Saturday, November 22, 2014

BAUAW NEWSLETTER: SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2014


SF Emergency Protest if Officer Darren Wilson Not Indicted in Killing of Michael Brown

5pm at 24th and Mission Sts., SF
(Same day if announcement is made before 5 pm PST, next day if announcement is after 5 pm PST)

Call 415-821-6545 for information.

The ANSWER Coalition is calling on all of its affiliate organizations, friends and supporters to join in day of/day after demonstrations that are being planned in local cities around the country should the grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri, fail to indict officer Darren Wilson for the cold-blooded murder of unarmed teenager Michael Brown. Hundreds of protests across the country are expected if the event that the grand jury fails to indict.

Initiated by: ANSWER Coalition

More info on nationwide protests:
http://fergusonresponse.tumblr.com/

ANSWER SF
http://answersf.nationbuilder.com/

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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter

Table of Contents:

A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS

B. ARTICLES IN FULL



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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS



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Sunday, Nov. 23, 10am - 3pm
"Change the Name" Rally
Levi's Stadium, Santa Clara

Share the Facebook event

change nameA rally and march will be held demanding that the Washington National Football League change its racist nickname and mascot. Washington will be playing the San Francisco 49ers.

Sponsored by American Indian Movement-West, Bay Area Coalition Against Racism in Sports, Eradicating Offensive Native Mascotry, Indian People Organizing for Change, Sacred Sites Protection & Rights of Indigenous Tribes, ANSWER Coalition, Idle No More Bay Area CA, and more.

For more information, call Tony Gonzales at  AIM-West, 415-577-1492 or Kris Longoria at 510-759-3911.

ANSWER SF
http://answersf.nationbuilder.com/

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COURAGE TO RESIST
http://couragetoresist.org/
  • EU's top court rules favorably for André Shepherd, resister in Germany
  • Tomas Young (1979-2014), Iraq War veteran and anti-war hero
  • Objector Sara Beining trial set for Dec. 9th at Ft Carson, Colorado
  • Armistice Day statement from Veterans for Peace

André Shepherd gets favorable ruling from EU's top court prior to asylum hearing!

shepherdNovember 11, 2014. By Connection e.V.and Courage to Resist
In the legal case of U.S. AWOL soldier André Shepherd, the European Court of Justice Advocate General, Eleanor Sharpton, ruled that those endangered by prosecution or punishment for refusal to perform military service involving an illegal war or committal of war crimes, should be protected by the European Union. This is a best-case situation for André heading into his asylum hearing.
Rudi Friedrich of Connection e.V. (Germany) stated, "Should the European Union Court of Justice respect the Advocate General's final opinion, the position in asylum cases of military service refusers and deserters will be significantly reinforced.
André Shepherd, upon reading Sharpton's decision, "The final opinion gives me new reason for optimism, both in my own case, and for the rights of other deserters."

Tomas Young (1979-2014)

tomas youngNovember 11, 2014. Excerpts from CommonDreams obituary
Iraq war veteran and outspoken Iraq war critic Tomas Young has died at the age of 34.
Tomas Young enlisted in the Army following the September 11 attacks, volunteering to go to Afghanistan. He was sent to Iraq in 2004, and was left paralyzed by a bullet on the fifth day of his deployment. In 2008, he explained that "many of us volunteered with patriotic feelings in our heart, only to see them subverted and bastardized by the administration and sent into the wrong country."
Young was the subject of the award-wining documentary Body of War by Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro.
Last year, Tomas read a letter to Bush and Cheney which read in part: "You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans — my fellow veterans — whose future you stole."
Photo by Jeff Paterson. Tomas Young traveled to Crawford, Texas in an attempt to challenge President Bush on the Iraq War. August 29, 2005.

War resister Sara Beining court martial set for Dec. 9 at Fort Carson, Colorado

sara beiningClick here to contribute to Sara Beining’s legal defense and prison fund
November 11, 2014. Courage to Resist and the Nuclear Resister
Facing a lengthy prison sentence, Army war resister Sara Beining is scheduled to be court martialed at Fort Carson, Colorado at 9am, December 9th, on two counts of desertion.
Supporters are encouraged to attend the trial, contribute to her legal and prison fund, and send her letters letter of support to: Sara Beining, A0305918 / Criminal Justice Center / 2739 E. Las Vegas St / Colorado Springs, CO 80906
Sara is a single mother and Iraq war veteran. She is being held in the civilian county jail prior to her military trial. Sara went AWOL a second time last summer after a nearly year-long delay in resolving the original charge that resulted when she left her unit at Ft. Hood in January, 2007.
Just over one year ago, September 14, 2013, Beining was stopped for a traffic offense and held on an outstanding military warrant, more than six years after she and her newlywed husband had together walked away from war service. She was briefly jailed, then given a plane ticket and orders to report back to Fort Carson, Colorado, where, she said, “I tried for another year to play the game” and be quietly processed out of the army as many other recent military refusers have been. But in her absence without leave, Beining had given birth to a daughter in September, 2008 and become an outspoken opponent of war.


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

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Rasmea Defense Committee statement

Without a full and fair trial,
Rasmea found guilty

In a travesty of justice, Rasmea Odeh today was found guilty of one count of Unlawful Procurement of Naturalization. For over a year, Rasmea, her supporters, and her legal team have been battling this unjust government prosecution, saying from the start that the immigration charge was nothing but a pretext to attack this icon of the Palestine liberation movement. And although there is real anger and disappointment in the jury’s verdict, it was known as early as October 27th that she would not get a full and fair trial.

On that day, Judge Gershwin Drain made a number of rulings that made her defense virtually impossible. The government’s indictment stated that she had unlawfully gained U.S. citizenship because she had allegedly answered a number of questions falsely on her visa application in 1995 and her naturalization application in 2004. She had been in this country as a lawful permanent resident for almost 20 years, and a citizen for over nine, when she was arrested on October 22nd, 2013.

The main basis for the arrest a year ago was that she had allegedly falsely answered “No” to a question asking whether she had ever been arrested or imprisoned. The government claimed that she failed to disclose that she had been convicted by the Israelis of participating in bombings in 1969. This conviction in a military court was the result of a false confession made after she was viciously tortured and raped by Israeli military authorities for weeks. There is no due process in Israeli military courts, which “convict” over 99% of Palestinians who come before them, and “evidence” from these should not be accepted in a court in the U.S.

But Judge Drain did allow the conviction in Israel to be entered into evidence; and even though he suggested that Rasmea’s assertion that she faced torture and sexual abuse at the hands of her Israeli captors was “credible,” he still ruled that it could not be brought up in the course of her trial. So her attorneys had to scrap plans to call to the stand an expert witness, clinical psychologist Dr. Mary Fabri, who has decades of experience working with torture survivors, to testify that the allegedly false answers on the immigration forms were the result of Rasmea’s chronic Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

The judge also rejected Rasmea’s selective prosecution motion, even though it was clear that the case against her grew out of the investigation of 23 anti-war and Palestinian community organizers in Chicago and Minneapolis, who were subpoenaed to a federal grand jury in 2010. Make no mistake. Rasmea came under attack by the U.S. government because she is Palestinian, and because for decades, she has organized for Palestinian liberation and self-determination, the Right of Return, and an end to U.S. funding of Israeli occupation. Palestine support work, especially the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement, has made a number of recent gains, and the long arm of federal law enforcement has attempted to crack down on it, like it has on all effective and impactful movements for social justice in the history of this country. The crackdown reached Rasmea.

More than 200 people from across the Midwest, especially from Chicago, traveled to stand with her throughout the trial. They bore silent witness to her incredible testimony, for despite the judge’s rulings, she and her defense team did put the crimes of Israel on record. Her story of being exiled from the village of her birth, Lifta, in 1948; of being exiled again during the 1967 war; of experiencing the death of her sister after the raid on her home in 1969; and of being a political prisoner, one of the most famous in the history of the Palestine liberation movement—all these are stories of the crimes of apartheid Israel, crimes that continue today in the racist settler and military assaults we have seen in the Gaza Strip, Jerusalem, 1948 Palestine, and the West Bank. Israel’s terrorism, and the U.S. government’s complicity, were exposed for all the world to see.

Rasmea’s honesty in the face of cross-examination from Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Tukel was thoroughly convincing as well. She said clearly that she thought the questions on the immigration forms were being asked about her time in the U.S., because she said she had nothing to hide and did not need to lie. She had testified about her torture at the United Nations when she was released in 1979, and as her lead attorney, Michael Deutsch, said, “It was well known that she was convicted, and traded [in a prisoner exchange]. The U.S. Embassy knew it, the State Department knew it, and Immigration should have known it.” So although the government had to prove that she “knowingly lied,” it never met that burden, regardless of what the verdict says.

For over a year, the Rasmea Defense Committee has been organizing educational events, rallies, protests, and call-in days to demand that U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade and Tukel drop the charges against her. We now have more work ahead of us. Rasmea’s brilliant legal team—Deutsch, Jim Fennerty, Bill Goodman, and Dennis Cunningham—will undoubtedly file an appeal, and have strong grounds to do so, based on Judge Drain’s unjust decisions. And we will continue to support their work with our political organizing and mobilizations.

Just like our people in Palestine and across the world will never rest until every inch of historical Palestine is free, we will never rest in our defense and support of Rasmea as she moves forward to challenge this conviction. As Deutsch said in his closing statement to the jury, “It has been one of the great privileges of my long legal career to represent this extraordinary woman of great passion and dignity.” Rasmea’s story is the story of millions of Palestinians, and of millions of freedom-loving defenders of justice everywhere. Her eventual victory will be a victory for Palestine and for all the people’s movements across the world.

Today, we thank everyone who stood with Rasmea this past year, and ask you to continue fighting with us until we achieve that victory.

www.uspcn.org and www.stopfbi.net
Donate to Rasmea! today

http://www.stopfbi.net/events/11-10-14/be-detroit-nov-10-rasmea-odeh-and-final-verdict

 follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend
Copyright © 2014 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights reserved.
Thanks for your ongoing interest in the fight against FBI repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists!
Our mailing address is:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414



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Urban Dreams Restored!

A Victory, but More Struggle Ahead

20 November 2014 — In an unexpected announcement, the new Superintendent of Oakland Schools, Antwan Wilson, announced yesterday that the Urban Dreams website, taken down in April of this year by Oakland School officials, would be restored. This teacher-generated, social issues site had been singled out by the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) and Fox News as a target, because it included a curriculum which focussed on a comparison between Martin Luther King and Mumia Abu-Jamal. Mumia has been a target of the FOP ever since police and prosecutors framed him up for the shooting death of a police officer in 1981 in Philadelphia.

The Oakland School Board could have defied this police attack on free speech and academic freedom months ago, but chose instead to capitulate under a Fox News onslaught without a whimper. Now, let’s make sure they stick to their word to restore the site!

