Friday, September 25, 2015

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2015




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Flood Wall Street West
Mass March and Action to Shut Down Climate Profiteers
Monday, September 28 at 8:00 A.M.
Justin Herman Plaza, San Francisco, CA



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Wednesday, October 7, 2015, 7pm in Berkeley!
Vijay Prashad on Palestine and the Middle East
Wednesday, October 7, 7pm
First Congregational Church of Berkeley
2345 Channing Way
(near downtown Berkeley Bart)
Facebook event

Vijay Prashad is a prominent & charismatic scholar and critic of US foreign policy. Two of his 17 books have been named “Books of the Year” by the Village Voice. Currently Professor of International Studies at Trinity College in Connecticut, he was previously Edward Said Chair at the American University of Beirut.

In addition to speaking about his new book, Letters to Palestine: Writers Respond to War & Occupation, Vijay Prashad will give an overview of ever-changing events in the Middle East – not to be missed

“WHAT WE DO IS TO CREATE A SHORT-CIRCUIT BETWEEN THE HEART AND THE HEAD.” - Vijay Prashad

TICKETS: $10, $15, $20 sliding scale – available now through Brown Paper Tickets!

$15 Tickets also available in bookstores
East Bay: Books Inc./Berkeley, Moe's, Diesel, Walden Pond
San Francisco: Modern Times.
You can also get tickets directly from MECA (no service charge!) -- call or email Sue or Nawal weekdays, 510-548-0542, susan@mecaforpeace.org

Vijay Prashad edited Letters to Palestine, tracing the “swelling American recognition of Palestinian suffering, struggle, and hope, in writing that is personal, lyrical, anguished, and inspiring.” For example, after the 2014 Gaza assault, polls revealed that a majority of Americans under thirty found Israel’s actions unjustified.

Letters to Palestine: Writers Respond to War & Occupation includes contributions by Mumia Abu Jamal, Naomi Shihab Nye, Robin D.G. Kelley, Teju Cole, Junot Diaz (who wrote the Introduction), Noura Erekat, Huwaida Araf, Remi Kanazi, Sarah Schulman, Nora Barrows-Friedman, Alex Lubin, and more! (Note: these writers will not be speaking at this event.)

Read Vijay Prashad's new piece on the Iran deal here

Check out this recent interview in "Red Pepper" with Vijay Prashad about "Letters to Palestine"

Hear Vijay Prashad on Democracy Now!

Benefit for aid to Palestinian children, cosponsored by KPFA, Arab Resource & Organizing Center, Jewish Voice for Peace/Bay Area, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network.
Wheelchair accessible. ASL interpreted.

For info www.mecaforpeace.org, 510-548-0542.

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Tour organizer: ISM Support Group in Northern California

California Speaking Tour of David Sheen, Oct. 21-29, 2015

The Bullet, the Ballot, & the Boycott: Racism in Israel Today


Oct. 21-29, 2015, independent Canadian-Israeli journalist and filmmaker David Sheen will present the Bullet, the Ballot & the Boycott at venues in California.  He will cover Israeli incitement to racist violence, the focus of his on-the-ground reporting for the past five years.

David will describe how top Israeli political and religious leaders use dehumanizing discourse to inspire vigilante attacks toward Palestinians, Africans and other non-Jews, especially during the 2014 assault on the Gaza Strip.  It will include material that Sheen presented at the Russell Tribunal on Palestine in Brussels, as well as new information never before been made public in English.

David's speaking schedule is as follows.  To make arrangements for David to come to your event or to add the name of your organization as a tour endorser, please call 510-236-4250 or write to us at solidarity@ism-norcal.org.

Wed., Oct. 21
6:00pm
San Jose State University, details to follow
SJSU Students for Justice in Palestine
https://www.facebook.com/sjsusjp

Thu., Oct. 22
TBA
Berkeley, details to follow
Zaytuna University
www.zaytuna.edu

Sun., Oct. 25
2:00pm
Uptown Body & Fender, 401 26th St., Oakland
ISM-NorCal & JVP-Bay Area
510-236-4250, ism-norcal.org
$10 suggested donation


Thu., Oct. 29
TBA
The Markaz, 5998 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles
The Markaz & JVP-LA
www.themarkaz.org 310.657.5511


www.ism-norcal.org
ISM Northern California | Supporting Palestinian-led non...
Northern California branch of the Palestinian-led movement committed to resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land using nonviolent, direct-action methods...

View on www.ism-norcal.org
Preview by Yahoo










 
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 Hi Nor Cal climate activists,

Here's the broadly vetted final front side of our forthcoming flyer to build November 21. The back side will have all the details – endorsers, sponsors, points of unity, etc. In my humble view, it's a fine example of the perfect blending of art-design with our deeply felt politics and dedication to humanity's cause. Very special thanks to Ragina Johnson for this wonderful effort. Thousands of copies will be available at this Thursday's, October 1, 7 pm General Meeting at Berkeley Community College, 2050 Center Street, Berkeley (very close to the downtown BART station at Center St.) Room 311.





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Commute Kevin Cooper's Death Sentence

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


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

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

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

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

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

Cooper has consistently maintained his innocence.

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

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

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

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

In solidarity,

James Clark
Senior Death Penalty Campaigner
Amnesty International USA

News Updates

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Free Albert Woodfox!

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

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

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

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

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Amnesty for all those arrested demanding justice for Freddie Gray!

 

Amnesty for ALL those arrested
demanding justice for Freddie Gray!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Petition to Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake

Download PDF of Petition 

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

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

Dear Mayor Rawlings-Blake:

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

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

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

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

Sincerely,
[add your name below]

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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



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"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’s Life Is In Grave Danger!

Friends and Comrades:

The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal wants you to know:

 Mumia Abu-Jamal’s life is in grave danger, this time not from imminent execution, or the “slow death” of LWOP, but from criminal medical neglect by prison authorities. Like many others in the hell-hole of US prisons, Mumia suffers from a potentially fatal disease which is not being treated by prison authorities.

In Alameda County California recently, a prisoner being held for trial in the county jail died because the for-profit prison medical company refused him a necessary treatment despite numerous requests. The same could happen to Mumia unless we act!

Please read the informational briefs below, and take a few minutes to call the official numbers below to demand competent medical care for Mumia, not transfer to another prison; and for the cure for Hepatitis C to be delivered to Mumia and the other prisoners needing it immediately!
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Last minute notice:
Prisoners and Hep C, including Mumia’s Case
A presentation on “Health Action”
 Monday 14 September, 1 PM Eastern
WBAI Pacifica Radio, New York
NY, NJ, Ct, 99.5 FM
Stream at: www.wbai.org
_  _  _  _  _  _  _  _

The following is from:  Johanna Fernandez
for Pam Africa and the Movement to Free Mumia &
the Campaign to Bring Mumia Home:


AN URGENT MESSAGE:

Competent Medical Care, Not Transfer!
Administer the Hepatitis C cure to Mumia &
the 10,000 PA Prisoners with the disease, NOW!

At the urging of Pam Africa, I visited Mumia yesterday, Sunday, September 6. Pam got word from inside that Mumia’s cell had been raided by prison authorities.

As you know, after a series of hospitalizations in March and April 2015, Mumia has remained in the prison infirmary. During this time, most of his property has remained in his old cell.  According to Mumia, on Friday, September 4, officers rushed him out of his regularly-scheduled medical bath to inform him that all the belongings in his cell had been packed up and placed in storage. The handling of prison property in the absence of a prisoner is a violation of prison procedures. After signing the forms required when prisoner property is placed in storage, Mumia asked if he was about to be moved to a different facility, since the boxing up of a prisoner’s property usually precedes a transfer. An officer assured him that he would not be transferred; but this all seemed really strange to Mumia.

These developments follow the immediate aftermath of a medical lawsuit filed by Mumia charging the DOC with medical neglect. Coming at this moment, a prison transfer would not be in Mumia’s best interest as it would disrupt contact with his attorneys and isolate him from his family and supporters. In addition, a move would put Mumia’s at risk; it would further compromise his physical and mental health and interrupt his medical care. The only transfer acceptable would be safe transit to a professional facility that would guarantee the medical attention he needs for a cure of his “active” Hepatitis C condition, for which there is a cure.

As you know, Mumia has been in an acute health crisis for over 9 months, since January 2015. In March 2015, prison infirmary physicians allowed Mumia to fall into diabetic shock and come close to death.

Please urge the PA Department of Corrections (DOC) to act in Mumia’s best interests and refrain from transferring him. Please also urge the DOC to give Mumia, and the 10,000 PA Prisoners with Hepatitis C, the cure he needs.

Recently, Mumia has lost approximately 25lbs in two months. Although his spirits are high and his cognitive abilities have improved, he still sleeps all day and is suffering extreme lethargy, a bi-product of untreated, “active” Hepatitis C, a liver disease. The skin around his face is clearer than before and although his leg wounds have closed, they have left crater-like scars, which can erupt at any moment. The skin throughout his body remains jet-black, raw, extremely wrinkled, and rough, like elephant hide. Nails on his hands and feet are falling off and the palms of his hands are blackened. These conditions are also symptoms of his untreated, “active” Hepatitis C.

The denial of the Hepatitis C cure to Mumia –while his medical condition remains precarious and while his disfiguring skin condition continues to cause him unthinkable suffering –is cruel and unusual punishment, and torture through medical neglect.


Demand the Hepatitis C cure for Mumia and for the 10,000 PA Prisoners with the disease, NOW!
John Wetzel, Secretary of Corrections, Pennsylvania Phone: (717) 728-2573
John Kerestes, Superintendent, SCI-Mahanoy prison: Phone: (570) 773-2158

love and solidarity,

Johanna Fernandez
for Pam Africa and the Movement to Free Mumia &
the Campaign to Bring Mumia Home

ROBERT J. BOYLE
Attorney At Law
277 Broadway
Suite 1501
New York, N.Y.  10007
 (212)431-0229

September 7, 2015

SUMMARY OF MEDICAL CRISIS OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL

          The following is a summary of the medical issues currently confronting Mumia Abu Jamal, currently a prisoner at SCI Mahanoy.  A detailed presentation of his issues is contained in the papers filed in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania in the case of Abu-Jamal v. Kerestes and will be made available upon request.

          Mumia Abu Jamal is suffering from “active” hepatitis C, a serious liver disease.  Tests performed over the last several months show that Mr. Abu Jamal’s liver likely has “significant firbrosis” (scarring) and deteriorated function.  The disease has also manifested itself in other ways.  He has a persistent, painful skin rash over most of his body.  Our consulting physician, who visited Mr. Abu Jamal. has concluded that it is likely a disease known as Necrolytic Acral Erythma, a condition that is almost always associated with an untreated hepatitis C infection.    Mr. Abu Jamal has been diagnosed with “anemia of chronic disease”, another common consequence of hepatitis C.  He has sudden-onset adult diabetes, a complication that led to an episode of diabetic shock on March 30, 2015.  Most recently, he has begun to lose weight again.

          Mr. Abu Jamal’s hepatitis C can be cured – and the painful and dangerous consequences alleviated – if the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC) would administer the direct acting anti-viral medication that has now become the standard for treatment for hepatitis C infections.  According to the American Association for the Study of Liver Disease (AASLD) this hepatitis C treatment “results in sustained virologic response (SVR) which is tantamount to virologic cure”.  See  http://www.hcvguidelines.org.  The AASLD protocol has been adopted by the United States Bureau of Prisons.  Under that protocol, Mr. Abu Jamal is a candidate for “immediate” treatment.

