Tuesday, December 06, 2016

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2016

CONTRASTS:

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Well, @AceHardware certainly picked a strange holiday marketing strategy. #BoycottAceHardware #NoDAPL

ACE HARDWARE STATEMENT UPDATE:

Please note below (sentence enlarged) that they are only stocking and selling 1-pound propane canisters! All normal grills use at least 15-pound canisters. This is a purposeful attack on the Water Protectors who are trying to survive in sub-freezing weather in North Dakota. Everyone should demand they keep their stores in the area stocked up fully! Human lives depend on it! This is outrageous! --Bonnie Weinstein, bauaw.org

Oak Brook, Ill.,

December

01,

2016

Ace Hardware statement on North Dakota protest and product sales

Update: As of Thursday, Dec. 1 at 10 a.m. local time, Ace Hardware stores in Bismarck, N. D., are in-stock and selling 1 lb. propane canisters.

At Ace, our local store owners take great pride in serving their neighbors and it is our policy to serve all customers without discrimination and to follow all laws in each respective community.

We understand the concerns that have been shared with us regarding product sales related to the recent protests in North Dakota and have been working very hard to gather all of the facts from our locally-owned Ace stores that operate in the area and local authorities. To be candid, we've been working feverishly to unearth all of the facts, which have been cloudy at times.

In an effort to clear any misunderstanding and/or misinformation, Ace Hardware can now confirm that there is no ban on the sale of products at our locally-owned Ace stores; customers should feel free to check with their local store for inventory availability.

http://newsroom.acehardware.com/ace-hardware-statement-on-north-dakota-protest-and-product-sales/

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North Dakota: Stop Using Cold Water to Blast Unarmed Protestors in Sub-Freezing Temperatures

by: Kelsey Bourgeois
target: Morton County North Dakota Law Enforcement

13,333 SUPPORTERS

14,000 GOAL

As we gear up to celebrate Thanksgiving, Native Americans are fighting for their right to their own land, clean water and now, their lives. On Sunday night, Dakota Access Pipeline unarmed protesters were blasted with tear gas, mace, rubber bullets and water cannons for hours in 23-degree weather, all while simply trying to clear the road for emergency services.

While all of this violence is unacceptable, the freezing cold water cannons are especially cruel given the temperature; protesters could easily get hypothermia and even die! Please join the Standing Rock medics in begging Morton County law enforcement to stop the use of water cannons on peaceful protesters immediately.

Protesters were simply trying to clear the road to allow emergency services to get to their camp when the militarized police force assaulted them for hours on end. The medics at the scene said 300 people were injured, 23 of whom ended up in the hospital. The majority of the injured got hypothermia from the freezing water cannons.

Frontline journalists were also targeted and shot with rubber bullets, press drones were shot down and some protectors were shot in the head with rubber bullets and fell unconscious.

This dangerous, potentially lethal treatment of peaceful protesters cannot stand. These people are using legal and unarmed tactics to simply protect their water supply and Morton County may end up killing them. Add your name to ask them to cut the worst of their tactics out: using a freezing water cannon in sub-freezing temperatures.

Sign Petition Here:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/253/888/166/?z00m=28621731&redirectID=2245909653

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International Committee

for Peace, Justice and Dignity

Message from the National Boricua Human Rights Network

SIGN THIS PETITION NOW!

PLEASE FORWARD FAR AND WIDE WE ARE TRYING TO GET 100,000 SIGNATURES IN 30 DAYS.

Hi all:

We are asking all organizations, communities, unions, churches, activists, political parties- to CALL ON THEIR INDIVIDUAL MEMBERS to sign this petition and spread the word- this is a time-sensitive request!

We must try to achieve the signing of 100,000 signatures by December 11.

No matter how many petitions you have signed- SIGN THIS ONLINE PETITION and get everyone else to do the same. Do not let anyone tell you they have signed petitions or letters before- this is the one that will be highlighted.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/president-obama-free-oscar-lopez-rivera-he-ends-his-term-president

WE ARE FREEING OSCAR LÓPEZ RIVERA

Coordinating Committee
National Boricua Human Rights Network
2739 W. Division Street
Chicago IL 60622
www.boricuahumanrights.org
@free_olr

International Committee for Peace, Justice and Dignity

510-219-0092 | info@TheInternationalCommittee.org | Website

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Black Children Punished for Anthem Protests

After young 11 and 12-year-boys of the Beaumont Bulls football knelt during the anthem to protest police violence against Black youth, their local executive board canceled their entire football season, suspended the coaching staff, and threatened to arrest their parents if they attended any future games, practices or events.

For these young Black kids, the plight of injustice in America is their own. Instead of supporting the boys and their protests, their executive board and league officials abandoned them. The board has decided to strip these kids of the team that they love to punish them for asking for basic rights and dignities. This is about the board reinforcing that police violence in our communities doesn't matter, that our issues aren't important and that speaking onthem makes you subject to punishment.

These kids are brave for refusing to give in to the executive board and for standing against injustice. We need to support the fight of these children and show them that their protest is heard.

To the Beaumont Bulls Executive Board,

Immediately reinstate the Beaumont Bulls coaching staff, apologize to the boys and their parents, and allow them to finish their season.

Sincerely,

We need to support the fight of these children and show them that their protest is heard.

http://act.colorofchange.org/sign/black-children-punished-anthem-protests/?sp_ref=239333099.176.176140.e.558213.2&referring_akid=6495.1114646.XlU2ME&source=em_sp

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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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FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL NOW!

FREE HEP-C MEDS FOR ALL INFECTED PRISONERS!

Rally and March

Friday December 9, Rally Oscar Grant Plaza, OAKLAND, 4pm

Followed by March to OPD Headquarters

Join us for a National Day of Action on December 9 to FREE MUMIA NOW!

and Demand: FREE HEP-C MEDS FOR ALL PRISONERS!

in coordination with his Philadelphia and New York supporters

Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther who police tried to execute on the streets of Philadelphia in 1981, was framed by a racist judicial system and sentenced to death. Like other Black Panthers he was an innocent target of the FBI's repressive COINTELPRO campaign. From death row Mumia, became known as the "voice of the voiceless", exposing deplorable prison conditions and fighting racist police killings, imperialist wars and capitalist oppression. International protests got him off death row, but now they are trying to kill him by medical neglect. They are withholding life-saving Hep C medication he and 7,000 other Pennsylvania prisoners desperately need. After 35 years in prison, mostly in solitary confinement, it's time to mobilize to FREE MUMIA and other political prisoners like him now!

A recent US Supreme Court decision, "Williams vs. Pennsylvania" could open the door for Mumia's freedom but only if this fundamentally racist judicial system is confronted with mass protests like those that got him off death row. This decision ruled that a prosecutor cannot later sit as judge over the same defendant's appeal. This is exactly what happened in Mumia's case. On this basis Mumia's attorneys have filed a new legal action. If successful, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rulings that upheld his conviction would be overturned. Mumia could then re-appeal the issues of his innocence, jury bias and falsified evidence to win an outright dismissal of charges or get a new trial. Mumia was framed by corrupt cops, prosecutors, and judges for the murder of a policeman that he did not commit!!

We say: Free Mumia Now!

Endorsers for the December 9th Free Mumia Coalition:

Angela Davis; ANSWER Coalition; Anti Police-Terror Project; BAMN; Black Panther Commemoration Committee, NY; (Former) Black Panthers: Cleo Silvers, Eddie Conway, Larry Pinkney, William Johnson; Cal BSU; Code Pink, Freedom Socialist Party-Bay Area; Haiti Action Committee; International Action Center; John Brown Society; Justice for Palestinians-San Jose; Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal; Love Not Blood Campaign/Uncle Bobby; National Alumni Association of the Black Panther Party; Oakland Socialist Group; Oakland Teachers for Mumia; Oasis Hepatitis C Clinic; Occupy 4 Prisoners; Oscar Grant Committee Against Police Brutality and State Repression; Party for Socialism and Liberation; Peace and Freedom Party; Socialist Organizer; Socialist Viewpoint; Speak Out Now; Veterans for Peace – East Bay; Workers World Party

See you at Oscar Grant Plaza (City Hall), Oakland, 4 pm, December 9th

More Info: Tova, 510-600-5800; Jack, 510-501-7080; Gerald 510-417-1252

(This message from: Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal).

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In Philadelphia on December 9th:

3-6pm - Rally outside next to the hated Rizzo statue across from City Hall in Thomas Paine Plaza

6-9pm - Indoor event at Arch Street Methodist Church, Arch and N. Broad Street streets (food will be available.)

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January 20, 2017, 7:00 A.M.

Freedom Plaza

1355 Pennsylvania Ave N.W.

(14th Street and Pennsylvania Ave.)

Washington, D.C.

Here in San Francisco:

Fri. Jan. 20, 5pm
SF Protest: Say NO to Trump and the Trump Program on Inauguration Day
Fight Racism, Sexism and Bigotry—Defend Immigrants!
UN Plaza, near Civic Center BART, San Francisco

Join the Mass Organizing Meeting, Sat. Dec. 10, 12noon at 2969 Mission St., SF. Help build for the Jan. 20 action!

Sign up to volunteer! Become an organizer in the fightback movement against Trump!

Progressive people from all over the country will be descending on Washington, D.C. on January 20, 2017, to stage a massive demonstration along Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day along with corresponding actions in San Francisco and other West Coast cities.

Trump's appointees are a motley and dangerous crew of billionaires, white supremacists and other extreme rightwingers. They have nothing good in mind for anyone but the banks, oil companies and the military-industrial complex.

Please make a generous donation now to support the struggle against racism, sexism, bigotry and the Trump agenda!

It is more important than ever that we keep building the grassroots movement against war, militarism, racism, anti-immigrant scapegoating and neoliberal capitalism's assault against workers' living standards and the environment.

Real social change comes from the bottom, the mobilized grassroots, and not from the centers of institutional power, the professional politicians or the capitalist elites.

This country needs a real political revolution. Millions of people feel entirely disenfranchised by a political system that delivered the least favorable and trusted candidates in U.S. history. Many hoped that the Bernie Sanders campaign would represent a new direction and opportunity to take on entrenched power and extreme inequality, for a higher minimum wage, to defend Social Security, rebuild the labor movement, provide universal health care and free tuition.

Donald Trump is a racist, sexist bigot. On Inauguration Day, thousands will be in the streets to give voice to the millions of people in this country who are demanding systemic change and who reject Trump's anti-people program.

Join us on January 20, 2017, for a massive mobilization of the people!

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

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Support Chelsea's petition to reduce sentence to time served

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View it in your browser.

