Sunday, September 13, 2015

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2015





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Dear Friends,

One year ago, thousands of activists flooded Wall Street in New York, taking mass direct action in the heart of a global financial system that’s fueling the climate crisis.

Now, a year later, people across the continent are preparing and organizing for #FloodTheSystem, a sustained campaign of direct action and civil disobedience targeting the political and corporate elites that profit off of climate change.

To kick off #FloodTheSystem, on Monday, September 28, we’re going to Flood Wall Street West: San Francisco’s financial district. Flood Wall Street West will consist of a tour of shame of some of the worst corporate and political bad actors in downtown San Francisco.

We will take mass direct action to shut down business as usual and emphasize the connections between the climate crisis, capitalism, exploitation and oppression. Here are the details:

What: Flood Wall Street West

When: Monday, September 28, 8 am

Where: Justin Herman Plaza, San Francisco, CA

Click here to sign up for more details, and to sign up to attend Flood Wall St. West.

Come dressed in blue. The march organizers will have everything else you need, including chant sheets, banners, signs, props and art.

This is direct action for everybody. While many attendees will risk arrest, everyone can participate safely, whether or not you’re willing to go to jail. There will be a legal briefing and nonviolent direct action training before the march to make sure that everyone is prepared to participate.

The march organizers will need lots of extra hands to make this march a success. If you’d like to volunteer to help out before or during the march, RSVP and indicate that you’d like to take on a volunteer role. Click here to sign up.

#FloodTheSystem is timed to coincide with the Paris climate talks. Instead of hoping that yet another round of negotiations will finally yield a solution to the climate crisis, activists across North America will shut down business as usual and demand real, transformative solutions to the climate crisis.

We hope you’ll join us to kick off this mass mobilization with Flood Wall Street West. Click here to RSVP.

Thanks for all you do.

For a just and stable climate,

The Flood Wall St. West Welcoming Committee

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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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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

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

Dear Mayor Rawlings-Blake:

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

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

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

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

Sincerely,
[add your name below]

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CANCEL ALL STUDENT DEBT!

Sign the Petition:

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


Dear President Obama, Senators, and Members of Congress:


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

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

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


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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter

Table of Contents:

A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS

B. ARTICLES IN FULL


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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS


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Action Alert!

Stand with Major Tillery


Dear Bonnie,

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

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

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

- Mumia Abu-Jamal

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

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

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

2. Write Major a letter of solidarity:

Dear Major Tillery,

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

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

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


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



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

The time to act is now.

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

With your help, that changes- today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And we can't do it without you.

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

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

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

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

Grant Mumia's consulting physicians access to directly examine Mumia 

Fuel a public campaign to bring Mumia back to health

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

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


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

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

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


Copyright © Prison Radio

www,prisonradio.org 415-706-5222

Our mailing address is:

Prison Radio PO Box 411074, SF CA 94141

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

Donate Now

$35 is the yearly membership.

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

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

$300 will bring one essay to the airwaves.

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

Luchando por la justicia y la libertad,

Noelle Hanrahan, Director, Prison Radio

PRISON RADIO

P.O. Box 411074 San Francisco, CA 94141

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


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

International Unions Demand Decent Medical Treatment for Mumia Abu-Jamal

June 2, 2015

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jam


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

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

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

Lastly, Lorenzo has a message to you all.

A Letter from Lorenzo:

July 23, 2015
Dauphin County Prison
Harrisburg, PA

Dear Supporters,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The Pain Within"

Free the Innocent
Lorenzo "Cat" Johnson

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

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

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

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

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


freelorenzojohnson.org

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 Join the Fight to Free Rev. Pinkney!

Click HERE to view in browser

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MESSAGE FROM REV. PINKNEY

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

Background to Campaign to free Rev. Pinkney

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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COURAGE TO RESIST

 http://couragetoresist.org/

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

Secretary of the Army John McHugh

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

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

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

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

Secretary of the Army John McHugh

101 Army Pentagon

Washington, DC 20310-0101

The Judge Advocate General

2200 Army Pentagon

Washington, DC 20310-2200

Army Clemency and Parole Board

251 18th St, Suite 385

Arlington, VA 22202-3532

Directorate of Inmate Administration

Attn: Boards Branch

U.S. Disciplinary Barracks

1301 N. Warehouse Road

Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027-2304

Suggestions for letters send to DoD officials:

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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B. ARTICLES IN FULL


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1) Police Officers Charged in Freddie Gray’s Death to Be Tried in Baltimore
By

BALTIMORE — Six police officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who sustained a fatal spinal cord injury in police custody, will be tried in Baltimore, a circuit court judge ruled here Thursday, saying defense lawyers had “not met their constitutional burden” for moving the trials to another jurisdiction.

In making his decision, Judge Barry G. Williams of the Baltimore City Circuit Court rejected defense lawyers’ arguments that the intense publicity surrounding Mr. Gray’s death, and the riots that followed, would make it impossible for the officers to receive fair and impartial trials in the city.

“The citizens of Baltimore are not monolithic,” Judge Williams said. “They think for themselves.”The ruling cleared the way for the first of the six trials to begin as early as next month, though the judge did leave open the possibility that he would reconsider if picking a jury proved difficult. A day earlier, Baltimore officials agreed to pay the Gray family $6.4 million to settle an expected lawsuit — a deal that defense lawyers also argued would prejudice potential jurors against their clients.

“We cannot have a single juror who’s not a taxpayer — every single juror will be paying that settlement,” Ivan Bates, the lawyer arguing on behalf of all six officers, told the judge. “What that settlement says is, ‘These officers are guilty.’ ”

City officials have said that the settlement — approved Wednesday by a five-member panel that includes Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake — is not an admission of wrongdoing on the part of the city or the officers, a point that a prosecutor, Michael Schatzow, reiterated to the judge. “They have conceded nothing,” he said. “They have acknowledged nothing. They’ve admitted nothing.”

Thursday’s hearing was the second of two pretrial sessions — the first was last week — that determined how the cases of the six officers would proceed. Last week, Judge Williams ruled that the officers would be tried separately, and he rejected requests by defense lawyers to force the removal of the state’s attorney for the city of Baltimore, Marilyn J. Mosby, as the prosecutor.

The hearings have once again set this city on edge. Mayor Rawlings-Blake has said repeatedly in recent weeks that Baltimore is prepared for more unrest, and the interim police commissioner, Kevin Davis, canceled leave for officers on Thursday, as he had during last week’s hearing.

Outside the courthouse on Thursday, Mr. Davis mingled with a small crowd of demonstrators, who later cheered the judge’s decision.

“It is a step in the right direction — I would even go so far as to call it promising,” said Cortly C. D. Witherspoon, an activist and president of the Baltimore city chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. “I think this would not have happened if people were not out in the street.”

Mr. Gray was arrested April 12 in West Baltimore and died in a hospital a week later. His death set off more than a week of sometimes violent protests that culminated in a wave of rioting, looting and arson; protesters set cars on fire and burned down drugstores and a center for older adults. Gov. Larry Hogan declared a state of emergency and sent in the National Guard to restore order, and Ms. Rawlings-Blake imposed a curfew that lasted five nights.

