Thursday, February 19, 2015

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2015


SF Anti-war Protest on 12th Anniversary of U.S. Invasion of Iraq

Saturday, March 21, 12 noon, Powell & Market Sts.

In solidarity with the “Spring Rising” protest at the White House on Mar. 21 – Reply to endorse
Stop Pres. Obama’s proposed new 3-year AUMF – Authorization for Use of Military Force!
End U.S. War and Occupation in the Middle East and Central Asia – U.S. Out!
No to U.S. sanctions & intervention vs. Iran, Venezuela, Korea, Cuba, Mexico, Russia, Haiti & everywhere
Free Palestine – End U.S. Aid to Israel!

Fund People’s Needs, Not Endless War!

To Endorse or Volunteer reply to: answer@answersf.org
More info: 415-821-6545 or visit www.ANSWERsf.org.
ANSWER SF

To join the Facebook event for Spring Rising: https://www.facebook.com/events/430232700485435
For more information, click here:
http://nepajac.org/springrising.html

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Cancel the #DetroitWater Debt and Start Afresh

Sign the petition:

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/cancel-the-detroitwater-debt-and-start-afresh


We call on the City of Detroit and the newly-formed Great Lakes Water Authority to cancel the existing debts of Detroit Water and Sewerage customers and start afresh with simple, affordable rates: all customer past-due balances are wiped clean.

Last year, Detroit made international headlines when tens of thousands of residents lost their access to water through an aggressive shut-off program by the water department.

The city of Detroit has endured decades of economic turmoil, drastic depopulation and repeated mismanagement. The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) is over $5 billion in debt (over $4,500 per family in the metro Detroit area).To compensate, they have increased rates over 119% in the last decade.¹Residents who fall behind on their bills risk water shutoff, and in 2014 that’s exactly what happened to tens of thousands of Detroiters.

The shutoff program didn't work, and the DWSD collected less than 3% of the over $100 million currently owed.² A large number of the families who entered into payment plans last year are now defaulting on them yet again because they lack sufficient income.

In contrast, a voluntary bond tender offer initiated during the shutoffs allowed the city to renegotiate high interest rates on municipal water bonds and save over $250 million in interest fees for the city.³

The bond markets know that Detroit's water debt is junk and the city will unlikely ever be able to pay the current interest rates, which is why Default Trends proclaimed Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) its "Biggest Default of 2014".⁴

Corruption in the DWSD has been rampant, with former Department head Victor Mercado currently serving an 8-month federal corruption sentence for "conspiracy to commit extortion" by padding department contracts and rigging bids that netted his business associates millions. Although many of those contracts are now being scrutinized by the city's legal team, Detroiters are still paying dearly for the fraud of past leaders.

The overbearing Detroit water debt has a human side, too: it has pushed Detroit into an outright humanitarian crisis. Rates of infectious disease and sickness are up dramatically, leading the National Nurses union recently to declare a 'Public Health Emergency' in Detroit.⁵The water department is significantly under-staffed and water infrastructure is crumbling, leading to leaks that cost taxpayers tens of millions annually. The department is unable to address these time-sensitive issues due to lack of funding, as it currently spends 46% of its operating revenue on debt service to banks - the largest line-item by far in its budget.

We call on the City of Detroit and the newly-formed Great Lakes Water Authority to cancel the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department's existing debts and start afresh with simple, affordable rates: all customer past-due balances are wiped clean.

Detroit's existing water/sewerage rate structure is highly-regressive and unaffordable for too many families. We call on the city to implement the 2005 Water Affordability Plan to ensure that no family pays more than the EPA-recommended threshold for water, including "lifeline rates" for essential quantities of drinking/bathing water.⁶

The water department acknowledges that 90% of its operating costs are fixed⁷, meaning they don't depend upon how much water is consumed by users. Still, they charge usage-based rates that fluctuate dramatically with weather (up to 18% decrease in usage) and with broader demographic shifts in the region (2/3 of Detroit's population has left the city since 1950). Creating a progressive rate structure based at least partially upon a family's income - as is done with many public services like streetlights, schools, libraries, etc - would more equitably distribute the burden of operating a system relied upon by over 4 million people for essential drinking water.

The Detroit Water Brigade has provided emergency relief and advocacy to hundreds of families since June of 2014, including providing immediate financial assistance to families currently without water.⁸We've seen first-hand the disastrous effects of these harsh, debt-driven austerity policies.

We pledge to escalate this campaign in the coming months until we bring relief to the tens of thousands of metro Detroit families living without water today and the millions living precariously with unaffordable water rates.


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Free Albert Woodfox!
End the Injustice. Don’t Oppose Bail for Albert Woodfox

In 1972 a young white prison guard named Brent Miller was fatally stabbed inside Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as “Angola.” Although no physical evidence tied Albert Woodfox to the crime, he was immediately assumed to be guilty and placed in solitary confinement; 23 hours a day isolated in a small cell, four steps long, three steps across. He was eventually convicted of the crime after trials tainted with constitutional violations and other legal issues, and has been held in solitary confinement, fighting to prove his innocence ever since.

Albert believes that he and fellow prisoners, Herman Wallace and Robert King, were placed in solitary confinement in retaliation for their activism and outspoken critique of injustice. All three men were members of the Black Panther Party and campaigned for better treatment, racial solidarity, and an end to the brutal sexual slavery in prison. Woodfox, Wallace and King came to be known as the Angola 3.

Albert Woodfox’s conviction has been overturned three times - most recently in 2013 on the basis of racial discrimination in the selection of a grand jury foreperson. In late 2014, an appeals court upheld the decision in Alberts favor, and on February 6, his lawyers filed for bail. After years of the State of Louisiana appealing decisions in Albert’s favor, It is critical that Governor Bobby Jindal show leadership, and ensure that Albert’s cruel and unjust isolation is not his legacy. April 2015 will mark 43 years since Woodfox was first placed solitary - for a crime he maintains that he didn't' commit, a claim that much of the available evidence supports. It is time for the State to let the wisdom of the courts stand and ensure his release.


Amnesty International
http://act.amnestyusa.org/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=1839&ea.campaign.id=35593&ea.tracking.id=Country_USA~MessagingCategory_PrisonersandPeopleatRisk&ac=W1502EAIAR2&ea.url.id=359128&forwarded=true

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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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Protest War Criminal Netanyahu’s Speech to Joint Session of Congress

Tuesday, March 3, 5:00 pm, Israeli Consulate, 456 Montgomery St., San Francisco

Join us on March 3 to say: No to War Criminal Netanyahu - No New War on Iran - End the Colonial Occupation of Palestine - End U.S. Aid to Israel!

More info: 415-821-6545 or www.ANSWERsf.org


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SHUT DOWN CREECH!

Mass Mobilization to Stop Drone Wars!

A Convergence For Peace in the Nevada Desert

Join us March 4-6, 2015 at Creech Air Force Base, Indian Springs, Nevada, for a national mobilization of nonviolent resistance to shut down killer drone operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan,Yemen, Somalia, and everywhere. Sponsored by CODEPINK: Women for Peace, Nevada Desert Experience , Veterans For Peace, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and Voices for Creative Nonviolence. CODEPINK will also hold vigils daily on March 2nd and 3rd, prior to the official beginning of this Creech Convergence For Peace, and welcomes everyone to join them.


In 2005, Creech Air Force Base secretly became the first U.S. base in the country to carry out illegal, remotely controlled assassinations using the MQ-1 Predator drones, and in 2006, the more advanced Reaper drones were added to its arsenal.  Creech drone personnel sit behind computers in the desert north of Las Vegas and kill "suspects" thousands of miles away.  Recent independent research indicates that the identity of only one out of 28 victims of U.S. drone strikes is known beforehand. Though officials deny it, the majority of those killed by drones are civilians. In 2014, it was leaked that the CIA's criminal drone assassination program, officially a separate operation from the Air Force's, has been piloted all along by Creech's super-secret Squadron 17. 


Since 2009 dozens of activists have been arrested for allegedly trespassing at Creech, in attempts to stop the indiscriminate killing and burning of innocent people by drones.  At the trial of the "Creech 14," the first Americans prosecuted for trespass at a drone base, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark testified that "to have a baby burn to death because of a 'no trespass'  sign would be poor public policy, to put it mildly."  In a time of burning children, the "no trespass" signs attached to the fences that protect the crimes perpetrated with drones are not legitimate, and they do not command our obedience.  After all, it is the U.S. military that is guilty of lethal trespassing.


The US drone program is rapidly proliferating as air bases are being converted to drone bases across the U.S. and abroad, but Creech remains the primary air base in U.S. state-sponsored global terrorism. Creech is where the killer drone program started--it is where we shall end it.


We must put an end to this desecration of our Mother Earth and all creatures who inhabit it.

We must put an end to the dehumanization of lives from Ferguson to Palestine to Pakistan.

We must close all foreign U.S. military bases.  Money for human needs. 

We must put an end to drone warfare, drone surveillance, and global militarization.

We must...
SHUT CREECH DOWN! 
More details to come soon!

Sign up on facebook https://www.facebook.com/events/1525740921010540/?context=create&previousaction=create&source=49&sid_create=3742154553#

Or contact:

Toby Blomé of Code Pink, 510-215-5974 (h)

Brian Terrell of VCNV and NDE,   773-853-1886

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Justice for Rasmea: All out for March 12!

On March 12, Rasmea is set to appear once again in the Detroit courtroom of Judge Gershwin Drain, this time for a sentencing hearing. We are seeking letters to the judge requesting leniency.

For this round of letters, we are NOT looking for a mountain of individual statements, but rather letters from prominent individuals who represent broader constituencies. We need you to work with leaders of faith-based, labor, and community organizations, as well as student governments, student organizations (national), prominent professors, and legislators in your area to draft and submit letters.

Below you will find an outline you can use to draft these letters, but it is important for the authors to write them in their own voices. Letters should be submitted by February 4 to justice4rasmea@uspcn.org.

Stay tuned! Keep sharing Rasmea’s story and organizing fundraisers. Watch for calls for your support as we prepare for sentencing and appeal. Our organizing is key to winning #Justice4Rasmea.

follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend
Copyright © 2015 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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Save the Date - UNAC National Conference, May 8 - 10, 2015


UNAC is the major national antiwar coalition in the U.S. today.  The existence of a United National Antiwar Coalition is vital and we need your financial support to continue our work and to expand.

