Monday, August 31, 2015

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, MONIDAY, AUGUST 31, 2015


Planning for Paris 2015
​
Join the Northern California Climate Mobilization

Join us to plan for a mass march and rally leading up to the Paris COP21* UN climate talks.

Thursday, September 10, 2015

7 pm – 9 pm at the Berkeley Unitarian Church

(Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists)

Connie Barbour Room, 1606 Bonita in Berkeley

(at Cedar and Bonita, between MLK, Jr and Shattuck)

Please join us for our next planning meeting aimed to coordinate a mass march and rally in Oakland from the Lake Merritt Amphitheater to Oakland City Hall on November 21st as a lead up to the Paris UN COP21 climate meeting (Nov 30 – Dec 11).  We are a network that has grown and expanded from the groups  who organized the Northern California People's Climate Rally in Oakland on September 21, 2014, in solidarity with the People's Climate March in New York.   Our point of unity are on the reverse side.   We need activists to join our committees:  outreach, media/messaging, and logistics.   And please reach out to your networks and invite other groups to this meeting to help build for climate action.

Contact us at info@norcalclimatemob.net and visit our website: www.norcalclimatemob.net

*COP21 is the 21st "Conference of the Parties" held by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.  The conference objective is to achieve a legally binding and universal agreement on climate, from all the nations of the world.

Challenging climate catastrophe the Northern California Climate Mobilization demands:

-A global agreement to implement dramatic and rapid reduction in global warming pollution

-Keep fossil fuels in the ground!

-100 percent clean, safe, renewable energy!

-End all fracking, tar sands mining and pipelines, offshore drilling, arctic drilling.

-Stop expansion of the extractive  economy. Wind, solar, geothermal power now.

-No coal exports or crude-by-rail bomb trains in Northern California.

            These conditions are necessary to create:

●      A world united to repair the ravages of climate change

Industrial countries and polluting corporations of the global north need to pay their ecological debt to society and to the global south by providing funding for developing countries and vulnerable communities worldwide to adapt to the impacts of climate change and convert to sustainable economies.

●      A world with an economy that works for people and the planet

Billions of dollars for energy efficiency and conservation. We need a just transition to a sustainable, demilitarized economy based on renewable energy, clean transportation, and jobs for all at union wages. Convert water-wasting, polluting factory farms to sustainable organic agriculture. End corporate personhood; end "money equals free speech"; end billionaire purchase of elections.

●      A demilitarized world with peace and social justice for everyone; where Black Lives Matter; where good jobs, clean air and water, and healthy communities belong to all

End all forms of oppression and discrimination. No to environmental racism and pollution of indigenous, low income, and frontline nations and communities. Respect all indigenous lands. No militarized police. No wars. No nuclear weapons or power.   A true ecological approach must integrate questions of justice to protect biodiversity, honor all life on earth and lift all people out of poverty.

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Starting this September, Rising Tide North America is calling for mass actions to shut down the economic and political systems threatening our survival.

Already, hundreds of thousands are streaming into the streets to fight back against climate chaos, capitalism and white supremacy.

This wave of resistance couldn't be more urgent. To stop climate chaos we need a phenomenal escalation in organizing, participation and tactical courage. We need a profound social transformation to uproot the institutions of capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, and white supremacy, the systems that created the climate crisis. And we need to link arms with allies fighting for migrant justice, dignified work and pay, and an end to the criminalization and brutal policing of black and brown bodies.

We need to #FloodTheSystem.

In the lead up to the United Nations climate talks in Paris, in December, we will escalate local and regional resistance against systems that threaten our collective survival. Together, we will open alternative paths to the failing negotiations of political elites.

This is not another protest. It is a call for a massive economic and political intervention. It is a call to build the relationships needed to sustain our struggles for the long haul. To build popular power along the intersections of race, class, gender and ability. To collectively unleash our power and change everything.

The Story So Far

Over the past year, hundreds of thousands of people have flowed into the streets to fight back.

Fast food workers in over a hundred cities went on strike, with thousands arrested demanding $15 an hour and a union. Young people in Ferguson, protesting the murder of Michael Brown by Darren Wilson, showed us the power of sustained action as they fought back against state violence for weeks, reinvigorating a national movement for Black liberation. Hundreds of thousands of climate activists marched at the People's Climate March in New York, and the next day Flood Wall Street shut down the heart of New York's financial district.

Across the country, and the world, powerful movements are using nonviolent direct action to to disrupt business as usual and demand lasting systemic change.

These moments show that broad mobilization and disruption are ways that we can transform our society. It is time we move beyond conventional strategies. Its time we connect across movements and #FloodTheSystem.

Rising Tide North America and its allies call on communities, networks, affinity groups and organizations across the continent to join together this Fall to rapidly escalate the pace and scale of the anti-capitalist climate justice movements.

We need to wash away the root causes of climate change -- capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy and colonialism. These systems enable the domination of people and Earth. They place gains for the elite before the well being of our communities.

To build the scale of movements necessary to take on this challenge, we need everyone. Using sustained, coordinated direct action we can bring more people into a movement for radical social transformation than ever before.

The upcoming United Nations meeting of the Conference of the Parties in Paris (COP 21) at the end of the year provide us with an opportunity. Framed as climate negotiations they are really about capitalism and the corporate elites. We have an opportunity to focus the debate on capitalism itself as negotiators wedded to and benefiting from the status quo refuse to discuss the systems that drive the crisis. This is a natural moment to preemptively highlight community resistance and radical alternatives in advance of another colossal failure of international leadership. Through our combined action we can turn the failure of these critical talks into a moment in which the systemic nature of the crisis moves to the center and in which our movements begin to connect and collaborate.

In the past, the climate movement has repeatedly tried days of action and one-day marches. While these have built important relationships, they have not created the sustained movement swells we need. To lay the groundwork for exponential movement growth we are asking groups to convene Action Councils, like those forming in the Pacific Northwest, California, Montana, Northeast and elsewhere, with the intention of coming together to organize sustained actions beginning in late Summer, continuing through November and beyond.

With luck, waves of mobilizations breaking across the continent and world will build off each other to create a flood of resistance to fossil fuel extraction, capitalism and colonialism.

Vision

#FloodTheSystem invites the Rising Tide network, the larger climate justice movements, and other non-climate focused groups to create a flood of massive economic and political disruption of the systems that allow the climate and economic crisis to continue to escalate. This is not a simple call to action or day of action, it's a long-term process. We want to organize a series of actions that would:
  • Build a more robust anti-capitalist movement that clearly defines climate change as a symptom of capitalism. Specifically, we hope to support and catalyze regional organizing networks and relationships to challenge extreme energy infrastructure and the systems of oppression that enable it.
  • Build long term local, regional and continental networks that can continue to coordinate, build connections between movements, and escalate these fights in 2016 and beyond.
  • Begin to work closely with other movements through the analysis of where our struggles intersect and through a commitment to anti-oppressive organizing practices.
  • Share, implement and gain experience in innovative models of horizontal movement structures and mass democracy in organizing that will serve radical forces for the long haul.
  • Create a flood of energy within regions that inspires others to join in with organic, spontaneous actions and organizing. Regional blocks of escalating action are already planned that will lead into, and play off, each other. More emerge everyday.
  • Preemptively highlight community resistance and real alternatives to the fossil fuel economy ahead of the inevitable colossal failure by global elites at the United Nations climate negotiations in Paris.

Principles

#FloodTheSystem will organize and act according to the following principles.
  • Anti-capitalism/colonialism/racism/patriarchy - We see the climate crisis as a symptom of hierarchical social systems based upon domination and exploitation of lands, and predominately people of color. Addressing the crisis at its roots means joining with and supporting those who are fighting for liberation from these and other oppressive systems, and for their replacement with relations based upon equity, mutual aid, and ecological stewardship.
  • Grassroots Led, NGOs in Support Role - Non-profits and NGOs often function to co-opt and defuse resistance into reform-based avenues which are amenable to the social systems we are ultimately seeking to dismantle and replace. The priorities of this mobilization should be driven by groups grounded in and accountable to the communities most impacted by white supremacy, capitalism, and settler colonialism, with NGOs in a support role -- not the other way around.
  • Community-Based Alternatives - Corporations, nation-states, and multilateral institutions like the United Nations are integral pillars upholding global capitalism and colonialism. We see alternatives to extreme energy and the climate crisis arising out of social struggles which challenge and seek to replace these institutions and their logics. However, we recognize that there may be important defensive struggles within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, such as fighting the expansion of carbon markets or advancing state recognition of Indigenous land rights.


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Commute Kevin Cooper's Death Sentence

Sign the Petition:
https://act.amnestyusa.org/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=1839&ea.campaign.id=40574&ea.tracking.id=Country_USA~MessagingCategory_DeathPenalty~MessagingCategory_PrisonersandPeopleatRisk&ac=W1507EADP1&ea.url.id=432762&forwarded=true

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

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

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

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

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

Cooper has consistently maintained his innocence.

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

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

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

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

In solidarity,

James Clark
Senior Death Penalty Campaigner
Amnesty International USA

News Updates

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Free Albert Woodfox!

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

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

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

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

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Amnesty for all those arrested demanding justice for Freddie Gray!