In filing criminal charges against the six officers, Ms. Mosby asserted that they had improperly arrested and shackled Mr. Gray, violating police rules and common standards of decency by loading him into a van without required safety restraints and by ignoring his pleas for help during the ride.

The officers face varying charges. Officer Caesar R. Goodson Jr., the driver of the van, is charged with second-degree depraved-heart murder — in essence, murder with willful disregard for human life. Sgt. Alicia D. White, Lt. Brian Rice and Officer William G. Porter are charged with manslaughter. Officers Edward M. Nero and Garrett Miller face lesser charges, including second-degree assault.

In arguing for the trials to be moved, Mr. Bates said that the riots constituted “a city under siege” and that the relentless news coverage would prejudice potential jurors. But Mr. Schatzow said not all the coverage had been negative toward the officers.

“The media hasn’t found these people guilty,” he said. “The media hasn’t called for their conviction.”


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2) With Jeremy Corbyn Elected as New Leader, Britain’s Labour Party Takes a Hard Left Turn
By

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/world/europe/labour-party-election-jeremy-corbyn.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

LONDON - Britain’s opposition Labour Party on Saturday took a remarkable leftward turn, electing as its leader Jeremy Corbyn, a longtime socialist committed to nationalizing key industries, scrapping Britain’s nuclear missile system and reversing the centrist policies of previous leaders such as Tony Blair.

The result of the contest, announced on Saturday morning in London, gave stewardship of the Labour party to the hard left for the first time in more than three decades, a development seen here as one of the most surprising upsets in modern British politics.

As Europe continues to feel the aftershocks of the financial crisis of 2008, voters have been increasingly attracted to the political extremes, with support growing both for socialist parties on the left and nationalist ones on the right. The Labour leadership result could now shift the main opposition party in Britain closer to the types of positions taken by other leftist parties that have become prominent across Europe, including Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain.

Mr. Corbyn, 66, has been a lawmaker for more than three decades but never served in government, preferring to campaign, often for unfashionable causes, and frequently rebelling against the party line.

He only made it into the contest at the last minute, gaining the 35 nominations he needed from fellow lawmakers, thanks to the support of some colleagues who did not support him but thought he should take part.

Yet his program, which includes nationalizing energy and rail companies, printing money to boost the economy and scrapping Britain’s Trident nuclear missile system, has struck a chord with many activists and new, often young supporters.

Crucially, he took advantage of a rule change that allowed candidates to recruit sympathizers who, for a small fee, could sign up as registered supporters of the Labour Party and gain a vote in the contest.

Much like Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who has ignited liberal passions in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in the United States, Mr. Corbyn is promising radical approaches to longstanding problems.

As Labour leader, Mr. Corbyn will be some way from power, but his views could influence policy, particularly on foreign affairs. Mr. Cameron, for example, wants to know the position of the new Labour leader before asking Parliament to authorize military strikes in Syria. Two years ago, Mr. Cameron lost a vote on the issue, and Mr. Corbyn was a staunch opponent.

Then there is a looming referendum on whether Britain should stay in the European Union, due by the end of 2017, in which Labour’s role will be important. Though Mr. Corbyn has not said he wants Britain to leave the bloc, he has said he voted against British membership of the bloc’s forerunner in a plebiscite in 1975.

And in Washington there may be unease over the main British opposition party’s being led by a fierce critic of American foreign policy — one who, without endorsing their actions, has described Hamas and Hezbollah as “friends.”

Hardly anyone contemplated such an outcome after the party’s previous leader, Ed Miliband, led Labour to defeat in May’s general election, on a platform already seen as being to the left of Mr. Blair. After that electoral rebuff, most expected the right of the party to reclaim the leadership. Instead the Blairites tried frantically to derail Mr. Corbyn, a vegetarian teetotaler based in North London who made a career of rebelling against the party line and until now had little public profile outside of party activists.

Steven Fielding, professor of political history at Nottingham University, said Mr. Corbyn’s rise had “taken everyone by surprise,” yet even opponents concede that his campaign has energized a cohort of enthusiastic, and often young, supporters.

Such people, Mr. Corbyn said at a rally in London this week, had been “written off as being a nonpolitical generation, when in reality they were a political generation that politics had written off.”

Although Britain’s economy is growing fast, Mr. Corbyn’s message has struck a chord with workers and families still feeling the aftershocks of Europe’s financial crisis of 2008.

For many, prospects remain poor, wages low and employment insecure. Soaring housing prices in the south have left many locked out of the real estate market. Bankers remain the target of simmering resentment.

Still, chance played a big part in Mr. Corbyn’s rise, not least because he had to be persuaded to run as the left’s leadership candidate, a position traditionally akin to that of a sacrificial lamb.

To stand, Mr. Corbyn needed 35 nominations from Labour lawmakers, and he scraped enough together only when several of those who did not support him decided he ought to be on the ballot to broaden the debate within the party. But, once there, he exploited a change of rules for the election of Labour leader, which had been devised to bolster the power of individual party members and curtail the influence of trade unions.

For just three British pounds, about $4.60, anyone can become a “registered supporter” and take part in what has become something like an American-style primary. The party, which had around 187,000 members before the May general election, has gained more than 105,000 since, plus an additional 112,000 “registered supporters.” When those affiliated to the party, mainly through unions, are added, more than half a million people have a vote. The voting has been underway for several weeks.

This system is now engulfed in controversy amid claims of organized efforts by hard-left supporters to register Corbyn voters and allegations that Conservative supporters have signed up to vote for Mr. Corbyn, calculating that this will sabotage Labour’s chances in the next election. Having won a five-year term in May, Mr. Cameron does not have to call another election until 2020.

Perhaps most of all, Mr. Corbyn’s success reflects Labour’s internal failure to confront the toxic legacy of the war in Iraq, which Mr. Blair joined President George W. Bush in starting, and of the economic policies that many link to the financial crash.

Mr. Corbyn’s opponents — Yvette Cooper, Andy Burnham and Liz Kendall — were all associated to varying degrees with a Mr. Blair’s centrist vision, yet none seem to have the charisma he possessed in 1994 when he won the party leadership.

After a televised debate among the current four contenders, the Daily Telegraph commentator Dan Hodges declared Ms. Cooper the best performer, but lampooned her tendency to lapse into the type of robotic politician-style of speaking that has repelled many voters.

“Each position she adopts,” Mr. Hodges wrote, “is carefully calculated to place herself in a position of perfect equilibrium between two other competing positions. ‘Tea or coffee, Yvette?’ ‘Well, I love tea. But I think it would be a serious mistake to ignore the importance of coffee.’ ”

Mr. Fielding sees Mr. Corbyn’s success as a “sign of alienation from the system as it exists,” adding that his three opponents are viewed by many within the party as “Tory-lite,” a reference to Mr. Cameron’s Conservatives.

The view among many supporters, Mr. Fielding added, was that “voting for Jeremy Corbyn might not work, but at least it is something that we believe in — and maybe it will work.”

That chimes with the experience of the former Labour minister Chris Mullin, when he explained his reservations about Mr. Corbyn to party supporters.

“Gently I pointed out,” Mr. Mullin wrote in The Guardian, “that a party led by Corbyn, saintly and decent man that he is, was likely to be unelectable. Which only met with the riposte that since the other three candidates appear to be unelectable too, why not go for the real thing?”