The main credit for this victory goes to Oakland Teachers for Mumia, who have worked tirelessly for this restoration, and to Johanna Fernandez of Educators For Mumia, who valiantly combatted Fox News in an on-air interview on this subject earlier this year. It also goes to Pulitzer Prize-wining author Alice Walker, who wrote a firm letter to the School Board opposing the censorship of Urban Dreams. (We send out her letter again, reproduced below.)

The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal is ecstatic that this victory has been achieved, and we salute all those involved in this struggle. But we remind everyone that we need to see the actual restoration without censorship of the Urban Dreams site (promised for the “next week or so”), and we need to keep struggling to combat the other attacks of cops against free speech, chiefly the new “gag” law just passed in Pennsylvania.

PA Gag Law Punishes Prisoners for Speech

Although Mumia Abu-Jamal has been shown to be innocent, having been victimized by (now discredited) “witness” allegations and other prosecutorial fabrications, the FOP, having failed to get him executed, continues to seek to “shut him up.”  This is precisely the purpose of a new law, just passed and signed in Pennsylvania, which punishes any felony convict for speech which causes “mental anguish” to the crime victim(s). Clearly unconstitutional, this law threatens not just prisoners, but non-profit organizations which distribute their speech and writings, such as Prison Radio and the Pacifica Radio Network, both of which publish and air Mumia’s prolific commentaries.

Save the Date — 05 December

The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, together with Prison Radio and Oakland Teachers for Mumia, will hold a public forum, Cops vs Free Speech, on December 5th at La Pena Cultural Center in Berkeley.  Please join us for this important event!

Cops vs Free Speech

How police are threatening the right
of free speech of convicts, dissidents,
and All of Us!

Speakers: Keith Cook (Mumia’s brother),
Cephus “Uncle Bobby” Johnson,
Mumia’s recorded comments,
and other Speakers.

Film showing: “Manufacturing Guilt,”
an expose of the frame-up of Mumia Abu-Jamal

7 pm Friday Dec. 5th 2014
La Pena Cultural Center
3105 Shattuck Av. Berkeley CA

$5 - $!0 sliding scale
All donations benefit the
defense suit against the PA Gag Law

- The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222  •  Oakland CA  •  510.763.2347
_  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _

       PULITZER PRIZE WINNER ALICE WALKER OPPOSES POLICE CENSORSHIP OF OAKLAND SCHOOLS CURRICULUM

November 8, 2014

I am dismayed to learn that the Oakland School Board has dismantled a website of Social Justice lesson plans because the police objected to it.  The Board has a duty to defend students’ right to learn against police interference.  I am asking the Oakland School District to repost the Urban Dreams website.

The police attack on Urban Dreams is part of a long campaign to injure and defame political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, a brilliant journalist and author who is innocent of all charges against him.  In October the police obtained a state gag law in Pennsylvania specifically intended to silence Mumia Abu-Jamal.  One lesson on the Urban Dreams website in Oakland asked students to compare media suppression of Mumia’s writings with suppression of the radical thoughts of Martin Luther King, and the police call for censorship was meant to shut out the words of both these defenders of freedom.

I hope that the educators of the Oakland School Board will defend free speech and academic freedom by restoring the Urban Dreams website.

In Peace,
Alice Walker

CC:  Antwan Wilson, Superintendent
David Kakishiba, School Board President
Oakland Teachers for Mumia
Oakland Tribune
San Francisco Chronicle

— This message is from: Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222  •  Oakland CA 94610  •   510 763-2347
18 November 2014


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First Amendment Lawsuit

"Abu-Jamal v. Kane" filed 11/10 in Federal Court!

Dear Friends,

Today the Abolitionist Law Center, Amistad Law Project, and the
Roderick & Solange MacArthur Justice Center are filing a historic lawsuit in Federal Court on behalf of Prison Radio, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Educators for Mumia, and other plaintiffs. We seek to overturn a new PA Law designed to allow the state to silence targeted prisoners by preventing their speech.

What is at stake is your right to hear Mumia and other prisoners, journalists right to record, and prisoners right to speak.  As a puppet for the agenda of the Fraternal Order of Police, and to add to his poll numbers, PA Governor Tom Corbett signed SB508 into law on 10/21, (effective immediately), and specifically targeting Mumia Abu-Jamal's right to free speech.

The law puts Prison Radio, our correspondents, and our listeners in jeopardy. So in response we have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in the middle district of PA (Harrisburg).

We will win this lawsuit.
We will continue to record Mumia.
We can uphold all prisoners’ rights to speak their truth.
But we need your help to do it.

DONATE:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/protect-freedom-of-speech-keep-mumia-on-the-air


Defeat Pennsylvania’s Prisoner Gag Law!

Free Speech Under Threat from Police & Politicians!

Mumia is the Immediate Target, but We’re All in the Cross-Hairs!

How You Can Help… see below…

07 November 2014 — An outrageous new law threatening the free speech of convicts has been passed in Pennsylvania in a lightning fast process. The chief target of this law?  Innocent political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, and others like him. The perpetrators of this law?  The Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), and their lap-dog friends in the state legislature and governor’s mansion of PA. The victims of this law? Convicts like Mumia; non-profits that distribute the writings and speech of convicts; and ultimately the working class and all who oppose this racist, capitalist system.

The new law, the “Re-victimization Relief Act,” enables crime victims—as well as local authorities and the state, using taxpayer funds—to sue any imprisoned convict whose conduct “perpetuates the continuing effect of the crime on the victim,” ie, causes “mental anguish.” This broad and subjective definition could mean anything!

PA Governor: Convicts Have No Rights

This law was hashed together, and quickly passed and signed in reaction to a pre-recorded commencement address to a Goddard College graduating class by Mumia Abu-Jamal, himself a graduate of Goddard College.  Mumia’s inspiring address at Goddard said absolutely nothing about his case, yet cops protested at the college entrance; and days later the law was signed by PA Governor Corbett in a ceremony at 13th and Locust in Philadelphia, the spot where Officer Daniel Faulkner was shot to death—by someone other than Mumia—in 1981. Corbett said that “convicted felons in prison have abused and surrendered their rights,” a blatantly false assertion.

Protestors shouted “free Mumia,” and “one-term Tom” at the Governor, which is what he turned out to be after losing his seat in the recent mid-term elections. But the threatening law he signed continues to menace convicts.

“Mumia Bill” Designed to “Shut Him Up”

This new law is just the latest manifestation of the blatant targeting of Mumia, by the very cops, courts and politicians who put him away for a crime he didn’t commit in the first place. Called the “Mumia Bill,” this act was designed to “shut him up” (Philly.com, 07.Oct.2014). It follows a long line of “Mumia rules,” in which courts have literally changed precedent when considering Mumia’s case, only to change back again on other cases later. Will this blatantly unconstitutional law get overturned, or will it be allowed to stand as yet another “Mumia rule,” in defiance of all precedent? We cannot take that chance!

Mumia’s case is just the immediate pretext for this legal atrocity. The danger here is that this blatantly unconstitutional law could have far-reaching effects, even if it does eventually get overturned. What about radio stations such as the Pacifica Network, and non-profit organizations such as Prison Radio, which promote the defense cases, and distribute the writings of Mumia and other convicts, wrongfully convicted or otherwise?  They all have the right of free speech!

Lawyers with the Abolitionist Law Center and the Amistad Law Project have joined with Prison Radio (publishers of Mumia’s commentaries) to mount an aggressive defense against this vindictive, so-called “legal” challenge to the right of free speech. These folks need you help!

— Donate Now To Defeat PA’s Prisoner Gag Law —

Go to: http://bit.ly/defendfreespeech

Mumia has been definitively shown to be innocent of the 1981 crime for which he was convicted. He was the victim of an orchestrated frame-up by cops and prosecutors, who were not only targeting a known leftist and former Black Panther, and not only covering up their own rampant corruption in Philadelphia’s inner city; but they were also covering their probable complicity in the execution of one of their own, who was talking to the Feds about the corruption at the time.

The system has chickened out of trying to execute Mumia, since the evidence of his innocence is so overwhelming. But they’ve confined him to state prison for life without the possibility of parole (LWOP). Our job remains unchanged: Mumia is Innocent! For labor action to free Mumia!

Defeat Pennsylvania’s Prisoner Gag Law!

http://bit.ly/defendfreespeech

This message brought to you by:

The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal

PO Box 16222, Oakland CA 94610 • www.laboractionmumia.org • 510.762.2347

November 2014



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Support Prison Radio

$35 is the yearly membership.

$50 will get you a beautiful tote bag (you can special order a yoga mat bag, just call us).

$100 will get the DVD "Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary"

$300 will bring one essay to the airwaves.

$1000 (or $88.83 per month) will make you a member of our Prison Radio Freedom Circle. Take a moment and Support Prison Radio

Luchando por la justicia y la libertad,

Noelle Hanrahan, Director, Prison Radio

PRISON RADIO

P.O. Box 411074 San Francisco, CA 94141

www.prisonradio.org
info@prisonradio.org 415-706-5222

Pennsylvania legislators are trying to stop prisoners from speaking about their ideas and experiences. Last week, PA Representative Mike Vereb introduced a bill (HB2533) called the “Revictimization Relief Act,” which would allow victims, District Attorneys, and the Attorney General to sue people who have been convicted of “personal injury” crimes for speaking out publicly if it causes the victim of the crime “mental anguish.”

The bill was written in response to political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal’s commencement speech at Goddard College, and is a clear attempt to silence Mumia and other prisoners and formerly incarcerated people. We believe that this legislation is not actually an attempt to help victims, but a cynical move by legislators to stop people in prison from speaking out against an unjust system.

While to us this seems like a clear violation of the first amendment, unfortunately the PA General Assembly doesn’t appear to agree, and they have fast-tracked the bill for approval and amended another bill (SB508) to include the same language. The legislation could be voted on as early as Wednesday.

If this bill passes, it will be a huge blow to the movement against mass incarceration. People inside prisons play a leading role in these struggles, and their perspectives, analysis, and strategies are essential to our work. Incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people who write books, contribute to newspapers, or even write for our Voices from the Inside section would run the risk of legal consequences just for sharing their ideas.

That’s why we are asking you to take action TUESDAY OCTOBER 14 by calling Pennsylvania lawmakers to tell them that prisoners should not be denied the right to speak.

Please call your legislators and demand that they vote NO on HB2533 and SB508. You can look up contact information at http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/findyourlegislator/.

We are also asking folks to call the following Senate leaders and ask them to stop the bill from moving forward:

Senate Majority Whip Pat Browne  (717) 787-1349

Senate Minority Whip Anthony Williams  (717) 787-5970

Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi  (717) 787-4712

Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa (717) 787-7683

Not sure what to say on the phone? Click here for a sample call script.

Want to write a letter to your legislators, or looking for more talking points? Click here for more info!

- See more at: http://decarceratepa.info/freespeech#sthash.TtdN3AkI.dpuf


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 Medical Care Needed for Chelsea Manning!