 

Amnesty for ALL those arrested
demanding justice for Freddie Gray!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Petition to Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake

Download PDF of Petition 

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

Amn3.pngMayor Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake
City Hall, Room 250,
100 North Holliday St.,
Baltimore, MD 21202

Dear Mayor Rawlings-Blake:

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

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

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

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

Sincerely,
[add your name below]

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CANCEL ALL STUDENT DEBT!

Sign the Petition:

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


Dear President Obama, Senators, and Members of Congress:


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

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

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


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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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Action Alert!

Stand with Major Tillery


Dear Bonnie,

Listen to Mumia tell this story. Major Tillery stood up to the prison administration: he confronted them in no uncertain terms, noting that Mumia must get to the hospital in time- before he dies. SCI Mahanory Superintendent Kerestes told Major to mind his own business, to which Major replied 'Mumia is my business'.

Please join us in standing in solidarity with Major Tillery, who has been transferred and put in solitary confinement as punishment for demanding that Mumia receive medical care.

"Major is in the hole, not because of drugs, but because of something prison administrators hate and fear among all things: prisoner unity, prisoner solidarity."

- Mumia Abu-Jamal

1. Call prison officials to demand that Major Tillery be released from solitary confinement!

Superintendent Brenda Tritt, SCI Frackville
(570) 874-4516

Dept. Of Corrections Secretary John Wetzel
(717) 728-4109
 
  • State that you are calling about Major Tillery #AM9786, to demand he be released from the RHU and placed back in general population.
  • Inform them that you aware that he is in the hole and being denied medication in retaliation for speaking up for another prisoner.

2. Write Major a letter of solidarity:

Dear Major Tillery,

We honor your brave act of solidarity on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal. You urged him to seek medical care and challenged the Prison Superintendent to protect his life. You helped save the life of a fellow prisoner and for that act of solidarity they are trying to bury you in the bowels of SCI Frackville under false charges. No matter how hard they try they cannot hide you under the weight of lies and intimidation. The power of the truth must come to light. Thank you Major Tillery for your courageous service. We salute you!
 
Major George Tillery
AM 9786 
SCI Frackville, 1111 Altamont Blvd, 
Frackville, PA 17931
 

"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." -Frederick Douglass

Mumia continues to transcend the prison walls, reaching out to us with his profound commentaries. Prison Radio is committed to amplifying Mumia's voice, getting him the medical care he needs to survive, and winning his freedom.


Mumia Abu-Jamal Has Hepatitis C:
Demand Treatment Now!



Mumia Abu-Jamal has Hepatitis C-- and the prison is refusing treatment. We are going back to court to demand critical care, and we can't do it without you. Will you support Mumia getting immediate treatment by giving $250, $100 or even $25 today? Every gift and action makes the difference for Mumia getting the care he needs. Thank you, Noelle.

The time to act is now.

Five months after being rushed to the hospital, new medical tests show that Mumia has active Hepatitis C. But prison officials are refusing to treat him for it.

With your help, that changes- today.

Mumia Abu-Jamal remains weak, ill, and in the prison infirmary.

Five months after being admitted to the hospital with lethal blood sugar levels and in renal failure, he continues to have a debilitating skin rashes, open wounds and swelling across his lower extremities. Because of our relentless demands for medical testing and treatment, we finally know the likely cause of his severe ailments: Hepatitis C.

But what is news to us is not news to his jailers. Prison officials have known that Mumia was Hep. C positive since 2012-- and have done nothing.

Even now that prison doctors know that Mumia's Hep. C is active -from testing they performed solely because we demanded it- they are refusing to provide treatment.

Today, we are going back to court to demand justice for our brother. 

Mumia's legal team (Bret Grote of Abolitionist Law Center and Robert Boyle of New York) is filing an amended lawsuit today, 'Abu-Jamal v. Kerestes', to include medical neglect and demand immediate treatment.

Meanwhile, Prison Radio is working tirelessly to make sure Mumia's legal and medical team have the necessary resources to get Mumia the critical care he needs.

And we can't do it without you.

We need your help today to ensure that the prison treats Mumia's Hepatitis C now!

The world came together for Mumia when he fell unconscious five months ago. Because of our international outcry for justice and the critical steps we took, Mumia is alive today.

Now, we need your help to get Mumia a treatment plan. Can you fight for Mumia's right to medical care by giving $100, $25 or $250 today?

Your donation will:
File an amended lawsuit 'Abu-Jamal v. Kerestes' to include medical neglect
Get Mumia a full Hepatitis C work up and treatment plan

Grant Mumia's consulting physicians access to directly examine Mumia 

Fuel a public campaign to bring Mumia back to health

Support the demand for treatment of Hepatitis C for all Pennsylvania prisoners
Please join us in demanding immediate medical treatment by giving $25, $100 or even $1,000 now. Every gift and action matters.

bit.ly/fight4mumia
I Demand Treatment NOW!
Luchando por la justicia y la libertad,
Noelle Hanrahan
Director, Prison Radio
To give by check:
PO Box 411074
San Francisco, CA
94141
Stock or legacy gifts:
Noelle Hanrahan
(415) 706 - 5222


Prison Radio has recorded Mumia and other political prisoners for over 25 years, and we are pulling out all the stops to keep these voices on the air. 

Please donate today to amplify prisoners' voices far and wide beyond the bars:

     Support Prison Radio: prisonradio.org/donate
     Defeat SB 508: bit.ly/defendfreespeech


Copyright © Prison Radio

www,prisonradio.org 415-706-5222

Our mailing address is:

Prison Radio PO Box 411074, SF CA 94141

http://us10.campaign-archive2.com/?u=247585f092e945ff55b9a1bb2&id=e113d0b6d0&e=0107d76ccd

Donate Now

$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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The  Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Mobilizes Support Internationally:
No Execution by Medical Neglect!

International Unions Demand Decent Medical Treatment for Mumia Abu-Jamal

June 2, 2015

Mumia Abu-Jamal was recently sent back to prison after having been hospitalized for the second time. There are some reports that his health is improving. He said to Suzanne Ross of the International Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia Abu-Jamal that "if there had not been an international outcry about the lack of appropriate treatment, in fact AGAINST the 'treatment' that was bringing him so close to death, he was sure he would not be alive today".

In some good news, he was also told by the prison doctor that his biopsy results came back negative.
However, neither Mumia nor his wife, lawyers or consulting doctors have been seen the actual medical reports detailing his condition. The Department of Corrections refuses to hand over his medical records, claiming that they don't have to hand them over because there is litigation to have them released! Denying Mumia and his family his medical records is an outrage!
We would like to inform you about some recent actions taken by unions around the world on behalf of Mumia.

- Unite, the largest union in the UK, representing over 1.4 million members, wrote letters to Governor Tom Wolf, Department of Corrections Secretary John Wetzel and Legal Counsel Theron Perez protesting Mumia's treatment.

- The International Dockworkers Council, representing 90,000 dockworkers from affiliated unions around the world, wrote an appeal to the labor movement calling for action on behalf of Mumia.
- The Inlandboatmen's Union of the Pacific sent a protest letter to Department of Corrections Secretary John Wetzel.

We hope that you will continue to take action on behalf of Mumia. Please call and email Department of Corrections Secretary John Wetzel and demand the following:

1) Mumia Abu-Jamal is an innocent man! He should be freed immediatel
2) Confirm what Mumia's medical condition is. Release his medical records to his family and lawyers!

3) Allow Mumia to be given medical treatment from a doctor of his choice. His doctor should be allowed to conduct an on-site medical examination, to communicate by phone with Mumia, and to communicate freely with prison medical staff.

4) Allow Mumia daily visits from his family, friends and lawyers!

5) Conduct an independent investigation of healthcare treatment inside the Pennsylvania prison system!DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, SECRETARY JOHN WETZEL 717 728 4109

We are also attaching a sample union resolution for you to use as a template. Please consider submitting it to your union and asking them to take action on behalf of Mumia. We would also be happy to work with you and make a presentation to your union or community group about his condition.

The Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jam


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

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

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

Lastly, Lorenzo has a message to you all.

A Letter from Lorenzo:

July 23, 2015
Dauphin County Prison
Harrisburg, PA

Dear Supporters,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The Pain Within"

Free the Innocent
Lorenzo "Cat" Johnson

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

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

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

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

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


freelorenzojohnson.org

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 Join the Fight to Free Rev. Pinkney!

Click HERE to view in browser

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MESSAGE FROM REV. PINKNEY

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

Background to Campaign to free Rev. Pinkney

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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COURAGE TO RESIST

 http://couragetoresist.org/

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

Secretary of the Army John McHugh

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

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

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

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

Secretary of the Army John McHugh

101 Army Pentagon

Washington, DC 20310-0101

The Judge Advocate General

2200 Army Pentagon

Washington, DC 20310-2200

Army Clemency and Parole Board

251 18th St, Suite 385

Arlington, VA 22202-3532

Directorate of Inmate Administration

Attn: Boards Branch

U.S. Disciplinary Barracks

1301 N. Warehouse Road

Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027-2304

Suggestions for letters send to DoD officials:

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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B. ARTICLES IN FULL


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1) Austria Finds Up to 50 Bodies Thought to Be of Migrants in Truck
By

VIENNA — The partly decomposing bodies of as many as 50 people assumed to be migrants being smuggled across Europe were found in a truck abandoned on a highway east of Vienna on Thursday, the police said.