With U.S. wars today accelerating and expanding globally in various forms – from drone attacks on Yemen and Pakistan, never-ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, support to neo-fascists in Ukraine, and proliferating Africom forces to threats of war for regime change in Syria – we have an obligation to do whatever is possible to educate the public and to take action to stop the carnage.

The wars abroad are connected to global warming with most wars fought over energy resources with the U.S. war machine as the largest polluter.

At home, we see hugely growing income inequality, a militarized and racist police force, mass incarceration of Blacks and Latinos, and a massive police state apparatus that includes global surveillance and laws to quell dissent.

In spite of the trillions spent by the U.S. corporate war government and its controlled media propaganda machine to keep us in check, the people are fighting back.  We’ve been inspired and strengthened by the hundreds of thousands of new activists taking to the streets of this country to stop police brutality, to build Occupy encampments, to fight for decent wages, to demand full rights for immigrants, to win marriage equality, to end global warming, to demonstrate solidarity with the besieged people of Gaza, and to protest unending U.S. wars.

UNAC has played an active, often leadership role, in all of the antiwar and social justice movements of our time.  While most activists are focused on their particular issues, the most vital role we can play is to connect the issues to their source.  All of the injustices and crimes we protest, stem from the imperialist insatiable drive for expanding profit and control – and the U.S. is the largest imperialist power militarily and economically.  When there should be plenty for all, only the obscenely wealthy benefit while the rest of the 99% struggle just to survive.

Some of our recent major accomplishments:
·       Initiated protest against NATO and 15,000 marched in Chicago in 2012.
·        Called for immediate actions against threats of war and coups directed at Libya, Iran, No. Korea, Africa, Latin America,    Ukraine, and maintaining the U.S. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.
·        Organized a national tour for Afghan leader Malalai Joya.
·        Sent representatives to international NATO protests and conferences.
·        Serve on the Board of the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms to act against Islamophobia , racist attacks on Muslims, and attacks on our civil liberties.
·        Participated in national efforts to organize anti-drone actions.
·        Campaigned to defend victims of government repression who speak out and expose Washington’s crimes, including Rasmea Odeh, Mumia abu Jamal, Lynne Stewart, Chelsea Manning, and the Midwest activists targeted by the FBI.
·        Produced national educational conference calls featuring experts on topics such as U.S. intervention in Africa, the destruction of Libya, the developing wars in Syria, and others.
·        Built an antiwar contingent in the massive New York City Climate Change march and built Climate Change action in other cities around the country.
·        Helped organize protests against Israel’s attack on Gaza
·        Helped organize protests against the murder of Blacks by white police and the militarization of the police forces in the U.S.

UNAC has a history of bringing hundreds of activists together at large national conferences to learn about the issues of the day, to discuss the way forward and to vote on an Action Program for the coming period.

The UNAC conference next May will bring activists from all the movements in motion to cross-fertilize these struggles.  We are particularly dedicated to bringing young activists together to support and learn from each other.  For this, we need your help to offer subsidies to leaders from Ferguson, from the border wars in the southwest, from the Native Americans who are fighting against the pipelines ruining their lands, from the Students for Justice in Palestine, and many others.

Please give generously so that we can continue our work to bring harmony and justice to the peoples of this earth.

You can send a check to UNAC at PO Box 123, Delmar, NY 12054 or click the button below to contribute on-line with your credit or debit card.

 https://www.unacpeace.org/

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On Behalf of Wadiya Jamal and
Mumia Abu-Jamal,
A Contribution Request

The message following is a forward from:
Rachel Wolkenstein
Sister, Advocate and Friend of the Extended Family

Samiya “Goldii” Abdullah, a daughter of Wadiya Jamal and Mumia Abu-Jamal died on December 17, 2014 after years of battle with breast cancer. Samiya would have been 37 this January 9 and is survived by two young daughters, Aiyanah and Aaiyah, affectionately known as Dolly and Puddy, ages eleven and four.

Samiya was a remarkable woman. She was accomplished as a musician, an activist and rapper on social justice, particularly in the struggle for Mumia’s freedom. She devoured books and education. During her long, often debilitating illness, Samiya finished her Masters Degree in School and Mental Health Counseling from the University of Pennsylvania with honors. She was dedicated to her young daughters and wanted them to grow up loving each other as much as she did her brothers and sisters. And she wanted her daughters to see Mumia (called “Pop Pop” by them) walk out of prison and home with their grandmother, Wadiya.

Samiya's active fight for Mumia's freedom, began at the young age of four. Mumia wrote about this in “The Visit” printed in Live from Death Row in 1994. This was recreated in the movie "Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary."

"My father is still considered to be a dangerous individual … his mind is what they fear, there is over- whelming evidence that would exonerate him of his conviction.
"He is an innocent man and the commonwealth has always known this, but being too Black, too smart, and too strong … The government will silence anyone that possesses the power to open the minds of the people."   
                     —Goldii

Samiya’s strength, character and spirit were nurtured by Wadiya and Mumia and are being passed on to her daughters.

On behalf of Wadiya Jamal and Mumia Abu-Jamal, this is a request for funds to assist Wadiya for care of her granddaughters, Dolly and Puddy.

A financial contribution of any amount will be greatly appreciated.

Please send checks or money orders, made payable to Wadiya Jamal:

Wadiya Jamal
P.O. Box 19404
Kingsessing Postal Station
Philadelphia, PA 19143-9998

In loving memory of Samiya and in tribute to her fierce fight for life,

Rachel Wolkenstein
Sister, Advocate and Friend of the Extended Family


Hear Mumia’s Words (and Song) played before the Janazah for Samiya on December 20, 2014: “Samiya Abdullah Makes Transition”:

http://prisonradio.org/sites/default/files/audio/uploads/SamiyaAbdullahMakesTransition12-19-2.mp3?download=1

This message has been sent to you by:
The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222  •  Oakland CA  •  510.763.2347
www.laboractionmumia.org

Donate Now
to fight the “gag” law!
go to:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/protect-freedom-of-speech-keep-mumia-on-the-air

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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


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Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson

Lorenzo Speaks Concerning Prosecution's Brief:
JANUARY 1, 2015—The prosecutor has run away from (almost) every issue raised in my PCRA by begging the Court to dismiss everything as “untimely”. When they don’t do this, they suggest that me and my lawyers were “defamatory” towards either my former prosecutor Christopher Abruzzo or Detective Kevin Duffin, in our claims they withheld, misused or hid evidence of my Innocence, in order to secure an unjust conviction in this case. If I charged, a year ago, that about a dozen AGs (attorneys general) were involved in circulating porno via their office computers, people would’ve laughed at me, and seen me as crazy.

But, guess what? During 2014, we learned that this was the truth. How can it be defamatory to speak the truth? Notice the OAG (Office of Attorney General), never said the obvious: That AG Abruzzo didn’t inform the Defense about the relationship between his Motive Witness and his head detective (Victoria Doubs and Det. Duffin); that Det. Duffin doesn’t deny Doubs was his god-sister, and that she lived in his family home, or that he assisted her whenever she got into trouble.

Why not? Because it is true. How can you defame someone who defames himself? Mr. Christopher Abruzzo, Esq., when a member of the higher ranks of the OAG, sent and/or received copious amounts of porno to other attorneys general and beyond. What does this say about his sense of judgment? He thought enough about his behavior to resign from his post in the Governor’s Cabinet. If he thought that his behavior was okay, he’d still be sitting in the Governor’s cabinet, right? The OAG cannot honestly oppose anything we’ve argued, but they try by seeking to get the Court to do their dirty work, how? By denying an Evidentiary Hearing to prove every point we’ve claimed.

The prosecution is trying desperately to avoid dealing with the substance of my claims in Com. v. Lorenzo Johnson. So, they slander my Legal Team and blame them for defaming the good AG’s and Cops involved with this case. They try to do what is undeniable, to deny that they hid evidence from the Defense for years. They blamed me for daring to protest the hidden evidence of their malfeasance and other acts to sabotage the defense. They claim that they had an “Open File” policy with my trial counsel. But “Open File” is more than letting an attorney read something in their office. If it’s a search for the truth it must include what is turned over to the attorney, for how do we really know what was shown to her?

They say it is inconceivable that an attorney would read a file, beginning on page nine (9), and not ask for the preceding eight (8) pages. Yet, it is conceivable if trial counsel was ineffective for not demanding the record of the first eight pages. Pages that identify the State’s only witness as a “SUSPECT” in the murder for which her client was charged! How could such an attorney fail to recognize the relevance of such an issue, barring their sheer Ineffectiveness and frankly, Incompetence.

By seeking to avoid an evidentiary hearing, the prosecution seeks to avoid evidence of their wrongdoing being made plain, for all to see. If they believe I’m wrong, why not prove it? They can’t. So they shout I filed my appeal untimely, as if there can ever justly be a rule that precludes an innocent from proving his innocence! Not to mention the fact that the prosecution has failed to even mention the positive finger prints that ay my trial they said none existed. Don’t try to hide it with a lame argument about time. When isn’t there a time for truth? The prosecution should be ashamed of itself for taking this road. It is unworthy of an office that claims to seek justice.

After the trial verdict The Patriot-News (March 18, 1997) reported, “Deputy Attorney General Christopher Abruzzo admitted there were some serious concerns about the strength of the evidence against Johnson and praised the jury for doing a thorough job.” I guess he forgot to mention all of the evidence he left out to show Innocence.

Now, more than ever, Lorenzo Johnson needs your support.
Publicize his case; bring it to your friends, clubs, religious
and social organizations. 