 ACLU files lawsuit against Army demanding medical care for Manning

 By the Chelsea Manning Support Network

Yesterday, the ACLU and Chelsea Manning filed a lawsuit against the Army demanding the necessary medical treatment for Manning’s previously diagnosed gender dysphoria.

By continuing to deny Manning treatment, the Army is directly violating Chelsea’s constitutional rights under the 8th amendment. Chase Strangio, attorney in the ACLU Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender project and co-counsel on Ms. Manning’s case, notes “such clear disregard of well-established medical protocols constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.”

Due to a full year of neglecting Manning’s medical care, the ACLU had previously announced a Sept 4th deadline for the Army to provide treatment. After continued failure to provide treatment, the ACLU filed a lawsuit yesterday and released the following statement:

ACLU Demands Government Provide Chelsea Manning Necessary Medical Care

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 23, 2014

CONTACT: Crystal Cooper, ACLU National, 212-549-2666; media@aclu.org

WASHINGTON—Today, Chelsea Manning filed a lawsuit in federal court in the District of Columbia against Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and other Department of Defense (DOD) and Department of the Army officials for their failure to provide necessary medical treatment for her gender dysphoria, a condition with which she was originally diagnosed by Army doctors more than four years ago.

The complaint is accompanied by a motion for preliminary injunction demanding that Ms. Manning be provided hormone therapy, permission to follow female grooming standards, and access to treatment by a medical provider qualified to treat her condition. Ms. Manning is currently serving a thirty-five year prison sentence at the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Ft. Leavenworth Kansas, and though the military recognizes that she has gender dysphoria requiring treatment, critical care has been withheld without any medical basis.

“The government continues to deny Ms. Manning’s access to necessary medical treatment for gender dysphoria, without which she will continue to suffer severe psychological harms,” said Chase Strangio, attorney in the ACLU Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender project and co-counsel on Ms. Manning’s case. “Such clear disregard of well-established medical protocols constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.”

Ms. Manning is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU of the Nation’s Capital, the ACLU of Kansas and civilian defense counsel David E. Coombs. Last month, Ms. Manning’s legal team sent a letter to the DOD and Army officials demanding that she receive treatment for gender dysphoria in accordance with medical standards of care, including hormone therapy and permission to follow female grooming standards. Her treatment needs have continued to be unmet and her distress has escalated.

“I am proud to be standing with the ACLU behind Chelsea on this very important issue.” said David E. Coombs, “It is my hope that through this action, Chelsea will receive the medical care that she needs without having to suffer any further anguish.”

Gender dysphoria is a serious medical condition that requires hormone therapy and changes to gender expression, like growing hair, to live consistently with one’s gender identity as part of accepted standards of care.

Without necessary treatment, gender dysphoria can cause severe psychological distress, anxiety, and suicidality. For this reason, the National Commission on Correctional Health Care and the American Psychological Association have issued policy statements that support providing treatment to prisoners diagnosed with the condition in accordance with established standards of care, as the Federal Bureau of Prisons and many state corrections agencies are already doing.

A copy of the complaint is available at:

aclu.org/lgbt-rights-prisoners-rights/manning-v-hagel-et-al-complaint-declaratory-and-injunctive-relief

The motion for preliminary injunction is available at:

aclu.org/lgbt-rights-prisoners-rights/manning-v-hagel-et-al-plaintiffs-motion-preliminary-injunction

This press release is available at:

aclu.org/lgbt-rights-prisoners-rights/aclu-demands-government-provide-chelsea-manning-necessary-medical-care

—Free Chelsea Manning, September 24, 2014

http://www.chelseamanning.org/press/aclu-files-lawsuit-against-army-demands-medical-care-for-manning

Write to Chelsea Manning:

Mail must be addressed exactly as follows:

CHELSEA E. MANNING     89289

1300 NORTH WAREHOUSE ROAD

FORT LEAVENWORTH, KANSAS 66027-2304



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 B. ARTICLES IN FULL




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1) Wife of Mexican President to Sell Mansion
By ELISABETH MALKIN




2) In Test for Premier, Italians Rally Against Plan to Relax Labor Rules
By




3) Deal by Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Raises Cash and Some Concern
By





4) Takata’s Switch to Cheaper Airbag Propellant Is at Center of Crisis
By




5) Swedish Court Rejects Appeal by Julian Assange
By




6) Protesters Return to Cairo’s Streets to Mark an Anniversary
Dozens Arrested for Honoring Activists Killed by Police in 2011




7) University of California Is Set to Raise Tuition
By




8) As Ferguson Grand Jury Report Looms, Police Say They Don’t Fear Protests
By




9) Mail Monitoring Rarely Denied, Postal Service Says
By





10) Brooklyn Man Fatally Shot by Police Was Unarmed, Bratton Says
By and




11) Five Guantánamo Inmates Are Sent to Eastern Europe
By




12) University of California to Raise Tuition Despite Protests
By




13) Virginia Death Row Inmates Seek More Privileges
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NOV. 21, 2014
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2014/11/21/us/ap-us-death-penalty-virginia.html?ref=us




14) Falling Wages at Factories Squeeze the Middle Class
By and





15)  Police Union Official: Darren Wilson Doesn't Expect to Be Charged
By CBS News
November 21, 2014
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/345-justice/27080-police-union-official-darren-wilson-doesnt-expect-to-be-charged




16) Four Decades of Solitary in Louisiana
By




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1) Wife of Mexican President to Sell Mansion
By ELISABETH MALKIN

MEXICO CITY — The wife of President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico said on Tuesday that she would give up her opulent new home in one of the city’s most expensive neighborhoods.

A growing scandal over the home and its financing is threatening to further undermine Mr. Peña Nieto, who is already under fire over the disappearance of 43 students at a rural college in September.

In a videotaped statement, Mexico’s first lady, Angélica Rivera, a former soap opera star, described how she had financed the purchase of the home. She said she earned $10 million in 2010, the year her contract with the Mexican television network Televisa ended, more than twice what she agreed to pay for the property two years later.

“I don’t want this to continue to be a pretext to offend and defame my family,” Ms. Rivera said in the statement, which was first broadcast on Televisa’s nightly newscast. “Today, I am here to defend my integrity, that of my children and of my husband.”

But Ms. Rivera failed to address a possible conflict of interest that is at the center of the criticism. She signed a contract to buy the 15,000-square-foot house from a subsidiary of a company that won multimillion-dollar contracts from the State of Mexico, the populous state surrounding the capital, while Mr. Peña Nieto was its governor.

Another subsidiary of the company, Grupo Higa, was part of a Chinese-led consortium that won an uncontested bid this month to build a $3.7 billion high-speed rail line. But Mr. Peña Nieto abruptly canceled the contract on Nov. 6, three days after the project was announced, after opposition politicians raised questions about the deal.

Ms. Rivera, her voice rich with indignation, said that she had met Grupo Higa’s owner, Juan Armando Hinojosa, “just as I have met many other business people, professionals, artists and other people.”

By revealing her income and making public the contract, Ms. Rivera sought to quell suspicions that she had benefited from a favorable deal with a government contractor.

Ms. Rivera said that Mr. Hinojosa’s company first acquired the property in 2009 and began construction in 2010 according to her specifications. By then she was engaged to Mr. Peña Nieto.

She signed a purchase agreement in January 2012, after the couple had married and when Mr. Peña Nieto was running for president. Under the contract, Ms. Rivera agreed to buy the house for about $4 million over eight years, at 9 percent interest. She has paid almost 30 percent of the price and said she would sell her rights to the purchase.

The existence of the house, which was first reported on Nov. 9 by Carmen Aristegui, a prominent journalist, came as Mr. Peña Nieto faces a crisis over the disappearance of 43 students from a rural teachers’ college.

According to the government’s investigation, the students were arrested by police officers in the town of Iguala, in the southwestern state of Guerrero, and handed over to the local drug gang on the orders of the mayor, José Luis Abarca, on the night of Sept. 26.

The government says the mayor and his wife, María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa, who have both since been arrested, worked closely with the local gang, Guerreros Unidos.

Investigators say they believe that the students were killed that night and that their bodies were burned to ashes. But the families of the students have refused to believe the government’s version and daily protests, led by demonstrators bearing pictures of the missing, are a steady reminder of the government’s failure to improve security and its inability to tackle corruption.

Against the backdrop of Iguala, the pictures of Ms. Rivera’s sleek white house, with swimming pool, elevator, and recessed blue, orange and magenta lighting, became an irritant.

Earlier Tuesday, Mr. Peña Nieto defended his wife, promising that she would explain how she had acquired the property.

“I will not allow this issue, this allegation, to place in doubt the confidence that the majority of Mexicans have placed in me,” he said.


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2) In Test for Premier, Italians Rally Against Plan to Relax Labor Rules
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ROME — In Naples, demonstrators blocked traffic. In Padua, Pisa and Milan, they clashed with the police. Here, they lobbed eggs at government buildings and climbed to the top of the Colosseum to unfurl a protest banner.

While their grievances are many, much of what has propelled Italians into the streets by the tens of thousands in recent weeks is the mere hint of a change to labor laws that, among other things, would make it easier for businesses to get rid of workers.

No matter that the law, known as the Jobs Act, has yet to be fully written, or that many economists consider it inadequate to solving the problems of Italy’s economy, which continues to stumble through recession.

On Tuesday, after weeks of protests that have become an ever-clearer gauge of the obstacles confronting Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, lawmakers were already considering proposals to water down the plan.

“The Jobs Act institutionalizes the continual precariousness we have been living in Italy,” said Cristian Sica, 37, who works on a project-by-project basis for a ministry and joined a sit-in against the plan in front of Parliament last month.

Workers’ rights and protections should be broadened, not curtailed, he said, echoing a common refrain. “We are the precarious generation, in work, but above all in life,” he added.

Mr. Renzi, 39, assumed office in February, pledging to shake up Italy’s sclerotic system and overcome entrenched interests, including in his own center-left Democratic Party and the powerful labor unions that have long been a base of support.

He now faces pressure from various quarters to show he can deliver on his promises of change, not least from his eurozone partners, who are eager to see progress as Mr. Renzi seeks flexibility for Italy on budget limits set by Brussels.

But in a country where the first article of the Constitution declares it a republic “founded on work,” rolling back labor protections is not to be taken lightly. It is particularly telling that many of those opposing Mr. Renzi’s plans are young people.

They are deeply skeptical that the proposed change would in fact open jobs to them — so many other overhaul efforts before it have failed to do so. Instead, they are demanding the same guarantees that their parents have had, something it is not at all clear Italy can still afford.

“All he’s doing is destroying the rights of full-time workers without giving rights to people in precarious job situations,” said Francesco Raparelli, 36, one of the coordinators of a nationwide strike last Friday by thousands of workers who hold temporary contracts.

The prime minister argues that a change toward a looser labor market would benefit young people in particular, by creating jobs and getting Italy’s economy moving again. Nearly 43 percent of those 15 to 24 are unemployed.