Support Chelsea's petition to Obama:
Reduce sentence to time served

"New York Times, November 14, 2016 -- Chelsea Manning, who confessed to disclosing archives of secret diplomatic and military documents to WikiLeaks in 2010 and has been incarcerated longer than any other convicted leaker in American history, has formally petitioned President Obama to reduce the remainder of her 35-year sentence to the more than six years she has already served."

Sign the whitehouse.gov petition in
support of Chelsea's request today!

Official clemency application from Chelsea Manning.
November 10, 2016
Also coverage by the Guardian and the New York Times. November 14, 2016
Washington DC action this Saturday!The White House Committee to Pardon Chelsea Manning invites you to join them this Saturday, November 19th from noon to 2pm in front of the White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC. They are calling on President Obama to pardon Chelsea Manning. Facebook page for more info.
Fort Leavenworth vigil this Sunday! The Kansas City Peace and Social Justice group is organizing a vigil for Chelsea this Sunday, November 20th at 2pm at the public right-of-way near the long driveway into Ft. Leavenworth, near Metropolitan & North 10th Street.

Chelsea tried committing suicide
a second time in October

Chelsea has been informed that the Army will hold another disciplinary hearing on the second attempted suicide, which was prompted by the punishment given by the first disciplinary hearing following her initial suicide attempt.

New York Times
November 4, 2016

Chelsea Manning tried to commit suicide last month as she was starting a week of solitary confinement at the prison barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., her punishment for a previous attempt to end her life in July.

Ms. Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst who is serving a 35-year sentence for leaking archives of secret documents to WikiLeaks, disclosed the attempted suicide, which took place Oct. 4, in a statement she dictated over the phone to a member of her volunteer support network. She asked that it be sent this week to The New York Times, according to members of the network who want to keep their identities private.

Chase Strangio, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer representing Ms. Manning, formerly known as Bradley Manning, confirmed the attempt, which raised new questions about the military's handling of the troubled soldier, dating to when she was permitted to deploy to Iraq and kept at her post in a secure facility despite signs of erratic behavior.
Read the full NYT article here

Sign the whitehouse.gov petition in
support of Chelsea's request today!

follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend

unsubscribe from this list| view email in browser

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http://www.freeleonard.org/case/

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Defying the Tomb: Selected Prison Writings and Art of Kevin "Rashid" Johnson featuring exchanges with an Outlaw Kindle Edition

by Kevin Rashid Johnson (Author), Tom Big Warrior (Introduction), Russell Maroon Shoatz(Introduction)

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http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013RU5M4S

Join the Fight to Free Rev. Pinkney!

Click HERE to view in browser

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

UPDATE:

Today is the 406th day that Rev. Edward Pinkney of Benton Harbor, Michigan
languishes in prison doing felony time for a misdemeanor crime he did not
commit. Today is also the day that Robert McKay, a spokesperson for the
Free Rev. Pinkney campaign, gave testimony before United Nations
representatives about the plight of Rev. Pinkney at a hearing held in
Chicago. The hearing was called in order to shed light upon the
mistreatment of African-Americans in the United States and put it on an
international stage. And yet as the UN representatives and audience heard
of the injustices in the Pinkney case many gasped in disbelief and asked
with frowns on their faces, "how is this possible?" But disbelief quickly
disappeared when everyone realized these were the same feelings they had
when they first heard of Flint and we all know what happened in Flint. FREE
REV. PINKNEY NOW.

Please send letters to:
Marquette Branch Prison
Rev. Edward Pinkney N-E-93 #294671
1960 US Hwy 41 South
Marquette, MI 49855

Please donate at http://bhbanco.org (Donate button) or send checks to BANCO:
c/o Dorothy Pinkney
1940 Union St.
Benton Harbor, MI 49022

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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State Seeks to Remove Innocent PA Lifer's Attorney! Free Corey Walker!

The PA Office of the Attorney General (OAG) filed legal action to remove Corey Walker's attorney, Rachel Wolkenstein, in November 2014. On Tuesday, February 9, 2016 the evidentiary hearing to terminate Wolkenstein as Corey Walker's pro hac vice lawyer continues before Judge Lawrence Clark of the Dauphin County Court of Common Pleas in Harrisburg, PA.

Walker, assisted by Wolkenstein, filed three sets of legal papers over five months in 2014 with new evidence of Walker's innocence and that the prosecution and police deliberately used false evidence to convict him of murder. Two weeks after Wolkenstein was granted pro hac vice status, the OAG moved against her and Walker.

The OAG claims that Wolkenstein's political views and prior legal representation of Mumia Abu-Jamal and courtroom arrest by the notorious Judge Albert Sabo makes it "intolerable" for her to represent Corey Walker in the courts of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Over the past fifteen months the OAG has effectively stopped any judicial action on the legal challenges of Corey Walker and his former co-defendant, Lorenzo Johnson against their convictions and sentences to life imprisonment without parole while it proceeds in its attempts to remove Wolkenstein.

This is retaliation against Corey Walker who is innocent and framed. Walker and his attorney won't stop until they thoroughly expose the police corruption and deliberate presentation of false evidence to convict Corey Walker and win his freedom.

This outrageous attack on Corey Walker's fundamental right to his lawyer of choice and challenge his conviction must cease. The evidence of his innocence and deliberate prosecutorial frame up was suppressed for almost twenty years. Corey Walker must be freed!

Read: Jim Crow Justice – The Frame-up Of Corey Walker by Charles Brover

Go to FreeCoreyWalker.org to provide help and get more information.

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TAKE ACTION: Mumia is sick

Contact: Prison Radio (info@prisonradio.org)

Website:

http://bit.ly/hepcfaq

Judge Robert Mariani of the U.S. District Court has issued an order in Mumia's case, granting Mumia's lawyers Bret Grote and Robert Boyle's motion to supplement the record.

New medical records documenting Mumia's deteriorated condition from February and March, will be presented June 6th. Judge Mariani has also instructed the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections to provide any updates and changes in DOC hep C treatment and policies which affect the plaintiff's treatment.

Calling into Prison Radio, Mumia noted:

"My friends, my brothers, it ain't over 'til it's over, but there is some motion. It means that we're moving closer to hopefully some real treatment not of my symptoms, but of my disease. I thank you all for being there. And freedom is a constant struggle. I love you all. From what used to be death row, this is Mumia, your brother."

Mumia remains quite ill. While stable, his curable hepatitis C is still active and progressive. The only treatment Mumia has received over the last 14 months to this day is skin ointment and photo therapy. He has not received the medically indicated treatment for hep C, the very condition that put him in the Intensive Care Unit in March 2015.

Hepatitis C is a progressive disease that attacks Mumia's organs, skin and liver. Unless the court orders the new hepatitis C treatment - one pill a day for 12 weeks, with a 95% cure rate - Mumia's health will remain at serious risk.

Before the court is the preliminary injunction motion, which demands immediate medical care.

The exhaustion of administrative remedy and the procedural hurdles make it extremely difficult for people in prison to actually get their grievances heard through the review process. The Prison Litigation Reform Act was passed specifically to create these very almost insurmountable barriers to access to the courts.

Please read the New Yorker article, Why it is Nearly Impossible for Prisoners to Sue Prisons.

In Abu-Jamal vs. Kerestes, one very telling point was when the DOC's Director of Medical Care, Dr. Paul Noel, took the stand. He said that he had never testified before in court! He has worked for the DOC for over a decade.

That meant that no prisoner had access to adversarial cross examination. Before Mumia's day in court in late December 2015, no prisoner ever had the opportunity to expose the PA DOC's blatant lies. Lies so bold that Dr. Noel disavowed his own signed affidavit, and in court he stated that he "did not sign it and it was false and misleading". The knowingly false and fabricated document was put in the record by Laura Neal, Senior DOC attorney.

Take Action for Mumia

Call prison officials to demand immediate treatment!

Dr. Paul Noel-Director of Medical Care, DOC
717-728-5309 x 5312

John Wetzel- Secretary of DOC
717+728-2573 x 4109

Dr. Carl Keldie-Chief Medical Officer, Correct Care Solutions
800-592-2974 x 5783

Theresa DelBalso-Superintendent, SCI Mahanoy
570-773-2158 x 8101

Tom Wolf, PA Governor
Phone 717-787-2500
Fax 717-772-8284
Email governor@pa.gov

Sign the Petition now to demand Mumia's right to life-saving hepatitis C care.

Help Mumia's lawyers prepare to demand access to Mumia's medical records from court!

Thank you for keeping Mumia in your heart and mind,
Noelle Hanrahan
Director, Prison Radio

SUPPORTERS OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL, AND FREE QUALITY HEALTH CARE FOR ALL:

The Oasis Clinic in Oakland, CA, which treats patients with Hepatitis-C (HCV), demands an end to the outrageous price-gouging of Big Pharma corporations, like Gilead Sciences, which hike-up the cost for essential, life-saving medications such as the cure for the deadly Hepatitis-C virus, in order to reap huge profits. The Oasis Clinic's demand is:

PUBLIC HEALTH, NOT CORPORATE WEALTH!

WE DEMAND:

PUBLIC HEALTH, NOT CORPORATE WEALTH!

IMMEDIATE AND FREE TREATMENT FOR ALL HCV-INFECTED PRISONERS!

NO EXECUTION BY MEDICAL NEGLECT!

JAIL DRUG PROFITEERS, FREE MUMIA!

This message from:
Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222 • Oakland CA 94610 • www.laboractionmumia.org
06 January 2016

Mumia Is Innocent! Free Mumia!

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Imam Jamil (H.Rap Brown) moved

Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (H. Rap Brown) was moved by bus from USP Canaan in Waymart, PA. to USP Tucson, Arizona. His mailing address is: USP Tucson United States Penitentiary P.O. Box Tucson, AZ. 85734 (BOP number 99974555)

Sign the Petition:

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, THE Bureau of Prisons, The Governor of Georgia

We are aware of a review being launched of criminal cases to determine whether any defendants were wrongly convicted and or deserve a new trail because of flawed forensic evidence and or wrongly reported evidence. It was stated in the Washington Post in April of 2012 that Justice Department Officials had known for years that flawed forensic work led to convictions of innocent people. We seek to have included in the review of such cases that of Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin. We understand that all cases reviewed will include the Innocence Project. We look forward to your immediate attention to these overdue wrongs.
ASAP: The Forgotten Imam Project
P.O. Box 373
Four Oaks, NC 27524

Signed,
Luqman Abdullah-ibn Al-Sidiq

https://www.causes.com/actions/1671495-the-forgotten-imam-jamil-abdullah-al-amin-h-rap-brown?utm_campaign=post_mailer%2Fcampaign_update.cb_71432&utm_medium=email&utm_source=causes

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Major Battles On

For over 31 years, Major Tillery has been a prisoner of the State.