The precise toll was yet to be determined, said Hans-Peter Doskozil, director of the police in the eastern state of Burgenland, during a live news conference on Austria’s public broadcaster.

He said the bodies, some of which had started to decompose, had been discovered when the truck was opened after the police noticed it parked off the highway that links Budapest and Vienna. He declined to give further details.

Mr. Doskozil said the Austrian police had contacted the authorities in neighboring Hungary, which has accelerated the building of a fence along the border with Serbia in an effort to block the flow of tens of thousands of migrants who have worked their way up the length of the Balkans in recent weeks.The border fence has threatened to complicate and even cut off what has become an increasingly accessible route for the migrants, many of whom are fleeing wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

In recent interviews, humanitarian aid workers and the migrants themselves said the fence would not stop the migrants but would force them to find other ways to make it to wealthy European Union countries farther north, often with the help of human traffickers.

The grisly discovery coincided with the start of a conference in Vienna on how to make the Balkans more secure and prosperous, partly as a means to stop the flight of thousands seeking better economic conditions in Austria, Germany and other more wealthy parts of the European Union.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, and Balkan heads of government are attending the conference.

Ms. Merkel and Chancellor Werner Faymann of Austria expressed sorrow over the deaths and said they were a chilling reminder of the need to give shelter to migrants fleeing war.

“We are all shaken by this terrible news that up to 50 people have lost their lives because they got into a situation where smugglers did not care about their lives,” Ms. Merkel said.

“Such a tragic death,” she added, emphasized the need for Europe to pull together and ease the current crisis, part of the biggest wave of migrants since World War II.

In his remarks, Mr. Faymann said, “This shows once more how necessary it is to save lives and to fight people smugglers.”

He said, “Those who look back to World War II history know that there were people who depended then on asylum” to survive. Today, too, “it saves lives,” he added.

Gerald Tatzgern, who leads an Austrian police team responsible for fighting human trafficking, said that the police had secured the site where the truck was found. But he said it would take several days for forensics teams to sift through the evidence and potentially learn more about the identities of those found dead.

The police are still searching for anyone who might have information about the truck, which had Hungarian license plates and was found abandoned in an emergency area beside a highway in the Neusiedl am See region, near the Hungarian border.

The Austrian authorities said they were working with the Hungarian police to try and find the driver, who is believed to be from Hungary.

Images in the Austrian news media showed a white vehicle with a rear cooler compartment, emblazoned with the word “Hyza” in brown letters, with a chicken standing in for the letter Y, surrounded by police cars parked at the side of the freeway.

A Slovakia-based company by the name of Hyza told the Austrian news agency APA that it had sold more than a dozen of its vehicles in 2014 but that it had no further knowledge about them.

Austria’s interior minister, Johanna Mikl-Leitner, called it a “dark day” and urged everyone across the 28-nation European Union to move harshly against human traffickers.

“These are not well-minded helpers,” she said. “They are not concerned with the welfare of the migrants. They care only about profit.”

The discovery of the truck not only threatened to overshadow the conference but also highlighted the continuing divides and dysfunction of the European Union in handling a migration crisis that is straining resources.

Ms. Mogherini gave the strongest voice to Europe’s need to act to stop such deaths, “moving from the blame game to real cooperation.”

There is “no magic solution,” she said, “but the road we can follow to start making things work is very well known.”

“We understand very well that we cannot continue like this — with a moment of silence every time we see someone dying,” she said.

Melissa Eddy contributed reporting from Berlin.



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2) San Francisco Firefighters Become Unintended Safety Net for the Homeless
By

SAN FRANCISCO — When the emergency bell sounds at Fire Station 1 here, firefighters pull on boots and backpacks, swing into Engine 1 and hurtle out the door in almost a single motion, a blast of red lights and caterwauling sirens. More often than not, there is no fire.

Instead, the calls that ring in this and nearby fire stations tend to go like this: Male, apparently homeless, sprawled unconscious on a train platform. Male, prone on a street corner pushing a needle into his arm.

In a measure of just how much homelessness has become an all-encompassing problem here, this city has the busiest fire engine in America — yet just over 1.5 percent of its runs last year involved fires.“We are here to help anybody — we have this infrastructure, and it’s always been here to help the city and its people,” said Lt. Tom Johannessen, an officer on the crew for Engine 1, which is based in the South of Market Street neighborhood and includes in its catchment the gritty Tenderloin neighborhood. “We are your best point for help, where it helps people in a car crash or a medical call. But where it gets to be picking up the same homeless person twice a day, it gets to be strained.”

In San Francisco and other cities, as homeless populations swell and emergency services are pushed to the limit, the question of how to provide housing for the growing ranks of street people — or whether to even bother trying — is a contentious debate. Mayor Ed Lee said this week that the homeless are “going to have to leave” the streets before the Super Bowl comes to town in February, but it is not entirely clear how that is going to happen.

A result is that the job of caring for the homeless has fallen heavily on the shoulders of firefighters and police officers, whose training is not necessarily in this area and whose challenge in confronting the problem is constantly on display.

In the age of ubiquitous camera phones, images of their struggles can go viral. Last week, a video surfaced online of a disabled black man on a busy street in San Francisco being restrained by officers who knelt on his prosthetic leg. Many onlookers saw not the police grappling with a mentally disturbed man as he kicked and bit, but yet another incident of police brutality.

The man was eventually taken to a hospital by firefighters, and was not arrested.

Last year, Engine 1 held the dubious honor of being the busiest engine in the entire country, according to a nationwide survey by Firehouse Magazine. In 2014, it made 10,221 runs, far outpacing the second-place engine (Engine 33 in Los Angeles, with 8,880 runs) and any single engine in New York City (where the busiest was Engine 290 in Brooklyn, with 6,101 runs). The year before, San Francisco’s Engine 3 — based in the Tenderloin — had the highest number of runs.

To be sure, some individual fire stations, which can house multiple engines, made more runs than either Engine 1 or Engine 3 in San Francisco. And larger cities — like New York, with its roughly 8.4 million residents — handled a much higher total of calls than San Francisco, which has about 850,000 residents.

But with an estimated 6,700 homeless people, San Francisco has a slightly higher proportion than New York, which has about 58,000 homeless people. Firefighters here say that calls involving homeless people dominate their shifts.

“For somebody whose dream was going to be a firefighter, their dream was they are going to be rushing into burning buildings, and they get into it, and they’re like, ‘What do you mean I only put out a fire once a month?’ “ said Capt. Niels Tangherlini, a veteran paramedic.

With a budget of more than $330 million, the San Francisco Fire Department responded to more than 136,000 incidents last year — about 28,000 of them fires and other nonmedical calls for service, plus just under 12,000 false alarms.

Equally vexing, firefighters say, is that the same few homeless people — the “frequent fliers,” as they call them — account for an extraordinary number of calls.

“You’re going to roll out of a station 20 times a day to go see the same chronic inebriate, the same mentally ill guy,” Captain Tangherlini said. “And it breaks a lot of their spirit.”

On a patrol in mid-August, Captain Tangherlini greeted one such homeless man as he lay in the city’s sobering center on Mission Street. Established in 2003, it is a barracks where emergency crews take severely inebriated people as an alternative to an emergency room. The man was familiar, Captain Tangherlini said, because in the past few years firefighters had been summoned to his aid between 300 and 500 times.

Advances in fire-safe construction, among other things, have contributed to a national shift in fire departments away from fighting infernos and toward responding to medical emergencies. “We are the absolute last, bottom rung of the social safety net, when every other institution fails,” said Thomas P. O’Connor, the president of the San Francisco Firefighters union.

Gordon Allen, 57, who lives on the street, said the situation made sense. “Hey, I’m out here on the street, and things happen real quick,” Mr. Allen said as he sat on his usual egg crate in the Mission District last week. “And thank God we have the Fire Department to back us up when things go downhill.”

Engine 1 can receive 30 calls on an ordinary day, members of the crew said, but often an entire shift goes by without a single fire. Each call involves sirens and a vehicle with 500 gallons of water in its belly, a supply that usually goes untapped.

“It kind of feels like you’re a Band-Aid, that this person has problems that are so much deeper than we’re able to fix,” said Capt. Dean Crispen of Truck 1. ”You realize your job is to solve the immediate crisis at hand. Bigger problems, they are out of your scope.”

Jennifer Friedenbach, the executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, a nonprofit in the city, said a lack of reasonably priced housing was the biggest problem. “All of those calls and costs would be avoided if they provided people with somewhere safe and decent to live,” she said. “Instead, we are letting human beings’ health deteriorate so they need to be picked up that frequently.”

Christine Falvey, a spokeswoman for the mayor’s office, said that a new budget, passed on July 1, that increased the amount spent on homeless services to nearly $230 million, would help ease the problem: By the end of this year 500 new single-occupancy units will be built and existing homeless resources will be expanded.

Dr. Clement Yeh, the San Francisco Fire Department’s medical director, said the city was in the early stages of re-establishing a program that paired social service workers with ambulance crews; it was disbanded in 2009.

“We are looking to evolve in ways other than sending an engine and a truck and taking you to an emergency room,” Dr. Yeh said. “For a certain population that we are seeing quite a bit of, that isn’t actually helping.”