Yet the real thing would take Labour further to the left than at any time since 1983, which history suggests would be a high risk.

In that year, Mr. Corbyn and Mr. Blair entered Parliament, but Labour went down to a crushing defeat, and its manifesto was called “the longest suicide note in history.”

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3) Japan Flooding Kills 3 and Leads to Release of Tainted Water
By HISAKO UENO and MAKIKO INOUE

TOKYO — At least three people were killed in extensive flooding this week in eastern Japan, the authorities said on Friday, with the deluge prompting the release of an unknown amount of contaminated water from a shuttered nuclear power plant. An additional 23 people were still missing, according to the public broadcaster NHK.

Tropical Storm Etau, which came ashore on Wednesday, brought with it heavy rainfall on the Kanto and Tohoku region of central Honshu Island. Ibaraki Prefecture, north of Tokyo, was particularly hard hit, with the city of Joso inundated on Thursday after embankments broke along the Kinu River. Helicopters rescued stranded residents.

The police continued to rescue residents by boat on Friday. NHK reported that 590 people were still cut off on Friday afternoon.The Tokyo Electric Power Company said that rainwater containing radioactive material flowed into the ocean from the disabled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Friday morning, when floodwaters overwhelmed drainage pumps. The amount of the overflow and radioactive material that escaped was not yet known, the company said. The plant, on the eastern coast of Fukushima Prefecture, was severely damaged in a 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

In the city of Osaki in Miyagi Prefecture, 1,200 people were trapped after the Shibui River overflowed on Friday morning, according to the daily Asahi Shimbun. The police, the Fire Department and self-defense forces, using helicopters and boats, had rescued more than 100 people there by 5 p.m. on Friday, NHK reported.
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4) Oklahoma Inmate the Focus of Renewed Attention as Execution Date Nears
By

Richard E. Glossip was at the center of a major Supreme Court case this year, arguing along with two other men on Oklahoma’s death row that the state’s choice of lethal injection drugs could cause unconstitutional suffering.

The court rejected that claim in a 5-4 decision in June, clearing the way for Oklahoma to resume executions. Mr. Glossip’s is the first; he is scheduled to die on Wednesday.

Now Mr. Glossip, 52, is again a focus of attention, this time over whether he is guilty of the arranged murder in 1997 of the owner of a run-down motel he was managing.

Mr. Glossip’s supporters call his case a striking example of a repeating pattern in American capital punishment, in which a defendant receives inadequate legal representation early on and then, many years later, only as execution nears, higher-powered lawyers and civil rights groups become involved, raising important new issues at the 11th hour, when it may be too late.Mr. Glossip has won the fervent backing of Sister Helen Prejean, the anti-death-penalty campaigner; the actress Susan Sarandon, who played Sister Helen in the film “Dead Man Walking”; and a new legal team, working pro bono, which says his conviction was marred by poor lawyering and unreliable, police-coached testimony.

In a drumbeat of media appearances, Mr. Glossip’s supporters are calling on Gov. Mary Fallin of Oklahoma to delay his execution for 60 days while they explore what they say is important new evidence that they released on Friday and will discuss in a news conference in Oklahoma City on Monday.
The victim, Barry Van Treese, was beaten to death with a baseball bat in a room at the Best Budget Inn in Oklahoma City, a motel that he owned and Mr. Glossip managed.
Justin Sneed, a 19-year-old drifter with an eighth-grade education whom Mr. Glossip allowed to stay at the motel in return for maintenance work, admitted to the murder and is serving life without parole.

Mr. Sneed testified that Mr. Glossip had told him to kill Mr. Van Treese in return for thousands of dollars in motel receipts. Prosecutors said Mr. Glossip was a cunning figure who feared he was about to be fired for mismanagement and stealing motel revenues, and persuaded Mr. Sneed to commit the crime.

In the absence of any physical evidence against him, Mr. Glossip’s conviction was largely based on Mr. Sneed’s testimony. Mr. Glossip’s lawyers noted that Mr. Sneed changed his story several times before he admitted to the murder, then made a deal to receive life in prison in return for implicating Mr. Glossip.

In a new report commissioned by the defense team and released on Friday, Richard A. Leo, an expert on police interrogations, said that based on transcripts of Mr. Sneed’s questioning and testimony, officers had used techniques that were known to cause false confessions — like telling him he would be the scapegoat for the murder, planting the idea that Mr. Glossip was the mastermind and pressuring Mr. Sneed to say so.

The defense also released on Friday an affidavit from a former drug dealer who said he repeatedly sold methamphetamine to Mr. Sneed at the Best Budget Inn, that Mr. Sneed appeared to be addicted and that he paid for drugs with items he stole from cars and rooms in the motel.

Mr. Glossip’s appeals to the state and federal Supreme Court have been exhausted. His last hope is for Governor Fallin, a Republican, to stay his execution while his lawyers work to persuade a judge, or the state board of pardon and parole, that significant new evidence warrants a new hearing or clemency.

“We are seriously racing against time, as you can imagine,” said one of those lawyers, Donald R. Knight, from Colorado. “We’re trying to do work that should have been done by trial lawyers a long time ago.”

But Governor Fallin has rejected calls to intervene.

“His actions directly led to the brutal murder of a husband and a father of seven children,” she said last month in a statement about Mr. Glossip, stressing that he had been convicted in two jury trials and lost multiple appeals. “The state of Oklahoma is prepared to hold him accountable for his crimes and move forward with his scheduled execution.”

Barry C. Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project in New York, said there were serious “residual doubts” about Mr. Glossip’s guilt. A number of cases in which those sentenced to death were later exonerated, he said, had similarly relied on witnesses who benefited from testimony.

Mr. Glossip was first found guilty and sentenced to death in 1998, but a state appeals court ordered a retrial because his defense lawyers had failed to cross-examine or investigate witnesses effectively.

He was again convicted and condemned in 2004, and the courts did not find evidence of deficiencies that would require a new appeal. But Mr. Knight said the new team had identified weaknesses with that second defense as well.

By all accounts, Mr. Glossip’s behavior on the day after the murder hurt his case.

He later admitted that Mr. Snead knocked on his door late that night and told him he had just killed Mr. Van Treese. He said he did not believe him at first and went back to sleep.

But he did not mention Mr. Sneed’s statement to the police when they initially questioned him the next day, after Mr. Van Treese’s wife reported him missing and his unlocked car was found across the street from the motel.

Mr. Sneed testified that he had taken about $4,000 from Mr. Van Treese’s car and divided it with Mr. Glossip the next morning, and that Mr. Glossip had sent him to buy a hacksaw, trash bags and muriatic acid to help dispose of the body.

Mr. Glossip denied those accusations. In any event, Mr. Sneed fled on his skateboard, and Mr. Glossip was taken into custody after the body was discovered in the motel room the night after the murder. At that point, he did reveal what Mr. Sneed had told him.

Last year, in a mysterious twist, the pardon and parole board received an email that was purportedly written by Mr. Sneed’s daughter, O’Ryan Justine Sneed. Pleading for clemency for what she called “an innocent man,” she wrote that her father had told her that Mr. Glossip had not asked him to commit the murder. She said her father had considered recanting, but was afraid his plea deal would unravel and he would be sentenced to death himself.