          The DOC has known of Mr. Abu Jamal’s hepatitis C infection since 2012 but never conducted a complete hepatitis C workup until recently.  His skin condition, which had been intermittent for several years  worsened and became constant in August 2014.  His health had deteriorated to such an extent that he was admitted to the hospital in May 2015.  Over those eight days numerous tests were conducted that ruled out many conditions, including some cancers.  Those tests led the doctors to conclude that the symptoms were likely caused by the hepatitis C.

          In June 2015, after Mr. Abu-Jamal’s release from the hospital, his attorneys demanded that a complete hepatitis C workup be conducted and treatment administered.  But it took several weeks for those simple blood tests to be taken.  They concluded that Mr. Abu Jamal does, in fact, have an active hepatitis C infection.  Notwithstanding that determination, and Mr. Abu-Jamal’s continued suffering and deteriorated health, he has not been given the anti-viral drugs.  As our consulting expert had concluded, “failure to treat Mr. Abu-Jamal’s hepatitis C will result in serious harm to his health, as his current-hepatic symptoms will not be cured, and he faces an increasingly serious risk of suffering from fibrosis and cirrhosis, liver cancer, complications of his diabetes, and eventual death.”

A motion for an injunction seeking treatment is pending in federal court.  However, the treatment, as our medical expert has stated, should begin “immediately”.  Given the overwhelming and undisputed evidence that Mr. Abu Jamal is suffering from an active infection, treatment should not await a determination by the court.  It must begin now.
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MUMIA IS INNOCENT!  FREE MUMIA NOW!

 - This message from The Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222  •  Oakland  CA 94610  •  www.laboractionmumia.org
13 September 2015

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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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September 18, 2015
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/09/18/1422588/-Texas-police-caught-in-an-enormous-lie-about-their-murder-of-an-unarmed-mother-Yvette-Smith?detail=email

On February 16, 2014, Yvette Smith, a 47-year-old mother beloved by her family and community, was shot twice by an AR-15 assault rifle and killed on the spot by local police as she opened the front door of her home. A full 18 months later, as her case finally came before a jury, it's disturbingly clear that the police lied, repeatedly, in an attempt to cover up their murder of Smith.

First off, Smith called 911 for help because two men in her home were arguing over a financial dispute and she felt it was getting out of hand. She had nothing to do with the dispute and was an innocent bystander—a victim, even. When the police showed up, both men were already in the front yard and it appeared that the dispute was settled. This should've been case closed, but it wasn't.

When Smith opened the front door of her home, she was shot twice with a high-powered .223 caliber rifle in less than two seconds by Officer Daniel Willis of Bastrop County, Texas, outside of Austin.

The lies and the coverup began immediately. The entire department was involved.

Below, see the initial statement from Sheriff Terry Pickering, issued just hours after Smith died.

As you may have seen, police not only claimed that Smith emerged from the home with a firearm, they stated that she ignored police commands. In essence, Smith came out of that house, according to police, ready to bring hellfire and damnation on police and they acted out in self-defense from an incredibly dangerous woman.

This is a lie. A complete fabrication. When Sheriff Terry Pickering issued the statement, he was fully and completely aware that Yvette Smith wasn't armed. No weapon was found on or near her. He knew this. The officers on the scene knew this, but Sheriff Pickering issued that statement anyway. It sounded better.

Knowing that the evidence and scores of eyewitnesses saw that she was unarmed, police later retracted the statement, but have given absolutely no answers or held anyone responsible for the earlier lie—which was the primary reason given for shooting Smith in the first place.

It may be hard to believe, but the lies get worse—much worse.

As you saw in the initial statement released by police, they claimed that Smith ignored their commands. On September 17, in open court, we learned that this was also an elaborate lie told to justify police misconduct.
Deputy Scott Gaskamp, who arrived at the scene just moments before the shooting, had told investigators and written reports stating that they had ordered Smith to show them her hands, to open the door and come out of the house, Gaskamp testified Thursday. Recordings of the incident showed no commands were ever issued.
When pressed to explain this in court, Officer Gaskamp literally admitted that he made the whole damn thing up. He also stated that he couldn't remember telling this lie to the lead investigator, until they played him the recorded interview where he stated the lie over and over again.
Gaskamp told the court he never amended any of his reports or came forward to investigators to correct his errors. After reviewing the dashboard camera footage caught from his patrol vehicle and Willis’ vehicle, he realized his written reports were wrong and that he had never told Smith to put her hands up or issued any other command. “I did not say those words. It must have been a figment of my imagination,” Gaskamp said.
Are you tracking this? Let me summarize it for you . . . Yvette Smith called 911 for help.
She opened the front door of her home and was almost instantly shot twice by police with an AR-15 assault rifle.
The officers on the scene lied and said she was armed.
The supervising officer doubled down on the lie and spread it in a press release.
The officers then lied and said they made multiple commands that Smith ignored, but the dashcam footage shows that none of those commands were made. Not one of them.
The coverup continued . . .
A few weeks after the shooting, an investigation by BCSO revealed that several supervisors had modified Willis’ field training records after the shooting in an effort to make sure the records were completed accurately. A lieutenant and a sergeant were demoted to patrol deputy and five additional supervisors also faced disciplinary action because of the record changes.
Lastly, and this may be the most disturbing fact of all, it was discovered that the officer who shot and killed Smith was found incompetent by another police department.
Before working for Bastrop County Sheriff’s Office, Willis, 29, was employed by Travis County. A Travis County 2012 evaluation of Willis stated that Willis needed more development in handling explosive situations and in the utilization of common sense.
Yes, you read that correctly: The damn evaluation said the police officer who killed Yvette Smith struggled with "common sense," but was hired by a neighboring department anyway. While Officer Willis has been charged in Smith's death, it is increasingly clear that the entire Bastrop County Sheriff's Office conspired to protect one another and cover up this crime. All of them should be immediately fired and a statewide investigation needs to be launched into the corrupt actions that we can clearly see in the murder of Yvette Smith.


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2) Volkswagen Denied Deception to E.P.A. for Nearly a Year
By

FRANKFURT — For nearly a year, Volkswagen officials told the Environmental Protection Agency that discrepancies between the formal air-quality tests on its diesel cars and the much higher pollution levels out on the road were the result of technical errors, not a deliberate attempt to deceive Washington officials.

But early this month, Volkswagen executives finally made a startling admission: The diesels it sold in the United States had software deliberately designed to cheat on the tests.

The company was evidently concerned that actually meeting the federal emissions standards would degrade the power of the engines, which it marketed as comparable in performance to gasoline engines. Meeting the standard would also undercut the fuel efficiency that is one of the main selling points of diesels.

The admission came only after the E.P.A. threatened to withhold approval for Volkswagen’s new 2016 models, according to letters sent to company officials by the E.P.A. and California regulators.Since news of that mass deception broke on Friday, Volkswagen has scrambled to conduct damage control, with its chief executive issuing an apology and the company saying it would not sell its 2015 and 2016 diesel cars in the United States.

But that did not stop Volkswagen shares from plummeting when trading opened in Europe on Monday. And the apology has not relieved pressure on Martin Winterkorn, the Volkswagen chief executive, whom analysts said would have tough questions to answer, seeking to know when he and other top executives at the company, which is ruled from the top with Germanic precision, were aware of the diesel deception.

Adding to pressure on Volkswagen, the German government said on Monday that it would also begin an inquiry to make sure that Volkswagen and other carmakers are complying with laws on auto emissions.

The E.P.A. disclosed the yearlong series of letters with Volkswagen as part of accusations it made against the company on Friday. The agency will require the company to recall nearly half-a-million vehicles equipped with 2-liter diesel engines dating to the 2009 model year. Volkswagen also faces fines that could run into the billions of dollars.

Volkswagen shares plunged about 20 percent on Monday, as investors registered alarm at the damage the company could suffer.

Mr. Winterkorn issued an apology on Sunday, saying the company had “broken the trust of our customers and the public.”

But the sophistication of the software used to manipulate emissions tests in the United States, and extensive attempts by Volkswagen to deflect official scrutiny before admitting misconduct this month, are sure to raise questions about Mr. Winterkorn’s effectiveness only months after he survived an internal power struggle.

“Either he knew, or he didn’t know, which is even worse,” said Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, a professor at the University of Duisburg-Essen who is a longtime Volkswagen critic. “Any politician in his situation would have to resign.”

Volkswagen’s supervisory board, which Mr. Winterkorn reports to, will hold a regularly scheduled meeting on Friday, and it is certain to discuss the E.P.A. action.

After being confronted last year with evidence that some diesel models did not comply with pollution standards under certain conditions, Volkswagen executives originally offered technical explanations, according to a letter of complaint sent to the company by the E.P.A. and the California Air Resources Board.

It was only on Sept. 3, according to the letters, that executives at Volkswagen of America, the company’s United States unit, admitted that cars equipped with the 2-liter diesel motors contained the software.

The software measured factors such as the position of the steering wheel, the vehicle’s speed and even barometric pressure to sense when the car was being subjected to testing, the E.P.A. said. The car then configured itself to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxide, a gas that is a major contributor to smog and is linked to an array of respiratory ailments including asthma, emphysema and bronchitis, the E.P.A. said on Friday.

Volkswagen is known for being a tightly controlled, autocratic organization, raising questions about how such a sophisticated system could have been installed in nearly half a million vehicles without knowledge of top management.

The plunge in Volkswagen shares was a clear indication that investors believe that company profit and sales could suffer because of the E.P.A. accusations. However, Volkswagen is relatively immune to stock market pressure because only 12 percent of its voting shares are traded. Porsche Automobil Holding, controlled by members of the Porsche family, holds a slight majority. The state of Lower Saxony owns 20 percent and the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar owns 17 percent.

Stephan Weil, the prime minister of Lower Saxony, where Volkswagen has its headquarters and major manufacturing operations, said in a statement on Monday, “Manipulation of an emissions test is completely unacceptable and without any justification.”

But Mr. Weil said consequences could be discussed only after a thorough investigation of the circumstances.

In Berlin, the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel said it would ask carmakers for information as the first step in an inquiry.

“We expect reliable information from carmakers so that the Federal Office for Vehicles can check whether similar manipulation in the exhaust systems has taken place in Germany or Europe,” Andreas Kübler, a spokesman for the Environment Ministry, told reporters in Berlin.

The European Commission has contacted Volkswagen as well as the E.P.A. for details about the accusations, a commission spokeswoman said.

“It is premature to comment on whether any specific immediate surveillance measures are also necessary in Europe and whether vehicles sold by Volkswagen in Europe are also affected,” the spokeswoman said in an email. “We are taking the matter very seriously.”

South Korea also planned to test Volkswagen cars to make sure they were in compliance with pollution rules, according to news reports.

More than half of all vehicles sold in Europe are diesels, which are popular because they typically offer better fuel economy than gasoline. European Union pollution rules were more favorable to diesels than United States rules, but they have been progressively tightened. The most recent standard, known as Euro 6, took effect for all new cars sold on Sept. 1.

Technology exists to reduce the amount of nitrogen oxides emitted by diesels. But the technology also tends to reduce fuel economy as well as performance. The software installed by Volkswagen on vehicles sold in the United States avoided this trade-off, which could have come as a disappointment to American customers, by scaling back pollution controls when the car was not being tested.

The accusations by the E.P.A. are a blow to Volkswagen’s efforts to build up its meager market share in the United States, in part by promoting “clean diesel” technology.

The silver lining for Volkswagen, though, may be that its most profitable vehicles in the United States are Porsche and Audi cars not affected by the E.P.A. action. The cars affected are Volkswagen Golf, Jetta, Beetle and Passat models from 2009 through 2015 that are equipped with 2-liter diesel engines.

Another silver lining for Volkswagen may be that diesel powered cars account for only a tiny fraction of sales in China, which is the company’s largest market.

Among Audi models, only the compact A3 is affected in the United States. The A3 accounted for less than a fifth of the 111,000 vehicles that Audi sold in the United States from January through August, and only a fraction of those A3s would have been equipped with diesels.