Despite that extraordinary fact, he continues his battles, both in the prison for his health, and in the courts for his freedom.

Several weeks ago, Tillery filed a direct challenge to his criminal conviction, by arguing that a so-called "secret witness" was, in fact, a paid police informant who was given a get-out-of-jail-free card if he testified against Tillery.

Remember I mentioned, "paid?"

Well, yes--the witness was 'paid'--but not in dollars. He was paid in sex!

In the spring of 1984, Robert Mickens was facing decades in prison on rape and robbery charges. After he testified against Tillery, however, his 25-year sentence became 5 years: probation!

And before he testified he was given an hour and a ½ private visit with his girlfriend--at the Homicide Squad room at the Police Roundhouse. (Another such witness was given another sweetheart deal--lie on Major, and get off!)

To a prisoner, some things are more important than money. Like sex!

In a verified document written in April, 2016, Mickens declares that he lied at trial, after being coached by the DAs and detectives on the case.

He lied to get out of jail--and because he could get with his girl.

Other men have done more for less.

Major's 58-page Petition is a time machine back into a practice that was once common in Philadelphia.

In the 1980s and '90s, the Police Roundhouse had become a whorehouse.

Major, now facing serious health challenges from his hepatitis C infection, stubborn skin rashes, and dangerous intestinal disorders, is still battling.

And the fight ain't over.

[©'16 MAJ 6/29/16]

Major Tillery Needs Your Help and Support

Major Tillery is an innocent man. There was no evidence against Major Tillery for the 1976 poolroom shootings that left one man dead and another wounded. The surviving victim gave a statement to homicide detectives naming others—not Tillery or his co-defendant—as the shooters. Major wasn't charged until 1980, he was tried in 1985.

The only evidence at trial came from these jailhouse informants who were given sexual favors and plea deals for dozens of pending felonies for lying against Major Tillery. Both witnesses now declare their testimony was manufactured by the police and prosecution. Neither witness had personal knowledge of the shooting.

This is a case of prosecutorial misconduct and police corruption that goes to the deepest levels of rot in the Philadelphia criminal injustice system. Major Tillery deserves not just a new trial, but dismissal of the charges against him and his freedom from prison.

It cost a lot of money for Major Tillery to be able to file his new pro se PCRA petition and continue investigation to get more evidence of the state misconduct. He needs help to get lawyers to make sure this case is not ignored. Please contribute, now.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

Financial Support: Tillery's investigation is ongoing, to get this case filed has been costly and he needs funds for a legal team to fight this to his freedom!

Go to JPay.com;

code: Major Tillery AM9786 PADOC

Tell Philadelphia District Attorney

Seth Williams:

Free Major Tillery! He is an innocent man, framed by police and and prosecution.

Call: 215-686-8711 or

Email: DA_Central@phila.gov

Write to:

Major Tillery AM9786

SCI Frackville

1111 Altamont Blvd.

Frackville, PA 17931

For More Information, Go To: Justice4MajorTillery/blogspot

Call/Write:

Kamilah Iddeen (717) 379-9009, Kamilah29@yahoo.com

Nancy Lockhart (843) 412-2035, thewrongfulconviction@gmail.com

Rachel Wolkenstein, Esq. (917) 689-4009, RachelWolkenstein@gmail.com

Justice4MajorTillery/blogspot

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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

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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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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Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson

Updates from Team Lorenzo Johnson

Dear Supporters and Friends,

Show your support for Lorenzo by wearing one of our beautiful new campaign t-shirts! If you donate $20 (or more!) to the Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson, we will send you a t-shirt, while supplies last. Make sure to note your size and shipping address in the comment section on PayPal, or to include this information with a check.

Here is a message from Lorenzo's wife, Tazza Salvatto:

My husband is innocent, FREE HIM NOW!

Lorenzo Johnson is a son, husband, father and brother. His injustice has been a continued nightmare for our family. Words cant explain our constant pain, I wish it on no one. Not even the people responsible for his injustice.

This is about an innocent man who has spent 20 years and counting in prison. The sad thing is Lorenzo's prosecution knew he was innocent from day one. These are the same people society relies on to protect us.

Not only have these prosecutors withheld evidence of my husbands innocence by NEVER turning over crucial evidence to his defense prior to trial. Now that Lorenzo's innocence has been revealed, the prosecution refuses to do the right thing. Instead they are "slow walking" his appeal and continuing their malicious prosecution.

When my husband or our family speak out about his injustice, he's labeled by his prosecutor as defaming a career cop and prosecutor. If they are responsible for Lorenzo's wrongful conviction, why keep it a secret??? This type of corruption and bullying of families of innocent prisoners to remain silent will not be tolerated.

Our family is not looking for any form of leniency. Lorenzo is innocent, we want what is owed to him. JUSTICE AND HIS IMMEDIATE FREEDOM!!!

Lorenzo's wife,

Tazza Salvatto

Lorenzo is continuing to fight for his freedom with the support of his lead counsel, Michael Wiseman, The Pennsylvania Innocence Project, the Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice, and the Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson.

Thank you all for reading this message and please take the time to visit our 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

Directly at LorenzoJohnson17932@gmail.com

Directly on ConnectNetwork -- instructions here

Have a wonderful day!

- The Team to Free Lorenzo Johnson

freelorenzojohnson.org

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

freelorenzojohnson.org

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B. ARTICLES IN FULL

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1) Fake Cowboys and Real Indians

"...Jon Stewart once described the national holiday just passed. 'I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way,' he said. 'I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land.'"

Timothy Egan DEC. 2, 2016

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/02/opinion/fake-cowboys-and-real-indians.html?action=clic

k&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&regi

on=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region

2) How Big Banks Are Putting Rain Forests in Peril

By HIROKO TABUCHI DEC. 3, 2016

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/03/business/energy-environment/how-

big-banks-are-putting-rain-forests-in-peril.html?ref=world&_r=0

3) Rodrigo Duterte Says Donald Trump Endorses His Violent Antidrug Campaign

By FELIPE VILLAMOR DEC. 3, 2016

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/03/world/asia/philippines-rodrigo-duterte-donald-trump.html?ref=world

4) A Nation in Mourning: Images of Cuba After Fidel Castro

(Take note of the Cuban military personnel along side of the road waiting for Fidel's ashes to pass. They are completely unarmed! --BW)

By TOMAS MUNITA, MAURICIO LIMA and AZAM AHMED <http://www.nytimes.com/by/azam-ahmed>DEC. 3, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/03/world/americas/a-nation-in-mourning-images-of-cuba-after-fidel-castro.html?ref=world<http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/03/world/americas/a-nation-in-mourning-images-of-cuba-after-fidel-castro.html?ref=world>

5) Standing Rock Pipeline Protesters, Ordered to Leave, Dig In
By JACK HEALY DEC. 3, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/03/us/standing-rock-pipeline-protest-north-dakota.html?
rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=
stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0

6) Fashion Steps Up at Standing Rock

On the Runway

By VALERIYA SAFRONOVA DEC. 2, 2016

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/02/fashion/standing-rock-dakota-access-

pipeline-pyer-moss.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action

=click&contentCollection=us&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version

=latest&contentPlacement=10&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=1

7) Cuba Puts Fidel Castro to Rest: 'A Man So Large in a Box So Small'

By KIRK SEMPLE DEC. 4, 2016

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/04/world/americas/fidel-castro-funeral-cuba.html?action=

click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region

=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&hp

8) Morton County Sheriff Defends Tactics Against Pipeline Protesters

By REUTERS DEC. 4, 2016, 12:03 P.M. E.S.T

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2016/12/04/business/04reuters-north-dakota-pipeline.html?src=busln

9) Army Blocks Drilling of Dakota Access Oil Pipeline
By JACK HEALY and NICHOLAS FANDOS DEC. 4, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/04/us/federal-officials-to-explore-different-
route-for-dakota-pipeline.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=
story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

10) Torture Can Be Useful, Nearly Half of Americans in Poll Say
By SOMINI SENGUPTA DEC. 5, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/world/americas/torture-can-be-useful-nearly-half-of-americans-in-poll-say.html?ref=world&_r=0

11) For Blacks Facing Parole in New York State, Signs of a Broken System
By MICHAEL WINERIP, MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ and ROBERT GEBELOFF DEC. 4, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/04/nyregion/new-york-prisons-inmates-parole-race.html?rref=collection
%2Fsectioncollection%2Fnyregion&action=click&contentCollection=nyregion&region=rank&module=package
&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0

12) Artists and Advocates Say Deadly Oakland Fire is Product of
Housing Crisis
By Sam Levin
December 5, 2016
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/05/oakland-warehouse-fire-ghost-ship-housing-crisis

13) As North Dakota Pipeline Is Blocked, Veterans at Standing Rock Cheer

By JACK HEALYDEC. 5, 2016

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/us/veterans-north-dakota-standing-rock.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=5&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0

14) A Bigger Economic Pie, but a Smaller Slice for Half of the U.S.

"Stagnant wages have sliced the share of income collected by the bottom half of the population to 12.5 percent in 2014, from 20 percent of the total in 1980. Where did that money go? Essentially, to the top 1 percent, whose share of the nation’s income nearly doubled to more than 20 percent during that same 34-year period. Average incomes grew by 61 percent. But nearly $7 out of every additional $10 went to those in the top tenth of the income scale. Inequality has soared over that period. In 1980, the researchers found, someone in the top 1 percent earned on average $428,200 a year — about 27 times more than the typical person in the bottom half, whose annual income equaled $16,000. ...Today, half of American adults are still pretty much earning that same $16,000 on average — in 1980 dollars, adjusted for inflation — while members of the top 1 percent now bring home $1,304,800 — 81 times as much."

By PATRICIA COHENDEC. 6, 2016

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/business/economy/a-bigger-economic-pie-but-a-smaller-slice-for-half-of-the-us.html?ref=business

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1) Fake Cowboys and Real Indians
"...Jon Stewart once described the national holiday just passed. 'I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way,' he said. 'I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land.'"
Timothy Egan DEC. 2, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/02/opinion/fake-cowboys-and-real-indians.html?action=clic
k&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&regi
on=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region

For most of this past week, a winter storm has lashed at the North Dakota prairie camp where the Standing Rock Sioux are making a stand to keep an oil pipeline away from water that is a source of life for them.

The sight of native people shivering in a blizzard, while government authorities threaten to starve them out or forcefully remove them, is a living diorama of so much awful history between the First Americans and those who took everything from them.

The authorities have brought water cannons, rubber bullets, tear gas, helicopters and dogs against what has become one of the largest gatherings of tribes, from all nations, in a century. They've given the protesters, who will soon include a brigade of veterans, until Dec. 5 to disperse.