SIGN LORENZO JOHNSON'S FREEDOM PETITION

http://www.freelorenzojohnson.org/sign-the-petition.html

CONTRIBUTE TO LORENZO'S CAMPAIGN FOR FREEDOM!
http://www.freelorenzojohnson.org/how-can-i-help.html


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

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



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Click HERE to view in browser
http://www.iacenter.org/prisoners/freepinkney-1-28-15/
       
Join the Fight to Free Rev. Pinkney!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MESSAGE FROM REV. PINKNEY

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

New Court Date on 4 Motions for Rev. Pinkney 

TUES, FEB. 24 1pm Berrien County Court 

Background to Campaign to free Rev. Pinkney

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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COURAGE TO RESIST
http://couragetoresist.org/

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

November 24, 2014 by the Chelsea Manning Support Network
mchugh_md
Secretary of the Army John McHugh
President Obama has delegated review of Chelsea Manning’s clemency appeal to individuals within the Department of Defense.
Please write them to express your support for heroic WikiLeaks’ whistle-blower former US Army intelligence analyst PFC Chelsea Manning’s release from military prison.
It is important that each of these authorities realize the wide support that Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning enjoys worldwide. They need to be reminded that millions understand that Manning is a political prisoner, imprisoned for following her conscience. While it is highly unlikely that any of these individuals would independently move to release Manning, a reduction in Manning’s outrageous 35-year prison sentence is a possibility at this stage.
Take action TODAY – Write letters supporting Chelsea’s clemency petition to the following DoD authorities:
Secretary of the Army John McHugh
101 Army Pentagon
Washington, DC 20310-0101
The Judge Advocate General
2200 Army Pentagon
Washington, DC 20310-2200
Army Clemency and Parole Board
251 18th St, Suite 385
Arlington, VA 22202-3532
Directorate of Inmate Administration
Attn: Boards Branch
U.S. Disciplinary Barracks
1301 N. Warehouse Road
Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027-2304
Suggestions for letters send to DoD officials:
  • The letter should focus on your support for Chelsea Manning, and especially why you believe justice will be served if Chelsea Manning’s sentence is reduced.  The letter should NOT be anti-military as this will be unlikely to help
  • A suggested message: “Chelsea Manning has been punished enough for violating military regulations in the course of being true to her conscience.  I urge you to use your authorityto reduce Pvt. Manning’s sentence to time served.”  Beyond that general message, feel free to personalize the details as to why you believe Chelsea deserves clemency.
  • Consider composing your letter on personalized letterhead -you can create this yourself (here are templates and some tips for doing that).
  • A comment on this post will NOT be seen by DoD authorities–please send your letters to the addresses above
This clemency petition is separate from Chelsea Manning’s upcoming appeal before the US Army Court of Criminal Appeals next year, where Manning’s new attorney Nancy Hollander will have an opportunity to highlight the prosecution’s—and the trial judge’s—misconduct during last year’s trial at Ft. Meade, Maryland.
Help us continue to cover 100% of Chelsea’s legal fees at this critical stage!



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

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 B. ARTICLES IN FULL




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1) Obama to Intervene in Dispute at West Coast Ports
By





2) Pot Could Save Your Life: 4 Ways Cannabis is Good for Your Brain
It's not just about getting high--cannabis could save your life.
By Dana Larsen / AlterNet
February 10, 2015
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/pot-could-save-your-life-4-ways-cannabis-good-your-brain?akid=12796.229473.8SXZe7&rd=1&src=newsletter1031917&t=7 
3) Aid to Needy Often Excludes the Poorest in America
By




4) George Washington, Slave Catcher
By ERICA ARMSTRONG DUNBAR




5) Rail Strike May Disrupt Industries Across North America
By





6) Killing in Washington State Offers ‘Ferguson’ Moment for Hispanics
Pasco Police’s Shooting of Rock Thrower Draws Comparisons to Michael Brown Case
By and




7) Desperation Drives Gazans Over a Fence and Into Israeli Prisons
By and MAJD AL WAHEIDI




8) Canadian Rail Strike Ends as Parties Agree to Arbitration
By




9) West Virginia Train Derailment Dumps Oil Into River
By




10) Hurricane Sandy Victims Say Damage Reports Were Altered
By





11) When One Penalty Is Enough
By




12) As Walmart Gives Raises, Other Employers May Have to Go Above Minimum Wage
By




13) Israeli Court Ruling on Protester’s Death Is Criticized
By ISABEL KERSHNER





14) Bus Ads Highlight U.S. Taxpayer Funding of “Israel’s War Crimes”
By Elaine Pasquini
February 20, 2015
http://www.wrmea.org/events-blog/bus-ads-highlight-u.s.-taxpayer-funding-of-israels-war-crimes.html








 









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1) Obama to Intervene in Dispute at West Coast Ports
By

LOS ANGELES — Seeking an end to a protracted labor dispute that has led to costly delays in West Coast shipping, President Obama has decided to intervene, the White House announced on Saturday.

At the president’s request, Thomas E. Perez, the secretary of labor, will travel to California to “meet with the parties to urge them to resolve their dispute quickly at the bargaining table,” according to a statement issued by Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman. Mr. Perez will try to mediate a settlement between an association of the major shipowners of the West Coast and the union of longshoremen who unload those ships, which collectively bring in half the nation’s imported cargo.

The White House statement said the president was acting “out of concern for the economic consequences of further delay” and added, “Secretary Perez is already in contact with the parties and will keep the president fully updated.”The unusual decision to intervene in contract negotiations came as American retailers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and agricultural exporters said they had already lost hundreds of millions of dollars because of mounting port congestion, with spare parts and consumer products from Asia not arriving on time and exports like oranges and apples left to rot.

For about nine months, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, whose workers unload cargo with giant cranes, then move it onto trucks and trains, has been in negotiations with shipowners, represented by the Pacific Maritime Association. The negotiations cover operations at 29 ports, including large ones in Long Beach and Los Angeles, in Southern California; Oakland in Northern California; and the Puget Sound.

The owners and the workers each accuse the other of causing the growing congestion and delays. Hopes of a settlement had risen last month as the two sides invited in a federal mediator, but over the last two weeks, fears of a lockout or a near-total shutdown have increased.

The owners accuse the longshoremen of engaging in severe work slowdowns and, in the Los Angeles-Long Beach complex, of refusing to allow experienced but uncertified crane operators — the linchpins of dock operations — to work. But the union says plenty of qualified workers are ready to meet any demand and accuses the owners of manufacturing a crisis to punish workers financially and to force them to settle.

For several weeks, the owners — blaming unannounced labor slowdowns for congestion in the dockyards — had canceled night shifts for the loading and unloading of vessels. Then they said they were halting unloading altogether last weekend, Thursday, and Saturday, Sunday and Monday over this holiday weekend. The owners, dominated by large foreign-owned fleets, said they did not want to pay time-and-a-half weekend and holiday wages for sluggish work — what the maritime association called a “strike with pay.”

On Saturday, the number of container ships waiting at anchor in the Los Angeles and Long Beach harbors, which together handle one-third of the nation’s container imports, had grown to 22, from 14 on Thursday, according to the Maritime Exchange, which monitors ship traffic. That was the largest backlog yet since the previous labor contract ended on July 1, and it appeared likely to grow in the days ahead.

The total number of ships waiting to dock at these two conjoined ports on Saturday, including bulk and general cargo carriers, was 32.

In recent weeks, ships that normally operate on a rigid schedule, coordinated with trucks and trains on shore, have often waited from one to two weeks at anchorage before they could start unloading. This in turn has delayed the loading of containers — either empty or with products — for the return trip to Asia.

The owners say that full-time workers already make more than $50 an hour, including premiums and overtime, and that they have offered a significant raise, as well as a health plan with no co-payments.

The union has not commented on the negotiations, but it appears that work rules and procedures, not wages, are the sticking points.

One of the main remaining issues, according to the owners, is a condition by the union for the right to demand a change in arbitrators when labor contracts expire. Currently, both sides must agree to fire arbitrators, who are hired for the long term and adjudicate labor disputes.

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2) Pot Could Save Your Life: 4 Ways Cannabis is Good for Your Brain
It's not just about getting high--cannabis could save your life.
By Dana Larsen / AlterNet
February 10, 2015
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/pot-could-save-your-life-4-ways-cannabis-good-your-brain?akid=12796.229473.8SXZe7&rd=1&src=newsletter1031917&t=7 


Modern research is showing that cannabis extracts protect and benefit the human brain. Here’s four amazing ways scientists are showing that cannabis actually helps to keep your brain safe from disease, dementia and even death!

#4 – Cannabis promotes new brain cell growth

Government scare campaigns often claim that cannabis kills brain cells, but now we are learning the truth. Those discredited studies were done in the 70s, by strapping a gas mask onto a monkey and pumping in hundreds of joints worth of smoke. The monkeys suffered from lack of oxygen, and that’s why their brain cells died.

Modern research is now proving the opposite. The active ingredients in cannabis spur the growth of new brain cells!

Back in 2005, Dr. Xia Zhang at the University of Saskatchewan showed that cannabinoids cause “neurogenesis” – which means that they help make new brain cells grow!

“Most ‘drugs of abuse’ suppress neurogenesis,” said Dr. Zhang. “Only marijuana promotes neurogenesis.”

Scientists in Brazil expanded on this research, demonstrating in 2013 that CBD, another chemical in cannabis, also causes new brain cells to sprout up. Researchers in Italy then produced the same resultwith CBC, another “cannabinoid” found in cannabis resin.

Now there is no doubt that cannabinoids cause new brain cells to grow in the hippocampus. This helps explain previous research showing that cannabinoids effectively treat mood disorders like depression, anxiety and stress – they are all related to a lack of adult neurogenesis.

#3 – Cannabis prevents Alzheimer’s

About 5 millions Americans suffer from Alzheimer’s. but there’s hope in sight.  Modern research shows that using cannabis helps prevent the incidence of Alzheimer’s and dementia by cleaning away beta-amyloid “brain plaque.”

A 2014 study into cannabis and Alzheimer’s was lead by Dr. Chuanhai Cao, PhD, a neuroscientist at the Byrd Alzheimer’s Institute.

“THC is known to be a potent antioxidant with neuroprotective properties,” said Cao, explaining that THC “directly affects Alzheimer’s pathology by decreasing amyloid beta levels, inhibiting its aggregation, and enhancing mitochondrial function.”

This confirmed earlier studies, such as one from 2008 which found that THC “simultaneously treated both the symptoms and progression of Alzheimer’s disease.” This study concluded that, “compared to currently approved drugs prescribed for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, THC is considerably superior.”

These studies used very low levels of THC to find these results – the levels you might find in a moderate cannabis user. So where’s the headlines saying “Smoking Cannabis Prevents Alzheimer’s”?

#2 – Cannabis prevents brain damage after strokes and trauma

Several recent studies have found that cannabinoids protect the brain from permanent damage after trauma or stroke.

Studies done in 2012 and 2013 found that a low dose of THC protected mice’s brains from damage by carbon monoxide and head trauma.

Researchers found that THC “protected brain cells and preserved cognitive function over time” and suggested that it could be used preventively, for ongoing protection.

A 2014 study found that people with low amounts of THC in their system were about 80% less likely to die from serious head injuries than those without.