The E.P.A. said on Friday that Volkswagen would be required to recall the affected vehicles for repairs to make them compliant with smog regulations. Car owners would not have to pay for the repairs. Many owners may not bother, though, because the changes are likely to reduce fuel consumption and performance.

John Schilling, a Volkswagen spokesman, said on Sunday that the company would stop selling 2015 and 2016 Volkswagen and Audi models equipped with the 2-liter diesel engines, which the company had marketed as “clean diesel.” The company will also stop selling used cars that have the engines, Mr. Schilling said.

He said he did not know how many models would be stuck on dealer lots as a result of the decision. This month, Volkswagen had said that 23 percent of new cars sold in August in the United States were diesels, or 7,400 vehicles. Some diesels, such as those used in Volkswagen S.U.V.s, are not affected by the E.P.A. action.

Melissa Eddy contributed reporting from Berlin, and Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong.


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3) Drug Goes From $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight
By

Specialists in infectious disease are protesting a gigantic overnight increase in the price of a 62-year-old drug that is the standard of care for treating a life-threatening parasitic infection.

The drug, called Daraprim, was acquired in August by Turing Pharmaceuticals, a start-up run by a former hedge fund manager. Turing immediately raised the price to $750 a tablet from $13.50, bringing the annual cost of treatment for some patients to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“What is it that they are doing differently that has led to this dramatic increase?” said Dr. Judith Aberg, the chief of the division of infectious diseases at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She said the price increase could force hospitals to use “alternative therapies that may not have the same efficacy.”Turing’s price increase is not an isolated example. While most of the attention on pharmaceutical prices has been on new drugs for diseases like cancer, hepatitis C and high cholesterol, there is also growing concern about huge price increases on older drugs, some of them generic, that have long been mainstays of treatment.

Although some price increases have been caused by shortages, others have resulted from a business strategy of buying old neglected drugs and turning them into high-priced “specialty drugs.”

Cycloserine, a drug used to treat dangerous multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, was just increased in price to $10,800 for 30 pills from $500 after its acquisition by Rodelis Therapeutics. Scott Spencer, general manager of Rodelis, said the company needed to invest to make sure the supply of the drug remained reliable. He said the company provided the drug free to certain needy patients.

In August, two members of Congress investigating generic drug price increases wrote to Valeant Pharmaceuticals after that company acquired two heart drugs, Isuprel and Nitropress, from Marathon Pharmaceuticals and promptly raised their prices by 525 percent and 212 percent respectively. Marathon had acquired the drugs from another company in 2013 and had quintupled their prices, according to the lawmakers, Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president, and Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland.

Doxycycline, an antibiotic, went from $20 a bottle in October 2013 to $1,849 by April 2014, according to the two lawmakers.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America and the HIV Medicine Association sent a joint letter to Turing earlier this month calling the price increase for Daraprim “unjustifiable for the medically vulnerable patient population” and “unsustainable for the health care system.” An organization representing the directors of state AIDS programs has also been looking into the price increase, according to doctors and patient advocates.

Daraprim, known generically as pyrimethamine, is used mainly to treat toxoplasmosis, a parasite infection that can cause serious or even life-threatening problems for babies born to women who become infected during pregnancy, and also for people with compromised immune systems, like AIDS patients and certain cancer patients.

Martin Shkreli, the founder and chief executive of Turing, said that the drug is so rarely used that the impact on the health system would be minuscule and that Turing would use the money it earns to develop better treatments for toxoplasmosis, with fewer side effects.

“This isn’t the greedy drug company trying to gouge patients, it is us trying to stay in business,” Mr. Shkreli said. He said that many patients use the drug for far less than a year and that the price was now more in line with those of other drugs for rare diseases.

“This is still one of the smallest pharmaceutical products in the world,” he said. “It really doesn’t make sense to get any criticism for this.”

This is not the first time the 32-year-old Mr. Shkreli, who has a reputation for both brilliance and brashness, has been the center of controversy. He started MSMB Capital, a hedge fund company, in his 20s and drew attention for urging the Food and Drug Administration not to approve certain drugs made by companies whose stock he was shorting.

In 2011, Mr. Shkreli started Retrophin, which also acquired old neglected drugs and sharply raised their prices. Retrophin’s board fired Mr. Shkreli a year ago. Last month, it filed a complaint in Federal District Court in Manhattan, accusing him of using Retrophin as a personal piggy bank to pay back angry investors in his hedge fund.

Mr. Shkreli has denied the accusations. He has filed for arbitration against his old company, which he says owes him at least $25 million in severance. “They are sort of concocting this wild and crazy and unlikely story to swindle me out of the money,” he said.

Daraprim, which is also used to treat malaria, was approved by the F.D.A. in 1953 and has long been made by GlaxoSmithKline. Glaxo sold United States marketing rights to CorePharma in 2010. Last year, Impax Laboratories agreed to buy Core and affiliated companies for $700 million. In August, Impax sold Daraprim to Turing for $55 million, a deal announced the same day Turing said it had raised $90 million from Mr. Shkreli and other investors in its first round of financing.

Daraprim cost only about $1 a tablet several years ago, but the drug’s price rose sharply after CorePharma acquired it. According to IMS Health, which tracks prescriptions, sales of the drug jumped to $6.3 million in 2011 from $667,000 in 2010, even as prescriptions held steady at about 12,700. In 2014, after further price increases, sales were $9.9 million, as the number of prescriptions shrank to 8,821. The figures do not include inpatient use in hospitals.

Turing’s price increase could bring sales to tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars a year if use remains constant. Medicaid and certain hospitals will be able to get the drug inexpensively under federal rules for discounts and rebates. But private insurers, Medicare and hospitalized patients would have to pay an amount closer to the list price.

Some doctors questioned Turing’s claim that there was a need for better drugs, saying the side effects, while potentially serious, could be managed.

“I certainly don’t think this is one of those diseases where we have been clamoring for better therapies,” said Dr. Wendy Armstrong, professor of infectious diseases at Emory University in Atlanta.

With the price now high, other companies could conceivably make generic copies, since patents have long expired. One factor that could discourage that option is that Daraprim’s distribution is now tightly controlled, making it harder for generic companies to get the samples they need for the required testing.

The switch from drugstores to controlled distribution was made in June by Impax, not by Turing. Still, controlled distribution was a strategy Mr. Shkreli talked about at his previous company as a way to thwart generics.

Some hospitals say they now have trouble getting the drug. “We’ve not had access to the drug for a few months,” said Dr. Armstrong, who also works at Grady Memorial Hospital, a huge public treatment center in Atlanta that serves many low-income patients.

But Dr. Rima McLeod, medical director of the toxoplasmosis center at the University of Chicago, said that Turing had been good about delivering drugs quickly to patients, sometimes without charge.

“They have jumped every time I’ve called,” she said. The situation, she added, “seems workable” despite the price increase.

Daraprim is the standard first treatment for toxoplasmosis, in combination with an antibiotic called sulfadiazine. There are alternative treatments, but there is less data supporting their efficacy.

Dr. Aberg of Mount Sinai said some hospitals will now find Daraprim too expensive to keep in stock, possibly resulting in treatment delays. She said that Mount Sinai was continuing to use the drug, but each use now required a special review.

“This seems to be all profit-driven for somebody,” Dr. Aberg said, “and I just think it’s a very dangerous process.”


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4) U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Sexual Abuse of Boys by Afghan Allies
By

KABUL, Afghanistan — In his last phone call home, Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley Jr. told his father what was troubling him: From his bunk in southern Afghanistan, he could hear Afghan police officers sexually abusing boys they had brought to the base.

“At night we can hear them screaming, but we’re not allowed to do anything about it,” the Marine’s father, Gregory Buckley Sr., recalled his son telling him before he was shot to death at the base in 2012. He urged his son to tell his superiors. “My son said that his officers told him to look the other way because it’s their culture.”Rampant sexual abuse of children has long been a problem in Afghanistan, particularly among armed commanders who dominate much of the rural landscape and can bully the population. The practice is called bacha bazi, literally “boy play,” and American soldiers and Marines have been instructed not to intervene — in some cases, not even when their Afghan allies have abused boys on military bases, according to interviews and court records.

The policy has endured as American forces have recruited and organized Afghan militias to help hold territory against the Taliban. But soldiers and Marines have been increasingly troubled that instead of weeding out pedophiles, the American military was arming them in some cases and placing them as the commanders of villages — and doing little when they began abusing children.

“The reason we were here is because we heard the terrible things the Taliban were doing to people, how they were taking away human rights,” said Dan Quinn, a former Special Forces captain who beat up an American-backed militia commander for keeping a boy chained to his bed as a sex slave. “But we were putting people into power who would do things that were worse than the Taliban did — that was something village elders voiced to me.”

The policy of instructing soldiers to ignore child sexual abuse by their Afghan allies is coming under new scrutiny, particularly as it emerges that service members like Captain Quinn have faced discipline, even career ruin, for disobeying it.

After the beating, the Army relieved Captain Quinn of his command and pulled him from Afghanistan. He has since left the military.

Four years later, the Army is also trying to forcibly retire Sgt. First Class Charles Martland, a Special Forces member who joined Captain Quinn in beating up the commander.

“The Army contends that Martland and others should have looked the other way (a contention that I believe is nonsense),” Representative Duncan Hunter, a California Republican who hopes to save Sergeant Martland’s career, wrote last week to the Pentagon’s inspector general.

In Sergeant Martland’s case, the Army said it could not comment because of the Privacy Act.

When asked about American military policy, the spokesman for the American command in Afghanistan, Col. Brian Tribus, wrote in an email: “Generally, allegations of child sexual abuse by Afghan military or police personnel would be a matter of domestic Afghan criminal law.” He added that “there would be no express requirement that U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan report it.” An exception, he said, is when rape is being used as a weapon of war.

The American policy of nonintervention is intended to maintain good relations with the Afghan police and militia units the United States has trained to fight the Taliban. It also reflects a reluctance to impose cultural values in a country where pederasty is rife, particularly among powerful men, for whom being surrounded by young teenagers can be a mark of social status.

Some soldiers believed that the policy made sense, even if they were personally distressed at the sexual predation they witnessed or heard about.

“The bigger picture was fighting the Taliban,” a former Marine lance corporal reflected. “It wasn’t to stop molestation.”

Still, the former lance corporal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid offending fellow Marines, recalled feeling sickened the day he entered a room on a base and saw three or four men lying on the floor with children between them. “I’m not a hundred percent sure what was happening under the sheet, but I have a pretty good idea of what was going on,” he said.

But the American policy of treating child sexual abuse as a cultural issue has often alienated the villages whose children are being preyed upon. The pitfalls of the policy emerged clearly as American Special Forces soldiers began to form Afghan Local Police militias to hold villages that American forces had retaken from the Taliban in 2010 and 2011.

By the summer of 2011, Captain Quinn and Sergeant Martland, both Green Berets on their second tour in northern Kunduz Province, began to receive dire complaints about the Afghan Local Police units they were training and supporting.

First, they were told, one of the militia commanders raped a 14- or 15-year-old girl whom he had spotted working in the fields. Captain Quinn informed the provincial police chief, who soon levied punishment. “He got one day in jail, and then she was forced to marry him,” Mr. Quinn said.

When he asked a superior officer what more he could do, he was told that he had done well to bring it up with local officials but that there was nothing else to be done. “We’re being praised for doing the right thing, and a guy just got away with raping a 14-year-old girl,” Mr. Quinn said.

Village elders grew more upset at the predatory behavior of American-backed commanders. After each case, Captain Quinn would gather the Afghan commanders and lecture them on human rights.