He also says it would help solve the problem of what has become a two-tier work force in Italy. Solidly protected full-time workers — mostly older — are all but immovable and are still guaranteed ample pensions and retirement benefits.

Behind them is a wave of mostly younger workers who subsist on temporary, usually low-paid contracts, with few or no benefits.

Mr. Renzi is pushing for more flexible labor rules to make it easier to hire and fire workers, as a way to make entrepreneurs feel safer in taking on more full-time employees.

The current workers’ statute was written in 1970. Even though it was modified in 2012 to make it easier to get rid of employees with full-time contracts in firms with more than 15 people — for example, in the case of economic difficulty — Mr. Renzi argues that it is still too outdated.

“It’s like taking an iPhone and wondering, ‘Where do I put in the phone token?’ ” he told a recent gathering in Florence, in the typically homespun manner that has made him popular with millions of Italians eager for change.

But the debate over labor flexibility has swamped other parts of Mr. Renzi’s plan, which also includes gradual access to severance compensation, job training, simplified contracts and the extension of unemployment benefits to many who currently do not have any.

“At the core of the Jobs Act is the idea of shifting protection from the job to the individual, and protecting the transitions,” said Stefano Sacchi, a political scientist at the University of Milan, who helped draft the Jobs Act and is a consultant for the Labor Ministry.

Critics of the new measures say they would further erode protections without doing much to create new jobs.

“It’s a design, in the face of this crisis, drafted by the real powers — banking and finance — which have decided to cancel the rights of workers and the freedom that were sanctioned by the conquests” of 1970, said Giorgio Cremaschi, a former trade union leader.

Others, including some economists and business leaders, say that making firing easier is “not the right recipe” to spur Italy’s economic recovery. Even business leaders who support Mr. Renzi’s effort say stimulating the economy will require a much more multipronged approach.

That would include reducing labor costs, overhauling a justice system in which lawsuits are mired for years and drastically simplifying bureaucracy for things like permits.

“You have to start from the concept that it has to be feasible to do business here; that’s where the change has to happen,” said Marco Gay, the president of Confindustria, a national business lobby for young entrepreneurs.

“A business can go badly or can succeed, but you have to have the possibility to allow a company to be born,” he said.

Elisabetta Addis, an economics professor at the University of Sassari, said the fight over the labor law had become “more political than economic.” Despite the turmoil on the streets and in Parliament, the effect would probably be negligible.

“The debate over job reintegration will have no effect on the labor market at all,” she said, “So there’s no reason for Renzi to present it as leading to new jobs, nor for the unions to make it a point of honor.”

“People aren’t not hiring because of labor laws, but because there’s no internal or external demand,” she added. “Companies aren’t selling, and if that doesn’t change, it’s going to be difficult for the economy to restart.”

It also remains to be seen how the government would ultimately shape the changes. Until the rules are specified, there is no telling what the law’s effect would be.

“Let’s see how it is turned into law before we assess how it can impact the labor market,” said Stefano Scarpetta, the director for employment, labor and social affairs at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

In the meantime, the protests are likely to continue. The Italian General Confederation of Labor, an especially combative union that brought an estimated one million people to a rally in Rome in late October, is now planning a general strike for Dec. 5.


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3) Deal by Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Raises Cash and Some Concern
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About 15 years ago, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation made what was considered a risky foray for a nonprofit organization into the world of business. It began giving money to a small biotechnology company to entice it to develop drugs for the deadly lung disease.

But that funding, a total commitment of $150 million, has now paid off enormously. The foundation is to announce on Wednesday that it will receive $3.3 billion from selling the rights to the royalties to those drugs. That is 20 times the foundation’s budget last year.

The payout is believed to be the largest financial return ever achieved for a charitable organization pursuing treatments for disease and is likely to encourage other patient advocacy groups to seek their own deals with pharmaceutical companies; a growing number are already doing so.

Proponents say it speeds drug development while also providing potential monetary rewards that can pay for even more research.But there is some concern that a profit motive could divert the organizations from their primary mission — helping patients — and create a conflict of interest. For instance, the price of the main drug developed through Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’s investment is $300,000 a year.

Critics say that perhaps because a higher price means higher royalty payments, the foundation did not do enough to bring the cost down.

“I would like to see them do more to get the price of this drug down to something that is going to be sustainable,” said Paul M. Quinton, a cystic fibrosis researcher at the University of California campuses in Riverside and San Diego, who has the disease himself. “And I have some concern about the possible appearance of a conflict.”

Robert J. Beall, the chief executive of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, said the organization had expressed concern over the cost of the drug to the manufacturer, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, but had no power to set the price. He said the foundation’s mission had always been to get treatments to patients, and that financial returns would only help.

“This is a transformational day for people with cystic fibrosis and their families,” he said in an interview. “It gives us an amazing opportunity to accelerate the research we’ve already started.”

The foundation’s grants to Vertex and a smaller company it acquired led to the development of Kalydeco, which was approved in 2012. It is the first drug that treats the underlying cause of cystic fibrosis rather than just the symptoms, slowing the rate of decline in lung function. Vertex, which is based in Boston, is testing two other drugs that have also shown promise in clinical trials. Wall Street analysts project that the family of medicines could eventually have sales of several billion dollars a year.

Rather than receiving royalties on sales of those drugs over the next two decades, the foundation decided to cash in now so it could have more money to put into research quickly. So it sold the rights to future royalties to Royalty Pharma, an investment firm that specializes in buying such assets, for a one-time $3.3 billion payment. Royalty will profit if, over time, the royalties amount to more than it paid.

Executives at Royalty Pharma say it is by far the largest payment ever made for pharmaceutical royalties. The next-biggest transactions were worth around $700 million each, including one in which Royalty Pharma acquired half the future royalties owed to Northwestern University for the invention of the pain and epilepsy drug Lyrica.

Pablo Legorreta, chief executive of Royalty Pharma, said, “This will demonstrate to many research organizations that by getting the royalties they can fuel their future investments.”

In the past, disease foundations might have supported only academic research. But many are now following the lead of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in getting involved with companies — an approach often called venture philanthropy.

“If we wanted to get therapies to patients faster, we needed to be partnering with the industry that actually brings those drugs to patients,” said Louis J. DeGennaro, chief executive of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Other organizations pursuing venture philanthropy include JDRF (formerly the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation), the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and some groups involved in muscular dystrophy.

Some organizations do not ask for royalties, saying that the return they seek is merely getting a drug to market. But increasingly they are asking for financial returns as well.

Dr. DeGennaro said that, to his knowledge, financial returns for his society and others had so far been modest. “That’s remarkable news,” he said of the payout to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

Dr. Michael Boyle, director of the adult cystic fibrosis program at Johns Hopkins University, which receives financing from the foundation, said it made sense that some of the profit from drugs should benefit patients, not only drug companies.“I think it’s going to transform the whole C.F. community,” and lead to better care, he said.

One risk for the foundation is that donors will see less need to give money or to organize fund-raising events. The foundation raises about $130 million a year from donations.

Dr. Beall said much more needed to be done in the fight against cystic fibrosis. Kalydeco works only for a small fraction of patients, those with particular genetic mutations. And it must be taken every day. The foundation’s ultimate goal is a one-time treatment that can cure everyone.

Experts in the disease say the foundation has helped sponsor much of the work that since 1980 has roughly doubled the life expectancy for those with cystic fibrosis to around 40 years. About 30,000 Americans have the inherited disease. The foundation has sponsored academic research and has provided about $400 million to three dozen companies, Dr. Beall said.

The foundation gave its first money in the late 1990s to Aurora Biosciences, a small San Diego company, to see if its technology for screening compounds could find drugs that might work for cystic fibrosis.

Vertex acquired Aurora in 2001 for the screening technology. Cystic fibrosis was not a priority, and Vertex officials have said the program might have been dropped if the foundation had not been paying for it.

Today Vertex counts on cystic fibrosis for its current sales and future prospects. The foundation is entitled to royalties ranging from a single-digit to a low-double-digit percentage of sales of the cystic fibrosis drugs. The $3.3 billion it is getting from Royalty Pharma is in addition to $400 million it has already received from another party, unnamed, for partial royalty rights.

Dr. Beall said the foundation would establish an endowment but that it was too soon to say how much its research spending would increase.

“This was a dramatic example of risk-taking that has paid off in a remarkable way,” said Dr. Francis S. Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, who co-discovered the gene behind cystic fibrosis in 1989 while at the University of Michigan.
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4) Takata’s Switch to Cheaper Airbag Propellant Is at Center of Crisis
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The new airbag propellant was supposed to be the next big thing for Takata in 1998. An engineer for the company, Paresh Khandhadia, declared it “the new technological edge” in an interview with a trade magazine then.

Based on a compound called tetrazole, it was seen as a reliable and effective compound for inflating airbags. Yet despite the fanfare, by 2001 Takata had switched to an alternative formula, ammonium nitrate, and started sending the airbags to automakers, including Honda.

That compound, according to experts, is highly sensitive to temperature changes and moisture, and it breaks down over time. And when it breaks down, it can combust violently, experts say.

“It shouldn’t be used in airbags,” said Paul Worsey, an expert in explosives engineering at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. The compound, he said, is more suitable for large demolitions in mining and construction. “But it’s cheap, unbelievably cheap,” he added.

On Thursday, Takata’s decision to change the propellant is expected to be among the lines of questioning before the Senate Commerce Committee, which is investigating Takata’s defective airbags.

Alby Berman, a spokesman for Takata, said the switch to an ammoniumnitrate-based propellant was not driven by cost considerations. Instead, the company’s engineers determined that the compound produced gas more efficiently with fewer emissions.

“This breakthrough allowed us to make the smallest, lightest inflaters available, as well as significantly improve manufacturing safety,” Mr.Berman said.

Two former Takata engineers said they and other employees had concerns over switching to such a risky compound.

“It’s a basic design flaw that predisposes this propellant to break apart, and therefore risk catastrophic failure in an inflater,” said Mark Lillie, a former senior engineer with Takata at its propellant plant in Moses Lake, Wash. Mr. Lillie recently shared his concerns with Senate staff members.

“It was a question that came up: Ammonium nitrate propellant, won’t that blow up?” said Michael Britton, a chemical engineer who worked with Mr. Lillie at the Moses Lake plant. “The answer was, not if it stays in the right phase.”

Takata will be represented at the hearing by Hiroshi Shimizu, the company’s senior vice president for global quality assurance. He will be joined by representatives for Chrysler and Honda, as well as a victim, Stephanie Erdman. David Friedman, the deputy administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, will also appear.

Takata’s struggle with propellant stretches back to 1991, when the Tokyo-based supplier first started to manufacture airbag inflaters in the United States.

Like other airbag manufacturers at the time, Takata based its airbag propellant on a toxic compound called sodium azide. But that compound is volatile and could release toxic fumes into the car, causing chemical burns or breathing problems when the airbags deployed.