This last study is actually quite remarkable and should have been headline news. Researchers analyzed blood samples from hundreds of people who had suffered head injuries, and found that people with small amounts of cannabinoids in their bloodstream were 80% less likely to be killed from head trauma.

This means that in a group of occasional pot smokers and a group of abstainers who suffer similar brain injuries, the pot smokers will have only 2 deaths for every 10 suffered by the abstainers!

There are 52,000 deathsevery year from traumatic head injury in America. This study showed that if every adult American had a puff of cannabis once a week, 80% of those deaths would be avoided – that’s about 41,600 lives that could be saved, every year. Why isn’t this front page news?

#1 – Cannabis extracts treat brain cancer

One exciting use of cannabinoids is in the treatment of cancer. Repeated laboratory and animal studies have shown that cannabinoids kill cancer cells and shrink tumours, while helping to protect normal cells.

Recent research includes a 2012 study showing that CBD stopped metastasis in aggressive forms of cancer,  a2013 study showing that a blend of six cannabinoids killed leukemia cell, and a 2014 study showing that THC and CBD could be combined with traditional chemotherapy to produce “dramatic reductions” in brain tumour size.

Using cannabis extracts for brain cancer is nothing new. A 1998 study found that THC “induces apoptosis [cell death] in C6 glioma cells” – an aggressive form of brain cancer. A 2009 study showed that THC triggered brain cell death, and acted “to kill cancer cells, while it does not affect normal cells.”

The medicinal benefits of cannabis and cannabinoids are immense, and it’s time everyone is allowed full access to this amazing healing herb.

Who knows? Maybe one day we’ll even get to use outdoor-grown hemp to produce vast quantities of pure, cheap cannabinoids for the millions of Americans who need them.

Dana Larsen is the editor of Cannabis Culture, which is based in Vancouver B.C.

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3) Aid to Needy Often Excludes the Poorest in America
By

The safety net helped keep Camille Saunders from falling, but not Charles Constance.

The difference? Ms. Saunders has a job, and Mr. Constance does not. And therein lies a tale of a profound shift in government support for low-income Americans at a time when stagnating wages and unstable schedules have kept many workers living near or below the poverty line.

Assistance to needy Americans has grown at a gallop since the mid-1980s, giving a hand up to the disabled, the working poor and married couples with children. At the same time, though, government aid directed at the nation’s poorest individuals has shrunk.

“Most observers would think that the government should support those who have the lowest incomes the most, and provide less help to those with higher incomes,” Robert A. Moffitt, an economist at Johns Hopkins University, writes in a forthcoming article in the journal Demography. “But that is not the case.”

Mr. Moffitt found that government assistance for families whose incomes flutter just above the poverty line nearly doubled from 1983 to 2004) after taking inflation into account. The numbers look very different for those scraping along at the bottom, generally unemployed single mothers with children. Their benefits declined in real terms by about one-third.

During the Great Recession, assistance to the poorest briefly expanded but has since fallen back, he said, and there is no indication that the long-run trend is shifting.

“There’s been this emphasis on rewarding workers and people like the elderly or disabled who are considered ‘the deserving poor,'” said Mr. Moffitt, referring to a revival in recent decades of age-old attitudes toward those at the bottom of the economic ladder. “If you’re not working, the interpretation is that you’re not trying.”

President Obama’s new proposals for a $500 tax credit for working parents with children, an increase in the minimum wage and paid parental leave are just the latest examples of this trend.

The shift reflects not only a more conservative political climate but also a response to broader economic forces, like globalization, advancing technology and workers’ enfeebled bargaining power, all of which have had a role in eliminating millions of traditional middle-class jobs and holding down wages.

More than 300,000 California workers at big companies like Walmart, for example, qualify for Medi-Cal, the state’s health insurance for the poor, according to a study from the Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California, Berkeley. And in New York, 40 percent of bank tellers are on some form of public aid like food stamps.

Across the country, working families account for nearly three-quarters of the people enrolled in major public benefits programs and 63 percent of the costs, the Berkeley researchers concluded.

Experts emphasize that they do not want to pit one needy group against another. “The working poor deserve some help; there’s no way I want to cut any of that,” Mr. Moffitt of Johns Hopkins said. “But there’s a group here that’s being left out.”

Distinguishing between people who deserve public generosity and those who don’t dates to Colonial times, but the idea has found powerful champions on both sides of the political divide, including Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the influential new Republican chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

The move away from giving more aid to those in abject poverty can be traced, in part, to the campaign to “end welfare as we know it,” promoted by President Bill Clinton during his 1992 presidential run and accomplished in 1996 when the system was overhauled.

The program he created, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, imposes time limits and work rules on recipients. And when a state’s allotted budget runs out, poor families are turned away.

“It got rid of welfare cheaters,” Sheldon Danziger, president of the Russell Sage Foundation, said of the Clinton-era changes. “But we forgot about people who want to work but can’t find anybody to hire them.”

Like Mr. Constance. “I couldn’t really find any kind of work or the help that I needed to help raise my son,” said Mr. Constance, 53, who until recently had been living at a homeless shelter in New Orleans with his 9-year old son, Pablo.

A prison record from the 1980s, the result of selling two ounces of marijuana in Texas, has hampered his search for work as a house painter. “That’s why I say it’s been a hard road for me trying to raise my son, with all those ghosts and shadows over my head,” he said.

As he discovered, benefits vary greatly from one state to the next. He applied to the Temporary Assistance program in Miami, he said, but was uncertain about why he never received any. “It wasn’t nothing but problem after problem after problem,” he said.

Last year, he moved with his son to New Orleans, where he said he was offered $123 a month in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families aid in exchange for community service. He tried it, but the time and money spent commuting wasn’t worth it, he said, explaining that he was better off using the time to look for an odd job, a car to wash or a yard to rake.

He said he received $318 a month in food stamps, and that his son received $390 a month from disability payments through his mother, who still lives in Florida.

After months of bouncing around in emergency homeless shelters, the two are now settled in an apartment. The $700 monthly rent is being paid by the Salvation Army for six months, while Mr. Constance searches for a permanent job. “With the light bill and water bill, I don’t have enough to take care of all of that,” he said.

LaDonna Pavetti, the vice president for family income support policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a research organization in the nation’s capital, said that without the small cash allotments previously available, “it becomes much trickier to figure out how to make ends meet.”

For Ms. Saunders, a 34-year-old security guard with two young daughters in Washington, government assistance has come in the form of food stamps, a rent subsidy, a tax refund for low-wage earners and a matching grant for budding entrepreneurs.

That aid has helped put food on the table after Ms. Saunders’s weekly $459 paycheck runs out and has given her hope that she might be able to start her own cleaning business.

“I’m very much a go-getter,” Ms. Saunders said. “For a person that doesn’t make much money, it’s definitely a big help.”

She supplements her income as a security guard with $297 a month in food stamps and depends on Medicaid for health insurance. The earned-income tax credit, considered by many advocates to be the best program to help nudge people above the poverty line, brought the family $5,500 in federal and local tax refunds.

One of the lucky few to live in federally subsidized housing, Ms. Saunders pays only $110 a month for her two-bedroom apartment in the northeast section of Washington. “It’s not the best neighborhood,” she said, but it’s cheap.

And by saving $1,000 to put toward her dream of a cleaning service, she is now designated to receive a $4,000 tax-free, no-strings-attached federal subsidy through the Individual Development Accounts program. These accounts, which are financed through public money and private donations, can be used only to help buy a home, pay for college or start a business

“This is not a handout approach,” said Joseph Leitmann-Santa Cruz, the head of Capital Area Asset Builders, the nonprofit organization that administers development accounts in the region. Earlier this year he insisted on rescheduling a meeting with Ms. Saunders so she could get some sleep after working an 18-hour double shift. “It’s a way for society to co-invest with a poor working family,” he said.

Ms. Saunders also has the advantage of living in the District of Columbia, which offers more generous benefits for low-income families than many states. Mr. Constance in New Orleans knows the difference.

“Not getting any kind of help or anything,” he said, “it’s been very rough.”



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4) George Washington, Slave Catcher
By ERICA ARMSTRONG DUNBAR

AMID the car and mattress sales that serve as markers for Presidents’ Day, Black History Month reminds Americans to focus on our common history. In 1926, the African-American historian Carter G. Woodson introduced Negro History Week as a commemoration built around the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Now February serves as a point of collision between presidential celebration and marginalized black history.

While Lincoln’s role in ending slavery is understood to have been more nuanced than his reputation as the great emancipator would suggest, it has taken longer for us to replace stories about cherry trees and false teeth with narratives about George Washington’s slaveholding.

When he was 11 years old, Washington inherited 10 slaves from his father’s estate. He continued to acquire slaves — some through the death of family members and others through direct purchase. Washington’s cache of enslaved people peaked in 1759 when he married the wealthy widow Martha Dandridge Custis. His new wife brought more than 80 slaves to the estate at Mount Vernon. On the eve of the American Revolution, nearly 150 souls were counted as part of the property there.

In 1789, Washington became the first president of the United States, a planter president who used and sanctioned black slavery. Washington needed slave labor to maintain his wealth, his lifestyle and his reputation. As he aged, Washington flirted with attempts to extricate himself from the murderous institution — “to get quit of Negroes,” as he famously wrote in 1778. But he never did.

During the president’s two terms in office, the Washingtons relocated first to New York and then to Philadelphia. Although slavery had steadily declined in the North, the Washingtons decided that they could not live without it. Once settled in Philadelphia, Washington encountered his first roadblock to slave ownership in the region — Pennsylvania’s Gradual Abolition Act of 1780.

The act began dismantling slavery, eventually releasing people from bondage after their 28th birthdays. Under the law, any slave who entered Pennsylvania with an owner and lived in the state for longer than six months would be set free automatically. This presented a problem for the new president.

Washington developed a canny strategy that would protect his property and allow him to avoid public scrutiny. Every six months, the president’s slaves would travel back to Mount Vernon or would journey with Mrs. Washington outside the boundaries of the state. In essence, the Washingtons reset the clock. The president was secretive when writing to his personal secretary Tobias Lear in 1791: “I request that these Sentiments and this advise may be known to none but yourself & Mrs. Washington.”

The president went on to support policies that would protect slave owners who had invested money in black lives. In 1793, Washington signed the first fugitive slave law, which allowed fugitives to be seized in any state, tried and returned to their owners. Anyone who harbored or assisted a fugitive faced a $500 penalty and possible imprisonment.