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3) Undercover Planned Parenthood Videos Were Altered, Analysis Finds
By

WASHINGTON — Planned Parenthood on Thursday gave congressional leaders and a committee that is investigating allegations of criminality at its clinics an analysis it commissioned concluding that “manipulation” of undercover videos by abortion opponents make those recordings unreliable for any official inquiry.

“A thorough review of these videos in consultation with qualified experts found that they do not present a complete or accurate record of the events they purport to depict,” said the analysis of a private research company.

Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood, underscored that message in a cover letter to the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, and House Speaker John A. Boehner, both Republicans, and to Senator Harry Reid and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leaders.

With Mr. Boehner’s urging, Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee in July opened an investigation of Planned Parenthood after the Center for Medical Progress, an anti-abortion group, began posting online secretly recorded videos that the center claims show Planned Parenthood affiliates illegally profit from selling tissue from aborted fetuses to researchers and, in some late-term abortions, prevent a possible live birth.

Planned Parenthood denies the charges, and says that the videos were deceptively and misleadingly edited.

The analysis was by Fusion GPS, a Washington-based research and corporate intelligence company, and its co-founder Glenn Simpson, a former investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal.

The videos, recorded by two activists posing as representatives of a biotechnology firm procuring tissue for researchers and universities, continue to be released online about once a week. One of the activists, David Daleiden of California, told The New York Times last month that his “thousands of hours of videotape” was enough to release videos into the fall. That will coincide with Congress’s final budget debate, and the videos have stoked growing Republican threats of a government shutdown unless Planned Parenthood is stripped of about $500 million it gets annually, mostly to care for low-income Medicaid patients. By law, public funds cannot pay for abortions.

The analysis commissioned by Planned Parenthood cover the first four videos and transcripts from the Center for Medical Progress, which were recorded in California, Colorado and Texas. Several have been released since with footage repeated from earlier videos, though the most recent ones focus not on Planned Parenthood but on a company, StemExpress, that procures fetal and human tissue globally for research.

The reviewers looked at both shorter, edited videos that are about eight minutes to 15 minutes long and what Mr. Daleiden said were full-length recordings, some more than two hours long, that he released simultaneously.

A transcription service was hired to transcribe the videos, without being told that Planned Parenthood was the client, to compare with transcripts publicized by the anti-abortion group. That comparison, the analysis said, showed “substantive omissions” from the group’s version. Mr. Simpson was assisted in the analysis by several others including a video forensics expert, Grant Fredericks, and a television producer, Scott Goldie.

According to the investigation, the reviewers could not determine “the extent to which C.M.P.s undisclosed edits and cuts distort the meaning of the encounters the videos purport to document.”

But, it said, “the manipulation of the videos does mean they have no evidentiary value in a legal context and cannot be relied upon for any official inquiries” unless C.M.P. provides investigators with its original material, and that material is independently authenticated as unaltered.

For example, Mr. Fredericks said recordings in Houston and Denver were each missing about 30 minutes of video, judging from time stamps and frame counters on the recordings.

The analysis also supported Planned Parenthood’s objection to two allegations that have elicited some of the most outrage from anti-abortion forces, disputing that Planned Parenthood staffers at one point say of fetal remains, “It’s a baby,” and in a second instance, “another boy.”


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4) Vulture Populations Wane, Poisoned by Man
By

MASAI MARA NATIONAL RESERVE, Kenya — Death feeds life on the Mara.

Each summer, 500,000 wildebeests die along the treacherous migration from the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania to the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya. And with death come the scavengers, none more important than the vulture.

But the birds that once feasted on that misfortune, the janitors that clean the grassy plains, are collapsing — part of a broader decline in vulture populations that throws off ecosystems and illustrates how far-reaching the effects of poaching, poisoning and other human interventions can be.

“The overall global picture for vultures is abysmal,” said Darcy Ogada, the assistant director of Africa programs at the Peregrine Fund, an organization dedicated to saving birds of prey. “Does this story echo that of the canary in the coal mine? Sure does.”

In the first major study of the 30-year decline of Pan-African vultures, Dr. Ogada and other scientists found that populations of eight species of vultures had declined an average of 62 percent.

Seven of those species had declined at a rate of 80 percent or more over three generations, according to the study, published this summer in the journal Conservation Letters.

In some parts of Africa, vultures are targeted by poachers who poison carcasses hoping to kill the birds so they will not circle overhead and signal park rangers. A vulture can spot a dead elephant in less than 30 minutes, but it can take a poacher more than an hour to hack off ivory tusks. No vulture, no warning.

Here on the Mara, one of the greatest natural strongholds left on the planet, the vultures are not directly targeted but are the unintended victims of poisoning of carcasses that is meant to kill large carnivores, like hyenas, in an effort to protect livestock.

Across Africa, the threats to wildlife are myriad, but much of the attention is focused on the stately animals of the savanna, like lions and elephants.

Vultures do not make for pretty postcards, and the local authorities are already stretched thin trying to protect the animals that tourists come to see.

“Everyone forgets about the Ugly Bettys of this world,” said Munir Z. Virani, who directs the Africa and South Asia programs for the Peregrine Fund. “We are told all the time by the authorities that they are so busy working to protect elephants and rhinos and other animals that when it comes to the vultures, they are exhausted.”

Anthony Ole Tira, who is Masai and was raised on these lands and is now the co-owner of the Matira Bush Camp in the heart of the reserve, stood by a river crossing and pointed to scores of rotting carcasses.

One week earlier, 900,000 wildebeests, long in the face and often short on luck, had plunged headlong into the river in a panic. Thousands were trampled to death.

That was normal. The rotting remains were not.

“Ten years ago, this would have been cleaned by now,” he said. “There are a lot of places along the Mara River that are not as clean as they once were because there are not enough vultures.”

Researchers say they have seen what happens to an ecosystem when the vultures disappear.

In 2000, Dr. Virani was dispatched to India, where vultures were dying in great numbers but no one knew why.

“Everywhere I went, there were dead vultures,” he said. “But everywhere, their remains were in good condition.”

The initial hypothesis was that some type of infectious disease was behind the deaths. Soon it became clear that the killer was man-made.

A painkiller widely used to treat livestock was poisoning the birds that fed on their carcasses.

One carcass with the painkiller in its system could poison hundreds of birds, Dr. Virani said, and by 2006, when the painkiller was officially banned, the vulture population had already declined by 97 percent.

Over the same period, there was a drastic rise in cases of rabies in India, with feral dogs taking advantage of the decline in vultures and often spreading the disease to humans.

Dr. Virani described what he called apocalyptic scenes, with hordes of wild dogs numbering in the thousands, scavenging the remains of livestock. Estimates vary, but some put the feral dog population in India now as high as 25 million.

Roughly 36 percent of the world’s rabies deaths — the majority of them children — occur in India, according to the World Health Organization. The battle against the virus is costing the government billions of dollars.

Over tens of millions of years, vultures have evolved into the most efficient cleaners in the natural world. Because of their highly acidic gastric juices, they can eat flesh infected with a variety of diseases without getting ill.

When the vultures feast on diseased meat, picking the carcass clean, the threat of wider infection ends.

But once the vultures are cleared from the skies, they are very hard to bring back.

Dr. Virani explained that vultures, despite their powerful digestive systems, are fragile.

Within the first four weeks of their lives, 50 percent of newborn vultures that leave the nest will die.

“They are naïve,” Dr. Virani said. Many fall from their nests, while others succumb to natural causes.

In their first year of life, vultures have an extraordinary 90 percent mortality rate.

If they survive, they do not become sexually mature until their fifth year. Even then, their reproductive rate is low.

In Arizona, California and Utah, the Peregrine Fund and its partners have been working for years to bring back the critically endangered California condor, which by 1987 was almost completely wiped out by lead poisoning, with fewer than two dozen birds left. Nearly three decades later, there are around 400, fewer than half of them in captivity.

In Africa, Dr. Virani hopes that the population decline can be halted and reversed before it reaches the kind of critical situation found in India and other parts of the world.“It is not too late,” he said.

The Peregrine Fund has started a program with the Masai people of East Africa to change attitudes about using poisons. It supported a young Masai man, Eric Ole-Reson, to study at Clemson University in South Carolina, and he has since returned to work with other Masai.

There are few things more important to the Masai than their cows. “The movable bank,” Mr. Tira calls them.

When a cow is killed by a lion or other predator, it is a threat to a family’s livelihood. So the Masai will poison carcasses in the hope of killing the killers. Inevitably, vultures come to feed and die.

Ole Sairowa, 67, a village elder, said that the use of poisons started two decades ago when the government provided “a dangerous white powder” to kill feral dogs. A decade later, he started to notice fewer vultures.

“Now we are worried they are not coming back,” he said.

Mr. Sairowa was recruited by Dr. Virani and the fund’s Kenyan director, Kabir Dhanji, to play a part in a short educational film about the unintended dangers of using poison, “Empty Skies,” which will be shown in villages across the Mara.

Mr. Tira and his son Selian, 9, also appear in the film.

Mr. Sairowa said that when he was a boy, the Masai would sing songs to the vulture. The appearance of the bird, long prized for its ability to see into the future, could be a good or bad omen, depending on the context. One song asks the vultures to stay away until a cow dies naturally, at which point they are promised a tasty feast.

Conservationists are working to find other ways to help the Masai protect their cows, including the testing of a system of solar-powered flashing lights to ward off predators at night.