Takata then turned to tetrazole, which it promoted to automakers at the time as a safer, more environmentally friendly alternative. Takata introduced the propellant, marketed as “Envirosure,” to automakers in the mid-1990s for inclusion on 1998-model vehicles.

“I said, ‘Wow! This is the break!' ” Mr. Khandhadia, Takata’s lead propellant engineer, told the industry publication Automotive News at the time, describing the moment tests showed the new propellant worked.

But tetrazole, which is produced in limited quantities and can be expensive, started to squeeze margins at Takata, especially as the airbag market became more competitive, Mr. Lillie said.

By 1999, Takata researchers in Michigan, pressured by executives, developed a propellant based on ammonium nitrate, he said.

But the engineering team in the Moses Lake plant raised objections to basing a propellant on such a risky compound. To bolster its case, the team pointed to explosives manuals warning that the compound “tended to disintegrate on storage under widely varying temperature conditions” with “irregular ballistic” consequences, Mr. Lillie said.

Ammonium nitrate cycles through five solid states. As the vehicle goes from receiving the heat of sunshine to the cold overnight, the temperature swing is large enough for the ammonium nitrate to change from one phase to another, experts say. Ammonium nitrate also absorbs moisture from the atmosphere readily. Those two things together make ammonium nitrate tablets prone to damage, experts say.

A focus in the mushrooming recalls has been that the airbags are more susceptible to malfunction in high humidity areas.

“Speaking generally, ammonium nitrate can be unstable. Its crystal structure can change according to temperature,” said Katsumi Kato, an assistant professor in safety engineering at Japan’s Fukuoka University. “It changes the burn rate. It leads to various malfunctions.”

Other airbag makers have said they stayed away from the explosive compound.

“We’ve made another choice for the propellant we produce,” Thomas Jonsson, a spokesman for Autoliv, a Swedish-American automotive safety products manufacturer, said in an email. Key Safety Systems, another airbag maker, said it used guanidine nitrate and tetrazole — which experts said was less risky and more durable than ammonium nitrate — in its inflaters. TRW Automotive, a large supplier of safety parts based in Michigan, also uses a propellant based on guanidine nitrate, experts said, though the airbag maker did not respond to requests for confirmation.

Still, at Takata, the answer at the time was to try to stabilize the ammonium nitrate to try to mitigate those cycling effects, but there are limits to just how far ammonium nitrate can be stabilized, said Mr. Worsey, the explosives expert.

The doubts over Takata’s propellant raise questions of whether the recalls should be limited to humid regions. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, however, said Tuesday that it would urge automakers to expand recalls of certain drivers’ side airbags that had previously been limited to states and territories with high humidity. Takata has said it continues to use ammonium nitrate in its replacement airbags.

In addition to the Senate hearing, Takata is facing mounting legal challenges. Takata said this month that it had received a subpoena for documents related to the defects from a federal grand jury in the Southern District of New York. The company confirmed that it hired Andrew Levander, a well-known defense lawyer based in New York, as it prepares for a criminal investigation.

Rachel Abrams contributed reporting, and Kitty Bennett contributed research.


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5) Swedish Court Rejects Appeal by Julian Assange
By

LONDON — A Swedish court on Thursday upheld a four-year-old order for the detention of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, over accusations of sexual assault that inspired a lengthy legal battle before he took refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London.

Lawyers for Mr. Assange, 43, had sought to have the order withdrawn on the grounds that it could not be enforced while he was in the embassy, and they also contended that it was restricting his civil rights.

But the Swedish court rejected the legal argument that it should “set aside the detention solely because Julian Assange is in an embassy and the detention order cannot be enforced at present for that reason,” Reuters reported.

The ruling was a bitter defeat for Mr. Assange, an Australian who fled to the modest embassy in London’s upmarket Knightsbridge neighborhood two years ago, after Britain ordered his extradition to Sweden in February 2011.

Sweden has not formally indicted Mr. Assange but prosecutors in Stockholm want to question him about allegations of sexual misconduct relating to two women he encountered during a visit there in 2010. He denies the allegations.

Mr. Assange filed unsuccessful appeals in British courts against the extradition order before taking refuge in the Embassy of Ecuador, which granted him asylum in 2012.

There had been speculation that, if he had succeeded in his appeal on Thursday, Mr. Assange might have left the embassy. He has said he fears that if extradited to Sweden, the authorities there would send him to the United States.

Mr. Assange has expressed a willingness to meet with Swedish prosecutors in London, an offer that the prosecutors have turned down.

The United States has not publicly indicted Mr. Assange or formally sought his extradition. But American investigations continue into WikiLeaks’ publication of classified military and diplomatic material on its website. Some of the material was published by news organizations, including The New York Times.

In August, at a news conference at the embassy, Mr. Assange said he would “be leaving the embassy soon,” but did not elaborate on his reasons for saying so. British news reports have said he was in poor health, suffering from ailments including arrhythmia, very high blood pressure and a chronic lung problem.


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6) Protesters Return to Cairo’s Streets to Mark an Anniversary
Dozens Arrested for Honoring Activists Killed by Police in 2011

At least 48 protesters were arrested in downtown Cairo on Wednesday as small groups of activists marched and chanted slogans in memory of colleagues killed in clashes with the police three years ago.

There were also demonstrations in Alexandria, where a prominent human rights lawyer, Mahienour al-Massry, was detained and questioned by the police before being released late Wednesday.

The protesters risked arrest to commemorate the dozens of activists who were killed by the police in clashes that began on the same date in 2011 on Mohamed Mahmoud Street, just off Tahrir Square, after the authorities tried to clear a sit-in by force.

More than 2,000 protesters were wounded in four days of pitched battles that year, including dozens who lost their sight after being shot in the eyes with projectiles fired by police snipers.

Witnesses to the rallies on Wednesday, including the Dutch journalist Ester Meerman and the Cairene filmmaker Cressida Trew, compared the small gatherings, in violation of a new law banning unsanctioned protests, to flash mobs and spotted hard-core fans of a Cairo soccer club among them.

Witnesses reported that the crackdown dragged on for some time, with officers hunting for dissidents. The streets around Tahrir Square were flooded with officers and senior police officials long after the demonstrations had been suppressed.
According to Ms. Meerman, some of those arrested were detained by men in civilian dress who appeared to be posing as protesters, wearing Guy Fawkes masks and waving flags.
News of the arrests, and scenes of a locked-down Tahrir Square, made sobering reading for many of the activists who had hoped for a less authoritarian Egypt after the 2011 uprising.

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7) University of California Is Set to Raise Tuition
By

SAN FRANCISCO — Over the protests of hundreds of angry and chanting students, a panel of the University of California Board of Regents gave preliminary approval Wednesday to a plan to raise tuition 27.6 percent over five years, turning aside a last-ditch effort by Gov. Jerry Brown to block it.

The day unfolded as a showdown between Mr. Brown, who holds himself out as a force for fiscal restraint, and Janet Napolitano, the president of the university system, who has insisted that only more money from the state can head off the tuition increase. Mr. Brown has countered that if the regents went ahead with the increase, they would get less from Sacramento, not more, and he bolstered his position by appointing two allies this week to vacant seats on the board.But even as sign-waving protesters tried to block entrances to the building, which led to shoving and jostling as officials tried to make their way in, Ms. Napolitano got her way: Under the plan, undergraduate tuition and fees for California residents would rise from $12,192 a year to as much as $15,560 in 2019-20.

Out-of-state students, who now pay more than $35,000 in tuition and fees, could see those charges rise to nearly $45,000. And those figures do not cover room and board, now about $14,000 for all students.

California’s prices are far above the national average of about $9,100 in tuition and fees for public four-year colleges, but below some, including elite public institutions like the University of Michigan and the University of Virginia. And California officials say that with financial aid to low- and middle-income students, more than half of California residents pay no tuition, and that would remain true after the increases.

People on both sides argued that at stake was nothing less than the basic character of one of the nation’s largest university systems: whether it can remain elite, yet still accessible to middle- and working-class families.

“I would have real trouble paying any more, and so would a lot of people,” said Buckminster Barrett, an undergraduate at the Santa Cruz campus. “They say they’re worried about student debt, but this would force a lot of us to take more loans.”

But after almost four hours of debate, and with students in the audience drowning out the regents’ voices with their chants, a committee of the board voted 7 to 2 to approve increases of up to 5 percent in each of the next five years. A vote of the full board is expected Thursday, and regents taking head counts based on the debate said it appeared likely that the plan would pass.

The clash between Mr. Brown and Ms. Napolitano pitted two powerful Democrats and experienced political infighters against each other. On Wednesday, the governor, who sits on the board, asked the regents to delay voting on the plan until their next meeting in January, and to form a committee to find ways for the university to overhaul the way it does business.

“The pressure of not having enough money can force creativity that otherwise cannot even be considered,” Mr. Brown said. And, in the meantime, “we’re not talking that there’s a scarcity here that makes it impossible to live with,” he added.

Ms. Napolitano, a former secretary of Homeland Security and governor of Arizona, insisted that 5 percent was a ceiling, and that the figure could still be reduced if state lawmakers pitched in more money. Citing “massive state disinvestment” during the recent recession, budget cuts that eliminated thousands of university jobs, and a three-year tuition freeze, she said the system had no choice but to raise tuition to sustain quality and enable students, families and administrators to plan for the future.

“I wanted tuition increases to be as low as possible and as predictable as possible,” she said.

Starting during the recession, California cut support for the university system by $1 billion a year, prompting tuition increases of more than 60 percent, after inflation.

Systemwide, state support has rebounded partly in the last two years, and now supplies $2.8 billion of the university system’s nearly $7 billion core operating budget. But as regents and university trustees noted repeatedly, it remains well below its peak, despite increased costs and enrollment that has grown to more than 230,000 students.

Versions of California’s higher education battles have been playing out in states across the country in recent years. State governments slashed support for public universities during the recession, driving big tuition increases and drawing criticism from political leaders. In several states, university administrators have frozen tuition, while protesting that they are still underfunded by their states.

Recent efforts by some University of Texas regents to oust William Powers Jr., the president of the flagship Austin campus, were prompted in part by his repeated calls for higher tuition, as the regents imposed a multiyear freeze.

The California students who descended on the university conference center here where the regents met — driving or taking buses from campuses across the state — had harsh words for both state lawmakers and the regents. But they aimed most of their ire at Ms. Napolitano and called for her resignation. Many said they had been turned into pawns in a larger political game.

“They’re all at fault — all of them,” said Victor Ye, a student at the Berkeley campus.

Mike Hirshman, president of the Graduate Students Association at the Los Angeles campus, said of the regents, “You may be frustrated with the state, but it doesn’t absolve you of responsibility to keep our education affordable.”