Soon another commander absconded with his men’s wages. Mr. Quinn said he later heard that the commander had spent the money on dancing boys. Another commander murdered his 12-year-old daughter in a so-called honor killing for having kissed a boy. “There were no repercussions,” Mr. Quinn recalled.

In September 2011, an Afghan woman, visibly bruised, showed up at an American base with her son, who was limping. One of the Afghan police commanders in the area, Abdul Rahman, had abducted the boy and forced him to become a sex slave, chained to his bed, the woman explained. When she sought her son’s return, she herself was beaten. Her son had eventually been released, but she was afraid it would happen again, she told the Americans on the base

She explained that because “her son was such a good-looking kid, he was a status symbol” coveted by local commanders, recalled Mr. Quinn, who did not speak to the woman directly but was told about her visit when he returned to the base from a mission later that day.

So Captain Quinn summoned Abdul Rahman and confronted him about what he had done. The police commander acknowledged that it was true, but brushed it off. When the American officer began to lecture about “how you are held to a higher standard if you are working with U.S. forces, and people expect more of you,” the commander began to laugh.“I picked him up and threw him onto the ground,” Mr. Quinn said. Sergeant Martland joined in, he said. “I did this to make sure the message was understood that if he went back to the boy, that it was not going to be tolerated,” Mr. Quinn recalled.

There is disagreement over the extent of the commander’s injuries. Mr. Quinn said they were not serious, which was corroborated by an Afghan official who saw the commander afterward.

(The commander, Abdul Rahman, was killed two years ago in a Taliban ambush. His brother said in an interview that his brother had never raped the boy, but was the victim of a false accusation engineered by his enemies.)

Sergeant Martland, who received a Bronze Star for valor for his actions during a Taliban ambush, wrote in a letter to the Army this year that he and Mr. Quinn “felt that morally we could no longer stand by and allow our A.L.P. to commit atrocities,” referring to the Afghan Local Police.

The father of Lance Corporal Buckley believes the policy of looking away from sexual abuse was a factor in his son’s death, and he has filed a lawsuit to press the Marine Corps for more information about it.

Lance Corporal Buckley and two other Marines were killed in 2012 by one of a large entourage of boys living at their base with an Afghan police commander named Sarwar Jan.

Mr. Jan had long had a bad reputation; in 2010, two Marine officers managed to persuade the Afghan authorities to arrest him following a litany of abuses, including corruption, support for the Taliban and child abduction. But just two years later, the police commander was back with a different unit, working at Lance Corporal Buckley’s post, Forward Operating Base Delhi, in Helmand Province.

Lance Corporal Buckley had noticed that a large entourage of “tea boys” — domestic servants who are sometimes pressed into sexual slavery — had arrived with Mr. Jan and moved into the same barracks, one floor below the Marines. He told his father about it during his final call home.

Word of Mr. Jan’s new position also reached the Marine officers who had gotten him arrested in 2010. One of them, Maj. Jason Brezler, dashed out an email to Marine officers at F.O.B. Delhi, warning them about Mr. Jan and attaching a dossier about him.

The warning was never heeded. About two weeks later, one of the older boys with Mr. Jan — around 17 years old — grabbed a rifle and killed Lance Corporal Buckley and the other Marines.

Lance Corporal Buckley’s father still agonizes about whether the killing occurred because of the sexual abuse by an American ally. “As far as the young boys are concerned, the Marines are allowing it to happen and so they’re guilty by association,” Mr. Buckley said. “They don’t know our Marines are sick to their stomachs.”

The one American service member who was punished in the investigation that followed was Major Brezler, who had sent the email warning about Mr. Jan, his lawyers said. In one of Major Brezler’s hearings, Marine Corps lawyers warned that information about the police commander’s penchant for abusing boys might be classified. The Marine Corps has initiated proceedings to discharge Major Brezler.

Mr. Jan appears to have moved on, to a higher-ranking police command in the same province. In an interview, he denied keeping boys as sex slaves or having any relationship with the boy who killed the three Marines. “No, it’s all untrue,” Mr. Jan said. But people who know him say he still suffers from “a toothache problem,” a euphemism here for child sexual abuse.



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5) Alexis Tsipras’s Election Victory, and Greece’s Looming Challenges
By NIKI KITSANTONIS 

Alexis Tsipras won an unexpectedly decisive victory in elections in Greece on Sunday, renewing his mandate to lead the austerity-weary nation, this time as a prime minister committed to supporting a bailout rather than to fighting one. Defying many experts’ predictions of a tight race, his leftist party, Syriza, received just over 35 percent of the vote, beating the main right-leaning opposition party by more than seven percentage points.

Mr. Tsipras, 41, a charismatic left-wing populist, is expected to waste no time announcing a new cabinet. The heavily indebted country faces huge challenges, including skeptical creditors who will be watching closely to see if the government follows through on promised changes. It must push through a slew of tough economic measures in the coming weeks in exchange for crucial rescue funding.Though Mr. Tsipras succeeded in ridding Syriza of radicals who had hampered his progress during his previous term, he still faces deep-rooted opposition to austerity from a population worn out by seemingly endless belt-tightening and lingering objections in the ranks of his own party.

Here are answers to some questions about the implications of the election results:

Q. How is this a victory for Mr. Tsipras if his party lost seats?

A. Mr. Tsipras’s resounding victory over the key conservative opposition New Democracy, even with a scaled-down Syriza, reinforces his position as the dominant player on Greece’s fractured political scene. He managed to sideline Syriza’s far-left rebels, who ran against him in Sunday’s elections but failed to enter Parliament, giving him greater control over his party. Shorn of its radical elements, the new Syriza is likely to raise fewer objections to carrying out Greece’s third bailout. Still, a deep-rooted opposition to austerity lingers within the party ranks and the larger population. Pleasing his party, voters and Greece’s creditors will not be easy.

Q. What difference will the election have made if the same coalition returns?

A. Apart from getting the radical leftists off Mr. Tsipras’s back, the elections also kept them out of the Greek Parliament. So the new coalition will face fewer anti-austerity forces in Parliament, with the exception of the Communist Party and Golden Dawn, the neo-fascist party. Golden Dawn reaffirmed its presence in Parliament, even though its entire leadership is on trial, accused of running a criminal organization. Still Greece’s third most-popular party, it remains mostly on the fringes of the country’s politics. The fact that New Democracy backed Greece’s third bailout in Parliament in August and campaigned on a pro-bailout platform in the latest elections essentially guarantees support for the bulk of the tough measures Greece must push into law to secure rescue loans.

Q. What did voters say about austerity and the bailout by re-electing Mr. Tsipras?

A. The details of the third bailout, which include further pension cuts, tax increases and an aggressive privatization program, were conspicuously absent from Syriza’s election campaign. Instead, the party pledged to crack down on the corruption that has bedeviled Greece, to eventually pull the country out of years of austerity, and to free the nation of the demands of foreign creditors. While Greeks are undoubtedly fed up with austerity, they appear to have decided that Mr. Tsipras could at least soften the impact. Mr. Tsipras’s insistence that he put up a fight with lenders and accepted a difficult compromise to keep the country solvent and prevent an exit from the euro appeared to have resonated with many Greeks.

Q. How will his survival in office matter in Greece’s dealings with its creditors?

A. Mr. Tsipras is hardly beloved by Greece’s creditors, who have spent months locking horns with him and his populist party. The country’s creditors — the other nations that use the euro, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund — would probably have preferred a broader coalition of avowed pro-European parties such as the socialist Pasok and the centrist, pro-business Potami. But Mr. Tsipras’s emphatic election victory has shown the lenders that he is really the only party leader with significant political leverage. Mr. Tsipras’s insistence on forming a “parallel program” that Syriza will seek to carry out alongside the bailout, chiefly aimed at helping poorer Greeks, could be a potential stumbling block in talks with creditors.

Q. What might we infer from the record-low turnout and the off-the-mark opinion polls?

A. With about 44 percent of Greeks staying away from polling stations, turnout was the lowest in the country’s history, highlighting the deep discontent of a public weary of austerity and of unfulfilled promises. For many, after five years of enforced belt-tightening, promises to curb austerity rang hollow. For others, merely choosing which party would impose more pain was hardly a motive to vote, particularly as many Greeks must travel to cast their ballot, an expense that many cannot afford.

The fact that Greek polling companies failed to predict Syriza’s decisive return to power was as much a topic of debate in Greece on Monday as the results of the elections were. The off-the-mark forecasts raised serious questions about the methodologies of the firms. Mr. Tsipras’s coalition partner, Panos Kammenos, the head of the rightist Independent Greeks party, called the pollsters “hired assassins” for consistently suggesting his group would fail to enter Parliament, suggesting that the Greek mainstream news media and entangled business interests were behind the predictions.



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6)  Five of the Latest Marijuana Studies That Upend Decades of Myths and Fearmongering
Reefer Madness-style propaganda is so last century.
By Paul Armentano / NORML
September 21, 2015
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/latest-cannabis-science-you-need-know?akid=13505.229473.o2R8Ah&rd=1&src=newsletter1042811&t=6 

Scientific discoveries are published almost daily rebuking the federal government’s contention that cannabis is a highly dangerous substance lacking therapeutic efficacy. But most of these findings appear primarily in obscure, peer-reviewed journals and often go unnoticed by the major media and the general public. Here are five new cannabis-centric studies that warrant mainstream attention.

Early Onset Pot Use Isn’t Associated With Adverse Outcomes in Adulthood

Kids who experiment with weed are far less likely than non-users to be healthy and successful adults. So says the conventional wisdom. But new science says otherwise. Investigators from the Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Rutgers University prospectively examined whether male subjects who consumed cannabis between the ages of 15 and 26 differed in terms of socioeconomic, social, and life satisfaction outcomes by their mid-30s as compared to those who were either abstinent or only consumed it sparingly. After controlling for potential confounders, such as the use of alcohol and other illicit substances, researchers reported that pot consuming subjects– including those who used the substance habitually – were generally “not at a heightened risk for maladjustment in adulthood.”

A separate evaluation of this same cohort published in August in the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviors reported that younger pot smokers were no more likely than their non-smoking peers to experience physical or mental health issues later in life. The finding defied researchers’ presumptions, as they acknowledged that their motivation for conducting the study was to "provide empirical evidence regarding the potential adverse consequences of marijuana legalization."

Providing Medical Cannabis Access Reduces Opioid Abuses

Is legalized pot a gateway to fewer opioid-related deaths? The data says ‘yes.’ According to findings published in July by the National Bureau of Economic Research – a non-partisan think-tank -- states that permit qualified patients to access medical marijuana via dispensaries possess lower rates of opioid addiction and overdose deaths as compared to those that do not.

Researchers from the RAND Corporation and the University of California, Irvine assessed the impact of medicinal cannabis laws on problematic opioid use, as measured by treatment admissions for opioid pain reliever addiction and by state-level opioid overdose deaths. They concluded, "[S]tates permitting medical marijuana dispensaries experience a relative decrease in both opioid addictions and opioid overdose deaths compared to states that do not.”

The findings were not the first time that researchers have reported a relationship between increased medi-pot access and decreased opioid deaths. Research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2014 also concluded, "States with medical cannabis laws had a 24.8 percent lower mean annual opioid overdose mortality rate compared with states without medical cannabis laws."

Pot Is a Frequent Substitute For Alcohol, Other Drugs

Legalized pot isn’t just associated with the less frequent use of opiates. Data published this month in the journal Drug and Alcohol Review also reports that most people who consume weed also report reducing their use of alcohol, as well as their consumption of other licit and illicit drugs. “Substituting cannabis for one or more of alcohol, illicit drugs or prescription drugs was reported by 87 percent of respondents” in the cohort, Canadian researchers reported, “with 80.3 percent reporting substitution for prescription drugs, 51.7 percent for alcohol, and 32.6 percent for illicit substances.” Rates of substitution were highest among respondents between the ages of 18 and 40.