But the daughter left no contact information, and so far no one has been able to find her or authenticate the email. Mr. Sneed has made no such statement himself.

The Glossip case reflects a common problem in capital punishment, Mr. Scheck said: a poor defense in the initial trial, which then limits the legal options in later appeals.

“What frequently happens in these capital cases is that the really good lawyers only get involved at the end, when it’s too late,” Mr. Scheck said.

Mr. Van Treese’s family is convinced of Mr. Glossip’s guilt and has thanked the governor for standing firm.

“Execution of Richard Glossip will not bring Barry back or lessen the empty hole left in the lives of those who loved Barry,” family members said in a statement this week to The Tulsa World. “What it does provide is a sense that justice has been served.”



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5) Ex-Officer Seeks Bond in Shooting Death of Walter Scott
By CHRIS DIXON

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/12/us/officer-seeks-bond-in-shooting-death-of-walter-scott.html?ref=us&_r=0

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Saying that he hoped to spend time with his young son, a former police officer asked a judge on Friday to release him on bond while he awaits trial in the shooting death of an unarmed black man after a traffic stop in April.

The former North Charleston officer, Michael T. Slager, 33, told Judge Clifton Newman that he “was not a flight risk” and would follow any bail requirements set by the court.

Bound in chains and wearing a purple-gray jumpsuit, Mr. Slager appeared haggard as he spoke in court for the first time since he was arrested in April in the death of Walter L. Scott, 50. Mr. Slager shuffled to the stand and said he hoped to see his family — particularly his son, who is to be baptized soon.Judge Newman said he would rule “as expeditiously as possible” on the bond request. The trial is expected sometime next year. Mr. Slager’s bond hearing had been put off, his lawyers said, because of delays in collecting information needed to make the defense’s arguments.

A video of the shooting taken by a bystander appeared to show Mr. Slager firing at Mr. Scott as he tried to run away in what started as a traffic stop over a broken taillight. The episode strained racial tensions in this port city and came at a time of intense scrutiny of the treatment of African-Americans by law enforcement officials.

During an earlier hearing on Thursday, Scarlett A. Wilson, the South Carolina prosecutor overseeing the case, squared off against Andy Savage, a Charleston lawyer known for representing clients in prominent cases, including the families of victims of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church slayings in June.

Mr. Savage argued that Mr. Slager’s bond request was warranted because he was a supportive husband and father who had no criminal record and had earned exemplary performance reviews from his superiors.

The hearing produced the defense’s first attempt to lay some of the blame for the killing on Mr. Scott. Mr. Savage argued that Mr. Scott had traces of cocaine in his bloodstream and that he and Mr. Slager had been involved in “a violent physical confrontation” moments before the shooting, fighting over Mr. Slager’s Taser. He said Mr. Slager, who had already fired the Taser at Mr. Scott, feared for his life.

Mr. Savage argued that the traffic stop occurred because Mr. Slager was trying to fill a quota system that mandated North Charleston officers pull over a minimum of three drivers a day for minor offenses such as noisy mufflers, loud radios or faulty brake lights. “That’s the policy that Michael Slager was following as he drove west on Remount Road and saw a Mercedes without a tiny little brake light in the rear,” Mr. Savage said.

Ms. Wilson vigorously disputed the defense’s characterization of Mr. Scott, saying only a trace amount of cocaine was found in his system. In addition, she said, Mr. Slager’s lightly skinned knees, lightly bloodied middle finger and clean uniform gave no indication of a perilous struggle.

The prosecutor noted inconsistencies in Mr. Slager’s testimony and asserted that the blurry footage at the start of the video showed not a violent attack but Mr. Slager grabbing Mr. Scott’s arm, the Taser falling to the ground and Mr. Scott turning to flee before being gunned down.

“Should he have fled from Officer Slager?” Ms. Wilson asked. “No, he shouldn’t have. But that doesn’t mean that Mr. Slager should have then become a firing squad and executed Mr. Scott.”

Mr. Scott’s mother, Judy, fought back tears as she described his devotion to family that included caring for a father who is blind and on dialysis.

“I’m truly hurt, and I pray for Slager and his family,” Ms. Scott said, “because of the love of Christ on the inside cannot hate. I don’t know what you would call that. To gun down a human being like you did. Nothing that’s done will ever bring him back.”

Outside the county courthouse, James Johnson, the Charleston president of the National Action Network, the civil rights organization started by the Rev. Al Sharpton, said that none of Mr. Savage’s arguments overshadowed the fact that Mr. Slager fired on Mr. Scott as he ran away.

“If Charleston County Court allows him to be out on bond, then every murder suspect whose bond was denied should be granted a new hearing,” Mr. Johnson said, adding that his and other civil rights organizations will call for nonviolent rallies should bail be granted.
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6) Four Pentagon Labs Face Inquiry on Handling of Deadly Germs
By

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are investigating four Defense Department labs for mishandling deadly germs used in bioterrorism research, a spokesman said Friday.

The mistakes involve anthrax, plague and viruses that cause encephalitis, which are studied by the military to defend against their potential use as biological weapons. There is no evidence that anyone has been harmed by the errors or that there is any risk to the public, officials say. But bioterrorism experts say that there should be zero tolerance because the organisms are so dangerous, and that even seemingly small mistakes, like flaws in record-keeping, could have calamitous results.

Because of the C.D.C. findings, the secretary of the Army on Sept. 2 ordered the four labs to suspend their work with certain dangerous microbes classified as “select agents” because of the risks that they pose. The suspension was first reported by USA Today. The laboratories are the Dugway Proving Ground Life Sciences Test Facility in Utah, and three sites in Maryland: the Edgewood Chemical and Biological Center, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and the Naval Medical Research Center. They, along with five other labs, have been ordered to conduct safety reviews of all their procedures.

Concerns about the military labs surfaced in May, when it was discovered that the Dugway lab had, during the past decade, mistakenly shipped live anthrax — the bacteria were supposed to have been killed — to numerous labs in the United States and seven other countries.

The Dugway incident led the C.D.C. to conduct spot checks at other Defense Department labs, said a spokesman for the agency, Jason McDonald. Six inspectors were sent to the Edgewood facility from Aug. 17 through 19.

“Inspectors found some labeling issues,” Mr. McDonald said. He said questions were raised about whether certain specimens labeled killed and harmless might actually contain live organisms. For instance, the inspectors found two vials of plague bacteria outside the safe containment area designated for live organisms, and when they asked for documentation to determine whether the bacteria were live or inactivated, “two documents provided showed discrepant results for the same product,” Mr. McDonald said in an email.

Questions were also raised about whether active encephalitis viruses might have been shipped as if they were harmless, but a preliminary investigation suggests that was not the case, Mr. McDonald said. But he added that there were “preliminary indications” that other specimens of dangerous organisms may have been shipped without proper authorization.

“C.D.C. is investigating those transfers to ensure that there was no risk to those that handled this material or to the public,” Mr. McDonald said.

The C.D.C. was not granting interviews with the scientists who conducted the inspections because the investigation is still going on, Mr. McDonald said.