Now flash back a few years to another Western standoff, the Nevada siege of Cliven Bundy, the deadbeat rancher who drew heavily armed white militia members to defend a man who stiffed the government while grazing his cattle on public land. There, the feds backed off.

Mr. Bundy and his thugs on the range were praised by Fox News and Tea Party Republicans. His two sons later took over the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, occupying that sanctuary of birds until they were arrested. In October, the Bundys and five others were acquitted of conspiracy and weapons charges.

At the heart of these cases is land — who owns it, and the narrative justification for a way of life. The Bundy brothers are comic-book cowboys. One of them runs a valet service in Phoenix. The other has a construction company in Utah. But they look the part; playing the role of principled Western men doin' what a man's got to do.

For the Indians, the Dakota Access Pipeline, which will run from oil fields in North Dakota to a terminal in Illinois, is an existential threat. "Water is life" is the protest name. As planned, the pipeline would pump an artery of oil under the Missouri River — the source of the tribe's water. The Indians want the pipeline rerouted.

The new administration of Donald J. Trump will be heavy with people who see public land, and Indian Country, as just one thing — a place to drill for oil, move it along, or get out of the way.

The story behind the policy is all-important here — what Senator Al Franken called "the complex burden of historical trauma." Consider how Jon Stewart once described the national holiday just passed. "I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way," he said. "I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land."

Now consider what the Bundy brothers said they were fighting for when they took over the Malheur Wildlife Refuge by armed force earlier this year. They wanted the government to give up turf owned by every American and let a handful of white ranchers "come back and reclaim their land."

This prompted collective whiplash from members of the Paiute Tribe, whose people have lived in the high desert of Oregon for centuries. "For them to say they want to give the land back to the rightful owners — well, I just had to laugh at that," the tribal chairwoman, Charlotte Rodrique, said at the time.

The Indian view is much more than P.C. revisionism, if you believe in the rule of law. A huge swath of the northern Plains was promised to bands of the Sioux in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, one of the few times when Native Americans forced the government to terms after defeating it in war.

The tribes lost much of that treaty land to intruders, backed by the Army. "A more ripe and rank case of dishonorable dealings will never, in all possibility, be found in our history," the Supreme Court concluded in 1980. One of the legacies of the great Sioux tactician, Red Cloud, was an apt description of how the big emerging nation treated the diminished ones. "They made many promises," he said. "But they kept but one: They promised to take our land, and they took it."

The "complex burden" of trauma that Senator Franken referred to includes images of frozen Indian bodies in the snow after the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. And yet, even with that history haunting the present protest, many of the natives at Standing Rock are not bitter, and see this stand in spiritual terms.

"In the face of this we pray," Lyla June Johnston, a young Native leader, told me the day after the blizzards blew in. "In the face of this we love. In the face of this we forgive. Because the vast majority of water protectors know this is the greatest battle of all: to keep our hearts intact."

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2) How Big Banks Are Putting Rain Forests in Peril
By HIROKO TABUCHI DEC. 3, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/03/business/energy-environment/how-
big-banks-are-putting-rain-forests-in-peril.html?ref=world&_r=0

In early 2015, scientists monitoring satellite images at Global Forest Watch raised the alarm about the destruction of rain forests in Indonesia.

Environmental groups raced to the scene in West Kalimantan province, on the island of Borneo, to find a charred wasteland: smoldering fires, orangutans driven from their nests, and signs of an extensive release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

"There was pretty much no forest left," said Karmele Llano Sánchez, director of the nonprofit International Animal Rescue's orangutan rescue group, which set out to save the endangered primates. "All the forest had burned."

Fingers pointed to the Rajawali Group, a sprawling local conglomerate known for its ties to powerful politicians like Malaysia's scandal-plagued prime minister. But lesser known is how some of the world's largest banks have helped Rajawali — and other global agricultural powerhouses — expand their plantation empires.

The year before the clearing of trees in West Kalimantan, Rajawali's plantation arm secured $235 million in loans — funds that the Indonesian company used to buy out a partner and bolster its landholdings — from banks including Credit Suisse and Bank of America, according to an examination of lending data by The New York Times.

The deal forms part of at least $43 billion in loans and underwriting to companies linked to deforestation and forest burning in Southeast Asia alone, according to a tally compiled by the California-based Rainforest Action Network, the Dutch consultancy Profundo and the Indonesian nongovernmental organization TuK Indonesia. More than a third of that sum comes from American, European and Japanese banks, many of which have sustainability pledges that specifically mention deforestation.

That figure is almost certainly incomplete because not all financing is made public. It also excludes loans made by the same banks to forestry projects outside Southeast Asia, or financing provided to other, more global players. And it contrasts with efforts by companies like Nestlé and Procter & Gamble to distance themselves from suppliers linked to deforestation.

And while there has been a growing movement among endowments and pension funds to divest from the fossil-fuel industry — and banks have started to back away from financing coal projects — any move away from deforestation has been slower to catch on, experts say. The role of banks has come under the spotlight in recent weeks after environmentalists called out banks like Bank of America and Goldman Sachs for financing the contentious Dakota Access oil pipeline project.

The money is aiding a process that scientists say destroys ecosystems, displaces indigenous communities and covers the region each year in a thick, suffocating smog that stretches from Jakarta to Hong Kong.

Deforestation — and the fires that frequently accompany it — also generates one-tenth of total global warming emissions, making forestry loss one of the biggest single contributors to global warming, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.

"Destroying the world's forests makes fighting climate change almost impossible," said Andrew W. Mitchell, executive director of the Global Canopy Programme, a forestry think tank. "The finance sector is really lagging behind in realizing that."

The Palm Oil Boom

In funding Rajawali's palm oil plantations, the banks appear to have violated their own sustainability policies. In its forestry and agribusiness policy, adopted in 2008, Credit Suisse says it will not finance or advise companies with operations in "primary tropical moist forests" like those of West Kalimantan. Bank of America says in a banking policy, adopted in 2004, that it will not finance commercial projects that result in the clearing of primary tropical moist forests.

The 2014 deal financed Rajawali's expansion into palm oil by helping the conglomerate buy out a former partner, invest in new palm oil mills and increase its landholdings. Demand for palm oil is surging worldwide, driven by rising incomes in markets like China and India and a switch away from trans fats by Americans and Europeans.

Rajawali's plantations have been accused by environmental and labor groups of deforestation and illegal burning. Indonesia is one of the world's biggest palm oil producers, and forestry loss there and elsewhere ranks as one of the biggest single contributors to global warming.

Sebastian Sharp, a spokesman for Rajawali's plantation arm, acknowledged that the burning and clearing on its West Kalimantan forest sites might be illegal but said local communities encroaching on its properties and starting the fires were to blame. He said the company did not engage in illegal burning or clearing.

Credit Suisse declined to comment on its Rajawali deal or to say whether the deal violated its sustainability policies. A Bank of America spokesman, Bill Halldin, said that the most serious accusations against Rajawali came after the 2014 loan, in which the bank played "a very small role."

"Today, we would certainly consider more information before making any decision on any client," he said.

Brigitte Seegers, a spokeswoman for ABN Amro, declined to comment.

A Deadly Haze

Climate concerns have been brought into sharp relief by the impending presidency of Donald J. Trump, who has called climate change a hoax. Mr. Trump has said he will pull the United States out of the Paris accord, a commitment by 95 countries to take concrete measures to reduce planet-warming carbon emissions.

Daily emissions from Indonesia's forest fires last year at times exceededemissions produced by all economic activity in the United States. A recent Harvard and Columbia study estimated that the fires caused at least 100,000 premature deaths across Southeast Asia. The World Bank estimates that the fires cost Indonesia's economy $16 billion.

Although deforestation has slowed in many parts of the world, notably in the Brazilian Amazon, forest clearing is on the rise in Southeast Asia. Indonesia, in particular, suffers the world's highest rates of forest loss, an average of almost 2.1 million acres a year, a study published in 2014 found.

About 15 percent of the world's historical forest cover remains intact, according to the World Resources Institute. The rest has been cleared or degraded or is in fragments.

Rajawali originally operated its palm plantation business, Green Eagle Holdings, as a joint venture with the French conglomerate Louis Dreyfus. But starting in 2014, Rajawali took the first step to consolidate the palm oil business under its control, and invest in new infrastructure.

Its loans from Western banks were crucial. In January 2014, Green Eagle attracted a $120 million loan from a group of lenders led by ABN Amro. In July of that year, it scored an even bigger loan of $235 million from a syndicate led by Credit Suisse. Bank of America also took part in that loan.

The financing allowed Green Eagle to buy out Louis Dreyfus to invest in new palm oil mills and increase its landholdings. In November 2014, Green Eagle merged with another plantation operator, BW Plantation; Rajawali is majority shareholder of the resulting company, Eagle High Plantations.

The banks issued those loans as Rajawali was being accused of extensive forest and peatland destruction, illegal burning, use of child labor and the use of force against workers at plantations under its control.

Land-cover mapping by the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry, and satellite imagery from Global Forest Watch, show forest loss at two sites in West Kalimantan from 2011 to 2013 and again in 2015, with much of the forest gone by the end of the year. Those sites included around 11,000 hectares of peat, which, when set alight, can smolder for months underground.

Zamzami, who goes by one name, a Greenpeace staff member in Indonesia who visited a Rajawali plantation in West Kalimantan in September 2015, said the burning continued. "It was difficult to breathe because of the smoke," he said in field notes. "Far away, on the horizon, I could see the forest wall."

Confronting Child Labor

Eagle High is now one of Indonesia's largest palm oil plantation operators, with more than a million acres in land rights under its control, according to an investors' presentation dated September 2014.

Human rights organizations have reported that children as young as 6 work to support their parents in another Rajawali-controlled plantation in the Papua province. That plantation has promised to support the abolition of child labor by ensuring that there are no children on plantation sites.

In December 2015, a 22-year-old worker was shot dead at the plantation by state security forces. It was unclear why state forces were on private property.

Mr. Sharp, the Eagle High spokesman, blamed local villagers for the forest clearing and burning on its sites. "It's being done by local communities, and we have no control over that," he said. Environmental groups argue that plantation companies are responsible for protecting their sites.

Mr. Sharp said that there were instances in which workers brought their children to plantations but that the company was "trying to brainstorm ways in which we can stop them from doing that."

He also questioned the wisdom of Indonesian labor law. "Why can't we hire children at 15? Families need income," he said. Under the country's law, the minimum age for hazardous work, including jobs on plantations, is 18.