Washington almost made it through his two terms in office without a major incident involving his slave ownership. On a spring evening in May of 1796, though, Ona Judge, the Washingtons’ 22-year-old slave woman, slipped away from the president’s house in Philadelphia. At 15, she had joined the Washingtons on their tour of Northern living. She was among a small cohort of nine slaves who lived with the president and his family in Philadelphia. Judge was Martha Washington’s first attendant; she took care of Mrs. Washington’s personal needs.

What prompted Judge’s decision to bolt was Martha Washington’s plan to give Judge away as a wedding gift to her granddaughter. Judge fled Philadelphia for Portsmouth, N.H., a city with 360 free black people, and virtually no slaves. Within a few months of her arrival, Judge married Jack Staines, a free black sailor, with whom she had three children. Judge and her offspring were vulnerable to slave catchers. They lived as free people, but legally belonged to Martha Washington.

Washington and his agents pursued Judge for three years, dispatching friends, officials and relatives to find and recapture her. Twelve weeks before his death, Washington was still actively pursuing her, but with the help of close allies, Judge managed to elude his slave-catching grasp.

George Washington died on Dec. 14, 1799. At the time of his death, 318 enslaved people lived at Mount Vernon and fewer than half of them belonged to the former president. Washington’s will called for the emancipation of his slaves following the death of his wife. He completed in death what he had been unwilling to do while living, an act made easier because he had no biological children expecting an inheritance. Martha Washington lived until 1802 and upon her death all of her human property went to her inheritors. She emancipated no one.

When asked by a reporter if she had regrets about leaving the Washingtons, Judge responded, “No, I am free, and have, I trust, been made a child of God by the means.” Ona Judge died on Feb. 25, 1848. She has earned a salute during the month of February.

Erica Armstrong Dunbar, an associate professor of black studies and history at the University of Delaware, is the author of “A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City.”


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5) Rail Strike May Disrupt Industries Across North America
By

OTTAWA — About 3,000 locomotive engineers and conductors at the Canadian Pacific Railway walked off the job Sunday morning in a dispute over wages and benefits.

Although the company said it would try to maintain some service by using managers, the strike is likely to disrupt major industries throughout North America, including automakers, oil companies, paper businesses, lumber suppliers and agriculture and mining companies.

In a news release issued immediately before the strike, the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference suggested that disagreements on rest time and other scheduling issues had led to the breakdown in negotiations.

“We require sufficient fatigue countermeasures to protect our members’ safety and health,” the statement said.

The company said it had offered workers improved pay and benefits. It disputed the union’s stance that members needed more rest.

The union’s leadership, the company said in a statement, “claims that lack of time off is at the heart of its reluctance to negotiate, yet 72 percent of all engineers and conductors do not take the time off they are entitled to.”

Unifor, the union for about 1,800 maintenance and safety workers, said Sunday morning that it had reached an agreement with the company minutes before its members were scheduled to strike.

A prolonged shutdown would be felt in the United States as well as Canada. Producers in Canada’s oil sands have been increasingly using Canadian Pacific, in addition to its rival, Canadian National Railway, for shipments to American refineries. The tightly integrated auto industry is also a major customer.

All three Toyota vehicle assembly plants in Ontario use only Canadian Pacific for rail shipments. Greig Mordue, the general manager of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada, said that the company had acquired additional areas to stockpile completed cars, would add truck shipments and would take some production to other railways by truck.

“It’s a challenge,” Mr. Mordue said. “We have storage spaces essentially for about five days outside of our normal routine.”

But those options are not economically viable or even practical for many of Canadian Pacific’s customers.

David Lindsay, the president of the Forest Products Association of Canada, said about three transport trucks would be needed to replace one rail car. A typical paper mill, he added, would need about 40 trucks a day to move its production.

“Getting that many trucks and drivers to replace rail cars is a physical challenge,” Mr. Lindsay said, particularly in the remote regions were most paper mills operate.

Although lumber producers can wait out the strike simply by storing wood outdoors, that is impossible for pulp and paper makers. In view of the lack of large warehouses at paper mills, Mr. Lindsay said, most of them would have to suspend production and lay off employees if the strike continued.

Service has also been canceled on three commuter rail lines in Montreal that use Canadian Pacific tracks and engineers.

Retailers in the United States may also encounter product shortages. Many containers ultimately bound for the United States are unloaded at ports in British Columbia, then delivered by rail to Chicago and other destinations in the United States by Canadian Pacific.

Labor relations at Canadian Pacific have been shaky in recent years. In 2012, the activist investor William A. Ackman won control of Canadian Pacific through a proxy fight. He then installed E. Hunter Harrison as chief executive, with a mandate to cut costs and improve performance, steps he had previously taken as the top executive at Canadian National. Many of Mr. Harrison’s measures have not gone over well with unions.

The Canadian government, which has clashed with Canadian Pacific over delays in grain shipments apparently caused by the growth in its oil shipping business, introduced legislation that ended a 2012 strike after nine days. It is expected that the government may introduce a bill to end this strike as soon as Parliament convenes on Monday.

On Friday, Kellie Leitch, the federal labor minister, joined in the labor talks, which were held in Montreal.


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6) Killing in Washington State Offers ‘Ferguson’ Moment for Hispanics
Pasco Police’s Shooting of Rock Thrower Draws Comparisons to Michael Brown Case
By and


PASCO, Wash. — Members of the Zambrano family began arriving here three decades ago, picking apples in nearby orchards. Over time they have become part of the fabric of this harvesting town, growing to more than 50 and settling in tiny candy-colored homes, some ringed by white picket fences.

Then, last week, one of their own was killed by the police, his death caught in a video that has sped around the Internet. Antonio Zambrano-Montes, 35, is shown running from three Pasco officers. He turns and swings his hands upward, before he is felled by a spray of bullets, his body slamming the concrete. He had been throwing rocks at cars and police officers.

It was the third killing by the Pasco police since July, and the video has brought international attention, with a flurry of online commenters criticizing the use of force against a man without a gun or a knife, making comparisons to the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.It has drawn condemnation from the president of Mexico and multiple investigations, including inquiries by a task force of local police agencies, by the county coroner and by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. An official from the United States attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Washington has also called community leaders, assuring them that the shooting will get a thorough review, which may include an examination of police training and whether it played a role.

But here in Pasco, a city of 68,000 that is 56 percent Hispanic, the public killing has pierced the immigrant enclave, spurring protests that have attracted hundreds and highlighting a division between the city’s increasingly Latino populace and its power structure — the police, the city government — which remains largely white.

While many Hispanics have found work and stable, if not particularly affluent, lives here, the killing has drawn attention to their lack of clout. And, as with blacks in Ferguson, it has intensified feelings among Hispanics that they remain second-tier residents, despite their deep roots here, defined by the many Latino shops that now dominate the main thoroughfare, Lewis Street.

“They had him like a deer, hunting him,” said Maria Paniagua, 41, a resident with six children. “What happens when one of my kids gets in a jam and runs. Will they shoot him down?”

Though Latino workers have been here since at least the 1960s, attracted by jobs gathering fruit and asparagus in the region’s vast fields, few have moved into law enforcement or city government. Of the city’s 68 officers, 14 are Hispanic. A dozen officers speak Spanish fluently, and some residents cite language barriers that complicate interactions with the police. The City Council has one Latino member. The five-member school board, which oversees a system that is 70 percent Latino, typically has one or two Latino members, but this year has none.

“People are finally getting their feelings out through this whole Antonio issue,” said Alicia Coria, 18, a former neighbor of Mr. Zambrano-Montes’s who moderated a recent protest, guiding a sea of Latino residents through local streets, signs and fists held high. “The Hispanic community is finally trying to have the power.”

All three officers involved in last week’s shooting have been placed on paid leave. One of them, Adrian Alaniz, a Pasco native, is Hispanic.

The shooting has caused soul-searching among some city officials, who, even as they urge the residents to wait for the results of an investigation, say the protests have uncovered anger bubbling below the surface.

“This was about more than just Antonio,” said City Manager Dave Zabell, who took over the job last August. “It’s part of a community emerging,” he continued, “and frankly, it’s welcomed.”

Mr. Zambrano-Montes was raised in Michoacán, Mexico. He came to the United States about a decade ago to work in the orchards, said family members, who described him as both caring — guiding newly arrived relatives — and troubled. His wife obtained a protection order against him several years ago, they said, alleging that he had abused her. She, along with their two daughters, eventually moved to California. Mr. Zambrano-Montes was in the country illegally and did not speak English.

He was arrested for assaulting a police officer in January 2014. The police said he had thrown objects at officers and tried to grab an officer’s pistol. He pleaded guilty in June.

In recent months he was out of work and appeared increasingly depressed and disoriented, his aunts and cousins said, after falling from a ladder in an apple orchard and breaking both his wrists. Then, in January, he was trapped in a house fire where he was renting a room, which burned his belongings.

“What I know is that he was alone, that his wife had left him, that he couldn’t see his daughters,” said his cousin Pedro Farias, 32. “I don’t know what his reasons were” for throwing rocks at the police, “but I know all of this affected him.”

There are some Hispanics who hold prominent positions in Pasco. Saul Martinez is a council member. Eight of 20 Pasco schools are headed by Latino principals.

And the Police Department said that it had worked to recruit Hispanic officers in recent years, recognizing the need to reach the group. An Explorer program is one of several recruitment efforts. Intended to train residents ages 14 to 21 in police practices, it has 15 enrollees, all but two or three of whom are Hispanic, said Capt. Ken Roske.

Still, despite deep roots here, Hispanics have struggled to break into the city’s highest echelons. Community leaders cite several reasons, including apathy, lack of English skills and education, and the fact that many Latinos are not citizens and cannot vote.

“There are so many barriers, not only linguistic but psychological, that act like an obstacle,” said Gabriel Portugal, 61, a former vice principal who came to Pasco from Mexico in the 1970s. He is now part of a community group called Consejo Latino, which lobbies the municipality for changes that will help immigrants and their children.

The video has been a near constant presence here in recent days, played repeatedly on television news in crowded taco shops and bakeries, each time drawing the gaze of those perched over plates of pupusas or pan dulce. Reyes Juarez, 54, said that she had slept little since viewing it, imagining her own son gunned down each time she shuts her eyes.

“It’s like having the badge gives you the right to take the life of a Mexican,” she said.