Authors concluded, “The finding that cannabis was substituted for alcohol and illicit substances suggests that the medical use of cannabis may play a harm reduction role in the context of use of these substances, and could have implications for substance use treatment approaches requiring abstinence from cannabis in the process of reducing the use of other substances.”

Forget ‘The Munchies’ – Pot Consumers Are Less Likely to Be Obese

Smoking pot may stimulate appetite, but it isn’t likely to make you fat. That’s the conclusion of a recent study published in journal Obesity.

Investigators from the Conference of Quebec University Health Centers assessed cannabis use patterns and body mass index (BMI) in a cohort of 786 Inuit (Arctic aboriginal) adults ages 18 to 74. Researchers reported that cannabis users possessed an average BMI of 26.8 compared to an index of 28.6 for non-users, after controlling for age, gender and other factors. Investigators further discovered that pot users possessed fewer diabetic markers than non-users. They concluded: “In this large cross-sectional adult survey with high prevalence of both substance use and obesity, cannabis use in the past year was associated with lower BMI, lower percentage fat mass, lower fasting insulin, and HOMA-IR (insulin resistance). ... [C]annabinoids from cannabis may be viewed as an interesting avenue for research on obesity and associated conditions."

While these latest findings run counter to stoner stereotypes, they are hardly novel. Observational trial data published in 2012 in the British Medical Journal reported that marijuana users possessed a lower prevalence of type 2 diabetes and possessed a lower risk of contracting the disease than did those with no history of cannabis consumption, even after researchers adjusted for social variables such as subjects' ethnicity, family history, and levels of physical activity. Additionally, cross-sectional data published in 2011 in the American Journal of Epidemiology similarly reported that the prevalence of obesity in the general population is sharply lower among those who consume the herb compared to those who do not.

Despite Legalization, Teens Aren’t Using More Pot (But They Are Consuming Far Less Alcohol and Tobacco)

Proponents of pot prohibition repeatedly claim that liberalizing marijuana laws will increase young people’s use of the substance. And when the data rebukes their claims – and it has time after time – they simply lie about it.

Nonetheless, the evidence is clear. According to the federal government’s own 2014 National Survey on Drug Use and Health report, current use of marijuana by those between the ages of 12 to 17 has remained largely unchanged over the past decade, while young people's self-reported consumption of alcohol and cigarettes has fallen to record lows.

Specifically, the percentage of respondents ages 12 to 17 who reported past-month use of marijuana remained steady from 7.6 percent in 2004 to 7.4 percent in 2014. By contrast, teens' use of tobacco, cigarettes, and alcohol fell dramatically during this same period. Over the past ten years, adolescents' use of tobacco fell from 14.4 percent to 7 percent, their use of cigarettes fell from 11.9 percent to 4.9 percent, and their use of alcohol fell from 17.6 percent to 11.5 percent. Binge drinking by young people fell from 11.1 percent in 2004 to 6.1 percent in 2014.

Separate data published by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin further reports that a greater proportion of younger adolescents are now acknowledging “strong disapproval” of marijuana use.

In short, more teens are not turning to pot. But they are turning away from more dangerous substances like alcohol and tobacco like never before.
Paul Armentano is the deputy director of NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) and serves as a senior policy advisor for Freedom Leaf, Inc. He is the co-author of the book, Marijuana Is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink? (Chelsea Green, 2013).
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7) Health Insurance Deductibles Outpacing Wage Increases, Study Finds
By


It may not seem like much — just an extra hundred dollars or so a year.

But the steady upward creep in health insurance deductibles has easily outpaced the average increase in a worker’s wages over the last five years, according to a new analysis released on Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Kaiser, a health policy research group that conducts a yearly survey of employer health benefits, calculates that deductibles have risen more than six times faster than workers’ earnings since 2010.

“It’s a very powerful trend,” said Drew Altman, Kaiser’s chief executive.

Four of five workers who receive their insurance through an employer now pay a deductible, in which they must pay some of their medical bills before their coverage starts, according to Kaiser.

Those workers have seen their deductibles climb from a yearly average of $900 in 2010 for an individual plan to more than $1,300 this year, while employees working for small businesses have an even higher average of $1,800 a year. One in five workers has a deductible of $2,000 or more.

The report comes as the Senate holds a hearing about the proposed mergers among the nation’s largest health insurers. Consumer advocates are concerned that the mergers will result in even higher costs for coverage.

While the Kaiser survey examines plans provided by employers, Mr. Altman said many of the insurance policies being sold under the federal health care law through the state exchanges also rely on high deductibles to keep premiums low. Some employers also increased the size of their deductibles to reduce the higher costs associated with the law.

The law may be prompting even more changes by companies, in order to have workers shoulder more of their medical costs.

The prospect of the so-called Cadillac tax, a new tax created under the law on high-price health plans, is causing more companies to consider changes like increasing the size of their employees’ deductibles. The tax, which is expected to go into effect in 2018 but faces widespread opposition, could change the steady increase in deductibles into a “spurt,” Mr. Altman said.

But asking employees to cover more of their medical bills through high deductibles raises questions about whether some workers, especially those with expensive, chronic conditions, are being discouraged from seeking the care they need.Companies have traditionally relied on higher deductibles to reduce premiums, both to lower their own costs and to reduce what they take out of the employees’ pay for coverage, said Laurel Pickering, the chief executive of the Northeast Business Group on Health, an employer group. “Clearly, it’s the go-to solution,” she said.

Total premiums are increasing modestly. The cost of a plan for both a single person and a family went up an average of 4 percent this year, according to Kaiser, well below the double-digit increases that were the norm a decade ago.

The average cost of a family plan rose to $17,545, with employees paying an average of $5,000 toward their premiums.

But as wages have stagnated, the steady increase in deductibles is squeezing an already beleaguered middle class. While employers have generally felt some relief from the burden of ever-rising health care costs in recent years, workers are feeling increasingly vulnerable to high medical bills.

Some are making difficult choices about what care they can afford. About two years ago, Beth Landrum, a 52-year-old teacher, who is insured through her husband’s job as an engineer, saw the deductible on her family’s plan increase to $3,300 a year.

Ms. Landrum decided to delay having the M.R.I. her doctor recommends she get every three years. Ten years ago, she had a noncancerous brain tumor that required surgery and radiation. “My doctor’s really mad at me because I haven’t had the M.R.I.,” she said, but she and her husband say they need to save toward the cost.

She is particularly concerned because they could owe thousands of dollars in medical bills if something unexpected happened, like a hospital stay, because their current plan asks them to contribute much more toward the cost of care. “It’s really scary,” Ms. Landrum said.

Employers also justify the higher deductibles as a way to make sure workers have a financial stake in choosing their doctor or ordering a test. “It truly is to engage employees as better health care consumers,” Ms. Pickering said.A higher deductible puts more of the onus on the employee to decide whether a doctor’s visit or test at a certain facility is worth it, said Robert Reiff, who heads the employee benefits consulting business for Lockton Companies, an insurance brokerage firm that advises medium-size companies.

Employers “are putting more decision-making authority in the employees’ hands,” he said. He has seen a significant jump in the number of clients offering high-deductible plans, frequently accompanied by a savings account that the employee can fund as a way of helping pay for medical bills. In some cases, employers may also put some money in those accounts.

To help employees make better decisions, companies are offering them online tools that show workers the cost of a particular test or doctor’s visit before they go. Many are also providing employees with access to a doctor or a nurse over the telephone or computer as an alternative to a costly doctor’s visit or trip to the emergency room.

Consumers who have to pay the higher deductibles may feel they had little choice about needing care. Matt Freedman, 34, chose a plan last year that had a $6,000 deductible. “I knew it was a risky plan,” he said, but he considered himself healthy and unlikely to accrue sizable medical bills. After minor surgery, however, he developed a serious infection that led to a hospital stay. “You never think something terrible is going to happen,” he said.

People who buy coverage through the state marketplaces may also face high deductibles. Rebecca Bullard, 27, chose a plan this year with a $6,000 annual deductible so she could afford the $129 a month in premiums. When she worried that she had cracked a rib after playing roller derby, she chose to ask friends on social media about what to do rather than go to the doctor. Although she had a plan with a $2,500 deductible before, she had not been worried about what she would pay out-of-pocket. “Now I don’t even want to go to the doctor,” she said.

What concerns policy experts and employers is evidence that higher deductibles are making people forgo care, even when they have serious conditions.

“It may be tamping down on unnecessary care, but we’re seeing a lot of evidence of skimping on necessary care,” said Sara R. Collins, vice president of health care coverage and access at the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit group that conducted a survey last fall about the effect of out-of-pocket health care costs on consumers.

Forty percent of people with private health insurance whose deductible equaled 5 percent or more of their income said they had decided not to go to the doctor when they were sick or had chosen not to get a test or go to a specialist, according to the survey.

A recent analysis by Truven Health Analytics of employers’ insurance claims showed that companies saw lower utilization, with fewer of their workers going to the doctor or getting lab tests, when workers had a high-deductible plan. But they also saw a decline in care for people with chronic conditions. In some cases, even when preventive care was covered under a high-deductible plan, workers were getting fewer mammograms and cervical cancer screenings.

“There’s a real risk people won’t get the care they need,” said David Lansky, the chief executive of the Pacific Business Group on Health, a West Coast employer group. Many of the companies he works with are now hesitant to raise deductibles much higher. Those employers believe “we’ve gone as far as we should go,” he said.


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8) Egypt’s President Pardons Journalists Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed
By

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/24/world/middleeast/mohamed-fahmy-baher-mohamed-egypt-pardon.html?ref=world

CAIRO — President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi issued a decree on Wednesday pardoning two imprisoned journalists from the Al Jazeera English news network as well as youth activists convicted of protesting, according to a presidential spokesman.

The spokesman, Alaa Youssef, said that the journalists, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed, were among 100 people pardoned by Mr. Sisi on the occasion of the Eid al-Adha holiday.

The detainees are among thousands of people arrested by the authorities over the last two years as part of a crackdown on free speech and dissent. Mr. Sisi’s government had faced scrutiny in particular over the cases of the Al Jazeera journalists, members of Egypt’s international press corps who were arrested on charges that human rights advocates called ludicrous and who were convicted after trials that appeared free of any incriminating evidence.Mr. Sisi had strongly suggested in the past that he regretted that the men had been brought to trial. Their pardons were announced a day before Mr. Sisi was scheduled to travel to New York for the United Nations General Assembly meeting.

Relatives of the journalists did not immediately return calls seeking comment. Rawya Sadeq, whose daughter, Yara Sallam, was arrested in the vicinity of a protest in 2014 and was among those the president’s office said had been pardoned on Wednesday, said that the family had yet to receive notification from the prison about whether Ms. Sallam was being released.

“I won’t believe any of it till Yara is out and on the asphalt,” she said.

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9) Education Gap Between Rich and Poor Is Growing Wider
"Only 5 percent of Americans ages 25 to 34 whose parents didn’t finish high school have a college degree. By comparison, the average across 20 rich countries in an analysis by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is almost 20 percent."
By

The wounds of segregation were still raw in the 1970s. With only rare exceptions, African-American children had nowhere near the same educational opportunities as whites.

The civil rights movement, school desegregation and the War on Poverty helped bring a measure of equity to the playing field. Today, despite some setbacks along the way, racial disparities in education have narrowed significantly. By 2012, the test-score deficit of black 9-, 13- and 17-year-olds in reading and math had been reduced as much as 50 percent compared with what it was 30 to 40 years before.

