikers! Watch what REALLY happened and how the

strike was really won!

'With babies & banners' -- 75 years since the 44-day Flint sit-down strike

http://links.org.au/node/2681

--Inspiring

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HALLELUJAH CORPORATIONS (revised edition).mov

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws0WSNRpy3g

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ONE OF THE GREATEST POSTS ON YOUTUBE SO FAR!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8C-qIgbP9o&feature=share&mid=552

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ILWU Local 10 Longshore Workers Speak-Out At Oakland Port Shutdown

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JUpBpZYwms

Uploaded by laborvideo on Dec 13, 2011

ILWU Local 10 longshore workers speak out during a blockade of the Port of

Oakland called for by Occupy Oakland. Anthony Levieges and Clarence Thomas rank

and file members of the union. The action took place on December 12, 2011 and

the interview took place at Pier 30 on the Oakland docks.

For more information on the ILWU Local 21 Longview EGT struggle go to

http://www.facebook.com/groups/256313837734192/

For further info on the action and the press conferernce go to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz3fE-Vhrw8&feature=youtu.be

Production of Labor Video Project www.laborvideo.org

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UC Davis Police Violence Adds Fuel to Fire

By Scott Galindez, Reader Supported News

19 November 11

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/275-42/8485-uc-davis-police-violence-add\

s-fuel-to-fire

UC Davis Protestors Pepper Sprayed

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AdDLhPwpp4&feature=player_embedded

Police PEPPER SPRAY UC Davis STUDENT PROTESTERS!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuWEx6Cfn-I&feature=player_embedded

Police pepper spraying and arresting students at UC Davis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmJmmnMkuEM&feature=player_embedded

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UC Davis Chancellor Katehi walks to her car

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CZ0t9ez_EGI#!

Occupy Seattle - 84 Year Old Woman Dorli Rainey Pepper Sprayed

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTIyE_JlJzw&feature=related

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THE BEST VIDEO ON "OCCUPY THE WORLD"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S880UldxB1o

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Shot by police with rubber bullet at Occupy Oakland

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0pX9LeE-g8&feature=player_embedded

*---------*

Copwatch@Occupy Oakland: Beware of Police Infiltrators and Provocateurs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrvMzqopHH0

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Occupy Oakland 11-2 Strike: Police Tear Gas, Black Bloc, War in the Streets

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Tu_D8SFYck&feature=player_embedded

*----*

Quebec police admitted that, in 2007, thugs carrying rocks to a peaceful protest

were actually undercover Quebec police officers:

POLICE STATE Criminal Cops EXPOSED As Agent Provocateurs @ SPP Protest

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoiisMMCFT0&feature=player_embedded

*----*

Quebec police admit going undercover at montebello protests

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAfzUOx53Rg&feature=player_embedded

G20: Epic Undercover Police Fail

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrJ7aU-n1L8&feature=player_embedded

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WHAT HAPPENED IN OAKLAND TUESDAY NIGHT, OCTOBER 25:

Occupy Oakland Protest

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlPs-REyl-0&feature=player_embedded

Cops make mass arrests at occupy Oakland

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R27kD2_7PwU&feature=player_embedded

Raw Video: Protesters Clash With Oakland Police

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpO-lJr2BQY&feature=player_embedded

Occupy Oakland - Flashbangs USED on protesters OPD LIES

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqNOPZLw03Q&feature=player_embedded

KTVU TV Video of Police violence

http://www.ktvu.com/video/29587714/index.html

Marine Vet wounded, tear gas & flash-bang grenades thrown in downtown

Oakland

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMUgPTCgwcQ&feature=player_embedded

Tear Gas billowing through 14th & Broadway in Downtown Oakland

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU4Y0pwJtWE&feature=player_embedded

Arrests at Occupy Atlanta -- This is what a police state looks like

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YStWz6jbeZA&feature=player_embedded

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Labor Beat: Hey You Billionaire, Pay Your Fair Share

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY8isD33f-I

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Voices of Occupy Boston 2011 - Kwame Somburu (Paul Boutelle) Part I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA48gmfGB6U&feature=youtu.be

Voices of Occupy Boston 2011 - Kwame Somburu (Paul Boutelle) Part II

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjKZpOk7TyM&feature=related

*---------*

#Occupy Wall Street In Washington Square: Mohammed Ezzeldin, former occupier of

Egypt's Tahrir Square Speaks at Washington Square!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziodsFWEb5Y&feature=player_embedded

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#OccupyTheHood, Occupy Wall Street

By adele pham

http://vimeo.com/30146870

*---------*

Live arrest at brooklyn bridge #occupywallstreet by We are Change

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yULSI-31Pto&feature=player_embedded

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FREE THE CUBAN FIVE!

http://www.thecuban5.org/wordpress/index.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmS4kHC_OlY&feature=player_embedded

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One World One Revolution -- MUST SEE VIDEO -- Powerful and beautiful...bw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE3R1BQrYCw&feature=player_embedded

"When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty." Thomas Jefferson

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Japan: angry Fukushima citizens confront government (video)

Posted by Xeni Jardin on Monday, Jul 25th at 11:36am

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVuGwc9dlhQ&feature=player_embedded


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Labor Beat: Labor Stands with Subpoenaed Activists Against FBI Raids and Grand

Jury Investigation of antiwar and social justice activists.

"If trouble is not at your door. It's on it's way, or it just left."

"Investigate the Billionaires...Full investigation into Wall Street..." Jesse

Sharkey, Vice

President, Chicago Teachers Union

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSNUSIGZCMQ

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Coal Ash: One Valley's Tale

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E7h-DNvwx4&feature=player_embedded

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