The worker who was killed, Marvel Doga, was "drunk and violent, poured petrol everywhere and threatened to set fire, and he had with him a bow and arrow" when nearby state security forces tried to incapacitate him, leading to his death, Mr. Sharp said. He said Eagle High paid "thousands of dollars" to his family in compensation.

Credit Suisse and ABN Amro declined to discuss specific deals. Bank of America declined to comment on the accusations.

But in a February 2015 research note, Credit Suisse deemed Rajawali's palm oil push a success. Eagle High's increased landholdings and land rights signaled "significant headroom for expansion" of palm oil production, Priscilla Tjitra, an equity analyst for the bank, said in a report to clients.

"The allocation of finance is so influential in our economy and to our environment," said Tom Picken of the Rainforest Action Network. "But there's little way we can hold financial sectors to account."

Running Out of Refuges

The orangutan rescues continue. The world has lost 60 percent of its population of Bornean orangutans since 1950, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. In July, the Bornean orangutan was listed as critically endangered.

International Animal Rescue, which runs a temporary shelter for about 100 orangutans in West Kalimantan, said its staff had rescued roughly 50 of the primates during the 2015 burning season, twice the number the organization rescues in an average year.

"They were all starving, all skinny," said Ms. Sánchez, the orangutan rescue group's director. So far this year, about 25 orangutans have been rehabilitated.

"The problem is that every time an area is destroyed and orangutans are under real threat, we have to look for areas to release them, and that's challenging," she said. "We're running out of places where we can release these orangutans."

In September, Rajawali's plantation arm secured a $192 million loan from Bank Negara Indonesia, a state bank, to refinance the debt held by its plantation subsidiaries and to double the capacity of palm oil refineries in Papua and West Kalimantan.

Bank Negara Indonesia's sustainability policies say that its clients must adopt "minimum environmental, social and governance standards." The bank did not respond to requests for comment.

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3) Rodrigo Duterte Says Donald Trump Endorses His Violent Antidrug Campaign
By FELIPE VILLAMOR DEC. 3, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/03/world/asia/philippines-rodrigo-duterte-donald-trump.html?ref=world

MANILA — President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines said on Saturday that President-elect Donald J. Trump had endorsed his brutal antidrug campaign, telling Mr. Duterte that the Philippines was conducting it "the right way."

Mr. Duterte, who spoke with Mr. Trump by telephone on Friday, said Mr. Trump was "quite sensitive" to "our worry about drugs."

"He wishes me well, too, in my campaign, and he said that, well, we are doing it as a sovereign nation, the right way," Mr. Duterte said.

There was no immediate response from Mr. Trump to Mr. Duterte's description of the phone call, and his transition team could not be reached for comment.

Since his election last month, Mr. Trump has held a series of unscripted calls with foreign leaders, several of which have broken radically from past American policies and diplomatic practice. A call on Friday with the president of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, appeared to be out of sync with four decades of United States policy toward China and prompted a Chinese call to the White House.

Mr. Duterte has led a campaign against drug abuse in which he has encouraged the police and others to kill people they suspect of using or selling drugs. Since he took office in June, more than 2,000 people have been killed by the police in what officers describe as drug raids, and the police say several hundred more have been killed by vigilantes.

DUTERTE'S ANTI-DRUG CAMPAIGN BY THE NUMBERS

712
suspects killed in police operations
1,067
people killed by vigilantes
10,205
drug-related arrests
640,233
suspects voluntarily surrendered to the police

The program has been condemned by the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and others for what rights organizations have characterized as extrajudicial killings. In rejecting such criticism from the United States this fall, Mr. Duterte called Mr. Obama a "son of a whore."

In a summary of the phone call with Mr. Trump released by Mr. Duterte's office on Saturday morning, Mr. Duterte said the two had spoken for just a few minutes but covered many topics, including the antidrug campaign.

"I could sense a good rapport, an animated President-elect Trump," Mr. Duterte said. "And he was wishing me success in my campaign against the drug problem."

Mr. Duterte added: "He understood the way we are handling it, and I said that there's nothing wrong in protecting a country. It was a bit very encouraging in the sense that I supposed that what he really wanted to say was that we would be the last to interfere in the affairs of your own country."

Mr. Duterte, who has said he was seeking "a separation" from the United States, a longtime ally, and has threatened to bar American troops from his country, also said, "We assured him of our ties with America." He did not elaborate on that comment.

Mr. Duterte also said that Mr. Trump had invited him to visit New York and Washington, and that Mr. Trump said he wanted to attend the summit meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations next year in the Philippines.

Mr. Duterte has often been compared to Mr. Trump for his blunt speech and populist positions.

"I appreciate the response that I got from President-elect Trump, and I would like to wish him success," Mr. Duterte said. "He will be a good president for the United States of America."

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4) A Nation in Mourning: Images of Cuba After Fidel Castro

(Take note of the Cuban military personnel along side of the road waiting for Fidel's ashes to pass. They are completely unarmed! --BW)

Cuba declared nine days of mourning after Fidel Castro's death, a period that will culminate in his funeral on Sunday. Photographers for The New York Times crossed the nation to capture the mood of Cubans grappling with life without him.

Students gathered at the University of Havana. Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

Havana, by nature, is a noisy place. Honking, chatter and pulsing music are just three strands of the city's braided soundtrack. But the death of Mr. Castro brought an eerie silence.

The government banned drinking, partying and loud music, leaving the city on mute, bereft of its melody and verve.

Mr. Castro's ashes were taken into the countryside, on a route that retraced, in reverse, the steps of the revolution he led in 1959. Tens of thousands crowded roads and open stretches along the way.

A carriage carried Fidel Castro's ashes in Havana. Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

Sorrow in Santa Clara as his ashes passed by. Tomas Munita for The New York Times

A ubiquitous image, here in a hair salon in Havana. Tomas Munita for The New York Times

Military personnel awaited the carriage in Ciego de Ávila. Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

For many Cubans, the death of Mr. Castro felt like that of a father — one with whom they had a complicated relationship. In his nearly 50 years leading the nation, he brought much to Cuba, including free health care and education, but he also oversaw economic deprivation and stifled freedom.

Some people hardly mourned at all, yet kept quiet all the same, out of fear, respect or a sense of social obligation.

But along the pockmarked highway to Santiago de Cuba, where Mr. Castro will be buried Sunday and where his revolution began, the clearest impression was borne on the banners and shirts of those paying their respects: Yo soy Fidel.

Tears as the caravan passed in Santa Clara. Tomas Munita for The New York Times

A basketball court in Havana. Tomas Munita for The New York Times

A vegetable market in Havana. Tomas Munita for The New York Times

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5) Standing Rock Pipeline Protesters, Ordered to Leave, Dig In
By JACK HEALY DEC. 3, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/03/us/standing-rock-pipeline-protest-north-dakota.html?
rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=
stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0

Protesters facing off with the police on Friday outside the Oceti Sakowin camp in North Dakota. The authorities have ordered the protesters to evacuate the camp by Monday.Cassi Alexandra for The New York Times

CANNON BALL, N.D. — Lee Plenty Wolf knows the government wants him to clear out of the snowbound tepee where he stokes the fire, sings traditional Oglala songs and sleeps alongside a pair of women from France and California who came to protest an oil pipeline in the stinging cold. But he and thousands of protesters are vowing to make what may be their last stand at Standing Rock.

The orders to evacuate the sprawling protest camp on this frozen prairie just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation came down last week from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the North Dakota governor's office. After four months of prayer marches and clashes with law enforcement officials who responded with tear gas and water cannons, the protesters now have until Monday to leave.

The government said it would not forcibly remove anyone, but could cite people for trespassing or other offenses.

At the camp, defiance is rising like smoke from the stovepipe of Mr. Plenty Wolf's tepee. People are here to stay. They are building yurts and hammering together plywood for bunkhouses and lodges. The communal kitchen stops serving dinner at 9:30 p.m., and reopens a half-hour later as a sleeping space.

"I ain't going nowhere," Mr. Plenty Wolf said one night as he cradled a buffalo-hide drum and reflected on grievances that run deeper than groundwater among Native Americans here. "We're getting tired of being pushed for 500 years. They've been taking, taking, taking, and enough's enough."

The approaching deadline to leave the camps and the dwindling days of President Obama's term create a feeling that any opportunity to stop the Dakota Access pipeline is fading. The fight has drawn thousands of tribal members, veterans, activists and celebrities and transformed a frozen patch of North Dakota into a focal point for environmental and tribal activism.

The main camp sits on federal lands that people at the camps say should rightfully belong to the Standing Rock Sioux under the terms of an 1851 treaty. To Mr. Plenty Wolf, closing it amounts to one more broken treaty.

The Standing Rock Sioux's concerns about an oil spill just upriver from their water source has resonated with environmentalist and clean-water groups across the country, and dozens have rallied to support the tribes. Climate-change activists who fought the Keystone XL pipeline have also joined the protests. "Keep it in the ground" is a rallying cry on banners.

Even as violent confrontations erupted in fields and along creeks and about 600 people were arrested, crews kept digging and burying the pipeline. Its 1,170-mile path from the oil fields of North Dakota to Southern Illinois is nearly complete.

Since September, the Obama administration has blocked construction on a critical section where the pipeline would burrow underneath a dammed section of the Missouri River that tribes say sits near sacred burial sites.

The tribe and activists are pushing Mr. Obama to order up a yearslong environmental review or otherwise block the project before he leaves office. President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Friday that he supported finishing the $3.7 billion pipeline.

Nobody here knows what to expect. The Army Corps of Engineers, which manages the federal land on which the main camp sits, says it wants protesters to make a "peaceful and orderly transition" out of the camps and to a "free speech zone" nearby. Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier of Morton County, a critic of the protesters who leads the law enforcement response, said his officers would not go into the camps to remove people.

With winter storms arriving, children took the opportunity to go sledding down a hill near the protest camp on Thursday. Cassi Alexandra for The New York Times

The divide between law enforcement officials and the tribe and protesters now feels more brittle than ever.

Dave Archambault II, the Standing Rock Sioux chairman, has asked the Justice Department to investigate allegations of civil rights violations. He criticized officers for using rubber bullets and sprays of freezing water against what he called unarmed, peaceful "water protectors."

"I'm worried about the next confrontation," he said. "The escalation has continued to rise. They have concertina wire all over the place. They're almost daring the water protectors. That's not safe."

Sheriff Kirchmeier dismissed the claims.

"I reject it all," he said in an interview in the basement of the county offices, where stacks of snacks, fruit and juice donated by the public sat beside scuffed riot shields. "The protesters are forcing police and us into taking action. They're committing criminal activities."