But other threats to birds of prey remain. Dr. Virani cited the intensive effort to bring electricity to power-starved communities across Africa through the construction of wind farms and power plants as one that, if not carried out carefully, could endanger vultures and other birds.

For now, the vultures — which in flight look every bit as majestic as the beloved eagle — continue to play their role in the natural drama that unfolds during the migration.

On a recent morning, as first light broke over fields of red oat grass on the savanna, a female lion let roar. A male lion returned the call, and the hunt was on.

By the time it was over, five wildebeests had met their end, their carcasses obscured in the tall grass.

It took only a few minutes for vultures to begin circling overhead. First two, then a dozen, then scores. They waited until the lions began walking away before swooping in and perching near the carcass.

Once the vultures pounced, it took them 20 minutes to pick the bones clean.

It seemed efficient. But Mr. Tira said the job used to be accomplished much faster, by many more vultures.

“In five minutes, they would be done,” he said. “If the vultures continue to disappear, can you imagine? This whole beautiful place will become one stink pit.”



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5) French Police Dismantle Roma Camp on Paris Outskirts
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LA CORNEUVE, France — Police cleared out one of France's biggest and oldest Roma camps on Thursday, dismantling a sprawling network of makeshift shelters next to a Paris region highway under pouring rain.

The evacuation of around 200 people lasted around 2 ½ hours and after it was done, about 50 people milled about on the streets of La Corneuve, despite the town's promises to give them either urgent housing or hotel vouchers.

Hugues Besancenot, the secretary general of the Seine-Saint-Denis region northeast of Paris, said around 60 women, children and disabled camp residents received urgent housing, while the rest received hotel vouchers.

"They did nothing for us. They said there's no place for me," said Brindus Dan, who lived in the camp with his wife and three children, including a 6-month-old baby.

Residents had six months to prepare for the evacuation, ever since a court ordered it shut last February. Police gave a final warning on Tuesday, Besancenot said.

Thousands of Roma, also known as Gypsies, are estimated to live in France, and face routine discrimination and evacuations. Their camps tend to lack water and electricity, and authorities often cite sanitary reasons for dismantling them.

In Thursday's action, police initially came through to tell residents to leave, and bulldozers arrived in mid-afternoon, according to Manon Fillonneau of the European Roma Rights Group, speaking from the site. Families quickly grabbed what belongings they could and gathered along a roadside or beneath the awning of a closed cafe under a steady rainfall.

Local authorities reserved 12 rooms for residents in extreme need, such as those who are very sick, she said, calling it not nearly enough compared to the approximately 300 people being evacuated.

The mayor of La Courneuve wouldn't immediately comment on the evacuation.

Loic Gandais, whose association works with Roma elsewhere in the Paris region, said it's one of the largest and longest-lasting camps in France, housing 200-300 people for at least three years, mostly Roma from eastern Europe who cycle through.

Associated Press writer Angela Charlton contributed from Paris.


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6) India: Protesters Demand Jobs and Aid
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS



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7) Gap Says It Will Phase Out On-Call Scheduling of Employees
By

Facing increasing pressure to curb erratic scheduling practices, Gap announced that it would stop requiring employees to make themselves available for last-minute shifts.

The move makes Gap the latest retailer to move away from “on-call scheduling,” which regulators, workers’ rights groups and some academics say is detrimental to employees and their families.

“At Gap Inc., we also believe that work-life integration enables all employees to reach their full potential and thrive both personally and professionally,” the company said in a statement on its blog announcing the change on Wednesday. “We recognize that flexibility, inclusive of consistent and reliable scheduling, is important to all of our employees.”On-call scheduling requires employees to call ahead before a specific shift to see if they will be needed, a practice that gives workers little predictability in scheduling. Facing public and regulatory pressure, some retailers, including Abercrombie & Fitch, Starbucks and Victoria’s Secret, have already begun phasing out the practice.

Gap said its five brands — Athleta, Banana Republic, Gap, Intermix and Old Navy — had agreed to stop on-call scheduling by the end of next month and have committed to providing employees with at least 10 to 14 days’ notice, according to Wednesday’s announcement.

In April, the New York attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, sent a letter to more than a dozen retailers, including Abercrombie & Fitch, Gap, J. C. Penney and Victoria’s Secret, requesting more information about on-call scheduling and questioning whether such practices were legal. In the months since, Abercrombie & Fitch and Victoria’s Secret both announced they would discontinue it.

Mr. Schneiderman praised Gap’s decision in a statement on Wednesday.

“Workers deserve stable and reliable work schedules, and I commend Gap for taking an important step to make their employees’ schedules fairer and more predictable,” he said.

Gap had already begun scaling back the use of on-call shifts after starting a pilot program last year to test alternative scheduling practices. Mr. Schneiderman’s office told Gap last week that it would consider legal action if the retailer did not take steps to end on-call scheduling, according to Eric Soufer, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office.

A recent study by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal advocacy group, found that the children of parents who worked unpredictable schedules could have inferior cognitive abilities, in areas like verbal communication, and struggle with anxiety and depression.

“Parents’ variable schedules require irregular family mealtimes and child bedtimes that interfere with children’s healthy development,” the study said.


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8) From the Bench, a New Look at Punishment
By

Jessica Otero’s request to the judge, made in neat handwriting, was simple: She wanted a second chance. Ten years after being convicted of driving an illegal immigrant across the border, her felony record meant she could not get work in the medical field. “I have learned from my past mistakes and am headed down a positive path,” Ms. Otero wrote.

Federal district courts review dozens of similar requests a month, detailing how old convictions are affecting defendants’ lives. Most judges have a standard response: Courts can expunge convictions only in exceptional circumstances. While Ms. Otero’s two-page letter described fairly common circumstances, the judge’s response was unusual.

“Her concern is justified,” Larry Alan Burns, a Federal District Court judge in the Southern District of California, wrote in June. “The court is inclined to grant the motion.”

Through everything from protest movements to bipartisan legislation addressing the high prison population, the nation is in the midst of a searching examination of the criminal-justice system, taking up long-simmering criticisms about race, inequality and law enforcement. While much of the focus has been on the police and prosecutors’ work, some judges are now taking a more active role, pushing for a reassessment of how defendants are punished.

“The popular view in our country has changed — we don’t want to hold somebody down forever and ever,” Judge Burns said in an interview. “I think judges should be aware of those things.”

It is hardly a uniform shift in judges’ attitudes, but across the country, some judges are refashioning sentences, asking prosecutors to drop cases that judges see as unfair, considering how to reduce the long-term impact of old convictions, and writing essays advocating change.

Among the moves: In June, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote five pages denouncing solitary confinement in a Supreme Court case where solitary confinement was not the issue. Judge Jed S. Rakoff of Federal District Court in Manhattan has written essays recently attacking plea bargaining and mass incarceration. In a June law-review article, Alex Kozinski, a United States Court of Appeals judge for the Ninth Circuit, criticized a range of criminal-justice issues, from fingerprint evidence to prosecutorial discretion to long sentences. These “are some of the reasons to doubt that our criminal justice system is fundamentally just,” he wrote. Other judges are putting out their point of view in decisions in individual cases.

“A growing number of federal judges, usefully insulated by life tenure, are feeling a need to speak out,” said Douglas A. Berman, a law professor at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. “Judges are moved by the broader public conversation about the need for reforms, and certain ones say, ‘That broader conversation ought to be reflected in the work I do, not just in the work that the political branch does.’  ”

In June, three judges for the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reviewed an Indiana case in which an Italian-born man who had never become a citizen said he did not realize that a guilty plea in his marijuana-growing case would result in deportation. He asked to withdraw the plea. A district court judge denied the motion, but the Court of Appeals reversed that decision.

Prosecutors argued that the man, Renato DeBartolo, could face a much more severe sentence at trial, thus his push to withdraw the plea was irrational. Judge Richard A. Posner, writing the Seventh Circuit panel’s unanimous opinion, disagreed, citing the changing public opinion on drugs.

“In light of the growing movement to legalize the sale of marijuana,” Judge Posner wrote, “a jury might have thought his offense trivial and either acquitted him or convicted him of some lesser offense.”

The judge then asked the government to reconsider even pursuing the case: “The government should consider whether having served the prison sentence the government originally recommended and having then languished in the custody of the Immigration and Naturalization Service for a year or more and then deported to a country in which he has never really lived, DeBartolo has been punished sufficiently and should now be allowed to go home to his wife and children without facing a new trial.” Legal proceedings in his case continue.

Mark W. Bennett, a Federal District Court judge in the Northern District of Iowa, also pushed prosecutors, writing in an opinion in which he described prosecutors’ “stunningly arbitrary” decision-making over whether to file information about a drug defendant’s prior convictions, which increases their sentences.

“These decisions are shrouded in such complete secrecy that they make the proceedings of the former English Court of Star Chamber appear to be a model of criminal justice transparency,” Judge Bennett wrote in 2013. “We as judges can and should do more.”

This summer, Judge Jack B. Weinstein of Federal District Court in Brooklyn, long known for his criticism of harsh sentences for the viewing of child pornography and for some drug offenses, questioned whether prison itself was an unfair punishment.

A defendant had pleaded guilty to possessing and sending child pornography using his computer. The defendant, now in his mid-20s, had poor mental development as a child and appeared to have been exposed to drugs in the womb, Judge Weinstein wrote. Placed into the foster care system, he was repeatedly raped by a foster brother and two separate foster fathers. Convicted at age 20 for showing child pornography to a boy, he was raped in prison, both by an individual and by a group of men. When he was released, he learned he had borderline personality disorder, depression and agoraphobia.