The killing of Mr. Zambrano-Montes has also drawn attention to past accusations of police misconduct. One officer involved in the shooting, Ryan Flanagan, was a defendant in a 2012 lawsuit in which he was accused of using excessive force in 2009 against Maria Davila-Marquez, then 30.

According to the lawsuit, Ms. Davila-Marquez was walking to pick up her children from child care after work when Officer Flanagan stopped her, somehow confusing her with a teenage suspect. When she requested an interpreter, he refused, said her lawyer, Vito de la Cruz. Another officer arrived, he said, and Ms. Davila-Marquez’s hands were twisted behind her back and her face was shoved onto the hood of the hot car, causing burns.

The police chief exonerated both officers, saying their conduct was appropriate, Mr. De la Cruz said. The city settled the suit for $100,000.

Julie Turkewitz reported from Pasco, and Richard A. Oppel Jr. from New York.


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7) Desperation Drives Gazans Over a Fence and Into Israeli Prisons
By and MAJD AL WAHEIDI

EL BUREIJ, Gaza Strip — It was not much of an escape.

Moments after Ibrahim al-Awawda climbed over the nine-foot fence separating the Bureij refugee camp on Gaza’s eastern edge from Israel, he was surrounded by six Israeli soldiers. They arrested him, interrogated him and, after he had spent a month in two Israeli prisons, sent him back to the poverty, death and destruction in Gaza that had led him to flee.

“I knew they would capture me,” said Ibrahim, 15, whose father was killed in an Israeli strike in 2002 and who has since lived through three wars between Israel and Gaza militants, including last summer’s bloody 50-day battle. “The war shook me,” he added. “I told myself I may find a better life. They served me good food, but later, they threw me back to Gaza.”Ibrahim is one of an increasing number of young Palestinians from Gaza who have been caught trying to cross into Israel in the nearly six months since the latest conflagration subsided. Though he carried nothing with him, others were armed with knives or grenades.

The crossings have shaken residents on Israel’s side of the fence who are still psychologically scarred from the series of tunnel invasions by Palestinian militants that marked last summer’s conflict. But military officials and others see the growing phenomenon as less about terrorism than desperation.

Several fence jumpers, and human rights workers who track their cases, compared their despondency to that of the roughly 300 Gazans who died in a September shipwreck as they were being smuggled across the Mediterranean Sea: They just wanted out, no matter the risk.

Some said they fantasized about finding work in Israel. Even the all-but-inevitable time behind bars is alluring — safe, three meals a day, and the monthly stipend the Palestinian Authority pays all its prisoners.

Compared with Gaza, “the prison in Israel is like a five-star hotel,” said Youssef Abbas, 21, who did stints there after crossing the border in 2010 and 2008. He said he had headed toward the fence twice more in September but had been turned back, once by Gaza security forces and once by a call from his fiancée.

“I was thinking of two choices: death or prison,” Mr. Abbas said. “Because there were so many problems in my life, I was so tired, I had this idea.”

The Israeli military said that 84 Palestinians had been arrested after hopping the fence from September to January, along with nine more in the first nine days of this month. The military would not provide comparable figures for the first half of 2014 or previous years, but it confirmed a recent report in the Israeli daily Haaretz that the prewar monthly average was 13 — less than half the 27 arrested in November.

“It’s a slight increase,” said the Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, “not necessarily a game-changer, as far as we’re concerned at this stage.” Still, Colonel Lerner said: “Each and every infiltration, we address as a potential terrorist attack. All it takes is for one to come in with a weapon, with a grenade, with a suicide belt and so on. So that’s our concern.”

Separately, the military announced last week that it had destroyed the Israeli side of a tunnel discovered during the summer fight with Hamas, the militant Islamic faction that dominates Gaza.

The military wing of Hamas ran a dozen training camps last month in which 17,000 boys and men ages 15 to 21 learned to climb ropes and fire assault rifles in preparation for the next confrontation with Israel.

For the Israelis living in the tiny communities near the barrier, reports of each illegal crossing are jittery reminders of last summer.

At Kibbutz Sufa, about a mile from where 13 gunmen from Gaza emerged from a tunnel July 17 — an episode that led to Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza — “people are reliving the fear,” said Eyal Brandeis, a longtime member of the 300-person kibbutz’s emergency team and a professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University.

Rony Kissin, community manager of Kibbutz Kerem Shalom, just half a football field’s length from the fence, said that residents with permits were carrying their pistols more often than before. Children in the community are acting more violent, she said, and mothers are more worried.

“We can’t see them, because we have not just a fence — we have a wall around three-quarters of the kibbutz, so we don’t really see the border,” said Ms. Kissin, 49. “Sometimes I don’t want to know. If the army catches him seconds after he crosses the border, I don’t think I should know, because it really makes the tension more high.”

In Gaza, men who had crossed said Israeli security officials had questioned them, sometimes for hours, about whether Hamas or any other group had sent them, how they had planned their escape, what they intended to do in Israel and, broadly, what was happening back home in the aftermath of the war. Then, when they returned to Gaza, they said, Hamas security officials questioned them, sometimes for hours, about what they had told the Israelis.

Iyad al-Buzom, the spokesman for Gaza’s Interior Ministry, said it had taken “serious measures to prevent border sneaking” since the war and was considering “more harsh procedures and punishments to stop those who think of crossing the fence.” He said officials worried that crossers would be pressured into collaboration with Israeli intelligence upon their arrest, or that they would be shot as they tried to get to the other side.

Data from the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs show that Israeli soldiers killed six Palestinians near the fence in 2014, all but one before the war. That was double the number in 2013, but significantly fewer than the average of 22 annually in the previous four years. Thirty-nine Gaza residents were wounded by Israeli fire and tear gas from September through January, the data show, some while protesting or throwing stones, others while trying to cross.

Ateya al-Nabahin, 15, was shot in the neck as he tried to sneak into Israel in November, and he returned home in January after being treated in two Israeli hospitals. “Now, he is lying on his bed like the dead,” Ateya’s brother, Fadi, said in a recent interview. “He cannot walk or even talk like normal people.”

Looking back, Hasan and Salwa al-Zawara’a see plenty of signs that their 20-year-old son, Noor, was planning to cross before he disappeared Oct. 27 from their home in Johor al-Deek, a village next to the Bureij camp.

Three days earlier, his mother recalled, Noor had asked for a copy of his identity card. That morning, he changed clothes several times before settling on jeans and a black shirt. He had almost never had a decent night’s sleep since the war, his father said, and he had been asking a sister’s husband who had spent six years in Israeli prison what life was like there.

Now he knows. The younger Mr. Zawara’a, who left school after 11th grade and worked occasionally harvesting olives or in construction, calls once a day from the jail in Beersheba where he is awaiting trial Feb. 23 for entering Israel illegally.

“The prison is good, because all of them live in a sense of safety,” said Ms. Zawara’a, who has visited her son twice in jail. “After the war, he got really depressed. He started to feel like there is no life and there is no money, no employment.”

“All the people in this place, in each house, you can find someone who tried to cross,” she added. “When I was traveling in the bus, the Israelis were asking us: ‘What’s wrong? Suddenly, the whole neighborhood is coming to us.'”


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8) Canadian Rail Strike Ends as Parties Agree to Arbitration
By

OTTAWA — A strike by about 3,000 locomotive engineers and conductors at the Canadian Pacific Railway unexpectedly ended on Monday, its second day, as both sides agreed to arbitration. The announcement came about half an hour before a bill was to be introduced in Parliament ordering the members of the union, the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, back to work.

Canadian Pacific said the “ramp-up process” to resume train service had begun. Though it could not say precisely how long that would take, a spokesman, Martin Cej, said “it will be fast.”

The agreement by the union and the company eliminated the possibility of disruptions, increased costs and even shutdowns for a variety of businesses throughout North America. Three commuter lines that carry about 19,000 people a day along Canadian Pacific tracks in Montreal were also closed by the walkout.“While we would have preferred a negotiated settlement, this is the right thing to do at this time,” E. Hunter Harrison, the chief executive of Canadian Pacific, said in a statement.

It would have taken at least several days for a back-to-work bill to make its way through Parliament. When it appeared that the Conservative government was about to introduce the bill, both of the main opposition parties condemned the plan.

“The Conservatives always have the same answers: to attack the workers, attack their rights — their constitutional rights,” said Alexandre Boulerice, a member of Parliament for New Democratic Party, which was partly founded by labor unions.

In a news conference originally intended to announce the return-to-work legislation, Kellie Leitch, the labor minister, instead praised the two sides for agreeing to arbitration.

“I do believe there are still numerous issues on the table and I’m confident that the mediation and arbitration process will get them to the place where they need to be,” she said.

Earlier in the House of Commons, Ms. Leitch said that the strike would reduce Canadian economic output by 205 million Canadian dollars a week.

Resource companies, agricultural shippers and many manufacturers, particularly automakers, are not able to fully replace the transportation provided by Canadian Pacific by using trucks. The railroad also has a growing business shipping production from Canada’s oil sands to the United States.

The union did not respond to requests for comment.

Negotiations collapsed early Sunday morning over the length of shifts and rest breaks for train crews. Before the strike, the union said that the railway was demanding unspecified rule changes that would tire out crews and create a safety hazard.

The railroad company said that 72 percent of conductors and engineers were not using all of the break time they were entitled to under the previous contract.

“Our conductors and engineers have plenty of options for time off, but the vast majority don’t take full advantage of those opportunities,” Mr. Harrison said in a statement issued last weekend. “We want to implement a model that allows us to properly schedule crews while maintaining the highest standards of safe railroading.”


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9) West Virginia Train Derailment Dumps Oil Into River
By

A wrecked train hauling millions of pounds of oil continued burning in West Virginia on Tuesday, a day after it derailed in a snowstorm and sent fireballs ripping through the air. The derailment prompted the evacuation of nearby villages and dumped crude oil into a river, forcing the shut-off of local water supplies.

The CSX train, with 109 tanker cars and two locomotives, derailed about 1:20 p.m., near the village of Boomer, in the southern part of the state. Twelve or thirteen cars jumped the tracks, and at least seven ignited, said Jennifer Sayre, the Kanawha County manager.

Photos and videos posted online by witnesses showed the burning tankers that had tumbled down the Kanawha River bank or piled against each other at odd angles. There were multiple explosions as flames shot hundreds of feet in the sky, and “there are still tankers that are on fire,” Ms. Sayre said Tuesday, 21 hours after the crash.