In an email, he said the agencies’ responses “demonstrate how seriously both organizations take incidents involving select agents. We accept there will always be some risk in the laboratory work C.D.C. and others do to protect Americans, but our goal is to eliminate unnecessary risk and reduce unavoidable risk. That is why labs in the select agent program have numerous, redundant systems to ensure there are many layers of protection between the work done in labs and the general public.”

When asked for comment, the Pentagon provided only its statement from Sept. 2.

Matthew Rosenberg contributed reporting.


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7) Study Predicts Antarctica Ice Melt if All Fossil Fuels Are Burned
By

Burning all the world’s deposits of coal, oil and natural gas would raise the temperature enough to melt the entire ice sheet covering Antarctica, driving the level of the sea up by more than 160 feet, scientists reported Friday.

In a major surprise to the scientists, they found that half the melting could occur in as little as a thousand years, causing the ocean to rise by something on the order of a foot per decade, roughly 10 times the rate at which it is rising now. Such a pace would almost certainly throw human society into chaos, forcing a rapid retreat from the world’s coastal cities.

The rest of the earth’s land ice would melt along with Antarctica, and warming ocean waters would expand, so that the total rise of the sea would likely exceed 200 feet, the scientists said.“To be blunt: If we burn it all, we melt it all,” said Ricarda Winkelmann, a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and the lead author of a paper published Friday in the journal Science Advances.

A sea level rise of 200 feet would put almost all of Florida, much of Louisiana and Texas, the entire East Coast of the United States, large parts of Britain, much of the European Plain, and huge parts of coastal Asia under water. The cities lost would include Miami, New Orleans, Houston, Washington, New York, Amsterdam, Stockholm, London, Paris, Berlin, Venice, Buenos Aires, Beijing, Shanghai, Sydney, Rome and Tokyo.

Nobody alive today, nor even their grandchildren, would live to see such a calamity unfold, given the time the melting would take. Yet the new study gives a sense of the risks that future generations face if emissions of greenhouse gases are not brought under control.

“This is humanity as a geologic force,” said Ken Caldeira, a researcher at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, Calif., and another author of the paper. “We’re not a subtle influence on the climate system – we are really hitting it with a hammer.”

Climate scientists have long assumed that countries would recognize the dangers of continuing to dig up and burn the world’s fossil fuels. Yet they have been saying that for 30 years, and political efforts in that time to limit the burning have been ineffectual.

With a major push from President Obama, the nations of the world will convene in Paris in December in another attempt to reach an ambitious deal for reducing emissions. Yet Mr. Obama faces fierce opposition from the Republican Party in putting limits into effect in the United States, which uses more fossil fuels per person than any other large country.

The long-running political gridlock has prompted scientists to start thinking about worst-case scenarios. And recently, major advances have been made in the computerized analysis of the huge ice sheets covering Antarctica and Greenland.

The researchers involved in Friday’s paper decided to use one of these ice-sheet models to attempt the most detailed analysis yet of the potential consequences of burning all fossil fuels. As the first of its kind, the paper is likely to undergo intense scientific scrutiny.

In certain ways, the findings are reassuring. They offer no reason, for instance, to revise the sea-level forecast for the coming century.

A United Nations panel has said that the rise of the sea would not likely exceed three feet in that period, and would probably be less. While some island nations may be wiped out by a rise of that magnitude, experts believe most major cities could be protected from it, though at a likely cost in the trillions of dollars.

The ice sheets respond slowly enough to changes in the climate that it simply takes longer than a century for large-scale melting to begin. But from that point, the paper found, about half the Antarctic ice sheet would melt or fall into the sea in the first thousand years.

“I didn’t expect it would go so fast,” Dr. Caldeira said. “To melt all of Antarctica, I thought it would take something like 10,000 years.”

The more basic finding that the whole ice sheet could eventually melt is less surprising, at least to scientists who specialize in studying the history of the earth. “As a paleoclimate person, I don’t feel like this is necessarily a shock to me,” said Robert E. Kopp, a professor of earth system history at Rutgers University, who studies sea level but was not involved in the new research.

Paleoclimatologists have established that Antarctica was once a lush, green continent, icing over only in the past 35 million years, amid a general cooling of the world’s climate. Moreover, rates of sea level rise like those outlined in the paper have occurred in the past.

Human civilization is built on the premise that the level of the sea is stable, as indeed it has been for several thousand years. But the deeper history of the earth reveals enormous shifts, on the order of a hundred feet or more within a few thousand years.

Sea levels far higher than those of today have been documented at more than a thousand sites around the world. Along the East Coast, seashells from just 3 million years ago can be dug up by the shovel-full a hundred miles inland from the current shore.

Studying this evidence, scientists concluded long ago that the great ice sheets are sensitive to small changes in the earth’s average temperature, caused by wobbles in its orbit around the sun. They believe that human emissions are about to produce a large change.

Though the climate is still in the earliest stages of this shift, the ice sheets in both Greenland and the low-lying, western part of Antarctica are already showing serious signs of instability.

The higher, colder ice sheet in eastern Antarctica, by far the largest chunk of land ice on the planet, had long been assumed to be more stable. But for several years, evidence has been accumulating that at least large parts of that ice sheet are vulnerable, too.

The new study confirms previous findings that how much of the world’s ice will melt is closely linked to how much total fossil fuel humans burn. These studies suggest that a rapid shift away from those fuels over coming decades would preserve much of the ice, or at least slow the melting drastically.

On the other hand, if the use of fossil fuels were to continue rising at the same rate it rose over the past century, the estimated deposits would be burned by about the middle of the 22nd century, Dr. Caldeira said, and complete destruction of the world’s land ice would be well underway.

The exact timing is open to question, he said, but “the idea that most of it would melt, I believe, is a robust result.”

Scientists focus on melting ice in part because the consequences are relatively easy to visualize. But if anything like the scenario in the paper were to play out in the real world, the problems would go far beyond a rise of the sea and a retreat from the coasts.

In a rough calculation, the scientists found that burning all fossil fuels might raise the average temperature of the planet by something like 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Past research suggests that an increase that enormous would likely render vast stretches of the earth too hot and humid for human habitation, cause food production to collapse, and drive much of the plant and animal life of the planet to extinction.

In interviews, scientists said that such long-term risks raise profound moral questions for people of today.

“What right do we have to do things that, even if they don’t affect us, are going to be someone else’s problem a thousand years from now?” asked Ian Joughin, an ice sheet expert at the University of Washington who was not involved in the new research. “Is it fair to do that so we can go on burning fuel as fast as we can?”


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8) The Next Genocide
By TIMOTHY SNYDER

New Haven — BEFORE he fired the shot, the Einsatzgruppe commander lifted the Jewish child in the air and said, “You must die so that we can live.” As the killing proceeded, other Germans rationalized the murder of Jewish children in the same way: them or us.

Today we think of the Nazi Final Solution as some dark apex of high technology. It was in fact the killing of human beings at close range during a war for resources. The war that brought Jews under German control was fought because Hitler believed that Germany needed more land and food to survive and maintain its standard of living — and that Jews, and their ideas, posed a threat to his violent expansionist program.