In his address to the regents, Mr. Brown called on the university to look into changes like three-year bachelor’s degrees, concentrating some specialties at specific campuses, raising the number of students admitted as transfers from community colleges, sharply increasing online courses, and giving college credit for work experience. Those ideas are being debated across the country as cost-savers and ways to get more people through college, but many educators see them as an erosion of standards.

Mr. Brown has proposed 4 percent annual increases in state support for the system, but Ms. Napolitano and her allies contend that is not nearly enough. They said that if the state gave more, they would shrink the tuition increase. The governor said he would withhold the 4 percent increase if the regents went ahead with raising tuition.

In keeping with the bare-knuckled prelude, the meeting was characterized by sharp exchanges. John A. Pérez, a former Assembly speaker and one of the newly appointed regents who spoke against the tuition plan, said, “If you come in in a hostage-taking posture, saying give us X or this is what we’re going to do to our students, it’s not the most productive path.”

Responding to Mr. Brown’s proposal, Ms. Napolitano said, “We don’t have time to wait for another commission.” But, she conceded, “maybe we’ll actually get some nifty ideas out of it — that’s always possible,” prompting scattered laughter.

Another regent, Richard C. Blum, who is married to Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, endorsed the tuition increase, arguing that the system simply needed more money to stay competitive. Referring to the years of cutting, he said it was harder than ever to debate the matter civilly, describing himself as “apoplectic.”

Mr. Brown replied, “Money doesn’t buy everything in the world.” Noting pointedly that Mr. Blum is an investment banker, the governor added: “This is not Wall Street. This is the University of California.”




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8) As Ferguson Grand Jury Report Looms, Police Say They Don’t Fear Protests
By

As a grand jury in St. Louis nears a decision on whether to indict a white police officer in the fatal shooting of a black teenager, activists are planning scores of protests across the nation, leading the F.B.I. to warn of potential violence and some cities to take the threat seriously.

Officials in Oakland, Calif., have advised residents and businesses near downtown to protect their cars and reinforce their doors with steel plates. The acting police chief of Pittsburgh said the city was “in an extremely precarious position,” and added that his department was hoping for the best but girding “for the very, very worst.”

But with a few exceptions — most notably metropolitan St. Louis, near where the shooting occurred — law enforcement authorities appear to be greeting the prospect of demonstrations with equanimity.From Detroit to Atlanta, officials said they expected little trouble or violence should the grand jury decide not to indict Darren Wilson, the Ferguson, Mo., police officer who shot Michael Brown, 18, after a dispute on Aug. 9.

“Based on our intelligence, we don’t anticipate any problems,” said Chief James E. Craig of the Detroit police. “Detroit has come a long way since the ’67 civil unrest,” he said, in reference to one of the worst race riots in American history. “We’ve talked to organizers, reached out to make it clear there are no adversarial lines to be drawn. They’ve expressed their desire to have as peaceful a protest as they could make it.”

The federal authorities, however, have told police departments to be prepared. The F.B.I. warned that agitators bent on violence could seek to infiltrate legitimate demonstrations, and that the police and “critical infrastructure” could be among their targets. The bulletin, first obtained by ABC News, said protests could be exploited “both in the Ferguson area and nationwide.”

The authorities in metropolitan St. Louis and the state of Missouri have prepared significantly for the possibility of violence. The St. Louis County police, the city police and the Missouri State Highway Patrol have created a unified command to respond to unrest, and have bought new riot gear and other equipment. Officers have also received increased training, including instruction on how to manage acts of civil disobedience.

The county police spent nearly $40,000 in October on helmets, shields, batons and shin guards. And the city police have spent about $325,000 on new equipment.

“We have to be attentive to a changing situation,” Chief Jon Belmar of the St. Louis County force said in an interview, adding that balancing the need to let people voice their anger with preventing violence would be crucial. “Human life trumps everything,” he said.

In Ferguson on Wednesday, both Mayor James Knowles III and Chief Thomas Jackson of the city police declined requests for interviews. The city said in a statement that neither man would speak to the news media until after the grand jury’s decision was made public.

The New York Times first requested the interviews three weeks ago, amid reports that Chief Jackson would soon resign. The chief has repeatedly said that he has no immediate plans to leave his job.

A handful of cities elsewhere appear to be preparing for trouble. Oakland suffered riots in 2010 and 2013 after court decisions in the shootings of young black men by whites. In 2010, riots erupted after a jury concluded that a transit police officer had accidentally shot a 22-year-old black man. The city again erupted after the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the Florida man who shot Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old student.

On Tuesday, Jean Quan, the mayor of Oakland, advised residents and businesses near the city’s downtown to move vehicles and trash cans to secure spots, ensure that locks and security cameras work, and reinforce doors with steel plates to make them difficult to open.

“We are providing this information to raise awareness about these events, not to alarm, and so that you may plan ahead,” the mayor said in a letter.

Oakland’s Police Department declined to discuss its preparations, saying in a statement that it was committed to protecting people’s right to demonstrate. Mayor Quan could not be reached for comment.

In Pittsburgh, acting Chief Cameron McLay told a community meeting on Monday that his department was “all hands on deck” in anticipation of protests.

“We’re extremely concerned about what might happen if things go badly,” he said, according to The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

A spokeswoman said Chief McLay was too busy for an interview.

Elsewhere, departments appeared to be taking standard precautions for demonstrations, but little more.

A Los Angeles police spokesman said it was “business as usual” there. In Gainesville, Fla., where organizers are planning a protest at the county courthouse, the police said they would not “come out in riot gear.” “We’re here to make sure the protesters are safe,” said Officer Ben Tobias, a department spokesman.

The authorities in most cities are reaching out to protest organizers and community leaders to pre-empt trouble. Departments in larger cities typically identify local agitators who might be expected to mar an otherwise peaceful demonstration.

One potential problem is the presence of outsiders bent on violence, a central point of the F.B.I.’s advisory. Oakland’s riots, like Ferguson’s violence, were fueled in part by self-described anarchists attracted to hot spots of unrest.

“No one’s concerned about a rally led by the local clergy,” said one big-city police official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about police procedures. “What we’re concerned about is the fringe element, and the fringe criminal as well.”

“It’s the guys in Guy Fawkes masks and all dressed in black. That’s what we’re worried about,” he said of outside agitators.

Monica Davey and Mitch Smith contributed reporting.


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9) Mail Monitoring Rarely Denied, Postal Service Says
By

WASHINGTON — The United States Postal Service granted almost all of the nearly 6,700 requests from law enforcement agencies last year to monitor the mail of Americans for use in criminal and national security investigations, Postal Service officials told a House panel on Wednesday.

The officials said that only 10 requests had been denied, for a rate of approval that some members of Congress sharply criticized. Cases of monitoring are called mail covers because the collected information comes from the outside of letters and parcels.

“The fact that 99.85 percent of the mail covers were approved raises serious questions about privacy and the management of the mail covers program,” said Representative Blake Farenthold, the Texas Republican who is chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee responsible for the Postal Service, the panel that heard the testimony.The hearing followed a recent data breach by hackers into the Postal Service’s computer system and a May audit by the agency’s inspector general that found numerous problems with how the Postal Service runs its mail surveillance program.

At the hearing, postal officials sought to assure members of the panel that the agency had adequate controls over the surveillance to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans.

Guy Cottrell, chief of the Postal Inspection Service, the law enforcement arm of the Postal Service, said the agency had made several changes in the way it managed the mail covers program after the audit in May. The audit found that 21 percent of law enforcement requests to monitor mail had been approved without written authorization from the proper Postal Service officials, and that 13 percent had lacked properly documented explanations for their approval.

The audit also found that the Postal Inspection Service had not conducted annual reviews of the mail cover program as required by federal law, and that more than 900 mail covers were still active even though the orders for them had expired.

“We had made substantial progress in addressing the issues raised in the audit,” Mr. Cottrell told the subcommittee. He provided data showing that the number of mail covers requested by law enforcement agencies had declined to about 6,700 in 2013 from slightly more than 9,400 in 2010.

But Mr. Cottrell said the Postal Service’s overall use of mail covers, including by its internal law enforcement arm, had jumped to about 57,000 so far this year from about 16,000 in 2012. He said the increase was due to the Postal Inspection Service’s use of one-day covers, mostly in cases of suspected drug smuggling through the mail. The one-day covers permit surveillance of a single piece of mail rather than of all the mail going to an individual or business.

Under the program, which is more than a century old, local and federal law enforcement officials send requests to the Postal Inspection Service to monitor the mail of individuals or businesses suspected of a crime. The inspection service then directs postal workers to record visible external information on mail sent to the target of an investigation, including names, addresses and postmarks. The process is not subject to judicial review.

Law enforcement officials, including Capt. Charles E. Hamby II of the Prince George’s County, Md., Police Department, who testified at Wednesday’s hearing, said that although mail covers are old-fashioned, they can still be critical to investigations.

The agency is updating its computer system, Mr. Cottrell said, to make sure its information on each mail cover is accurate, and it is developing a process to bar law enforcement agencies who abuse the program from being approved for mail covers. The Postal Service also uses a program called Mail Imaging, in which its computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail sent in the United States. The program primarily helps process the mail, but in some cases it allows law enforcement agencies to request stored images of mail sent to and received by people who are under investigation.

Timothy H. Edgar, a visiting fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University who was the first director of privacy and civil liberties for the National Security Council in the Obama administration, told the panel that the Mail Imaging program was troubling.

“It raises real questions about the bulk collection of metadata, raises privacy risks and questions about who has access to this data,” he said.


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10) Brooklyn Man Fatally Shot by Police Was Unarmed, Bratton Says
By and

A rookie New York City police officer shot and killed an unarmed 28-year-old man in a darkened stairwell in Brooklyn late Thursday night, according to the police.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said the shooting appeared to be unprovoked.

“We don’t know enough yet, but it does appear to be an accident,” the mayor said at a news conference on Friday. “This is a tragedy.”

The victim was identified as Akai Gurley, and the officer, Peter Liang, has been placed on modified assignment and was relieved of both his badge and gun.

Police Commissioner William J. Bratton called the shooting “an unfortunate accident.”

Mr. Gurley “was a total innocent,” Mr. Bratton said. He was not engaged in any activity other than trying to walk down the stairs, Mr. Bratton said.

Officer Liang, who was on the job less than 18 months, and his partner were patrolling the Louis H. Pink Houses in East New York when they encountered Mr. Gurley inside a nearly pitch-black stairwell shortly before midnight, Mr. Bratton said.

Officer Liang drew his flashlight and his gun as he entered the stairwell on the eighth floor.

At the same time, Mr. Gurley and his girlfriend had just entered the stairwell on the seventh floor.

“One officer discharged one round from his service weapon, striking the male in the chest,” according to a statement from the police.

Mr. Gurley was taken to Brookdale Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Janice Butler, whose sister was with Mr. Gurley at the time of the shooting, said that the victim had been in an apartment on the eighth floor getting his hair braided for several hours Thursday night.