Firefighters from several surrounding departments fought the blaze in temperatures that did not go above 13 degrees.

Local authorities advised residents of Boomer and Adena Village, southeast of Charleston, to evacuate, and 200 to 300 people took shelter in schools, a fire station and a community center, Ms. Sayre said “The railroad has made arrangements for some families to get hotel rooms,” she said.

Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin declared a state of emergency in Kanawha and Fayette counties.

CSX and local officials said that one person had been treated for possible respiratory trouble related to the accident, and that they knew of no other injuries. It was not clear if any structures were damaged.

Crude oil poured into the Kanawha River, and West Virginia American Water closed at least one intake to a water treatment plant downstream, and prepared to close others if needed. Charleston lies downstream on the same river, but officials said it was not clear whether enough oil spilled to affect the city’s water supply.

The utility warned that depending on how long the water intake remained closed, about 2,000 customers could lose service. “I don’t think it’s gotten to the point yet where there’s no water coming out of anyone’s tap,” Ms. Sayre said, but officials were moving water tanker trucks and bottled water to the area.

The train was carrying oil from North Dakota to a ship terminal in Yorktown, Va.

Such accidents have become more common as oil shipment by rail has soared with the boom in oil production from the Bakken shale formation underlying parts of the northern plains states and central Canada. Before 2009, fewer than 10,000 tank cars of oil were transported by rail each year in the United States, according to the Association of American Railroads, but that traffic jumped to more than 230,000 cars in 2012, and more than 430,000 in 2013.

Spills and fires in derailments have prompted concerns about the safety of the tankers. In 2011, the railroad association required that new cars meet higher standards to resist rupture in accidents, though it did not require refitting older cars. CSX said the tankers in Monday’s crash were all built to the new specifications.

The federal Department of Transportation has proposed even tougher standards, and Canadian authorities have required the retrofitting of older cars by 2017.

State, federal and CSX investigators headed to the scene of the West Virginia crash to determine the cause and the extent of environmental damage.

It was not clear whether the unusually frigid conditions, or the snowstorm barreling through the region at the time, played any role in the accident.


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10) Hurricane Sandy Victims Say Damage Reports Were Altered
By

When Frank Johnston’s insurance carrier rejected his claim that flooding from Hurricane Sandy had severely damaged the foundation of his Fire Island home, the company cited an engineering report that seemed to establish his problems were “unrelated” to the storm, and were caused instead by the “long-term deterioration” of wooden piers beneath his house.

In reality, the original had reached the opposite conclusion. The engineering report, documents show, had been altered.

Mr. Johnston is part of a growing number of homeowners who suspect that their engineering reports were similarly rewritten as part of an effort to minimize insurance payments to flood victims in New York and New Jersey after the 2012 hurricane.

In November, allegations of altered reports prompted a federal judge overseeing more than 1,000 hurricane related lawsuits in the New York City area to order all drafts of the engineering reports be turned over, saying he believed such revisions could be “widespread.” Lawyers for homeowners in the suits began reviewing the documents, and say they have already identified more than 500 doctored reports.

When Frank Johnston’s insurance carrier rejected his claim that flooding from Hurricane Sandy had severely damaged the foundation of his Fire Island home, the company cited an engineering report that seemed to establish his problems were “unrelated” to the storm, and were caused instead by the “long-term deterioration” of wooden piers beneath his house.

In reality, the original had reached the opposite conclusion. The engineering report, documents show, had been altered.

Mr. Johnston is part of a growing number of homeowners who suspect that their engineering reports were similarly rewritten as part of an effort to minimize insurance payments to flood victims in New York and New Jersey after the 2012 hurricane.

In November, allegations of altered reports prompted a federal judge overseeing more than 1,000 hurricane related lawsuits in the New York City area to order all drafts of the engineering reports be turned over, saying he believed such revisions could be “widespread.” Lawyers for homeowners in the suits began reviewing the documents, and say they have already identified more than 500 doctored reports.

That is how Mr. Johnston learned of the revisions on his report, and led a judicial panel for the Eastern District of New York to schedule a hearing this week to review the documents.

Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman of New York has begun a criminal inquiry, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which ultimately pays out the claims through the National Flood Insurance Program, is conducting an inquiry.

To the homeowners, the revised reports reinforce long-held suspicions that insurers and their partners often collude against homeowners.

Steven Bertolino, a Long Island lawyer who is representing Mr. Johnston, said engineering firms would have an incentive to produce reports favorable to insurance firms. “You’re not going to bite the hand that feeds you,” Mr. Bertolino said, “and if a report is not written the right way, you’re not going to get work.”

Insurance and engineering firms deny any culpability. Even if some documents were altered by rogue actors, they say, the total would be just 1 percent of all Hurricane Sandy-related flood claims in the two states. Besides, said Robert P. Hartwig, the president of the Insurance Information Institute, an advocacy group for insurers, there is little motivation to cheat: Under federal rules, the money that is paid out ultimately comes from FEMA, not the insurance companies.

If the practice was pervasive, many victims may never know what happened to them. Most simply accepted whatever settlement offer was presented, because challenging it can be stressful, said Benjamin Rajotte, director of the Disaster Relief Clinic at the Touro Law Center on Long Island.

None of this might have emerged were it not for a chance encounter between homeowners and the engineer who first assessed their property.

In Long Beach, on Long Island, an independent claims adjuster and an engineer told the homeowners, Deborah Raimey and her father, Larry Raisfeld, that the hurricane had damaged their house beyond repair. But their insurer declined to pay for structural damage, citing an engineering report blaming soil settlement, not the flood.

When Ms. Raimey asked for another opinion, the insurer, Wright National Flood Insurance, asked the engineering firm, U.S. Forensics, to dispatch an engineer. They sent George Hernemar, the original engineer. He showed Ms. Raimey a copy of his first report; it differed substantially from the final version. She took a picture with her phone.

Only later, after a lawsuit was filed, did Ms. Raimey learn that key findings, and not just conclusions, in Mr. Hernemar’s report had been revised or deleted by a U.S. Forensics executive, Michael Garove, who did not visit the property, according to court documents. (The house has been torn down.)

In court papers filed on Jan. 23, a lawyer for U.S. Forensics, Larry E. Demmons, played down the significance of the different versions.

“It is common for law clerks to draft memoranda, orders and opinions for judges,” Mr. Demmons wrote. “No one would ever seriously suggest (and rightfully so) that an opinion originally drafted by a law clerk, but later changed by a judge, was fraudulent or constituted a crime.”

In an email, Neal Conolly, president of Wright National Flood Insurance, said that “in no case would Wright pressure an engineering firm to reach a conclusion.”

Mr. Conolly also contended that insurers had no reason to be miserly when settling claims, pointing out his company earns a 1.5 percent fee on total damages.

Still, in early November, the allegations of altered reports led the federal judge, Gary R. Brown, to order all defendants to produce all drafts of the engineering reports. Writing that “these unprincipled practices may be widespread,” he called the Raimey case an example of “reprehensible gamesmanship” that was “concealed by design from the homeowners.”

Senators Charles E. Schumer and Kirsten E. Gillibrand of New York and Robert Menendez and Cory A. Booker of New Jersey, all Democrats, then pressed W. Craig Fugate, the FEMA administrator, to push insurance companies being sued to produce all their draft reports. On Dec. 5, Mr. Fugate sent a memorandum to insurance companies, asking them to turn over the drafts.

Since then, dozens of cases similar to Ms. Raimey’s and Mr. Johnston’s on Fire Island have come to light. In Long Beach, floodwater damaged the floors and heating system of Marilyn Wellisch’s house, according to the initial engineering report, but the final version blamed soil settlement instead.

In Coney Island, Brooklyn, flooding washed out the cellar and part of the first floor of Vadim Klimenko’s home, according to the first report. But the revised one said “there was no evidence” that the flood had caused damage, even though the Klimenkos have yet to move back.

“These cases, they just keep coming,” said Denis G. Kelly, a lawyer who represents Ms. Raimey and Ms. Wellisch.In March 2013, Stephen and Sarise Dweck, whose home in Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn, flooded during the hurricane, were surprised when they learned that a report written by an engineer hired by their insurer, the Hartford Financial Services Group, had determined that cracks to the foundation of their house had not been caused by the storm. The engineer, hired by HiRise Engineering, had indicated otherwise during his visit.

The Dwecks contacted the engineer, Harold Weinberg, who lives nearby. He, too, was perplexed, because the final report differed from his submission, yet included his signature and professional seal. “The false report issued by HiRise, purportedly in my name, is a forgery,” Mr. Weinberg later wrote in an affidavit.

The Dwecks’ lawyer, Mitchell B. Shpelfogel, informed Hartford of what he believed was fraud in July 2013. After a lawyer for Hartford warned that the Dwecks’ claim would be denied unless another opinion was sought, they relented, and that second engineer agreed with the insurer. The family filed an administrative appeal with FEMA but was denied.

Now, newly discovered correspondence filed in federal court raise serious questions about the manner in which the Dwecks’ claim was handled and is being cited by the plaintiffs in the suits as part of a broader allegation of racketeering.

A few weeks after Mr. Shpelfogel’s July 2013 email, according to court filings, a HiRise executive, Matthew Pappalardo, instructed employees to try to convince the engineers they hired to certify that the original and final drafts were unchanged by signing a “memo of understanding” that would be later backdated by the firm. Mr. Pappalardo said the employees should not view the request as “an intimidating and discouraging task” because the engineers “made a lot of money by working for us during the storm season.”

Mr. Pappalardo, reached recently on his cellphone, declined to comment. HiRise lawyers did not respond to calls and emails.

While Hartford has denied any role in the altered reports, a spokesman, Thomas Hambrick, said that the company had “suspended all further use of the engineering firm while the allegations are being investigated.”

David R. Charles, a longtime claims adjuster in Jersey City, said insurance companies were naturally oriented toward minimizing payments.

That orientation only hardened after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when FEMA and the insurance industry were criticized as being overly generous and creating an atmosphere ripe for fraudulent homeowner claims.

Mr. Fugate, the FEMA administrator, warned insurance companies in his recent memo that they needed to be vigilant about not tilting too far in the other direction. On Feb. 19, a three-judge panel will hold a hearing in Brooklyn to hear testimony on the engineering reports. In New Jersey, hundreds of new cases could soon emerge when engineering firms and insurance companies begin turning over all draft reports.