The defendant was supposed to be sentenced in June, but he appeared “deeply depressed,” Judge Weinstein wrote. The judge stopped the hearing, and instead asked the lawyers to address “whether sentencing this defendant — who has been raped multiple times — to the statutory minimum sentence of 15 years violates his right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment,” especially given the likelihood he would be placed in solitary confinement as a protection from rape.

Arguments in the case continue.

Also in Brooklyn, Judge John Gleeson, who has criticized prosecutors for using the threat of mandatory-minimum sentences to force defendants into pleas, and pushed them to drop charges so that mandatory minimums would not stack up, turned his attention to the consequences of convictions.

In 1997, a home health aide was raising four children on $783 a month in Queens. She participated in a staged auto accident “ubiquitous in this district at the time,” Judge Gleeson wrote, where passengers faked injuries and went to complicit medical clinics, which billed insurance companies for procedures that were never performed. The passengers often filed civil lawsuits, as the woman did, receiving $2,500.

Since her conviction, she often lost jobs or had offers withdrawn. “People said I’m very sorry for you. I can’t hired you because criminal background checked and fingerprint,” she wrote to the probation office in a handwritten note in 2005 (English is the woman’s second language). A year later, she wrote, “I don’t like welfare, I like to work.”

Last year, she filed a formal motion asking the judge to expunge the conviction.

The prosecution opposed her request, arguing that expunging should be allowed only in extreme circumstances, and this woman’s was not one of them.

Judge Gleeson disagreed. “The public safety is better served when people with criminal convictions are able to participate as productive members of society by working and paying taxes,” he wrote in granting the woman’s request. “Her case highlights the need to take a fresh look at policies that shut people out from the social, economic, and educational opportunities they desperately need in order to re-enter society successfully.”

In June, another defendant, a nurse, also asked Judge Gleeson to expunge her 12-year-old conviction in a similar insurance-fraud scheme. Her lawyer, Mitchell A. Golub, wrote that she had lost jobs “a half dozen times in just the last two years” because of it.

As the government prepared its response, Judge Gleeson came up with a new idea: a certificate of rehabilitation that would show the defendant was now in good standing. With little legal precedent for that, he asked the prosecution and a policy expert to weigh in on whether that was an appropriate solution.

“As a society we really need to have a serious conversation on this subject of people with convictions never being able to work again,” Judge Gleeson wrote in an email. “A strong argument can be made that the answer to this problem should be more systemic, through legislation, not on a case-by-case basis in individual judge’s courtrooms.”




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9) Greece's Varoufakis Says Will Not Take Part in 'Sad Elections'
By REUTERS

ATHENS — Yanis Varoufakis will not take part in "sad" elections expected next month in Greece and will instead focus on setting up a new movement to "restore democracy" across Europe, the former Greek finance minister told Reuters on Thursday.

The combative, motorbike-riding academic was sacked as finance minister last month after alienating euro zone counterparts with his lecturing style and divisive words, hampering Greece's efforts to secure a bailout from partners.

The one-time political rockstar has since steadily attacked the bailout programme that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras subsequently signed up to and the austerity policies that go with it, rebelling against his former boss in parliament.

"I'm not going to take part in these sad elections," Varoufakis told Reuters by telephone when asked about the vote likely to be held on Sept. 20.

Tsipras's Syriza party, which hopes to return to power with a strengthened mandate, says it will not allow Varoufakis and others who voted against the bailout to run for parliament under the Syriza ticket anyway.

"Not only him but other lawmakers who did not back the bailout will not be part of the ticket," a party official said.

Tsipras has poured scorn on Varoufakis, telling Alpha TV on Wednesday that he had realised in June that "Varoufakis was talking but nobody paid any attention to him" at the height of Greece's negotiations with IMF and European Union lenders.

"They had switched off, they didn't listen to what he was saying," Tsipras said. "He didn't say anything bad but he had lost his credibility among his interlocutors."

Varoufakis, in turn, likened Tsipras to the mythical Sisyphus condemned to push a rock uphill only to have it roll back down, telling Australia's ABC Radio the prime minister had embarked on "pushing the same rock of austerity up the hill" against the laws of economics and ethical principles.

The 54-year-old Varoufakis has already dismissed speculation that he would join the far-left Popular Unity party that broke away from Syriza last week, telling ABC that he had "great sympathy" but fundamental differences with them and considered their stance "isolationist".

Instead, he told Reuters he wanted to set up a European network aimed at restoring democracy that could eventually become a party but at the moment was just an idea that he had seen a lot of support for.

"Instead of having national parties that run on a national level it will be a European network which is active on a national level," he said. "It's not something immediate. It's something slow-burning ... something that gradually grows roots across Europe."

(Writing by Deepa Babington; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)


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10) Cornrows and Cultural Appropriation: The Truth About Racial Identity Theft
By Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, TIME
27 August 15
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/32064-focus-cornrows-and-cultural-appropriation-the-truth-about-racial-identity-theft
 
Whether it’s a hairstyle or jazz music, there’s a difference between honoring a culture and stealing from it
s the current cornrow controversy much hairdo about nothing? Or a gateway crime against black culture that includes stealing everything from music to art to clothes to language? Cornrows are just the tip of the follicle, but because so many white celebrities have adopted this hairstyle, it has become the public platform to discuss the broader topic of cultural appropriation. Celebrities who have exhibited cornrows include Fergie, Gwen Stefani, Heidi Klum, Paris Hilton, Justin Timberlake, Jared Leto, David Beckman, and, more recently, Lena Dunham, Kendall Jenner, Kylie Jenner, and Kim Kardashian. Several of them have taken heat for popping the cornrow, and prompted some African-Americans to accuse the dominant white American culture of stealing cherished icons of identity from the subjugated black culture. Kind of like wearing the teeth of your pillaged enemy as a necklace.

Most white Americans would agree that the influence of black culture on America is significant. Without the black swing, blues, and jazz musicians, there is no Elvis or Jerry Lee Lewis or rock ‘n’ roll. And the influence is evident in all aspects of American culture, from fashion to food, from language to literature. What most white Americans won’t agree with is that there is anything wrong with that. In fact, they would argue that such assimilation of ethnic influences has occurred with every immigrant group in America, whether Latino or Irish or Vietnamese. They would argue that it is a symbol of American inclusion that we so readily embrace these foreign influences into our culture. The melting pot and so forth. American culture is not appropriating anything—that would be stealing!—it’s honoring black culture through homage. America acknowledges the influence and gives the influencers full credit. And, after all, isn’t weaving black culture into mainstream American culture the best way to end racism? Are cornrows the ambassador to racial equality or just another version of Al Jolson mammying in blackface?

One very legitimate point is economic. In general, when blacks create something that is later adopted by white culture, white people tend to make a lot more money from it. Certainly, one can see why that’s both annoying and disheartening. Through everything from access to loans to education, systemic racism has created a smoother path to economic success for whites who exploit what blacks have created. It feels an awful lot like slavery to have others profit from your efforts.

Loving burritos doesn’t make someone less racist against Latinos. Lusting after Bo Derek in 10 doesn’t make anyone appreciate black culture more. So, the argument that appropriation is the same as assimilation doesn’t hold up. Appreciating an individual item from a culture doesn’t translate into accepting the whole people. While high-priced cornrows on a white celebrity on the red carper at the Oscars is chic, those same cornrows on the little black girl in Watts, Los Angeles, are a symbol of her ghetto lifestyle. A white person looking black gets a fashion spread in a glossy magazine; a black person wearing the same thing gets pulled over by the police. One can understand the frustration.

Another aspect that infuriates many African-Americans: what white culture deems worthy to borrow is often so narrow that it perpetuates negative stereotypes rather than increases racial appreciation. Underwear sticking out of pants? Hip-hop language? Twerking? An unintended byproduct is that white people, feeling aglow in One-Worldness brought on by taking a hip-hop exercise class, forget the serious state of racial inequality that still exists and needs to be constantly addressed. In the face of being shamed and persecuted, African-Americans have cultivated art and fashion to maintain pride in who they are, so to see other cultures take this and profit from it while still allowing the shame and persecution to persist makes us want to holler.

Having said all that, here’s the harsh reality. Whether we call it cultural appropriation, assimilation, exploitation, homage, plundering or honoring, it will continue to happen unabated or affected by complaints and protests. Sure, some products, like ones featuring the Confederate flag, can’t seriously claim to be an homage, so public outcry is more effective in eliminating them. But for the most part, Culture is a ravenous beast that consists of many commercial outlets that need to sell consumer goods. Music, movies, clothes, books, art, etc., are the products that keep the beast alive, but they have to evolve in order to do so. Because of that, all non-mainstream cultures are subject to being looted for inspiration to create new goods to sell.

It is some consolation that, on a smaller scale, African-Americans have been able to do some cultural appropriation of their own. Once upon a time, professional sports were all white. Today, more than 77% of NBA players and 67.3% in the NFL are black. From 1950 to 2009, 81 percent of Billboard’s Top 10 bestselling albums were from non-white or mixed-race groups of artists. This shift will continue over the coming decades. The Census Bureau estimates that by 2060, 56% of the population will belong to racial and ethnic minorities—a minority majority. With each subsequent generation, cultural icons truly will be based on assimilation, not appropriation.