The Holocaust may seem a distant horror whose lessons have already been learned. But sadly, the anxieties of our own era could once again give rise to scapegoats and imagined enemies, while contemporary environmental stresses could encourage new variations on Hitler’s ideas, especially in countries anxious about feeding their growing populations or maintaining a rising standard of living.

The quest for German domination was premised on the denial of science. Hitler’s alternative to science was the idea of Lebensraum. Germany needed an Eastern European empire because only conquest, and not agricultural technology, offered the hope of feeding the German people. In Hitler’s “Second Book,” which was composed in 1928 and not published until after his death, he insisted that hunger would outstrip crop improvements and that all “the scientific methods of land management” had already failed. No conceivable improvement would allow Germans to be fed “from their own land and territory,” he claimed. Hitler specifically — and wrongly — denied that irrigation, hybrids and fertilizers could change the relationship between people and land.

The pursuit of peace and plenty through science, he claimed in “Mein Kampf,” was a Jewish plot to distract Germans from the necessity of war. “It is always the Jew,” argued Hitler, “who seeks and succeeds in implanting such lethal ways of thinking.”

As exotic as it sounds, the concept of Lebensraum is less distant from our own ways of thinking than we believe. Germany was blockaded during World War I, dependent on imports of agricultural commodities and faced real uncertainties about its food supply. Hitler transformed these fears into a vision of absolute conquest for total security. Lebensraum linked a war of extermination to the improvement of lifestyle. The chief Nazi propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, could therefore define the purpose of a war of extermination as “a big breakfast, a big lunch and a big dinner.” He conflated lifestyle with life.

To expand Germany’s Lebensraum, Hitler aimed to seize Ukraine from the Soviet Union, starve 30 million Eastern Europeans and transfer the food to Germany. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the campaign had two major aims: the control of fertile Ukrainian soil and the destruction of Jews living there. It was this invasion that placed defenseless Jewish children at the mercy of the murderous Einsatzgruppen.

Climate change threatens to provoke a new ecological panic. So far, poor people in Africa and the Middle East have borne the brunt of the suffering.

The mass murder of at least 500,000 Rwandans in 1994 followed a decline in agricultural production for several years before. Hutus killed Tutsis not only out of ethnic hatred, but to take their land, as many genocidaires later admitted.

In Sudan, drought drove Arabs into the lands of African pastoralists in 2003. The Sudanese government sided with the Arabs and pursued a policy of eliminating the Zaghawa, Masalit and Fur peoples in Darfur and surrounding regions.

Climate change has also brought uncertainties about food supply back to the center of great power politics. China today, like Germany before the war, is an industrial power incapable of feeding its population from its own territory, and is thus dependent on unpredictable international markets.

This could make China’s population susceptible to a revival of ideas like Lebensraum. The Chinese government must balance a not-so-distant history of starving its own population with today’s promise of ever-increasing prosperity — all while confronting increasingly unfavorable environmental conditions. The danger is not that the Chinese might actually starve to death in the near future, any more than Germans would have during the 1930s. The risk is that a developed country able to project military power could, like Hitler’s Germany, fall into ecological panic, and take drastic steps to protect its existing standard of living.

How might such a scenario unfold? China is already leasing a tenth of Ukraine’s arable soil, and buying up food whenever global supplies tighten. During the drought of 2010, Chinese panic buying helped bring bread riots and revolution to the Middle East. The Chinese leadership already regards Africa as a long-term source of food. Although many Africans themselves still go hungry, their continent holds about half of the world’s untilled arable land. Like China, the United Arab Emirates and South Korea are interested in Sudan’s fertile regions — and they have been joined by Japan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia in efforts to buy or lease land throughout Africa.

Nations in need of land would likely begin with tactfully negotiated leases or purchases; but under conditions of stress or acute need, such agrarian export zones could become fortified colonies, requiring or attracting violence.Hitler spread ecological panic by claiming that only land would bring Germany security and by denying the science that promised alternatives to war. By polluting the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, the United States has done more than any other nation to bring about the next ecological panic, yet it is the only country where climate science is still resisted by certain political and business elites. These deniers tend to present the empirical findings of scientists as a conspiracy and question the validity of science — an intellectual stance that is uncomfortably close to Hitler’s.

The full consequences of climate change may reach America only decades after warming wreaks havoc in other regions. And by then it will be too late for climate science and energy technology to make any difference. Indeed, by the time the door is open to the demagogy of ecological panic in the United States, Americans will have spent years spreading climate disaster around the world.

THE European Union, by contrast, takes global warming very seriously, but its existence is under threat. As Africa and the Middle East continue to warm and wars rage, economic migrants and war refugees are making perilous journeys to flee to Europe. In response, European populists have called for the strict enforcement of national borders and the end of the union. Many of these populist parties are supported by Russia, which is openly pursuing a divide-and-conquer policy with the aim of bringing about European disintegration.

Russia’s 2014 intervention in Ukraine has already shattered the peaceful order that Europeans had come to take for granted. The Kremlin, which is economically dependent on the export of hydrocarbons to Europe, is now seeking to make gas deals with individual European states one by one in order to weaken European unity and expand its own influence. Meanwhile, President Vladimir V. Putin waxes nostalgic for the 1930s, while Russian nationalists blame gays, cosmopolitans and Jews for antiwar sentiment. None of this bodes well for Europe’s future — or Russia’s.

When mass killing is on the way, it won’t announce itself in the language we are familiar with. The Nazi scenario of 1941 will not reappear in precisely the same form, but several of its causal elements have already begun to assemble.

It is not difficult to imagine ethnic mass murder in Africa, which has already happened; or the triumph of a violent totalitarian strain of Islamism in the parched Middle East; or a Chinese play for resources in Africa or Russia or Eastern Europe that involves removing the people already living there; or a growing global ecological panic if America abandons climate science or the European Union falls apart.

Today we confront the same crucial choice between science and ideology that Germans once faced. Will we accept empirical evidence and support new energy technologies, or allow a wave of ecological panic to spread across the world?

Denying science imperils the future by summoning the ghosts of the past.

A professor of history at Yale University and the author of “Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning.”




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9) Gaps in Alumni Earnings Stand Out in Release of College Data
By Kevin Carey

Colleges give prospective students very little information about how much money they can expect to earn in the job market. In part that’s because colleges may not want people to know, and in part it’s because such information is difficult and expensive to gather. Colleges are good at tracking down rich alumni to hit up for donations, but people who make little or no money are harder and less lucrative to find.

On Saturday, the federal government solved that problem by releasing a huge set of new data detailing the earnings of people who attended nearly every college and university in America. Although it abandonded efforts to rate the quality of colleges, the federal government matched data from the federal student financial aid system to federal tax returns. The Department of Education was thus able to calculate how much money people who enrolled in individual colleges in 2001 and 2002 were earning 10 years later.On the surface, the trends aren’t surprising — students who enroll in wealthy, elite colleges earn more than those who do not. But the deeper that you delve into the data, the more clear it becomes how perilous the higher education market can be for students making expensive, important choices that don’t always pay off.