He said protesters had used sling shots to attack officers and thrown rocks and bottles. He and other local officials continue to criticize the federal government's response. They say the decision to delay the pipeline created months of instability that have cost Morton County $8 million. They say federal officials have offered little in the way of manpower or money to help.

On Friday, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said she had asked Justice Department officials who handle tribal-justice issues and community policing, as well as the United States attorney for North Dakota, to help mediate.

In recent days, conflicting statements from local and state officials have stirred confusion a about how vigorously officials will enforce the closure of the camps. A Morton County spokeswoman initially said people could face $1,000 fines for trying to bring supplies to the camp, only to be contradicted by a governor's spokesman who said that North Dakota had no plans to block supplies.

The authorities are still enforcing a blockade of the fastest, most direct route into the camp. But other roads – and supply lines – were still open. Pickup trucks and U-Hauls carried in lumber and propane tanks, pallets of bottled water, firewood and food. A container truck managed to crawl down the icy, flag-lined ramp into camp.

Cusi Ballew, a Pottawatomie member from southern Ohio making his second trip to the camp, was up on a ladder drilling pieces of plywood together to make a bunkhouse for Sioux tribal members. "Humans have been surviving winters for over 250,000 years," he said. "What's important isn't how we're doing it but why we're doing it. We're here for prayer and for action."

And more people were pouring in.

Veterans' groups were hoping to bring 2,000 Native and non-Native veterans to Standing Rock over the weekend. The Bismarck airport was a hive one morning: the actress Patricia Arquette could be seen heaving a suitcase off the baggage carousel; the director of a clean-water group was on the phone figuring out transportation; California friends from the Burning Man festival arrived with $5,000 worth of turmeric and medicinal herbs and oils.

At the camp, children sledded down the icy hills and horses cantered through the snow, and as night fell and people clustered around campfires to cook chili and fry bread, Laurie Running Hawk made her way to a small camp by the banks of the river. In the distance were the sounds of Native men drumming and singing, and the sight of tall floodlights along a ridge that marked the path of the pipeline.

Ms. Running Hawk grew up on the southern end of the Standing Rock Reservation and said she had been home from Minnesota for a powwow this summer when she and her 7-year-old and 15-year-old sons chanced onto one of the first major confrontations to block the pipeline. They joined in, and four months later, she was back, sleeping in a yurt with four teenagers from Minnesota who nearly froze to death on their first night in camp.

"I'm here," she said. "You're not going to kick me out. This is my land."

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6) Fashion Steps Up at Standing Rock

On the Runway

By VALERIYA SAFRONOVA DEC. 2, 2016

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/02/fashion/standing-rock-dakota-access-

pipeline-pyer-moss.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action

=click&contentCollection=us&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version

=latest&contentPlacement=10&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=1

Kerby Jean-Raymond, the founder of the independent, critically acclaimed fashion label Pyer Moss, planned to attend more than a dozen events at Art Basel Miami Beach this weekend, including an exhibition that showcases some of his label's shoes.

Instead, he'll be flying to North Dakota.

Mr. Jean-Raymond is among a number of designers and brands that are responding to the basic needs of demonstrators fighting to prevent the Dakota Access pipeline from being built near the Standing Rock Reservation out of concern for the environment and Native American ancestral lands.

Activists have requested nylon coveralls, heavy-duty sleeping bags, gloves, wool clothes and blankets, along with monetary donations, on their own websites and on Amazon.

After all, temperatures in Cannon Ball, N.D., the town near which protesters have gathered, range from highs in the low 30s to single digits. And it's not about to get any warmer. On Monday, Gov. Jack Dalrymple of North Dakota cited "anticipated harsh weather conditions" when issuing a mandatory evacuation order.

Exacerbating the effects of the cold are the water cannons that the police have used against protesters, causing early signs of hypothermia in some.

Over the last several days, Mr. Jean-Raymond, 30, has worked to secure an assortment of warm clothes, using his personal funds and his connections.

"I called Nike and I said, 'Instead of me keeping a couple of thousand dollars worth of sneakers that I'm not going to wear, let me send these back to you,'" Mr. Jean-Raymond said. "'Let me get some thermals instead.'" In exchange for the free sneakers, he received credits that he then used to purchase thermal clothing. He has also personally purchased outerwear from Uniqlo.

It's not the first time the designer, whose youthful but streamlined collections often engage with heavy topics, has taken a dive into activism. For his spring 2016 show, Mr. Jean-Raymond prepared a short film about race relations in the United States. And two years ago, he designed a T-shirt listing names of victims of police brutality, profits from which went to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Designers with less visible profiles have also jumped in to help Standing Rock demonstrators.

Bethany Yellowtail, a Los Angeles-based designer who is a member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe and who grew up on the Crow reservation in Montana, created a line of "Protector Gear," including T-shirts, hoodies, water bottles and hats, with profits to go directly to the Standing Rock Sioux, the tribe leading the protests. So far, the effort has raised over $10,000, Ms. Yellowtail said.

Louie Gong, founder of the brand Eighth Generation, sent 60 blankets to the Standing Rock campsite, at a cost he estimated to be about $10,000. "It seems like a small and superficial sacrifice, however, when compared to our cousins sleeping in tents that are covered in snow," Mr. Gong, who grew up in the NookSack tribe, wrote in an email.

Bliss and Mischief, a Los Angeles brand, is donating 15 percent of proceeds from every purchase until the end of 2016 to a cause of the customer's choice, with the Standing Rock Sioux offered as an option.

And at least one major corporation is involved. Patagonia gave a $25,000 grant to the Indigenous Environmental Network, a nongovernmental organization, to support the indigenous community at Standing Rock.

Ms. Yellowtail expressed enthusiasm about the outflow of support the tribes have received, but she cautioned non-Native American volunteers, whether in the fashion industry or otherwise, against blindly appropriating the cause of the tribes at Standing Rock.

"They're not asking allies to come out and speak for them, they're asking for people to stand in solidarity and be supportive," she said. "Ask yourself: Are you going for your own agenda or to listen and follow protocol?"

For Mr. Jean-Raymond, the purpose of his trip is simple. "I'm bringing as much supplies as I can out there," he said. "If I can do anything past that, I'll do it. If I feel like I'm unnecessary, I'll leave."

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7) Cuba Puts Fidel Castro to Rest: 'A Man So Large in a Box So Small'
By KIRK SEMPLE DEC. 4, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/04/world/americas/fidel-castro-funeral-cuba.html?action=
click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region
=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&hp

The ashes of Fidel Castro were transported on Sunday through Revolution Plaza in Santiago de Cuba.Juan Barreto/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

SANTIAGO de CUBA — Bringing to an end nine days of national mourning, the burial of Fidel Castro got underway on Sunday morning in a cemetery in this coastal city where, 63 years ago, he began his socialist revolution.

The Cuban government has closely guarded the details of the funeral service, which was private and closed to the news media, but the ceremony followed a short cortege through the city and a 21-gun salute, and Mr. Castro's remains were expected to be entombed near the burial site of José Martí, the 19th-century Cuban poet and independence fighter, perhaps the only other native son held in such great esteem by Cubans.

It made for a subdued ending to a busy week of remembrance marked by large, government-orchestrated tributes in the country's public squares and nonstop television and radio coverage that provided a continual soundtrack in households and businesses across this nation of 11 million.

The mourning period was a time of reflection for the nation, as it considered Mr. Castro's life and legacy, measuring the achievements of "Castroismo" against its undelivered promises.

"Nothing's perfect — it's taken a lot of work, that's true," said Liliam Dominguez, 60, a professor of psychology and pedagogy at the University of Havana, as students and faculty gathered for a memorial march at the university campus last week. "There are good things and bad things. But in the balance, for me, what we have had weighs more than what we haven't had."

Like many Cubans are quick to do, she extolled the virtues of the country's free health care and education systems. Her father was from a poor family and became a manual laborer in the sugar industry at 15, before the revolution. But a generation later, Ms. Dominguez and her two siblings earned university degrees — thanks, she said, to Mr. Castro's initiatives.

Many spoke of Mr. Castro this week in terms befitting a father figure. But Mr. Castro's long illness, which compelled him to cede power to his brother Raúl Castro a decade ago, seemed to blunt the emotional impact of his death. The nation's response was generally stoic, with public displays of unchecked emotion rare.

"For me, he's going to be alive forever," said Julia Piloto Cuellar, 53, who attended one of several public memorial gatherings last week in Havana, the capital. "He left physically, but he's going to be with us forever."

While analysts abroad speculated about the possible effects of Mr. Castro's death on Cuba's domestic and foreign policy, Cuban citizens appeared to keep expectations in check, perhaps because hopes for speedy improvements at other historic junctures, like the re-establishing of diplomatic relations with the United States in 2014, had gone unrealized for most people.

A banner of Mr. Castro was displayed during his funeral service in Santiago. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The government, meanwhile, harnessed Mr. Castro's death to reaffirm its socialist program, urging people to honor his legacy by redoubling their commitment to the ideals he espoused and the country he built. The government even placed logbooks in schools and other locations throughout the country and invited Cubans to sign an oath of loyalty to the revolution's ideals.

"This is undefeated Fidel, who summons us with his example and with the demonstration that, yes, we could; yes, we can; and yes, we will be able to overcome any obstacle, threat or turmoil in our firm commitment to build socialism in Cuba," President Raúl Castro said during an address to a large gathering here in Santiago on Saturday night.

The public events during the mourning period, as expected, drew vast, yet restrained, crowds. Perhaps the most dramatic homage was a three-day cortege that carried Mr. Castro's ashes hundreds of miles to Santiago from Havana, reversing the route that he and his guerrillas took after overthrowing the forces of Fulgencio Batista in 1959.

Hundreds of thousands of people lined the route, with some traveling long distances and many hours for a glimpse of the modest convoy and the small, flag-draped wooden box containing Mr. Castro's ashes, which sat in a glass case on a trailer hitched to a military jeep.

Esteban Caraballo, 63, a maintenance worker at an agricultural studies institute, rode in a caravan of 36 buses that had been provided by his town to carry spectators to the cortege route. They were waiting roadside at a spot east of Havana by 2 a.m. one morning last week, even though the cortege was not expected to arrive until after 8 a.m. People held small plastic Cuban flags on wooden sticks or clutched images of Mr. Castro to their chests.

"We're here to accompany our commander," Mr. Caraballo said. "Even though our commander has died, he will always accompany us."

The cortege came into view at about 8:30 a.m. and, as the crowd went quiet, the convoy passed and, a second later, disappeared from view. The bystanders walked in silence to their vehicles and drove away.

For those who could not make it to the cortege route, the entire trip was covered live on television and radio, which is how most Cubans saw it, including Maria Aleisy Hernandez Ruiz, 71, a retiree in the municipality of Santa Cruz del Norte, who kept her television on for much of the week.