Achievements like these breathe hope into our belief in the Land of Opportunity. They build trust in education as a leveling force powering economic mobility. “We do have a track record of reducing these inequalities,” said Jane Waldfogel, a professor of social work at Columbia University.

But the question remains: Why did we stop there?For all the progress in improving educational outcomes among African-American children, the achievement gaps between more affluent and less privileged children is wider than ever, notes Sean Reardon of the Center for Education Policy Analysis at Stanford. Racial disparities are still a stain on American society, but they are no longer the main divider. Today the biggest threat to the American dream is class.

Education is today more critical than ever. College has become virtually a precondition for upward mobility. Men with only a high school diploma earn about a fifth less than they did 35 years ago. The gap between the earnings of students with a college degree and those without one is bigger than ever.

And yet American higher education is increasingly the preserve of the elite. The sons and daughters of college-educated parents are more than twice as likely to go to college as the children of high school graduates and seven times as likely as those of high school dropouts.

Only 5 percent of Americans ages 25 to 34 whose parents didn’t finish high school have a college degree. By comparison, the average across 20 rich countries in an analysis by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is almost 20 percent.

The problem, of course, doesn’t start in college.

Earlier this week, Professor Waldfogel and colleagues from Australia, Canada and Britain published a new book titled “Too Many Children Left Behind” (Russell Sage). It traces the story of America’s educational disparities across the life cycle of its children, from the day they enter kindergarten to eighth grade.

Their story goes sour very early, and it gets worse as it goes along. On the day they start kindergarten, children from families of low socioeconomic status are already more than a year behind the children of college graduates in their grasp of both reading and math.

And despite the efforts deployed by the American public education system, nine years later the achievement gap, on average, will have widened by somewhere from one-half to two-thirds.

Even the best performers from disadvantaged backgrounds, who enter kindergarten reading as well as the smartest rich kids, fall behind over the course of their schooling.

The challenges such children face compared to their more fortunate peers are enormous. Children from low socioeconomic backgrounds are seven times more likely to have been born to a teenage mother. Only half live with both parents, compared with 83 percent of the children of college graduates.

The children of less educated parents suffer higher obesity rates, have more social and emotional problems and are more likely to report poor or fair health. And because they are much poorer, they are less likely to afford private preschool or the many enrichment opportunities — extra lessons, tutors, music and art, elite sports teams — that richer, better-educated parents lavish on their children.

When they enter the public education system, they are shortchanged again. Eleven-year-olds from the wrong side of the tracks are about one-third more likely to have a novice teacher, according to Professor Waldfogel and her colleagues. They are much more likely to be held back a grade, a surefire way to stunt their development, the researchers say.

Financed mainly by real estate taxes that are more plentiful in neighborhoods with expensive homes, public education is becoming increasingly compartmentalized. Well-funded schools where the children of the affluent can play and learn with each other are cordoned off from the shabbier schools teaching the poor, who are still disproportionally from black or Hispanic backgrounds.

Even efforts to lean against inequality backfire. Research by Rachel Valentino, who received her Ph.D. in education policy at Stanford University this year, found that public prekindergarten programs offered minorities and the poor a lower-quality education.

Perhaps pre-K programs serving poor and minority children have trouble attracting good teachers. Perhaps classrooms with more disadvantaged children are more difficult to manage. Perhaps teachers offer more basic instruction because disadvantaged children need to catch up. In any event, Ms. Valentino told me, “the gaps are huge.”

This is arguably education’s biggest problem. Narrowing proficiency gaps that emerge way before college would probably do more to increase the nation’s college graduation rate than offering universal community college, easier terms on student loans or more financial aid.

“If we could equalize achievement from age zero to 14,” Professor Waldfogel told me, “that would go a long way toward closing the college enrollment and completion gaps.”

It can be done. Australia, Canada — even the historically class-ridden Britain — show much more equitable outcomes.

The policy prescriptions go beyond improving teachers and curriculums, or investing in bringing struggling students up to speed. They include helping parents, too: teaching them best practices in parenting, raising their pay and helping them with the overlapping demands of work and family.

And yet the strains from our world of increasing income inequality raise doubts about our ability to narrow the educational divide. Poorer, less educated parents simply can’t keep up with the rich, who are spending hand over fist to ensure that their children end at the front of the rat race. Our public school system has proved no match to the forces reproducing inequality across the generations.

Fifty years ago, the black-white proficiency gap was one and a half to two times as large as the gap between a child from a family at the top 90th percentile of the income distribution and a child from a family at the 10th percentile, according to Professor Reardon at Stanford. Today, the proficiency gap between the poor and the rich is nearly twice as large as that between black and white children.

In other words, even as one achievement gap narrowed, another opened wide. That kind of progress could dash one’s hope in the leveling power of education. 


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10) Florida: Brandishing a Stapler, a Man Is Killed by a Deputy
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS



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11) Race and Class Collide in a Plan for Two Brooklyn Schools
"P.S. 307’s population is 90 percent black and Hispanic, and 90 percent of the students’ families receive some form of public assistance. Its state test scores, while below the citywide averages, are closer to average for black and Hispanic students, with 20 percent of its students passing the math tests and 12 percent passing the reading tests this past year. At P.S. 8, whose population is 59 percent white, with only 15 percent receiving assistance, scores are considerably above the city averages. Almost two-thirds of its students passed each test."
By

At Public School 8 in Brooklyn Heights, the auditorium’s stage is crowded with music stands that were stored there when the music room had to be turned into a first-grade classroom.

The prekindergarten program was cut because of lack of space. And with the school operating far above capacity, 50 families who live within its zone — which also includes Dumbo and much of another Brooklyn neighborhood, Vinegar Hill — were placed on a waiting list for kindergarten last spring.

To the city, the solution for the overcrowding at P.S. 8 seemed obvious: move those two neighborhoods from P.S. 8’s zone and into that of P.S. 307, which is nearby and has room to spare. The proposal, however, has drawn intense opposition, and not only from the families who would be rezoned from the predominantly white P.S. 8 to the mostly black P.S. 307. Some residents of the housing project served by P.S. 307 also oppose the rezoning, worried about how an influx of wealthy, mostly white families could change their school.

For all its diversity, New York City, by some measures, has one of the most segregated school systems in the country, in part because many elementary schools are effectively closed off to children who live outside their zones. And although the Brooklyn rezoning is mainly a response to crowding, it is becoming a real-life study in the challenges of integrating just one of the city’s schools.

It is also, perhaps, an unavoidable result of the gentrification in its part of Brooklyn. For many years, the area that came to be named Dumbo, for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, was a decaying industrial district with relatively few families.

Shirese Casenave, 51, who grew up in Farragut Houses, a public housing complex that now sends many children to P.S. 307, said she recalled some of her friends being bused to P.S. 8. “They had a choice,” she said.

That has changed, as Dumbo has become a thriving neighborhood where condominiums regularly sell for millions of dollars. Saying that the crowding problem was urgent, the city’s Education Department plans to present its proposal at the end of the month to the District 13 Community Education Council, which represents school parents in the area and has the power to approve rezonings. The department is hoping the council will vote on the proposal in time for the boundaries to take effect next year.

But at two town-hall-style meetings this month, parents on both sides angrily accused the department of withholding information and demanded that the timeline be slowed down. During a meeting at P.S. 307 last week, residents of Farragut Houses expressed fears that their children would no longer be allowed to attend P.S. 307 and would be bused elsewhere. (Students who are already enrolled in P.S. 8 and P.S. 307, even if they do not live in the proposed zones, would not have to leave, according to the department.)

“We fought hard to build this school, and we’re not just going to let people come from outside when we worked so hard and dedicated ourselves,” Dolores Cheatom, a Farragut Houses resident, said at the meeting, holding her 1-year-old daughter on her hip.

She said she had “no problem working with anybody, but I’m not going to let anybody take from my daughter.”

At a meeting at P.S. 8 on Monday, Dumbo residents pointed to P.S. 307’s low test scores and asked what kind of training and extra resources the school’s teachers would receive to make the education there comparable to that at P.S. 8. Some Dumbo parents said they were anxious about their children’s being part of a racial minority in the school, while others worried that their children would not be sufficiently challenged.

“If you’re doubling the classroom size, what are the plans in terms of who are you hiring?” asked Lisa McKeon, a mother of two toddlers in Dumbo. “Who’s going to be training them?

“I need answers, and it’s not because I want to be in P.S. 8.”

A father of a 1-year-old in Dumbo, who declined to give his name, accused the department of playing down the academic challenges at P.S. 307, which he called “severely underperforming.”

“I don’t want to be the bad guy in the room, but no one else wants to talk about it,” he said.

He added, “How does sending all Dumbo and Vinegar Hill children to the school solve P.S. 307’s problems?”

A department official, Jonathan Geis, spoke up to correct him. “We are not seeing problems at 307,” he said. “We are seeing and what we’ve heard from everyone is that it’s a wonderful learning community,” adding that the schools chancellor had said so.

“None of this rezoning is to fix any problems at 307,” Mr. Geis added.

P.S. 307’s population is 90 percent black and Hispanic, and 90 percent of the students’ families receive some form of public assistance. Its state test scores, while below the citywide averages, are closer to average for black and Hispanic students, with 20 percent of its students passing the math tests and 12 percent passing the reading tests this past year. At P.S. 8, whose population is 59 percent white, with only 15 percent receiving assistance, scores are considerably above the city averages. Almost two-thirds of its students passed each test.

Andrew Lee, who lives in Dumbo and has a 4-year-old son and a daughter on the way, said he was not necessarily opposed to the rezoning but wanted to hear more from the department about how it would enhance the offerings at P.S. 307.

“We understand that that school is kind of on the upswing, all things considered,” Mr. Lee said in an interview. “But is it at the level of a P.S. 8 yet? It’s not really clear.”

Research has found that minority students who attend integrated schools perform better academically and go on to earn higher incomes and have better health than minority students who attend segregated schools.

Gary Orfield, the co-director of the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, which published a study about school segregation in New York State last year, said it was rare for a school district to take advantage of gentrification to create more integrated schools. “This is exactly the opposite of what New York has been doing for decades,” Dr. Orfield said.

He said the residents who opposed the rezoning “aren’t racists.”

“They aren’t people who don’t want to be with other races and other cultures,” he said. “They just don’t want to be in a ghetto. They don’t want to be in a school where everybody’s poor and their kid is the only white kid or the only Asian kid.”

While redrawing school zones are, logistically, the simplest solutions to crowding and segregation, they are usually the most politically complex and thus are done relatively rarely. A school’s boundary zone can dictate neighborhood real estate values. In another part of Brooklyn, the removal of several blocks from the highly coveted P.S. 321 in Park Slope drew protests a few years ago, though in that case, those students were transferred to a new school.

In Dumbo, the Community Education Council has not said yet whether it will approve the proposal in its current form. If it does not approve a rezoning plan, the lines will stay as drawn, meaning some future kindergartners who live in the P.S. 8 zone will probably have to go elsewhere.

Weeks before a decision could be made, the reluctance that some Dumbo parents have expressed about sending their children to P.S. 307 has already produced some bitter feelings. Toward the end of the meeting on Monday, Benjamin Greene, the second vice president of the Community Education Council and a parent at P.S. 307, challenged the parents in P.S. 8’s zone to visit P.S. 307 to see whether their minds might change.

“We are all parents,” Mr. Greene said. “We need to start talking to one another and stop looking down on one another.”



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12) Los Angeles County Rethinks Deportation of Inmates
By IAN LOVETT

LOS ANGELES — Federal immigration officials, who had been banished from Los Angeles County jails earlier this year at a time when many cities here were working to protect immigrants from deportation, will be invited back in — with some limits — under a new a policy that will allow them to interview and identify some inmates for deportation.