The national universities producing the top earners are no surprise: Harvard, M.I.T., Stanford and others that routinely top the annual U.S. News & World Report college rankings. The most troubling numbers show up far beneath the upper echelons of higher education. Elite institutions prop up the overall average earnings of college graduates nationwide. Although earnings of college graduates continue to outpace those of non-collegians by a significant margin, at some institutions, the earnings of students 10 years after enrollment are bleak.

The Department of Education calculated the percentage of students at each college who earned more than $25,000 per year, which is about what high school graduates earn. At hundreds of colleges, less than half of students met this threshold 10 years after enrolling. The list includes a raft of barber academies, cosmetology schools and for-profit colleges that often leave students with few job prospects and mountains of debt.

But some more well-known institutions weren’t far behind. At Bennington College in Vermont, over 48 percent of former students were earning less than $25,000 per year. A quarter were earning less than $10,600 per year. At Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, the median annual earnings were only $35,700. Results at the University of New Mexico were almost exactly the same.

The data reveals how much money students are borrowing in exchange for earnings after graduation. While U.C.L.A. and Penn State are both prestigious public research universities, recent U.C.L.A. grads leave with about 30 percent less debt, even as their predecessors are earning about 30 percent more money than counterparts at Penn State. Harvard students borrow barely a quarter of what Brandeis students take on, and earn nearly twice as much.

The return is unequal in other ways. There is an earnings gender gap at every top university. The size of the difference varies a great deal. At Duke, for example, women earned $93,100 per year on average, compared with $123,000 for men, a difference of $29,900. At Princeton, men earned more and women earned less, for a difference of $47,700. Women who enrolled at Cornell earned more than women who enrolled at Yale.Defining higher education in purely economic terms risks exacerbating what some have described as the corporatization of the modern university. People get a lot more out of college than earnings potential. They learn to be better citizens and better human beings. The world needs dancers and poets along with the future investment bankers and tech entrepreneurs streaming out of elite schools.

The problem is that the dancers and poets are paying the same, ever-rising tuition, even though the necessary cost of running a good poetry program is probably not much more than it was in earlier times when college tuition was much less expensive than it is today. And you can’t pay your student loans back with citizenship — only dollars will do.

Colleges can ameliorate this problem by providing need-based financial aid to low-income students, reducing their debt burden and likelihood of loan default. The new data indicates that some colleges are more successful with this strategy than others.

At the University of Cincinnati, a third of low-income students (from households earning less than $30,000 per year) had failed to pay back any of their student loans five years after graduation. At the University of Alabama, the number was roughly a quarter; at Wayne State University in Detroit, over 40 percent. At the for-profit University of Phoenix, nearly two-thirds of poor students are in these dire straits.

It will take time for the raft of new federal earnings data to seep into the complex reputational ecosystem that continues to govern the higher education market. But this new bottom line will eventually become a permanent aspect of how colleges of all kinds are understood.

Kevin Carey directs the education policy program at New America. You can follow him on Twitter at @kevincarey1.


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10) Labour Party’s Swerve Left May Help Tories in Next British Elections
By

Jeremy Corbyn, the new leader of the opposition Labour Party, has stopped wearing T-shirts in public and now favors blue shirts and darker jackets. But even with his more prime ministerial attire, it is difficult to imagine a British electorate that just handed Conservatives a parliamentary majority turning to a party that has lurched so far to the left.

Instead, Mr. Corbyn’s resounding victory in his party’s leadership election makes it highly likely that Britain’s next prime minister will be the Conservative politician George Osborne, 44, the chancellor of the Exchequer and second in command to Prime Minister David Cameron.

Mr. Cameron, having just won another five-year term, has confirmed that he will not run for a third term and intends to step down before this one ends. In the unsentimental Conservative Party, that means the maneuvering to succeed him has already begun, with a change expected sometime after Britain votes in a referendum on whether to remain in the European Union.

That vote must happen before the end of 2017, but may take place sooner. With the British economy going well, and assuming that the Conservatives do not self-destruct over internal disputes on European Union membership, Mr. Osborne is considered the person most likely to lead the party into the 2020 elections.

His main rival, Mayor Boris Johnson of London, is engaging and popular with the public, but less so with his fellow members of Parliament. And with the Labour Party now leaving the center of politics wide open, it may be much easier for Mr. Cameron and Mr. Osborne to move Tories closer to that aspirational center, arguing that they have created jobs and pared down the budget deficit, and are a safer set of hands than an “old-style” Labour socialist.

Mr. Corbyn, 66, is consistent and sincere, a professed man of the “hard left” who believes that the Labour Party must return to its roots in the working class and fight inequality in all its forms. He is a sharp critic of American foreign policy and of Israel; he wants Britain to abandon its nuclear deterrent and has favored quitting NATO.

His resounding victory has energized a party in the doldrums after the fiasco of May’s elections, when Labour was nearly shut out of Scotland and had one of its worst showings in decades. He appeals to the angry, insurgent mood among trade unionists and many young people over inequality in capitalism, a sentiment that helped parties like Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain. In a sense, he is a left-wing response to the kind of alienation that helped the United Kingdom Independence Party, or UKIP, win nearly 13 percent of the vote in May, though it only won one seat in Parliament.

But as UKIP shows, strong minority parties do not produce many legislators in Britain’s electoral system, and the Labour Party was already, under Ed Miliband, considered too left-wing and too unreliable to get the seats in southern England that it needed for victory, even if propped up by the Scottish National Party. Those concerns will be only more entrenched now.

Mr. Corbyn is also going to have a very difficult time keeping Labour together. Already, the two leadership candidates of the center, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall, have said they will not serve in his shadow cabinet because of strong policy differences. Mr. Corbyn, who has made his career since he was elected in 1983 by voting against his party’s orders, is also opposed by most of Labour’s 232 members of Parliament. Even to get the 35 nominations he needed to run in this leadership election was a struggle, and some of those who nominated him did so simply to broaden the debate, with no idea that Mr. Corbyn would end up their leader.

Mr. Corbyn needs to appoint a shadow cabinet — members of Parliament who would be ministers if the party were in power and speak for the party on all issues — of 26 legislators, with another 60 or more shadow junior ministers. It is not clear how easy that is going to be.

For the moment, talk of any breakaway party is muted — after all, when the Social Democrats broke away from Labour in 1981, they were well-known moderates with government experience who were considered the new center of British politics. In the end, the Social Democrats effectively dissolved just seven years later, joining with the Liberals to become the Liberal Democrats. And the Liberal Democrats were just trounced in May for the sin of sharing power in a coalition government with the Conservatives.

Many Labour legislators will want to remain, not just to keep their seats, but to fight for Labour’s future as a mainstream party. Mr. Corbyn is 20 years older than his leadership competitors, and many will prefer to see his leadership as a temporary blast from the past — to the policies and rhetoric of the disastrous 1983 campaign of Michael Foot.

Still, once elected, Mr. Corbyn may be hard to dislodge before the next general elections. And he may be very useful in poking holes in Conservative positions and at skewering Mr. Cameron during weekly prime minister’s questions in Parliament, on issues ranging from refugees and foreign policy to social inequality.

The Conservatives are hardly immune. Their party is deeply divided over Britain’s membership in the European Union, and Mr. Cameron has a majority of only 12 seats, which he must manage carefully. If the Conservative Party does split over Europe, it is not inconceivable to imagine a new party of the center.