"A man so large in a box so small — it really impacts you," she said. "He was such a big man, with his big chest."

The cross-country caravan was bookended by two large memorial events, one at Revolution Plaza in the capital on Tuesday night and the other at Revolution Plaza in Santiago on Saturday night. Both were attended by heads of state from around the world and other high-level representatives of foreign governments, many from developing countries that admired Mr. Castro's socialist idealism and pugnaciousness toward the United States.

The burial ceremony of Mr. Castro in Santiago. Yamil Lage/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The state's engineering of the week's homage included a nine-day ban on alcohol and a shutdown of Havana's nightclubs and music venues, as well as a near-total dedication of state-run newspapers, television and radio to tributes to Mr. Castro and often breathless coverage of the week's events.

"He is now absolutely tranquil," a broadcaster intoned as the cortege set off from Havana on Wednesday. "A sad nation, but a committed nation."

Dissent within Cuba was, unsurprisingly, muted.

At a gathering of students and faculty on the campus of the University of Havana to honor Mr. Castro, not everyone attended with an equal degree of conviction.

A professor allowed that she was not exactly in mourning, noting with a sardonic laugh that she was not wearing black. Indeed, she wasn't. She was wearing a blouse decorated with colorful flowers.

The professor, who requested anonymity because she was wary of repercussions from her colleagues and the authorities, said her view of Castroism was mitigated by the ordeals of scarcity and hardship, citing food rationing and low salaries.

But voices like this were overwhelmed by the outpouring of praise, often unbridled, for Mr. Castro and the country he built, however flawed.

In conversations across the country this week, many spoke about the country's free health care and educational systems, the high literacy rate, the low infant mortality rate and the government's efforts to combat racism.

But Mr. Castro's greatest legacy may well be the deep and unyielding national pride he cultivated, in part by unifying the Cuban people against a common nemesis of the United States government and its trade embargo.

"We aren't fearful," said José Manuel Perez, 64, a merchant mariner who was standing in a long line under a hot sun to view a shrine to Mr. Castro in Havana's Revolution Plaza last week. Earlier that day, President-elect Donald J. Trump had threatened on Twitter to reverse the rapprochement carefully brokered by Raúl Castro and President Obama.

The news elicited a shrug from Mr. Perez. "If we lived for 50 years with it," he said of the animosity between Washington and Havana, "we can live 50 years more."

"Another country couldn't do it," he added. "But we can. We're a nation that has always fought."

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8) Morton County Sheriff Defends Tactics Against Pipeline Protesters
By REUTERS DEC. 4, 2016, 12:03 P.M. E.S.T
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2016/12/04/business/04reuters-north-dakota-pipeline.html?src=busln

CANNON BALL, N.D. — The sheriff of the North Dakota county where thousands of people are protesting a controversial pipeline project defended police tactics after they used water hoses and rubber bullets in a late November confrontation.

Kyle Kirchmeier, the sheriff of Morton County, where the Dakota Access Pipeline snakes through en route to Illinois, said in an interview late on Saturday that he hoped protesters would be peaceful while waiting for federal authorities to resolve questions about a permit to tunnel under the Missouri River.

The 1,172-mile (1,885-km) Dakota Access Pipeline, owned by Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners LP, is mostly complete, except for a segment planned to run under Lake Oahe, a reservoir formed by a dam on the Missouri River.

The Standing Rock Sioux tribe, along with climate activists, have been protesting the $3.8 billion project, saying it could contaminate the water supply.

"We really just need to get to a point where that easement decision is made. One way or the other. I don't care which way it is. We'll enforce it," Kirchmeier said.

Protests have been largely peaceful, but there have been a number of violent clashes, the most recent on Nov. 20, when police responded to hundreds of protesters amassing on a barricaded bridge with water hoses, despite freezing temperatures.

"All the individuals who were there were warned. Warned to back up. Warned to get out of the way over and over again. It was a very simple solution: all you had to do was back up and you wouldn't get wet," he said.

Some 564 people have been arrested during the protests, the Morton County Sheriff's Department said.

State officials on Monday ordered the thousands of protesters now present to leave the snowy camp, which is on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers land, citing harsh weather. On Wednesday they said they would not enforce the order. The temperature in Cannon Ball is expected to fall to 4 degrees Fahrenheit (-16 Celsius) next week.

Protesters, who refer to themselves as "water protectors," have been gearing up for the winter while they await the Army Corps decision on whether to allow Energy Transfer to tunnel under the river. The Army Corps has twice delayed that decision.

(Additional reporting by Timothy Mclaughlin in Chicago, Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee and David Gaffen in New York; Writing by Letitia Stein; Editing by Alan Crosby)

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9) Army Blocks Drilling of Dakota Access Oil Pipeline
By JACK HEALY and NICHOLAS FANDOS DEC. 4, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/04/us/federal-officials-to-explore-different-
route-for-dakota-pipeline.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=
story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

CANNON BALL, N.D. — The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe won a major victory on Sunday in its battle to block an oil pipeline being built near its reservation when the Department of the Army announced that it would not allow the pipeline to be drilled under a dammed section of the Missouri River.

The Army said it would look for alternative routes for the $3.7 billion Dakota Access pipeline. Construction of the route a half-mile from the Standing Rock Sioux reservation has become a global flash point for environmental and indigenous activism, drawing thousands of people out here to a sprawling prairie camp of tents, tepees and yurts.

"The best way to complete that work responsibly and expeditiously is to explore alternate routes for the pipeline crossing," Jo-Ellen Darcy, the Army's assistant secretary for civil works, said in a statement. The move could presage a lengthy environmental review that has the potential to block the pipeline's construction for months or years.

But it was unclear how durable the government's decision would be. Sunday's announcement came in the dwindling days of the Obama administration, which revealed in November that the Army Corps of Engineers was considering an alternative route. The Corps of Engineers is part of the Department of the Army.

President-elect Donald J. Trump, however, has taken a different view of the project and said as recently as last week that he supported finishing the 1,170-mile pipeline, which crosses four states and is almost complete.

Though the Army's decision calls for an environmental study of alternative routes, the Trump administration could ultimately decide to allow the original, contested route. Representatives for Mr. Trump's transition team did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Trump owns stock in the company building the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, but he has said that his support has nothing to do with his investment.

There was no immediate response from Energy Transfer Partners, but its chief executive, Kelcy Warren, has said that the company was unwilling to reroute the pipeline, which is intended to transport as much as 550,000 barrels of oil a day from the oil fields of western North Dakota to a terminal in Illinois.

Reaction was swift on both sides, with environmental groups like Greenpeace praising the decision. "The water protectors have done it," a Greenpeace spokeswoman, Lilian Molina, said. "This is a monumental victory in the fight to protect indigenous rights and sovereignty."

But Craig Stevens, a spokesman for the MAIN Coalition, a pro-infrastructure group, condemned the move as "a purely political decision that flies in the face of common sense and the rule of law."

"Unfortunately, it's not surprising that the president would, again, use executive fiat in an attempt to enhance his legacy among the extreme left," Mr. Stevens said in a statement. "With President-elect Trump set to take office in 47 days, we are hopeful that this is not the final word on the Dakota Access Pipeline."

Representative Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota and a Trump supporter, called Sunday's decision a "chilling signal to others who want to build infrastructure in this country."

"I can't wait for the adults to be in charge on Jan. 20," Mr. Cramer said, referring to Mr. Trump's inauguration.

Still, the announcement set off whoops of joy inside the Oceti Sakowin camp. Tribal members paraded through the camp on horseback, jubilantly beating drums and gathering around a fire at the center of the camp. Tribal elders celebrated what they said was the validation of months of prayer and protest.

"It's wonderful," Dave Archambault II, the Standing Rock tribal chairman, told cheering supporters who stood in the melting snow on a mild North Dakota afternoon. "You all did that. Your presence has brought the attention of the world."

The decision, he said, meant that people no longer had to stay at the camp during North Dakota's brutal winter. The Corps of Engineers, which manages the land, had ordered it to be closed, but the thousands of protesters had built yurts, tepees and bunkhouses and vowed to hunker down.

"It's time now that we move forward," Mr. Archambault said. "We don't have to stand and endure this hard winter. We can spend the winter with our families."

Law enforcement officials and non-Native ranchers in this conservative, heavily white part of North Dakota would like little more than to see the thousands of protesters return home. The sheriff has called the demonstrations an unlawful protest, and officials have characterized the demonstrators as rioters who have intimidated ranchers and threatened and attacked law enforcement — charges that protest leaders deny.

But on Sunday, several campers said they were not going anywhere. They said that there were too many uncertainties surrounding the Army's decision, and that they had dedicated too much time and emotion to this fight to leave now.

Federal and state regulators had issued the pipeline the necessary permits to proceed, but the Corps of Engineers had not yet granted it a final easement to drill under a stretch of the Missouri River called Lake Oahe.

The Standing Rock Sioux had objected to the pipeline's path so close to the source of their drinking water, and said any spill could poison water supplies for them and other reservations and cities downstream. They also said the pipeline's route through what are now privately owned ranches bordering the river crossed through sacred ancestral lands.

News of the government's denial came after the size of the camp had swelled with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Native and non-Native veterans who had arrived to support the tribe. As word spread, people who had camped out here for months, sometimes in bitterly cold temperatures, and who had clashed violently with local law enforcement, linked arms and cheered and cried.

They screamed, "Mni wiconi!" — the movement's rallying cry — which means "Water is life."

Jon Eagle Sr., a member of the Standing Rock Tribe, said the announcement was a vindication for the thousands who had traveled here, and for the multitudes who had rallied to the tribe's fight on social media or donated. Millions of dollars in donations and goods have flowed into the camps for months as the tribe's fight and the scenes of protesters being tear-gassed and sprayed with freezing water stirred outrage on social media. (Law enforcement officials have insisted the entire time that they have acted responsibly and with restraint.)

"I don't know quite how to put into words how proud I am of our people," Mr. Eagle said. "And I mean our people. I don't just mean the indigenous people of this continent. I mean all the people who came to stand with us. And it's a beautiful day. It's a powerful day."

Ken Many Wounds, who has served as a tribal liaison to express concerns and questions to law enforcement, said he had been standing by the camp's main fire — one that is tended constantly — when he heard the news from the tribal chairman's wife. He said he did not believe it at first.

"I hugged her, I cried," he said. "Our prayers have been answered. A lot of people didn't believe that prayer was going to be the answer. But our people stayed together. In our hearts, we knew."

Jack Healy reported from Cannon Ball, and Nicholas Fandos from Washington. Maggie Haberman contributed reporting from New York, and Coral Davenport from Washington.