The change may reflect a broader shift in California, which has been at the forefront of efforts to protect immigrants — even those convicted of minor crimes — from deportation. A 2013 state law called the Trust Act prohibits local governments from turning immigrants who have committed petty crimes over to federal immigration officials, a policy that was seen as a rebuke to the Obama administration’s deportation efforts. Major cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco have largely stopped cooperating with federal immigration officials in jails, and opposition in the state to the Secure Communities program — an Obama administration initiative that relied on local law enforcement to help with deportment efforts — contributed to that program’s end last year.

But sentiments have been shifting toward stricter enforcement, after two high-profile murders in the state this year for which illegal immigrants with criminal records face charges. One was the gunshot death of Kathryn Steinle at a tourist pier in San Francisco, said to have been committed by an undocumented immigrant who was released from county jail days earlier. The other was the rape and murder of Marilyn Pharis during a housebreak in Santa Maria, a city on the central California coast, for which two men are charged, one of them an illegal immigrant with an arrest record in this country but no felony convictions.

As recently as four months ago, the Los Angeles County government voted to end a plan that offered immigration officials a permanent place in its jails. But that will not end their presence in the jail system: Under the new policy, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will be permitted to interview inmates who have committed serious crimes, as well as all inmates who are being processed for release. In addition, the sheriff’s department will give immigration officials a seven-day notice before some inmates are released.

In a letter to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors outlining the program, Jim McDonnell, the county sheriff, noted the need to balance public safety with maintaining the trust of one of the most “immigrant-rich communities in the world.”

The letter said, “Serving the community, reducing crime, and promoting public safety is immeasurably harder if law enforcement fails to maintain relationships with — and the trust of — our community.”

Still, immigrant rights advocates responded in anger Wednesday at what they considered a reversal of course.

“In order for there to be trust, there has to be a firewall between the federal immigration agents and the sheriff’s department,” said Angelica Salas, the executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. “Does the sheriff run the jails or does I.C.E.? He’s saying they both do. He’s giving them full access to the jails.”

Ms. Salas said that in some cases, Sheriff McDonnell has constructed a policy that is even more generous than what Immigration and Customs Enforcement requested. For instance, instead of 48-hour notifications before certain inmates are released from custody, the sheriff’s department will give immigration officials a week’s notice.

But the sheriff’s department will also advise inmates who are flagged for the federal agency of their right to legal counsel, something advocacy groups had requested. And federal agents will be able to use the county’s databases.

Ms. Salas and other immigrant rights advocates accused the sheriff of bowing to political pressure from Donald J. Trump and others, who have put a spotlight on immigration this summer. But the murders of Ms. Steinle and Ms. Pharis have helped raise new voices in California — including prominent Democrats like Senator Dianne Feinstein and law enforcement officials like the Santa Maria police chief — in favor of more cooperation with immigration officials to help keep dangerous criminals off the streets.

Los Angeles County supervisors offered mixed responses to the sheriff’s policy. Michael Antonovich, one of the board’s most conservative members, expressed support, while Hilda Solis, who voted in May to remove the federal agency’s office from the jails, said that the plan was cause for concern.


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13) Workers at Alabama Plant Vote to Join the U.A.W.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRES
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14) Israel Acts to Combat Violence in Jerusalem
By ISABEL KERSHNER

JERUSALEM — Israel’s security cabinet approved a series of measures on Thursday as part of a crackdown on rock throwing and firebombing by Palestinians in Jerusalem, including minimum sentences and greater leeway for the police to open fire — steps that opponents say contravene basic legal principles and may only escalate the violence.

Police officers will now be authorized to use Ruger rifles that fire .22-caliber bullets, which have less impact than other types of live ammunition but can still be lethal or cause serious injury.

Under the new regulations, police have permission to open fire not only when their own lives are threatened, as was the case previously, but also when there is “an immediate and concrete danger” to civilians, according to a government statement.In addition, the government is preparing legislation to impose minimum prison terms of four years — the maximum is 20 years — for adults who throw rocks, homemade firebombs or shoot fireworks directly at people during confrontations. Increased fines will be imposed on convicted minors, ages 14 to 18, and their parents, and child support benefits will be revoked for jailed minors, the statement added.

Despite disagreement over the proposed measures last week, the attorney general approved the cabinet decisions, according to a spokesman for the Justice Ministry. The legislation for minimum sentences will be introduced as a temporary emergency procedure covering the next three years, although the attorney general had wanted it limited to one year, according to rights advocates who have been opposing the changes.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented the new steps as part of a “fight against those who throw rocks and firebombs and shoot fireworks.”

“We intend to change the norm that has become established here, that the State of Israel allows these deadly and murderous objects to be thrown without response and without being thwarted,” Mr. Netanyahu said.

The government has been under pressure to take action in the face of growing unrest in the predominantly Palestinian areas of East Jerusalem and along the seams between those areas and some predominantly Jewish parts of the city. Rocks and homemade firebombs have been hurled at security forces but also at cars belonging to Israeli civilians and at residential buildings.

The issue took on additional urgency this month when an Israeli man, Alexander Levlovich, 64, was killed during the Rosh Hashana holiday after Palestinians hurling stones at passing cars caused him to lose control and crash into a pole.

Mr. Netanyahu said the new measures would apply “to all citizens and residents of Israel” — a reference that includes the Palestinians of East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed after the 1967 war in a move that has never been internationally recognized. Most East Jerusalem Palestinians have not applied for Israeli citizenship but do hold permanent residency status.

East Jerusalem has erupted in waves of violence and confrontations with Israeli security forces over the last 15 months, beginning with the kidnapping and killing of a Palestinian youth, Muhammad Abu Khdeir, 16, by Jewish extremists who were acting to avenge the kidnapping and killing of three Jewish youths by Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the Israeli authorities. Tensions over a contested Jerusalem holy site have also flared into repeated bouts of violence, including in recent weeks.

The police have increased their presence in East Jerusalem and said that over the past 10 days they had arrested more than 130 Palestinians suspected of throwing rocks and firebombs, 61 of them minors.

Micky Rosenfeld, a spokesman for the Israeli police, said the .22-caliber bullets fired from Ruger rifles were not meant to be lethal and were “normally used in order to prevent and neutralize the immediate danger” in life-threatening situations. He described it as “a basic, simple means that can be effective in certain ranges.” The government statement said “relevant restrictions” would be applied to the use of live ammunition, without elaborating.

But B’tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, said that in the West Bank, which is under Israeli military rule, the use of the rifles was not likely to “have the result desired by the government.” Rather than restoring order to Jerusalem, the group said in a statement, it was likely to have lethal results and “exacerbate the cycle of violence.”

In some ways the new regulations blur the distinction Israel has always made between the occupied West Bank, where rights groups frequently accuse Israel of using excessive force, and annexed East Jerusalem, which Israel claims as part of its sovereign capital.

Nadeem Shehadeh, a lawyer for Adalah, an Arab civil rights group, said the proposed legislation for minimum sentences “goes against everything criminal law stands for.”

“Basically,” Mr. Shehadeh said, “you have a bill that says you cannot sentence anybody convicted of throwing stones for less than four years.”

“You take away the discretion of judges,” he added. “They say it is a temporary emergency regulation, but for those convicted it is not going to be temporary.”


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15) Ashley Diamond, Transgender Inmate, Is Out of Prison but Far From Free
By

ROME, Ga. — Right before her unexpected release from prison, Ashley Diamond, a nonviolent offender who had sued Georgia corrections officials for failing to provide her medical treatment and safekeeping, was locked down for 30 days in a windowless single cell. It was dimly lit and eerily silent, and reeked of excrement.

During that solitary confinement, which was ostensibly for her protection, she kept sane — though barely — by singing from dawn to dusk, especially Elton John songs: “Don’t let the sun go down on me,” she crooned to the graffiti-covered walls, even as she thought she would probably die, by her own hand or as a result of violence.A transgender woman, Ms. Diamond, 37, had been housed in male prisons for more than three years, mocked and reprimanded for her gender identity, and deprived until this spring — after she filed suit and the Justice Department supported her case — of the feminizing hormones she had taken since adolescence. She had been sexually assaulted eight times, she alleges, and the contemplation of suicide, which she had attempted while in isolation previously, became a habit.

Ms. Diamond said she was stunned when Georgia freed her, on Aug. 31, months before she became eligible for parole. When her sister, mother and best friend picked her up at the Augusta State Medical Prison, she stiffened as they hugged her, overwhelmed by their ebullience. They stopped for a celebratory lunch, and she anxiously perused a Waffle House menu, asking, like a child, what she would be allowed to order.

“She is not the same Ashley,” said her younger sister, Diana Diamond Wilson. “She’s fearful and jumpy. She gets these blank stares. She can’t hold a decent conversation. Prison is supposed to rehabilitate people; she’s come out more damaged.”

Re-entering society after prison is a documented challenge. For a transgender woman whose imprisonment was traumatic and whose parole plan mandates a return to the conservative Southern hometown where she had repeatedly tangled with the law, the challenge is considerably multiplied.

Two weeks after her release, spending a day with a reporter who had written about her case but had not been permitted to interview her in prison, Ms. Diamond tried to put on a brave, well-made-up face.

She wore knee-high boots, dangly earrings and a black-and-white halter dress, slightly stained; curls danced above her shoulders, her lashes fluttered thick and long, and her lips were glossed. She was the most glamorous Roman in town that day — “like a black Marilyn Monroe,” her brother said admiringly.

But her mood toggled between defiantly upbeat and exhaustedly bitter. A fatalistic outlook is hard to vanquish when you start over with what feels like two hands tied behind your back, under strict, costly supervision and dependent on relatives whose own lives are complicated, she said.

“It’s hard for me not to feel like I’m being set up for failure,” she said.

Broke and jobless — besides a couple of $40 stints cleaning kennels at a friend’s pet shelter — Ms. Diamond cannot afford the fees for her parole and monitoring, for her required mental health treatment or for the psychiatric drugs she was advised to keep taking. (Prison doctors gave her diagnoses of gender dysphoria, post-traumatic stress disorder and bipolar disorder.)

She also cannot afford hormones once her prison supply runs out; she has applied for Medicaid, but even if she qualifies for it, Georgia’s program, like that of most states, does not cover transition-related care for transgender people.

Georgia’s parole board said it had made a determination that Ms. Diamond’s release was “compatible with the welfare of society and public safety,” although she had served less than a third of her 12-year sentence for a probation violation on an earlier burglary conviction.

“I think they let me go to escape liability, to rid themselves of my health care and because of the publicity,” Ms. Diamond said.

The New York Times published a lengthy article about her case in April, and she garnered support not only from the Obama administration, which cautioned Georgia that its policy on hormone treatment for prisoners was unconstitutional, but also from transgender celebrities like Laverne Cox, an actress, and from Mr. John, a part-time Atlanta resident.

Ms. Diamond said she suspected that corrections officials were hoping to undermine her lawsuit by letting her go. But on Sept. 14, a federal judge wrote a 57-page order denying the officials’ motions to dismiss her case.

“I needed that,” she said the next day. “I’m trying to turn victim into victory. I’m trying not to give up. I want to do well. But my mind still — suicide still. ...”

In 2012, when Judge Tambra P. Colston of Floyd County Superior Court sent Ms. Diamond to prison, she advised the defendant to settle somewhere “more accepting” of her transgender identity on her release — “somewhere you can get a job and not have to steal and shoplift and forge things to survive.”

But for now, Ms. Diamond is confined to Rome, and specifically to her sister’s cramped two-bedroom home. She has a daily curfew of 4:30 p.m. and cannot go out on weekends, except to church.

Her sister, Ms. Wilson, gave up her bedroom to Ms. Diamond and sleeps on the couch. (The second bedroom belongs to Ms. Wilson’s 6-year-old daughter and her nephews, 8 and 19.