And today, that is no more inconceivable than the prospect of Mr. Corbyn becoming Labour leader was even three months ago.


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11) Shoddy Records Cited in California Oil Spill
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOS ANGELES — The pipeline company responsible for an oil spill that blackened California beaches in May kept shoddy records on emergency training and how it would protect the pristine coastline in the event of a break, federal regulators say.

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration proposed six violations from inspections begun in 2013 — some 20 months before the pipeline rupture near Santa Barbara — but imposed no fines.

Among the findings, the agency said Friday, the Texas-based company, Plains All American Pipeline, failed to properly document pressure tests on tanks and failed to keep adequate records on how it would prevent spills in sensitive environmental areas, or respond if one did occur.

The agency said the findings identified areas where the company should improve safety throughout its 18,000-mile pipeline system.

“While the probable violations noted in the enforcement action did not result in a civil penalty, we believe that all safety-related issues matter because they reflect the overall safety culture of an organization,” Artealia Gilliard, a spokeswoman for the agency, said.

Robert G. Bea, a civil engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said the latest action by regulators spoke to a weak culture of safety and inadequate efforts to assess risk and prevent spills.

“In all the documentation I have reviewed concerning the pipeline, I have never seen evidence of any advanced risk assessment and management processes being used by Plains,” said Mr. Bea, a former oil executive who has studied spills.

Plains said previously that it had increased spending on safety and hired more staff to prevent spills. A Plains spokesman said the company would work with regulators to resolve their concerns.

One of two lines in the 2013 inspections ruptured May 19 along a corroded section of pipe, releasing at least 101,000 gallons of crude on the coast. The mess forced a popular state park to shut down for two months, goo from the spill washed up on beaches 100 miles away, and hundreds of dead birds and sea lions were found.

They agency said that it could not connect the inspection findings from that time with the pipeline break, but that it might identify related violations in the future.

The company has been criticized for taking about 90 minutes to alert federal responders after confirming the spill, even though federal regulations require the company to notify the National Response Center, a clearinghouse for reports of hazardous-material releases, “at the earliest practicable moment.” State law requires immediate notification of a release or a threatened release.

The cause of the break is under investigation. Prosecutors are considering possible charges.


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12) Safety Suffers as Stock Options Propel Executive Pay Packages
"One group of companies produced consumer staples like foods, beverages and personal care products, while the other manufactured health care products, including medical devices and pharmaceuticals. Over the period studied — from 2004 through 2011 — these two sectors together accounted for over 85 percent of all recall activity reported by the F.D.A., the professors said. Their analysis examined two significant types of product recalls: those in which a product could cause serious harm or death and those in which exposure to a product might cause temporary or medically reversible health consequences."

By

Outsize executive pay packages have frequently been a flash point for stock market investors. Lavish executive compensation at publicly traded companies should be a significant concern for consumers, too.

That’s the message of a new study by three academics at the University of Notre Dame. Their research focuses on companies that rely heavily on stock options in executive compensation. They have found a correlation between generous option grants and the incidence of serious product recalls.

Stock options have been the jet fuel propelling some of the biggest executive pay packages over the years. From an investor’s point of view, these instruments are problematic because they provide an executive with little downside if the company’s underlying shares fall but oodles of upside on the rise.This heads-I-win, tails-I-barely-lose arrangement encourages executives to swing for the fences, an array of academic research has shown. Eager to reap the riches from a rising share price, option-laden executives have been found to make unwise acquisitions or, even worse, to undertake aggressive accounting practices.

Now comes evidence that product recalls are often linked to abundant option grants handed to chief executives. The study, “Throwing Caution to the Wind: The Effect of C.E.O. Stock Option Pay on the Incidence of Product Safety Problems,” concluded that “C.E.O. option pay was associated with both a higher likelihood of experiencing a recall as well as a higher number of recalls.”

The study’s authors are Adam J. Wowak, Michael J. Mannor and Kaitlin D. Wowak, all assistant professors of management at the Notre Dame Mendoza College of Business.

In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Wowak said that he and his colleagues wanted to build on past analyses of how stock options induce risk-taking among executives. “If options are generally causing C.E.O.s to be more aggressive, then it makes sense that more mistakes could occur and consumers could be affected,” Mr. Wowak said. “Options could be making C.E.O.s ignore the downside potential of some of their actions.”

The researchers scrutinized companies in two industries that are closely regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. All of the companies had sales and assets of at least $10 million. The academics looked at the size of stock options in proportion to a chief executive’s total pay and calculated a two-year average, finding that recalls tended to be more prevalent at companies with higher option percentages. The names of specific companies were not cited in the study.

One group of companies produced consumer staples like foods, beverages and personal care products, while the other manufactured health care products, including medical devices and pharmaceuticals. Over the period studied — from 2004 through 2011 — these two sectors together accounted for over 85 percent of all recall activity reported by the F.D.A., the professors said.

Their analysis examined two significant types of product recalls: those in which a product could cause serious harm or death and those in which exposure to a product might cause temporary or medically reversible health consequences.

The study examined the pay packages of 386 chief executives. One curious finding emerged: Product recalls were less common among companies whose chief executives founded the companies or had long tenures there. Such executives may be more risk-averse because they are generally large shareholders and may also feel that their personal reputations are intertwined with their companies’ actions.

“It was interesting for us to see that options don’t affect everybody the same way,” Mr. Wowak said in the interview. “When boards design pay packages, it would be beneficial for them to think about how their C.E.O. might respond and tailor the package around that.”

Mr. Wowak acknowledged that among publicly traded corporations over all, stock option grants as a percentage of total pay had declined recently. Many companies are dispensing restricted stock instead, making sure that executives feel the pain of a falling share price alongside their stockholders. With options, a falling stock price represents a lost opportunity for a future gain, not an actual hit to executives’ wallets.

But stock options remain popular. Data compiled by Equilar, an executive compensation analytics firm in Redwood City, Calif., shows that among the companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, option grants totaled 16.1 percent of direct pay for chief executives in 2014. In 2010, that figure was 20.1 percent.

“Of course, not every product recall that happens is caused by stock options,” Mr. Wowak said. “And it’s possible to pay a lot in options and not have a product recall. But boards are wise to have a balanced view of the potential downside to building in heavy option components to executive pay.”

The researchers’ focus on health care companies was appropriate: These companies are the biggest users of stock options, Equilar found. Last year, 84.4 percent of chief executives at these companies received options, while 67.3 percent of top managers at consumer goods manufacturers were recipients, according to Equilar. At utility companies, by contrast, only 27.6 percent of chief executives were granted options.

Among the top dispensers of stock options as a percentage of total C.E.O. pay, Equilar found, are Monster Beverage, with 87.1 percent; Avago Technologies, a semiconductor maker, with 84.2 percent; and Stericycle, a medical waste management company, at 69.7 percent.

Representatives from the three companies did not respond to requests for comment.

Having fielded complaints from shareholders about excessive executive pay for decades, corporate boards say they have gotten the picture that chief executives’ pay should be aligned with their owners’ interests. As this new study shows, directors should understand that executive pay needs to line up with consumers’ interests as well.






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Posted by: bonnieweinstein@yahoo.com
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