“Almost cut my hair,” Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young sang in 1970 about a long-haired boy suffering from an identity crisis. Cutting his hair would be to turn his back on the cultural revolution happening at the time in order to seek comfort in rejoining the social norms he doesn’t believe in. In the end, he doesn’t cut his hair because, “I feel like I owe it to someone.” It’s just hair, it grows. But, like cornrows, it is symbolic of a cultural identity that does not want to be homogenized—like Pat Boone’s 1956 sleepy version of Little Richard’s dynamic “Tutti Frutti.” Wop bop a loo bop a lop ba ba, indeed!

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11) California Death Penalty, Struck Down Over Delays, Faces Next Test
By

Whether California’s application of the death penalty is so drawn out and arbitrary that it amounts to cruel and unusual punishment will be argued on Monday before a federal appeals court in Pasadena.

If the lawyers for a condemned man are victorious, the case could bring a reprieve to more than 740 prisoners now on death row at San Quentin State Prison and send legal ripples across the country. Either way, legal experts say, it raises issues about the administration of capital punishment that are likely to reach the Supreme Court over time.

In Monday’s hearing before a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, California officials will seek to overturn a surprise ruling last year by a lower federal court, which declared the state’s “death penalty system” to be unconstitutional.Hailed by death penalty opponents as a breakthrough and attacked by others as unwise and legally out of line, the decision was issued on July 16, 2014, by Judge Cormac J. Carney of Federal District Court in Santa Ana. It focused not on disparities in the meting out of death sentences in the first place — the more familiar charge — but on the decades of tangled and prolonged reviews that follow and the rarity of actual executions.

In a scathing account of what he called a dysfunctional system, Judge Carney noted that of the more than 900 people who had been sentenced to death in California since 1978, when the current legal structure was established, only 13 had been executed.

Citing growing delays in a judicial review process that can take 25 years or more, far above the national norm, Judge Carney said death sentences had been transformed, in effect, into “life in prison, with the remote possibility of death.”

The “random few” who are put to death, he said, “will have languished for so long on death row that their execution will serve no retributive or deterrent purpose and will be arbitrary.”

Judge Carney ruled on the appeal of Ernest Dewayne Jones, who was condemned to die in 1995 for a murder and rape and made a last-ditch plea to a federal court after his appeals to the California Supreme Court had been denied. The judge vacated Mr. Jones’s death sentence as he declared California’s capital-punishment process to be generally unconstitutional.

The decision was a stunning one, and California officials have sharply challenged it on both procedure and substance. They say it was illegitimate because Mr. Jones’s arguments about the arbitrariness of the review system — issues going beyond the long delays alone — had not first been considered in the California courts, as required.

Beyond that, according to the brief from the state’s attorney general, Kamala D. Harris, a Democrat, the delays and rarity of executions do not reflect random quirks. Rather, it says, they are a product of California’s effort to be scrupulously fair, ensuring that condemned prisoners have high-quality lawyers and every opportunity to question the legality of their sentences.

California legislators have required such exhaustive reviews and procedures as “an important safeguard against arbitrariness and caprice,” the state holds, quoting from a 1976 Supreme Court decision.

In a plebiscite in 2012, California voters affirmed the death penalty by a narrow margin, with 52 percent voting to keep it and 48 percent voting to replace it with life in prison without parole.

California inmates normally wait three to five years just for the appointment of a qualified defense lawyer, a delay that may be repeated as convicts pursue two successive state appeals and then a federal one. Beyond the prolonged process of reviewing death sentences, California has had a de facto moratorium on executions since 2006 because of disputes over the method of lethal injection.

The questions of arbitrariness and extreme delay that are raised by the Jones case are important and may well gain purchase in the courts, said Eric M. Freedman, a professor of constitutional law and death penalty expert at Hofstra University.

“But that does not necessarily mean that this particular litigation will be the vehicle by which the courts resolve these issues,” he added, noting that procedural or other questions could lead the appeals panel to overrule the Jones decision.

The arguments made by Mr. Jones’s lawyers — and echoed by Judge Carney — are similar in part to those made in June by Justice Stephen G. Breyer of the Supreme Court. In a sweeping dissent, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Justice Breyer went beyond the lethal-injection issue at hand to ask whether the death penalty was so marred by unreliable decisions, arbitrary application and delays that it should be abolished.

But conservative justices responded that death penalty opponents, in their zeal to erect obstacles to executions, were responsible for inordinate delays and unpredictability.

If the Ninth Circuit and even the Supreme Court should uphold Judge Carney’s ruling, this would not necessarily cause the death penalty to unravel nationwide, said Douglas A. Berman, an expert on criminal law at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.

Judge Carney’s decision turned on details specific to California, and with its high number of condemned prisoners and very low pace of executions, the state is in a class by itself, Mr. Berman said. Still, he added, a similar critique might succeed in a few other states, including Pennsylvania and Florida.

Given the deep divisions within California over the death penalty, Mr. Berman added, the state may, in an odd way that has nothing to do with constitutional principles, be well served by the status quo.

“Voters, and perhaps the executive branch, too, are not that troubled with a system that has lots of death sentences and few executions,” Mr. Berman said.


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12) Three Children Among Migrants Found Crammed in Van Are Hospitalized in Austria
By

VIENNA — Three small children found crammed into a small van with 23 other migrants were hospitalized with severe dehydration in northern Austria, narrowly averting another fatal tragedy for refugees fleeing the Middle East and risking their lives with smugglers, the police said Saturday.

The police found the children around 4 a.m. Friday after a chase of a suspicious vehicle spotted near the Austrian-German border near Braunau.

The discovery came less than 24 hours after the Austrian police found 71 decomposing bodies in a truck southeast of Vienna.

The driver of the vehicle intercepted Friday initially ignored the police appeals to stop, said the police spokesman, David Furtner. Eventually, the driver stopped, and the police found the 26 refugees.

Five-year-old twin girls and a 6-year-old boy, all from Syria, were in life-threatening condition and taken immediately to the hospital in Braunau, Mr. Furtner said. Their conditions have since improved, he said.The driver, a 29-year-old Romanian, has been arrested, Mr. Furtner said.

The grisly discovery of bodies near Vienna has drawn international attention to the trafficking business behind the migration of tens of thousands of people fleeing war and despair in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

On Saturday, three Bulgarians and one Afghan who are suspects in that fatal smuggling case appeared in court in Kecskemet, Hungary, and were ordered to remain in detention pending trial on charges of human trafficking involving torture and financial gain. Officials would not release their identities, and provided few details, but said the suspects had picked up the 71 migrants on the Serbian border.

Ferenc Bicskei, president of the Kecskemet regional court said in a news conference that the local courts had lately been seeing 25 to 30 human smuggling cases each month, and that in response sentences would be more severe.

During the past day, the Hungarian police said, they had detained 2,822 people who crossed the border illegally and started criminal proceedings against 13 smugglers who had tried to drive migrants, crammed in trucks, through the country.

The migrants found on Friday in the van were from Syria, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, the Braunau spokesman added. All have declined to apply for asylum in Austria, saying they want to continue to Germany. This will most likely mean that they will be sent back to Hungary under European Union rules that state that migrants should be registered in the first member state they are proved to have entered.

Palko Karasz contributed reporting from London.


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13) Al Jazeera Journalists Sentenced to 3 Years in Prison in Egypt
By


CAIRO — An Egyptian judge on Saturday handed down an unexpectedly harsh verdict in the trial of three journalists from the Al Jazeera English news channel, sentencing them to three years in prison on charges that legal experts said were unfounded and politically motivated.

The verdict was especially stunning because Egyptian officials had repeatedly signaled that they viewed the trial as a nuisance that had brought unwanted scrutiny of the government. The families of the journalists, Mohamed Fahmy, Baher Mohamed and Peter Greste, said they had expected that the men would either be exonerated or sentenced to time already served.

But instead, the judge, Hassan Farid, upheld what human rights advocates said was among many baseless accusations leveled during the journalists’ long legal odyssey: that they had “broadcast false news” about Egypt on Al Jazeera.The judge also said that the men, who had all previously worked for other international news organizations, were not journalists because they lacked the necessary credentials.

Prosecutors had accused them of plotting with the Muslim Brotherhood to produce false news reports, but had offered no evidence of either collaboration with the Brotherhood or of any erroneous broadcasts.

The verdict appeared to reinforce a growing conviction among analysts and diplomats that President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who rules without a legislature, does not command full obedience from Egypt’s fractious bureaucracy, including its courts. Mr. Sisi has said in the past that he would have deported the journalists rather than try them.

At the same time, the verdict suggested enthusiasm in Egypt’s ruling circles for restricting free speech, even two years after the military takeover that brought Mr. Sisi to power.

“I’m completely shocked,” said Adel Fahmy, Mr. Fahmy’s brother, after the verdict was read. “Everything was pointing towards exoneration today. They keep on disappointing us with this unbelievable judicial system.”

Mr. Fahmy and Mr. Mohamed, who had been free on bail, were remanded into custody after the hearing on Saturday. Mr. Greste, an Australian citizen, was deported in February under a presidential decree that allows the expulsion of foreigners convicted of crimes.