Ms. Wilson, a survivor of ovarian cancer with other health problems, is herself barely scraping by on $731 in monthly disability benefits, and she skipped a car payment to set up Ms. Diamond on parole, she said. It cost her $100 to put in a telephone landline for an electronic monitoring system, and $72 for the first month of monitoring and parole fees, she said.

“I feel so bad because I’m a burden every which way it goes,” Ms. Diamond said, to which her sister responded, emphatically: “As long as I have, you have, Ashley. Don’t let that be a stress of yours.”

Ms. Wilson said she had shut herself in the bathroom without lights to imagine the feeling of being in solitary confinement. She lasted only an hour, she said, but it helped her understand why her sister told her in tearful phone calls that she expected to be coming home “in a box” if she was not released.

“At night,” Ms. Wilson said, “I watch Ashley sleep, and I pray over her. I pray that she stays strong and sees the bigger picture.”

Her childhood friend Nicole Carter said she visited daily to keep up Ms. Diamond’s spirits. “As soon as she is off curfew, we’re going to have a Christian Grey sleepover, ‘Fifty Shades,’ in nighties, with mimosas,” she said, embracing her.

Ms. Diamond made a visible effort to remain in the embrace: “I’m trying to relax after being degraded on a daily basis for several years,” she said. “In prison, I was a toy for the boys and a jester for the staff.”

Another friend, the pet shelter owner, had stopped by with a syringe to inject her with her weekly hormone dose. “I don’t want to have needles around,” Ms. Diamond said. “I don’t want anything that could be taken wrong. The fabric of trust is torn with me and law enforcement officials.”

As a result of Ms. Diamond’s lawsuit, Georgia’s Department of Corrections announced during a hearing — “to the surprise of plaintiff’s counsel and the court,” the judge wrote — that it had changed its policy on giving hormones to transgender prisoners.

But Ms. Diamond’s lawyers, at the Southern Poverty Law Center, argue that Georgia continues to deny some transgender prisoners access to hormones, that Ms. Diamond received only “subtherapeutic” doses for months, and that she was forbidden “female gender expression” in defiance of “medically accepted standards.” (Georgia declines to discuss active lawsuits.)

“People think I’m upset because I was denied a nail polish or a fingernail file, that it was about vanity,” Ms. Diamond said. “But anybody who’s known me my whole life knows this is not a costume I slip in and out of. It’s my identity, and when my outside doesn’t match my soul, I suffer.”

Free to be herself again, or to try to, Ms. Diamond, who during happier times performed in high style at Atlanta’s gay clubs, sought to restock her empty closet during a visit to a Salvation Army thrift store. “Look for the red tags — we’re talking 99 cents,” she instructed her sister and nephew.

She grimaced when her nephew showed her a fake-fur shrug: “Oh my Lord, that’s a little ‘Grinch Stole Christmas’ for me,” she said.

Ms. Wilson was clearly relieved to see her sister enjoying herself. Previous outings had been trying. When Ms. Diamond applied for temporary assistance at the welfare office, she had a panic attack. When she visited a Little Caesars, people gawked and pointed, recognizing her from news reports. (“Transgender Roman out of jail,” a banner headline in the local newspaper had said.) And when she put in a job application at a Burger King, she despaired that she would be perceived solely as “a convicted felon who dresses like a woman.”

She aspires at once to normalcy — “I want to be able to hit a time clock and cash a check like everybody else” — and to fame as a singer-songwriter or a memoirist.

“I know it’s unrealistic to think you can get out of prison and become a pop star or a best-selling author,” she said. “But a girl’s got to dream.”

By then, it was 4:30 p.m., and she had to call in to the parole monitoring system, which is programmed to recognize her voice and asks her to repeat a few series of numbers.

An automated voice answered.

“If you are Ashley Diamond, press 1,” the computer said.

She hesitated, then pressed 1.




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16) Police Program Aims to Pinpoint Those Most Likely to Commit Crimes
By and


KANSAS CITY, Mo. — At the request of his probation officer, Tyrone C. Brown came to a community auditorium here in June and sat alongside about 30 other mostly young black men with criminal records — men who were being watched closely by the police, just as he was.

He expected to hear an admonition from law enforcement officials to help end violence in the community. But Mr. Brown, 29, got more than he had bargained for. A police captain presented a slide show featuring mug shots of people they were cracking down on. Up popped a picture of Mr. Brown linking him to a criminal group that had been implicated in a homicide.

“I was disturbed,” said Mr. Brown, who acknowledges having been involved in crime but denied that he had ever been involved in a killing.

That discomfort was just the reaction the authorities were after.Mr. Brown, whose criminal record includes drug and assault charges, is at the center of an experiment taking place in dozens of police departments across the country, one in which the authorities have turned to complex computer algorithms to try to pinpoint the people most likely to be involved in future violent crimes — as either predator or prey. The goal is to do all they can to prevent the crime from happening.

The strategy, known as predictive policing, combines elements of traditional policing, like increased attention to crime “hot spots” and close monitoring of recent parolees. But it often also uses other data, including information about friendships, social media activity and drug use, to identify “hot people” and aid the authorities in forecasting crime.

The program here has been named the Kansas City No Violence Alliance, or KC NoVA. And the message on that June night to Mr. Brown and the others was simple: The next time they, or anyone in their crews, commit a violent act, the police will come after everyone in the group for whatever offense they can make stick, no matter how petty.

Such was the case for Mario Glenn, a 28-year-old with a criminal history that includes drug trafficking and assault. After he attended a program meeting, called a call-in, last year, he was caught during a police sting to take down a group implicated in several homicides. Mr. Glenn robbed a confidential informer trying to buy a gun from him, the police said. He has been convicted, and prosecutors are now seeking the maximum 30-year prison sentence.

“We have a moral reason to do a better job at addressing violence in this community,” said Jean Peters Baker, the prosecutor for Jackson County, which includes Kansas City. “I don’t know that this will work, but we need to try.”

The use of computer models by local law enforcement agencies to forecast crime is part of a larger trend by governments and corporations that are increasingly turning to predictive analytics and data mining in looking at behaviors. Typically financed by the federal government, the strategy is being used by dozens of police departments — including Los Angeles, Miami and Nashville — and district attorneys’ offices in Manhattan and Philadelphia.

At a time when many police departments are under fire for aggressive tactics, particularly in minority neighborhoods, advocates say predictive policing can help improve police-community relations by focusing on the people most likely to become involved in violent crime.

Civil liberties groups take a dim view of the strategy, questioning its legality and efficacy, and asserting that it may actually worsen the rapport between the police and civilians.

Ezekiel Edwards, the director of the Criminal Law Reform Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, said predictive policing tended to legitimize the profiling of racial minorities who live in poor, high-crime neighborhoods, and prompted officers to enforce laws selectively.

“Our concern is guilt by association,” Mr. Edwards said. “Because you live in a certain neighborhood or hang out with certain people, we are now going to be suspicious of you and treat you differently, not because you have committed a crime or because we have information that allows us to arrest you, but because our predictive tool shows us you might commit a crime at some point in the future.”

But researchers working with the police to develop the predictive algorithms say that they can come closer than traditional detective work to figuring out who is most apt to break the law. They say criminals commit violent crimes in fairly distinctive patterns and often have similar attributes. Those include previous arrests; unemployment; an unstable home life; friends and relatives who have been killed, are in prison or have gang ties; and problems with drugs or alcohol.

In Chicago, the police have developed a “heat list” of 400 people who are considered far more likely than the average person to be involved in violent crime. Factors in compiling that list included their criminal records, social circles and gang connections. Also a factor was whether they had been victims of an assault or a shooting.

“These are the people with the highest propensity for violence in the city of Chicago,” said Robert J. Tracy, chief of crime control strategies for the Chicago Police Department.

In the year since its program has been fully in place, Kansas City has had a significant decrease in homicides. The city had averaged 114 homicides a year over a four-and-a-half-decade period through 2013. And the number of murders hovered over 100 in the roughly five years before NoVA’s inception. But murders plummeted to 80 last year, a 20 percent drop from 2013. While assaults with guns also decreased last year, overall assaults increased.

Whether those changes were linked to NoVA is difficult to say, because fluctuations in crime are almost always a result of multiple factors. At the same time, a report released recently by the University of Missouri-Kansas City found that while crime decreased drastically early last year as NoVA was fully in place, the drop tapered off. It is too soon to determine if decreased crime will be a long-term trend, the report said.

In other places, the success of the algorithms has been spotty or difficult to assess.

John S. Hollywood, a senior operations researcher at the RAND Corporation, said that in the limited number of studies undertaken to measure the efficacy of predictive policing, the improvement in forecasting crimes had been only 5 or 10 percent better than regular policing methods.

The Memphis police force, a pioneer in predictive policing, has worked with the University of Memphis for about a decade to forecast crime by noting time and location of episodes and information about victims. Officers then flood those areas with marked and undercover police cars, and also increase traffic stops, the department said.

But violent crime has proved stubborn in Memphis, and the city continues to be one of the most dangerous places in the nation, according to F.B.I. data.

In Kansas City, NoVA officials gather about 30 to 40 patrol officers about once a quarter to discuss and examine intelligence gathered on the street — details not necessarily captured in official documents. The information often comes from informal conversations that officers have with people on the street about things like who is arguing and who might have committed a violent crime.The authorities have identified about 930 people who belong to 57 criminal groups in the city, said Maj. Joe McHale, the project leader for NoVA, who also commands the Police Department’s violent crime division. And there are about 125 people whom the authorities consider central figures in those groups, he said. The Kansas City authorities say they hope that if their zero tolerance for violence message gets through to these influential figures, it will be passed on to others who listen to them.

One of those powerful individuals, according to the police, was Mr. Brown, who said he began selling drugs at 14 because he was raised in poverty by a crack-addicted single mother.

When he was first drawn into the program, said Mr. Brown, who most recently served jail time for robbery, his probation officer told him he had to go to the June meeting, which is known as a call-in.

Call-ins are central to the program. The authorities invite about 120 of the group leaders they have identified (25 to 40 usually show up) to hear from a range of officials, including the local and federal prosecutors, the police chief and the mayor.

During an August call-in, the speakers told the men that this was their last chance. Tammy Dickinson, the United States attorney for the Western District of Missouri, related the story of a man in the program who was given a 15-year prison sentence for being caught with a bullet in his pocket. Another man, she said, got 25 years for having recreational designer drugs known as bath salts and posting a photograph of himself with a gun on Facebook.

A week after the June call-in, a social worker called Mr. Brown into a meeting. He said his heart was thumping when he entered the room and saw several police officers waiting for him.

“We know that you are the head of this and of that,” Mr. Brown recalled the officers telling him. “If we can change you, you can change them.”

People who have gotten in trouble with the law often think they can keep getting away with minor offenses without serious consequences, said Mr. Brown, whose nickname, Bird, slang for a brick of cocaine, came from his drug dealing. But what resonated with him, he said, was the NoVA team saying that harsh penalties will be imposed for even petty slights once warnings have been given.

Mr. Brown has come to see some benefit in the program. NoVA officials have helped him find housing, he said, and pushed him to get a job — he now works as a delivery driver for Back Porch Bar-B-Q. The authorities connected him with a program to help him pay child support — he has four children ranging from 4 months to 7 years. And he works with young people to help keep them out of trouble.

Still, Mr. Brown is hardly in the clear. Domestic assault charges are pending against him after his girlfriend accused him of choking her and hitting her head against a door last year, according to court documents.

Shaking loose from past misdeeds can be challenging, Major McHale said.

“Sometimes you can’t get away from things that you’ve done,” he said, “even though you turned a new leaf.”

John Eligon reported from Kansas City, Mo., and Timothy Williams from New York City.


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