Mr. Gurley did not live in the building and left the apartment with his girlfriend shortly after 11 p.m. The two initially went to the elevator but it was taking too long, so they decided to take the stairs.

The girlfriend entered the stairwell first and heard a door open nearby. The next sound she heard was a shot echoing through the stairwell. Then she saw her boyfriend, shot in the chest, staggering down two flights of stairs.

Ms. Butler said that, according to her sister, the police did not identify themselves, or give any commands.

“The cop didn’t present himself, he just shot him in the chest,” Ms. Butler said. “They didn’t see their face or nothing.”

She added, “They didn’t say anything.”

Ms. Butler, whose cheeks were streaked with tears, said her sister was in the building and grieving and was unable to speak to reporters.

The stairwell at the housing projects is so dark at night that anyone standing in it appears as a silhouette, according to residents.

The stairwells are fitted with fluorescent lights, they said, but the burned out bulbs are seldom replaced, and the few that work are dim.

Mattie Dubose, a resident, yelled at the building superintendent Friday morning, as employees of the New York City Housing Authority furiously worked on the stairwells.

“You see how dark our staircases are? This is ridiculous,” she said. “The staircases from eight down are dark. If you want to walk in them, you need an escort.”

The Police Department is still dealing with the fallout over the death of Eric Garner, who died after a confrontation with the police on Staten Island in July.

Mr. Garner, who was unarmed and being arrested on charges of illegally selling cigarettes on a street corner, died after being placed in a chokehold by a police officer trying to wrestle him to the ground.

A grand jury on Staten Island is deciding whether or not charges should be brought against any of the officers involved.

But the episode has raised questions about the use of force by the police and led the commissioner to call for sweeping reforms.

About a month after Mr. Garner’s death, the shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., sparked violent protests and prompted a national discussion over police tactics. With a grand jury expected to decide in coming days whether to indict the officer in that shooting, residents there remain on edge, so much so that the National Guard has already been called in to quell any unrest.

“I think when people see a tragedy, of course it pains them and it reminds us that we have a lot of work to do,” Mr. de Blasio said. Still, he said each of the recent deaths involving the police, from Staten Island to Ferguson, had its own dynamics and he warned against linking them all together.

The shooting on Thursday in Brooklyn, he said, appeared to be a “tragic mistake.”

Charles Barron, a former New York City councilman who was recently elected to the State Assembly, arrived at the Brooklyn building Friday morning to speak with residents, and said it would take more than apology to ease the concerns of the community.

“People are outraged, this is happening all over the country, people have no respect for black life,” he said. “I want to hear the justification for this one. We’re going to fight for justice with this one just like they are in Ferguson.”



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11) Five Guantánamo Inmates Are Sent to Eastern Europe
By

WASHINGTON — The government transferred five low-level Guantánamo Bay prisoners to Eastern Europe on Thursday. Four of the men were Yemenis, and their resettlement was a significant policy change in the Obama administration’s effort to close the prison at the naval base in Cuba.

The United States sent one Yemeni and a Tunisian to Slovakia, and the three other Yemenis to Georgia. All five men had been held without trial and had been unanimously recommended for transfer, if security conditions could be met in the countries where they were to be sent, by an interagency task force in 2009.The problem of what to do with a large number of low-level prisoners — those who are considered less of a threat — from Yemen has been seen as a major impediment to closing the prison. For years, officials in the Bush and the Obama administrations have been reluctant to repatriate Yemenis because of poor security conditions there. But they had also held out hope that matters would improve enough that low-level Yemenis could be repatriated.

As a result, even though large numbers of low-level detainees from other countries were sent home years ago, and dozens from other countries who could not be repatriated were resettled in nations that offered to take some in, most of the Yemenis have stayed imprisoned, eventually becoming a majority of the inmate population.

Cliff Sloan, the State Department envoy who negotiates transfer deals, thanked the two countries “for these generous humanitarian gestures.” Ian Moss, an aide to Mr. Sloan, would not say whether more Yemenis would soon be released.

“While our policy preference is to repatriate detainees where we can do so consistent with our national security and humane treatment policies, under certain circumstances, the most viable transfer option is resettlement in a third country,” Mr. Moss said. “I do not have a timeline on when particular detainees will be transferred from Guantánamo. However, the administration is committed to reducing the detainee population and to closing the detention facility responsibly.”

The Obama administration had been experimenting with repatriating low-level Yemenis in 2009, sending two men back home. But after Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula attempted to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25, 2009, President Obama imposed an indefinite moratorium on such repatriations. Last year, Mr. Obama lifted the moratorium as part of a broader effort to revive his effort to close the prison amid a widespread hunger strike there.

At the time, security conditions had appeared to be improving under Yemen’s new president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who appeared more eager and consistent about fighting Qaeda militants than his predecessor, Ali Abdullah Saleh. But two months ago, Houthi rebels — who are also fighting Al Qaeda — took control of Yemen’s capital city.

Congress has imposed security restrictions on the transfer of Guantánamo Bay detainees, and the seemingly ceaseless chaos in Yemen has made it difficult to say that the Yemeni government can monitor detainees who are repatriated. The Democratic-controlled Senate approved a provision this year on a defense bill reimposing a moratorium on any Yemen transfers.

On Thursday, the Obama administration stopped waiting for conditions in Yemen to improve. The men transferred to Slovakia were identified as Hisham Bin Ali Bin Amor Sliti, a Tunisian, and Hussein Salem Mohammed, a Yemeni. The three Yemenis sent to Georgia were Slah Muhamed Salih al-Zabe, Abdul Khaled Ahmed Sahleh al-Bedani and Abdel Ghalib Ahmad Hakim, officials said.

Mr. Mohammed, who was identified by the last name “Almerfedi” in court filings, had been the plaintiff in a notable habeas corpus lawsuit.

In July 2010, a Federal District Court judge had ordered Mr. Almerfedi freed, saying the evidence in support of a government claim that he was a Qaeda fighter was not credible. But in 2011, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia reversed that decision, as part of a constellation of rulings in which the appeals court made it harder for detainees to win habeas corpus cases.

Brian Foster, a lawyer who helped represent Mr. Almerfedi, said that his client had initially been skeptical that he would be released, noting that a military review panel during the Bush administration, the Obama-era task force and the district court judge had all recommended his transfer.

“It took him a long time, I think, to believe us,” Mr. Foster said. “This is a guy who has had his hopes raised and dashed so many times”

After the transfers Thursday, 54 of the 74 remaining inmates who are approved for transfer are Yemenis. The transfers leave 143 detainees in all at Guantánamo Bay, of whom about 86 are Yemeni. (Another detainee approved for transfer has ambiguous tribal ties and is sometimes considered a Yemeni and other times a Saudi, according to officials.)

After a flurry of transfers in late 2013, the transfer of detainees long approved for transfer was virtually shut down for most of 2014 amid internal administration disputes over how much risk to accept. But they resumed with a repatriation to Kuwait this month, followed by these five.

There may be more before the end of the year. A government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has notified Congress that he had approved 11 other detainee transfers. They include six detainees who are eventually bound for Uruguay in a widely reported but delayed deal.


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12) University of California to Raise Tuition Despite Protests
By

SAN FRANCISCO — As students with sleeping bags staged a sit-in at the University of California, Berkeley, and the police stood by watchfully, the Board of Regents of the University of California gave final approval on Thursday to a contentious plan to raise tuition steadily over five years, which students across the state protested as unaffordable.

The university’s Board of Regents voted, 14-7, to approve tuition increases of up to 5 percent in each of the next five years, a compounded increase of as much as 27.6 percent. The elected officials on the board, led by Gov. Jerry Brown, opposed the plan, which had been proposed and championed by Janet Napolitano, the president of the university system.

The regents who favor the tuition increases and the state lawmakers who oppose them have cast blame on each other, each side insisting that it is defending the quality and affordability of one of the world’s great public universities. Ms. Napolitano and her supporters, pointing to significant budget cuts in recent years, say that reduced state support for the university forced the tuition increases, while Mr. Brown and his allies contend that the university needs to find more savings through profound changes in the way it operates.

On Wednesday, a lengthy debate and a crucial committee vote showed that the proposal had the votes to pass, making Thursday’s session anticlimactic. There was no discussion by the board before the final vote, but students made a round of angry and emotional appeals.

“You should be crying, you should be praying, you should be trying to figure out what you are going to do to fix this,” said Amelia Itnyre, a student at the Davis campus, her voice breaking.

At the conference center on the San Francisco campus where the regents met there were far fewer protesters than on Wednesday, when some students tried to block access to the building and scuffled with people trying to enter.

Instead, the protesters’ focus shifted to campuses, particularly the one in Berkeley, across San Francisco Bay. Starting on Wednesday, students gathered for an overnight protest at Wheeler Hall, a favorite spot for activists dating to the free speech movement of the 1960s. Students occupied the building’s entrance on Wednesday night and, with supplies like bottled water, peanut butter and fruit, stayed through the night and into Thursday, vowing to remain until the tuition increase was reversed.

The protesters, who at times numbered in the hundreds, voted Thursday not to block access to the building, averting a possible confrontation with the campus police, who watched but took no action.

Because of financial aid, most California resident students pay no tuition at the University of California — though their room and board costs can be steep — and the regents said that would remain so. So the tuition increases will fall primarily on families with above-average incomes and on out-of-state students.

Protesters said they understood that distinction but still objected. “A lot of people’s incomes, it looks pretty good on paper, but it’s still really hard to come up with thousands of dollars for college,” said Jasmine McGee, a third-year student at Berkeley who was one of those sitting in Wheeler Hall.

The university’s undergraduate tuition and fees are $12,192 a year for in-state students and $35,070 for out-of-staters, well above the national averages for public universities. Those figures could rise over the next five years to as much as $15,560 and $44,759. In addition, individual campuses charge several hundred dollars in added fees, and many students pay room and board, typically about $14,000.



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13) Virginia Death Row Inmates Seek More Privileges
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NOV. 21, 2014
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2014/11/21/us/ap-us-death-penalty-virginia.html?ref=us

RICHMOND, Va. — Five Virginia death row inmates have filed a lawsuit challenging their solitary confinement.

The plaintiffs want the same expanded privileges won by another death row inmate who successfully challenged his solitary confinement on due process grounds. The new complaint says that inmate Alfredo Prieto is allowed to exercise in the prison gymnasium and have contact visits with members of his immediate family and that other death row inmates are entitled to the same treatment.

The state has appealed the ruling in Prieto's case. A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond heard oral arguments last month.

A spokesman for Attorney General Mark Herring, said that after officials receive the lawsuit, they will review it with their clients and respond appropriately.


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14) Falling Wages at Factories Squeeze the Middle Class
By and

For nearly 20 years, Darrell Eberhardt worked in an Ohio factory putting together wheelchairs, earning $18.50 an hour, enough to gain a toehold in the middle class and feel respected at work.