Veterans of the industry said it might be difficult in many cases for prosecutors to find evidence of an insurance company directly ordering an engineering firm to alter a report. There is sometimes a tacit understanding, they said, between engineers and insurers.

“The reason that the engineering reports are like this is they know where their bread is buttered,” said Mr. Charles, now president of Master Claims Consultants. “It’s a sword that dangles over the head of every adjuster, every engineer.”




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11) When One Penalty Is Enough
By

Millions of Americans may be in for a shock when they file tax returns and learn that they have to pay a fine for failing to enroll in health insurance in 2014 and an even bigger fine for failing to enroll in 2015 before the enrollment period ended on Feb. 15. While there is nothing they can do to avoid the 2014 fine, which must be paid this year, they could avoid the 2015 fine, payable next year, if the Obama administration allowed them more time to enroll.

The government should open a special enrollment period that lasts beyond April 15, the traditional filing time for most taxpayers. That would be fair to millions of consumers who remain uninformed about the health care law and ignorant about the subsidies it provides and the penalties for failing to enroll. And it would strengthen implementation of health care reform.

The Affordable Care Act requires most Americans to obtain health insurance or, with some exceptions, pay a fine, which is assessed at the time they pay their income taxes. For individual adults who failed to enroll in 2014, the fine is $95 or 1 percent of applicable yearly income, whichever is higher. For individuals who failed to enroll in 2015, the fine will jump to $325 or 2 percent of applicable yearly income, to be paid when taxes are filed next year. That is a big jump that will hurt many people on modest incomes. The fines leap even higher the following year.

President Obama said on Tuesday that 11.4 million people had selected private insurance plans or renewed their coverage in the enrollment period that ended on Feb. 15. Many people cited the threat of penalties if they failed to obtain insurance. Estimates of the number of people who will have to pay penalties now for failing to enroll in 2014 range from three million to six million. It seems unfair to hit them with a double-whammy for failing to enroll in 2015.

Eleven senators and three senior House Democrats have urged the Obama administration to allow a special enrollment period for those facing fines. There are at least four good reasons for doing so. It would increase the number of people with health insurance, which is, after all, the goal of the Affordable Care Act. It would reduce the number of people who must pay fines. It would enable tax preparers to help people sign up. And it would increase the number of people who receive subsidies to buy health insurance, strengthening support for the reform law. More than 85 percent people who buy insurance through the exchanges qualify for financial help.In an unrelated move, the administration extended the Feb. 15 deadline by a week, to Feb. 22, for people who tried to sign up on the federal government’s exchanges before the deadline but encountered problems with the website or its phone hotline. Many states that run their own exchanges also extended their deadlines for those who encountered problems, including, in some cases, because severe weather prevented people from venturing out to help centers.

This year 13 states and the District of Columbia are running their own exchanges, while 37 states are using the federal exchange. All Americans are required to obtain health insurance no matter where they buy it, whether on a state or federal exchange or elsewhere. The states can open special enrollment periods for those who face a fine for failing to enroll by Feb 15. The administration will announce soon whether it will grant special enrollment on the federal exchange.

Washington State on Monday opened a special enrollment period until April 17, becoming the first state to do so. Other states should follow suit. That would help their citizens obtain subsidized insurance and avoid fines. States should also ramp up efforts to enroll people who are poor enough in Medicaid and other programs that allow year-round enrollment. The more people covered, the better — for them and for health care reform.


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12) As Walmart Gives Raises, Other Employers May Have to Go Above Minimum Wage
By

Walmart is the biggest private employer in America, with 1.3 million United States workers. And many of them will soon see a raise, in the latest snippet of corporate news that suggests a firmer job market is starting to enable workers to successfully demand higher pay.

The company said it would pay even its lowest-level workers at least $9 an hour starting this spring, comfortably above the $7.25 federal minimum wage, and push that to $10 in 2016. The company also said it would strengthen a “department manager” role, giving it a minimum wage of $13 per hour this year and $15 next, thus offering low-wage hourly workers a clearer path to advancement. Including similar bumps at Walmart-owned Sam’s Clubs, the company expects 500,000 workers to receive a raise at a cost of $1 billion a year, executives said in a conference call with reporters.

Walmart is surely hoping to get plenty of good press for its decision to offer raises, but it’s worth examining the decision less based on whether they deserve applause on some moral grounds and more based on the economic forces that led them to act. Indeed, the best possible news would be if Walmart’s executives made this decision not out of a desire for good press or for a squishy sense of do-gooderism, but because coldhearted business strategy compelled it.

A first reaction may be simply: What took so long?

This has been a challenging five-year period in which, despite steady economic growth, average hourly wages for nonmanagerial workers have risen around 2 percent a year, barely more than inflation. There is no doubt that working on the floor of a Walmart store is still going to be a hard job at a pay level that makes it hard to get by. But these are enormous percentage gains, and the decision by Walmart comes on the heels of a similar announcement by the health insurer Aetna and survey data that also point to a tighter labor market and higher raises in the future.

Back in its 2007 fiscal year, before the recession, Walmart reported $183,500 in revenue per employee and $5,938 in profit. Not bad, but by 2014 those numbers had risen 18 percent and 22 percent. The company’s sales and profits rose nicely in that time while the company kept a lid on its payroll. Gains went to Walmart shareholders, not Walmart workers.So what has changed? The simple answer is that the world for employers is very different with a 5.7 percent unemployment rate (the January level) than it was five years ago, at 9.8 percent. Finding qualified workers is harder for employers now than it was then, and their workers are at risk of jumping ship if they don’t receive pay increases or other improvements. Apart from pay, Walmart executives said in their conference call with reporters that they were revising their employee scheduling policies so that workers could have more predictability in their work schedules and more easily get time off when they needed it, such as for a doctor’s appointment.

The giant question now is not whether there will be some meaningful wage gains in 2015; beyond the anecdotal evidence from Walmart and Aetna, the collapse in oil prices means even modest pay increases will translate into quite large inflation-adjusted raises. The question is whether wage gains will be strong enough to create a virtuous cycle in which rising pay for the workers at the bottom three-quarters of the income scale, who are most likely to spend the money and get it circulating through the economy, will spur more investment and hiring.

To the degree their logic was, “We think we’re going to need to raise wages this much in the next couple of years anyway to retain good workers and maximize profitability, so we may as well get ahead of the curve and get a public relations bump out of it and announce the plans in a big splashy way,” that would be the best news for American workers. Because that would imply that it won't just be Walmart workers getting a raise in 2015.



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13) Israeli Court Ruling on Protester’s Death Is Criticized
By ISABEL KERSHNER

JERUSALEM — The Israeli Supreme Court’s rejection of an appeal for damages by the family of Rachel Corrie, a young American woman who was run over by a military bulldozer in Gaza in 2003 as she protested Israeli Army actions there, has prompted criticism from the family and from Human Rights Watch.

The ruling “sends a dangerous message to Israeli armed forces that they can escape accountability for wrongful actions,” Human Rights Watch, based in New York, said this week in a statement.

Last week Israel’s Supreme Court upheld a 2012 decision by the Haifa district court that determined that the state bore no responsibility for Ms. Corrie’s death, an event that resounded internationally, on the grounds that it had occurred as a result of wartime activity.

The Haifa court characterized her death, during a ground-clearing operation in an area of southern Gaza near the Egyptian border, as a “regrettable accident.” The Israeli authorities said the area in question was one of the most dangerous in Gaza, where the military came under frequent sniper and grenade attack while trying to prevent infiltrations and weapons smuggling.

The Corrie family has argued, among other things, that Ms. Corrie’s death was the result of negligence, that the soldiers were not in immediate danger and were involved in routine activity at the time, and that the episode did not qualify as having occurred during wartime.

The family also argued in its civil suit that the investigation into Ms. Corrie’s death had been flawed.

In a separate case, the family had sought compensation relating to the autopsy on Ms. Corrie’s body at Israel’s forensic institute.

Her relatives have asserted that some body parts that were removed during the autopsy have not been handed over for burial.

In the matter of the autopsy, the Supreme Court ruled that a lower court should re-examine the family’s claims, meaning that after a decade, the legal proceedings have still not come to an end.

“Our family is disappointed but not surprised,” the Corrie family said in a statement last Thursday, the day of the Supreme Court ruling. “We had hoped for a different outcome, though we have come to see through this experience how deeply all of Israel’s institutions are implicated in the impunity enjoyed by the Israeli military.”

Ms. Corrie, who was from Washington State, was 23 and dressed in an orange vest at the time of her death in March 2003, at the height of the second Palestinian uprising.

The Israeli investigation determined that the driver of the bulldozer could not have seen her from where he was sitting when she was hit, a point long disputed by Ms. Corrie’s supporters.


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14) Bus Ads Highlight U.S. Taxpayer Funding of “Israel’s War Crimes”
By Elaine Pasquini
February 20, 2015
http://www.wrmea.org/events-blog/bus-ads-highlight-u.s.-taxpayer-funding-of-israels-war-crimes.html

Advertisements calling attention to Israel’s brutal 51-day military assault on Gaza last summer, as well as its continuing illegal occupation and confiscation of Palestinian land, went on display on San Francisco municipal buses Feb. 2.

Israel’s military assault on Gaza from July 7 to August 16, 2014 killed 2,131 Palestinians, including 1,473 civilians—501 of them children; wounded 11,000; and left at least 110,000 people homeless.

The ads, reading “ISRAEL’S WAR CRIMES, YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK,” were a joint project of the Free Palestine Movement and Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign (SeaMAC). The Free Palestine Movement has been organizing and participating in public advertising of this kind for more than two years, placing ads on buses and Bay Area Rapid Transit trains in San Francisco, a billboard in Sacramento, and buses in Denver.

These ads counter hateful anti-Muslim advertisements purchased by right-wing blogger Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative, which ran on the same buses in January. San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, District Attorney George Gascón and other city leaders condemned Geller’s advertisements, calling them racist and Islamophobic, but acknowledged they were protected free speech.

The website notaxdollarstoisrael.com was created to accompany the advertisements and bring attention to—and condemn—the more than $3 billion in American taxpayer dollars the U.S. gives to Israel every year. News and information about this use of U.S. taxpayer money and efforts to end the funding, including tax exemptions for projects in Israel that support human rights abuses, can be found on the site. The Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign, seamac.org, utilizes direct education through public forums, church and school presentations, and other face-to-face events to point out how U.S. support for Israel enables Israel’s continued oppression and subjugation of the Palestinian people.     

 


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