Mr. Fahmy, who holds Canadian citizenship, could still be deported under the same decree, but Mr. Mohamed, an Egyptian citizen, would not be eligible. Their families and lawyers said they would appeal the sentence.

Amal Clooney, a lawyer for Mr. Fahmy, told journalists after the hearing that she would ask Mr. Sisi to pardon her client and his colleagues. “What just happened in that courtroom was an outrage,” Ms. Clooney said.

The State Department said in a statement that the United States was “deeply disappointed and concerned” by the verdict, which “undermines the very freedom of expression necessary for stability and development.”

The three men were arrested in December 2013. Their arrests were among thousands carried out by the government after the military ouster in July 2013 of Mohamed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood leader and Egypt’s first fairly elected president.

The decision to prosecute the journalists was seen as part of a broader attempt by the military-backed government to stifle the news media and free expression. This summer, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that at least 18 journalists were imprisoned in Egypt — the highest number since the group began keeping records in 1990.

Analysts have said that journalists were also primarily victims of the damaged relations between Egypt and the government of Qatar, which owns Al Jazeera and is a strong supporter of the Brotherhood.

The journalists were convicted after a first trial that human rights advocates said showcased Egypt’s frequently slapdash prosecutions and capricious court judgments. In that trial, Ms. Clooney noted, the journalists were found by the judge to have been “in a plot with Satan.”

In January, Egypt’s highest appeals court ordered a retrial.

Mr. Mohamed, who appeared most likely to serve his sentence, was given an additional six months by the judge on Saturday — apparently for possessing a spent bullet casing at the time of his arrest that he had picked up one day at a protest.


David D. Kirkpatrick and Merna Thomas contributed reporting.


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14) No Retrial for North Carolina Officer Who Killed Unarmed Man
By JONATHAN M. KATZ


DURHAM, N.C. — North Carolina will not retry a white police officer who killed an unarmed black man who had just survived a car crash, state officials said Friday. The officer’s trial ended in a hung jury.

Officer Randall Kerrick killed 24-year-old Jonathan Ferrell at 2:45 a.m. on Sept. 14, 2013, shooting at him 12 times and hitting him 10 times on a dark street in a Charlotte subdivision. Officer Kerrick was charged with voluntary manslaughter. His trial ended this month in a mistrial, with four jurors wanting to convict and eight to acquit.

“In consideration of the jurors’ comments, the evidence available to the state and our background in criminal trials, it is our prosecutors’ unanimous belief a retrial will not yield a different result,” a North Carolina senior deputy attorney general, Robert C. Montgomery, wrote to the district attorney for Charlotte and Mecklenburg County.

Mr. Montgomery said that the charges against Officer Kerrick would be dismissed.Mr. Ferrell’s mother, Georgia, said by telephone from her home in Tallahassee, Fla., that state prosecutors had called her around 9:30 a.m. on Friday to tell her they doubted they could win a second trial.

“I think it’s just an excuse because they don’t want to try him anymore,” Ms. Ferrell said. “I think that the fact that he’s a cop killing a black man is just another random thing. They feel they have done enough. It’s not their child. It’s just a black child.”

Mr. Ferrell was driving his fiancée’s car home when he ran off the road. The airbag deployed and he lost his cellphone. He walked barefoot to a nearby home and knocked on the door. But the homeowner, Sarah McCartney, who is white, feared he was a robber, set off her burglar alarm and called 911.

On encountering Mr. Ferrell, one of the three police officers who responded to the scene immediately aimed his Taser, a dashboard camera video showed. Mr. Ferrell began to run as the Taser fired.

Officer Kerrick, who turned off his own dashboard camera upon arriving at the scene, cannot be seen in the video. He testified that he had had no choice and had shot in self-defense, believing that Mr. Ferrell wanted to take his gun.

The defense characterized Mr. Ferrell, who had no criminal record, as a would-be burglar who had tried to break down Ms. McCartney’s door and was looking for another house to rob when the police arrived. Mr. Ferrell’s family members were furious over that portrayal and are frustrated with prosecutors who, they said, did not do an adequate job.

After the hung jury was announced, a small group of protesters staged a “die-in” protest, lying down in the street next to the courthouse, then walked to the courthouse door chanting, “Stop killing us!” and “Black lives matter!”

Later that night, demonstrators were met with a heavy response by police officers in riot gear outside the city’s minor-league baseball stadium. Two of the protesters were arrested and accused of throwing rocks at the police.

At a news conference on Friday, the state attorney general, Roy Cooper, tried to address both the criticism that his office had not done enough to secure a conviction and lingering anger from conservatives and police advocates over the decision to prosecute Officer Kerrick at all.

“It was the right thing to bring this case before the jury and seek a conviction,” Mr. Cooper said. “But now we need to listen to what the jury said.”

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said in a statement Friday afternoon that it would conduct an internal investigation to “determine if all department policies and procedures were followed by Randall Kerrick.” It noted that such an investigation was standard procedure.

Officer Kerrick remained on unpaid administrative leave, the department’s spokesman, Robert Tufano, added.

The Ferrell family has already won a $2.25 million settlement in a wrongful-death lawsuit against the city, which they say they have used to pay expenses to travel from Florida to attend the trial. They also say they will use the money to establish a foundation in Mr. Ferrell’s name.

Family members said they would continue to fight for Officer Kerrick to be held accountable. Ms. Ferrell said she would go “on top of the White House — wherever I have to go to scream until someone understands my loss, our loss.”

“We can do everything in our power to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” she said. “And we are not going to stop trying to get a retrial.”


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15) Sixty Years Later, Echoes of Emmett Till’s Killing
By Charles M. Blow

Friday was the 60th anniversary of the savage killing of Emmett Till.

Till was a black 14-year-old Chicago boy who was visiting his great-uncle in Mississippi during the summer of 1955.

It is said that the boy said something to, and whistled at, a white woman.

This was a line not crossed in those parts in this country. As I wrote in June when Dylann Roof killed nine black people in a Charleston, S.C., church after complaining that black people are “raping our women”:

“There is the thread of couching his cowardice as chivalry, framing his selfish hatred as noble altruism in defense of white femininity from the black brute. So much black blood has been spilled and so many black necks noosed in the name of protecting white femininity, and by extension, white purity.”

That thread seems altered but unbroken from Emmett’s time to ours.In the wee hours of the night, two white men kidnapped Emmett from his family’s home, mercilessly beat him, took him to the banks of the Tallahatchie River and shot him in the head, then tied the metal fan of a cotton gin around his neck with barbed wire and pushed him in.

When Emmett’s body was fished from the river three days later, it had already begun to decompose. He was unrecognizable. His body was identified because he was wearing a ring that had belonged to his father.

His body was sent back to Chicago for burial. His mother, Mamie, collapsed at the sight of the coffin, just two weeks after she kissed her son goodbye.His mother insisted that the coffin be opened so that she could see her son. As she recalled: “I saw that his tongue was choked out. I noticed that the right eye was lying on midway his cheek. I noticed that his nose had been broken like somebody took a meat chopper and chopped his nose in several places. As I kept looking, I saw a hole, which I presumed was a bullet hole, and I could look through that hole and see daylight on the other side. And I wondered: Was it necessary to shoot him?”

His mother insisted on an open coffin so that everyone could see what had been done to her baby.

According to Devery S. Anderson’s book about Emmett published this month, the night of the wake alone, “between 10,000 and 50,000 people” filed past Emmett’s glass-covered coffin to gaze at what was left of his face.

A little over two weeks after Emmett was buried, the men who killed him were acquitted, after only 67 minutes of jury deliberations. One juror is said to have told a reporter that the deliberations wouldn’t have taken that long if the jurors hadn’t taken a break to drink a pop.

After the acquittal the killers kissed their wives, lit cigars and posed for pictures.Burnham and Margaret M. Russell wrote in The Times last week, there are hundreds of “disappeared” black people in this country “who were victims of racial violence from 1930 to 1960.”

But Emmett became the most pivotal. His death was immeasurable in its effect on young black people at the time. It activated and mobilized them. That is not so dissimilar from today.

Jesse Jackson is credited with calling Emmett’s murder the “Big Bang” of the civil rights movement.

But in an interview published earlier this month, a University of Illinois professor, Christopher Benson, co-author of the 2003 book “Death of Innocence” about the case, made a more direct comparison:

“Before Trayvon Martin, before Michael Brown, before Tamir Rice, there was Emmett Till. This was the first ‘Black Lives Matter’ story. It is no wonder, then, that each time we read about another young unarmed black male being shot down in the street — unjustly — by an authority figure, there is the mention of Emmett’s name. What we come to see with the loss of Emmett is just what racism has cost us in this country. What it costs us still, in the loss of so many bright, gifted kids. Partly through untimely deaths. But also in the limited opportunities many have to excel, because of mass incarceration or even unwarranted tracking in schools.”

Benson continued:

“When we begin to see the Emmett Till story in this context, we realize that we all lose something to racism. And we see that we all have something to gain by overcoming the obstacles to full participation that still exist. So, Emmett Till is a vital American story.”

Yes, Emmett’s story is a vital American story, and it feels like an all-too-present one as we see this cycle repeating itself: young lives are lost, the body itself is desecrated or neglected, killers are acquitted or not even brought to trial, and the effects of the feelings of terror and injustice galvanize a generation of young people who have taken as much as they plan to take.


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