He is still working with his hands, assembling seats for Chevrolet Cruze cars at the Camaco auto parts factory in Lorain, Ohio, but now he makes $10.50 an hour and is barely hanging on. “I’d like to earn more,” said Mr. Eberhardt, who is 49 and went back to school a few years ago to earn an associate’s degree. “But the chances of finding something like I used to have are slim to none.”

Even as the White House and leaders on Capitol Hill and in Fortune 500 boardrooms all agree that expanding the country’s manufacturing base is a key to prosperity, evidence is growing that the pay of many blue-collar jobs is shrinking to the point where they can no longer support a middle-class life.

A new study by the National Employment Law Project, to be released on Friday, reveals that many factory jobs nowadays pay far less than what workers in almost identical positions earned in the past.

Perhaps even more significant, while the typical production job in the manufacturing sector paid more than the private sector average in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, that relationship flipped in 2007, and line work in factories now pays less than the typical private sector job. That gap has been widening — in 2013, production jobs paid an average of $19.29 an hour, compared with $20.13 for all private sector positions.

Pressured by temporary hiring practices and a sharp decrease in salaries in the auto parts sector, real wages for manufacturing workers fell by 4.4 percent from 2003 to 2013, NELP researchers found, nearly three times the decline for workers as a whole.

Despite that widening gap, Washington still paints the manufacturing sector as a gateway to the middle class, even if the gate is closing.

The White House earmarked $100 million in grants last month to encourage manufacturing innovation, part of President Obama’s goal of adding one million American manufacturing jobs by the end of his second term.

After losing more than six million factory jobs from 2000 to 2010, the sector has rebounded a bit in recent years, with more than 700,000 positions created since early 2010. A total of 12.2 million Americans work in manufacturing, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.She argued that if federal, state and local governments continued to promote manufacturing jobs with tax breaks and credits, employers should be encouraged to pay higher starting salaries and provide good benefits. “If you are getting a tax break or a subsidy, we should make sure those jobs are good jobs,” Ms. Ruckelshaus said.

Based in New York, NELP is a research and advocacy group for low-wage and unemployed workers. It receives some financial support from organized labor, including unions like the United Steelworkers and the United Food and Commercial Workers, as well as the A.F.L.-C.I.O. The data in the study were drawn mostly from government sources like the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau, and independent experts confirm many of the trends NELP cites in the report.

“We are not going to back to Detroit in the 1950s or Akron in the 1900s,” said Lawrence Katz, a professor of economics at Harvard. “There still are many manufacturing jobs that are high-paying, but they tend to be more senior or require a lot more education than entry-level jobs do. And their numbers are shrinking, too.”

Even if it does not continue to be a mass employer or a ticket to the middle class, Mr. Katz said, manufacturing remains vital to the economy because it spurs innovation and leads to higher-paying, value-added jobs like design, marketing and other support services. It is also a major source of productivity gains, as well as a generator of profits and exports for American companies.

But most of those gains are not going to the workers on the factory floor. One major factor in the downward pressure on overall manufacturing wages has been a particularly sharp fall in hourly pay earned by workers like Mr. Eberhardt who make parts that supply the big automakers. Parts workers make about one-third less than assembly-line workers who put together cars and trucks, but parts jobs account for 72 percent of all auto sector employment. From 2003 to 2013, median wages for parts workers fell to $15.83 an hour from $18.35.The auto industry in the United States, both parts makers and large auto companies like General Motors, have staged an impressive recovery since G.M. filed for bankruptcy in 2009 and required a federal bailout. Lower salaries and efficiency gains, along with less debt, have helped make Detroit more globally competitive.

At the same time, one of the most important reasons for lower pay is the increased use of temporary workers. Some manufacturers have turned to staffing agencies for hiring rather than employing workers directly on their own payroll. For the first half of 2014, these agencies supplied one out of seven workers employed by auto parts manufacturers.

The increased use of these lower-paid workers, particularly on the assembly line, not only eats into the number of industry jobs available, but also has a ripple effect on full-time, regular workers.

Even veteran full-time auto parts workers who have managed to work their way up the assembly-line chain of command have eked out only modest gains.

When Timothy Shelly first started working at the Faurecia Automotive Seating plant in Cleveland, Miss., he was earning $8 an hour. Nearly 10 years later, with a promotion that moved him up to managing three other workers, he earns $12.72, not much more than the rise in the cost of living over the same period.

“The work is very strenuous. It’ll wear you down,” said Mr. Shelly, who loads 35-pound tubs of parts on pushcarts and then walks miles every day delivering them.

Mr. Shelly can supplement his paychecks with overtime, which pays 50 percent more, but, he said, “it’s not easy at all to get those extra shifts.” Instead, according to Mr. Shelly, his plant regularly uses a service to hire temp workers who are paid $7.50 an hour and do not receive health insurance or other benefits.

In Ohio, Mr. Eberhardt, who works a 10 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. shift, is due for a raise of 50 cents an hour, having just completed his first year in the job. “Once in a while we get a Saturday or a Sunday shift, and that helps,” he said. “It’s time and a half.”


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15)  Police Union Official: Darren Wilson Doesn't Expect to Be Charged
By CBS News
November 21, 2014
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/345-justice/27080-police-union-official-darren-wilson-doesnt-expect-to-be-charged

he suburban St. Louis police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown does not appear to expect criminal charges from a Missouri grand jury that has been investigating the case for several months, a police union official said Thursday.

Jeff Roorda, business manager for the St. Louis Police Officers' Association, said he met Thursday with Ferguson officer Darren Wilson, who has remained secluded from the public eye since the Aug. 9 shooting that sparked tense and occasionally violent protests and drew national attention.

Wilson has been under a lot of pressure and stress but appeared confident in the outcome of the grand jury investigation, Roorda said.

"It's fair to say that neither he nor his defense team expect an indictment," Roorda said, offering his impression of the situation based on the meeting with Wilson.

Roorda later told the AP in a text message that he was only speaking for himself.

"Wilson seems confident that justice will be served, but neither he nor his attorneys shared any expectations with me," he said in the text.

One of Wilson's attorneys, who also attended Thursday's meeting, said there was no specific discussion of expectations.

"We have absolutely no idea - no more than anyone else - what may or may not happen," attorney Neil Bruntrager said. "The only expectation that we would have is that the grand jury would be thorough and fair."

If he is indicted, Wilson will immediately turn himself in to authorities, Bruntrager said.

Wilson has been on paid administrative leave since the shooting.

A 12-person St. Louis County grand jury has been hearing evidence in the case as it weighs whether to issue charges against the white officer for the black 18-year-old's death. A decision could come soon, though authorities have not publicized any specific date for an announcement.

Roorda said St. Louis city police have been notified that they are switching to 12-hour shifts starting Saturday, a preparation for a potential uptick in protests.

The St. Louis County Police Department has not yet decided whether to switch to longer work shifts, spokesman Brian Schellman said.

For weeks, local and state police have been preparing for a grand jury announcement in anticipation that it will result in renewed protests. Earlier this week, Gov. Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard to help with security.

Authorities have said Wilson shot Brown, who was unarmed, following some sort of physical confrontation that occurred after Wilson told Brown and a friend to stop walking down the center of a street.

Wilson told authorities that the shooting happened after Brown struggled with him for his gun, according to reports by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the New York Times that cited unnamed sources. But some witnesses have said Brown had his arms raised - as if to surrender - when the fatal shot was fired.

Riots and looting occurred a day after the shooting, and protesters filled the streets for weeks. Police responded by firing tear gas and smoke canisters into crowds of demonstrators after some people threw rocks and Molotov cocktails.

Protests have been nearly constant since the shooting. The vast majority of protesters want to see the officer charged with murder. Many are also pushing for changes in the way police and the courts interact with minorities. A handful of demonstrations have been in support of Wilson.

Benjamin Crump, a lawyer for Brown's family, described the investigation as an "emotional roller-coaster" for his clients. Even if Wilson is indicted, there's no guarantee of a conviction. And if he isn't charged, Crump said Thursday, "they get no chance of justice for their child."

Crump said he had no insight into the timing of the grand jury's decision, but that he expected to be notified ahead of any public announcement.

Wilson has incurred significant legal, medical and relocation expenses, and a police charity has raised close to $500,000 for him, Roorda said.



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16) Four Decades of Solitary in Louisiana
By

Richard Nixon was president when Albert Woodfox landed in solitary confinement, along with another inmate, both convicted of the 1972 murder of a Louisiana prison guard named Brent Miller.

Mr. Woodfox is still there.

Now 67 years old, he has maintained his innocence of the murder from the start. He has been held in isolation longer than any prisoner in the United States, and perhaps in the nation’s history.

For 23 hours a day — 23 hours and 45 minutes on weekends — he sits by himself in a closet-size, windowless cell. He eats all his meals alone. He has no access to the prison’s educational or religious activities. His contact with visitors is extremely limited.

Over the past year, he has endured visual body cavity searches up to six times a day, even though he is under constant supervision and is shackled and accompanied by guards whenever he is removed.

Mr. Woodfox, who was serving a sentence for armed robbery at the time of the murder, would most likely have been released from solitary many years ago if he had pleaded guilty to the murder. But he has consistently denied any involvement, believing that he was targeted because of his political activism as a member of the Black Panther Party.

The facts of the case were on his side: There was no physical evidence linking him or his co-defendant, Herman Wallace, to the murder, and prosecutors did not reveal that their main witness had been bribed to testify against the men. Mr. Woodfox, by all accounts, has been a model prisoner, and under Louisiana prison policy this should have earned him his exit from solitary confinement years ago.

Finally, on Thursday, a federal appeals court panel in New Orleans unanimously voted to overturn Mr. Woodfox’s murder conviction because his 1998 retrial was tainted by racial bias in the grand jury selection process. (His original, 1973 conviction was overturned because of his lawyer’s ineffectiveness. In 2008, a federal judge overturned his second conviction on grounds of bad lawyering, but that ruling was reversed because of a federal law that dramatically restricts review of state court decisions.)Mr. Woodfox is the last incarcerated member of what became known as the Angola 3 — three prisoners who each spent decades in solitary, mostly at Louisiana’s notorious Angola prison. Robert King, who was put into isolation also in 1972, was released in 2001. Mr. Wallace was released last year, and he died of liver cancer days later.

In 2005, a federal magistrate judge wrote in a report that the amount of time the men had spent in solitary was “so far beyond the pale” that she could not find “anything even remotely comparable in the annals of American jurisprudence.” Yet in 2008, 36 years after the guard’s killing, the Louisiana attorney general was still calling Mr. Woodfox “the most dangerous person on the planet.”

State officials insist their case is solid and have already said they intend to retry him, though the prison guard’s widow believes he is innocent of the killing and most of the potential witnesses in the case are dead.

Even comparatively brief solitary confinement can cause severe mental and emotional trauma; a United Nations expert has said that more than 15 days may amount to torture. When it is imposed for more than 40 years, it is barbaric beyond measure.


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