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10) Torture Can Be Useful, Nearly Half of Americans in Poll Say
By SOMINI SENGUPTA DEC. 5, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/world/americas/torture-can-be-useful-nearly-half-of-americans-in-poll-say.html?ref=world&_r=0

UNITED NATIONS — Nearly half of Americans in a global survey said they believed an enemy fighter could be tortured to extract information, according to results released Monday. That finding puts respondents in the United States in contrast with citizens of many countries and at odds with international law, which prohibits torture under any circumstances.

The results were part of a poll carried out by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which surveyed 17,000 people in 16 countries, including many nations in conflict or recovering from conflict, to gauge public opinion about the laws of war.

The findings on torture were among the starkest. Among Americans, 46 percent said torture could be used to obtain information from an enemy combatant, while 30 percent disagreed and the rest said they did not know. On a more general question, one in three said torture was "part of war," just over half called it "wrong," and the rest said they did not know or preferred not to answer.

Torture is a war crime, according to international law. The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said recently that she had reasonable grounds to open an investigation into allegations of torture by American forces in Afghanistan.

On the campaign trail, Donald J. Trump endorsed waterboarding, claiming that "it works." He has suggested a shift in thinking since his election, saying that his nominee for defense secretary, Gen. James N. Mattis, believes there are more effective tactics for extracting important information from detainees.

In the survey, only Israelis, Palestinians and Nigerians seemed to endorse torture as enthusiastically as Americans. In Afghanistan, by contrast, 83 percent of those surveyed said torture was wrong; in Colombia, that number was 85 percent.

Worldwide, two-thirds of those surveyed said torture was wrong, though on the more specific question of whether it could be used to extract information from an enemy fighter, just under half said it was wrong.

One of the greatest contrasts in opinions on the rules of war was between the citizens of the world's most powerful countries and the citizens of countries at war.

Take, for instance, a question to gauge views on the killing or injuring of humanitarian workers in a conflict zone. Among people surveyed in the United States, Russia, France, China and Britain — the five countries that have permanent veto-wielding seats on the United Nations Security Council — 40 percent said it was part of war.

Among people in countries at war, including Syria and Yemen, only 25 percent said it was part of war, and nearly all of the rest said they considered it to be wrong.

Similarly, on a question about attacks on hospitals, a larger share of people in the Security Council's five permanent member countries said such acts were part of war. Like torture, deliberate attacks on health care facilities and aid workers are illegal, according to international law.

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11) For Blacks Facing Parole in New York State, Signs of a Broken System
By MICHAEL WINERIP, MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ and ROBERT GEBELOFF DEC. 4, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/04/nyregion/new-york-prisons-inmates-parole-race.html?rref=collection
%2Fsectioncollection%2Fnyregion&action=click&contentCollection=nyregion&region=rank&module=package
&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0

Jaimie Davenport and Billy Cassell had their first hearings before the New York State Board of Parole earlier this year. Both were serving a maximum of six years on a burglary conviction, Mr. Cassell for breaking into storage units, Mr. Davenport for stealing cellphones.

The men are in their 30s and told the board that they had struggled for years with substance abuse — Mr. Cassell with drugs, Mr. Davenport with alcohol.

Each had served a prior sentence for theft, and each had done a stretch in solitary confinement for breaking prison rules.

Mr. Cassell was set free. But not Mr. Davenport. The board turned him down, extending his prison term for at least another two years.

For all their similarities, there was a telling difference: Mr. Cassell is white; Mr. Davenport is black.

And in New York, black men going before the parole board are at a marked disadvantage.

An analysis by The New York Times of thousands of parole decisions from the past several years found that fewer than one in six black or Hispanic men was released at his first hearing, compared with one in four white men.

It is a disparity that is particularly striking not for the most violent criminals, like rapists and murderers, but for small-time offenders who commit property crimes like stealing a television from a house or shoplifting from Duane Reade — precisely the people many states are now working to keep out of prison in the first place.

Since 2006, white inmates serving two to four years for a single count of third-degree burglary have been released after an average of 803 days, while black inmates served an average of 883 days for the same crime.

The racial disparity in parole decisions in the state is perhaps the most dramatic manifestation of a broken system. Intended as a progressive tool to promote good behavior, parole has devolved into a hurried, often chaotic procedure. Inmates typically get less than 10 minutes to plead their cases before they are sent back to their cells.

The parole board has not been fully staffed for years and rarely sees a prisoner in person. Inmates are usually glimpsed from the shoulders up on a video screen.

Commissioners — as board members are called — often read through files to prepare for the next interview as the inmate speaks. The whole process is run like an assembly line. They hear cases just two days a week and see as many as 80 inmates in that time.

Board members are mainly from upstate, earn more than $100,000 annually and hold their positions for years. They tend to have backgrounds in law enforcement rather than rehabilitation. Most are white; there is currently only one black man, and there are no Latino men.

In short, they have little in common with the black and Latino inmates who make up nearly three-quarters of the state prison population.

At a September board meeting, one commissioner, Marc Coppola, complained that he had trouble keeping track of which inmate he was interviewing. "We were a mess," Mr. Coppola said, according to video of the meeting. "We didn't even know who was in the chair."

Tina Stanford, the board's chairwoman, agreed. "There are others among us who've had similar concerns, just for what their experience in terms of the caseload has been," she said.

While it is not possible to know whether race is a factor in any particular parole decision, a pattern of racial inequity is clear when the data are examined on a large scale. The Times analyzed 13,876 parole decisions for male inmates over a three-year period ending in May.

The analysis included only first-time appearances before the board, which take place after inmates complete their minimum sentence. The Times took into account such factors as an inmate's crime, age, race and previous stints in state prison.

The board rarely released violent offenders of any race, denying nearly 90 percent of them at their initial interview. But among offenders imprisoned for more minor felonies, the racial disparity is glaring. For third-degree burglars who had no earlier prison sentences, the board released 41 percent of white inmates compared with 30 percent of blacks and Latinos.

The imbalance is especially stark for younger inmates. Among male prisoners under 25 who had no prior state prison sentences, the parole board released 30 percent of whites but only 14 percent of blacks and Latinos.

The Times did not have access to the full range of information the board took into account. This includes inmates' time in county jail, full arrest histories, complete prison disciplinary records and whether required prison programs were completed.

Still, even before a black inmate takes a seat in the hearing room and utters a word, the odds are stacked against him. Guards punish black men in some prisons at twice the rate of whites, send them to solitary confinement more often and keep them there longer, a Times analysis of nearly 60,000 disciplinary cases from last year found. And bad prison records make it that much harder to be granted parole.

The Hearings

In parole hearings that are hurried and often disorganized, the board members' first impressions of an inmate — whether he is well spoken or inarticulate, neat or disheveled, black or white — can have an outsize impact on his future.

The Times reviewed transcripts of 109 parole hearings from the first quarter of this year, obtained through a Freedom of Information Law request. They all involved inmates guilty of burglary in the third degree, like Samuel McQuilkin, a black inmate with a long history of minor crimes who was convicted of stealing chicken nuggets from a school cafeteria.

It is often hard to pinpoint what the deciding factor is for commissioners. Some focus on an inmate's criminal record or problems with drug abuse. Others are more interested in family ties.

In an interview process that is impersonal — 95 of the 109 hearings examined by the Times were conducted by video — any rapport an inmate can establish with board members is likely to help. This can work in a white inmate's favor. A majority of commissioners are white, and like most of the white inmates in the New York system, they come from upstate.

Matthew Conley, a 27-year-old white college graduate from Eagle Bay, in the Adirondacks, was doing time for stealing golf carts from Mohawk Valley Country Club, in Little Falls, N.Y.

While hearings usually go quickly and focus on criminal and prison disciplinary history, W. William Smith, a commissioner who is also white, spent time reminiscing with Mr. Conley about summers spent white-water rafting in the Adirondacks.

"Were you employed by Tickner's kayak and canoe rental in Old Forge?" Mr. Smith asked.

"I was," Mr. Conley said.

Mr. Smith said he had done similar work. "That was the best job I ever had," he said. "Long time ago."

Mr. Conley was released.

The tone was different at the hearing for Mr. Davenport, the black inmate convicted of stealing cellphones. When it comes to an inmate's criminal history, commissioners are supposed to consider convictions only, but G. Kevin Ludlow, a white board member from Utica, pressed him to confess any additional crimes he might have committed.

"How many burgs have you done that you haven't been nailed for?" Mr. Ludlow asked. "There are others out there. What do you figure, five, six? How many?"

"No, sir, this is the only one," Mr. Davenport said. "Not that it matters — it was a crime. But this is the only one."

Though being a parole commissioner is considered a full-time job, only two days a week are devoted to hearing cases. Monday and Thursday are set aside for travel, and Friday is reserved for interviewing crime victims' families.

Every week, four teams of two or three commissioners are dispatched around the state to administrative offices for video conferences or one of the few facilities where interviews are still conducted in person.

The condensed schedule leaves commissioners with little time to prepare. They typically see their cases on the morning of the hearings, when they arrive to find a cardboard box with a stack of folders placed beside their chair.

According to data from the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, the board holds about 12,000 hearings a year and may conduct as many as 40 interviews a day. In practice, only one commissioner presides over a hearing, while the other two try to pay attention as they read files for upcoming cases, according to four former commissioners whose service on the board spanned from 2000 to 2014.

To save time, parole rulings are sometimes drafted beforehand. There are commissioners who come prepared with four or five decisions that they modify slightly to fit particular cases, said Robert Dennison, who was a commissioner from 2000 to 2007 and the board's chairman for part of that time.

"Some of the commissioners' minds are made up before the guy comes into the room," he said.

Inmates complained that it often seemed as if what they had to say did not matter.

At his hearing in January, James McArdelle sounded surprised that the commissioners appeared to be paying attention. "The most I would like to say is thank you for actually listening," he said at the time. "I have been through parole before. A lot of people don't listen and have a prejudgment."

The board has long been understaffed, and it now has 13 commissioners, though as many as 19 may be appointed.

Video conferences save time and may cut costs, but the former commissioners interviewed by The Times said they believed the inmates were being shortchanged.

"There are things you may not catch if it's done by video," said Henry Lemons, who was a commissioner from 2009 to 2012. "A person could have turned his whole life around and walks in holding a Bible. At the interview, I'm just seeing his shoulder, neck and face on the video screen."

Former commissioners said it was common knowledge on the board that corrections officers sometimes trumped up disciplinary "tickets," intentionally undermining an inmate's chances of parole.

"The commissioners in some instances are savvy enough to know that somebody who hasn't had a ticket in years that all of a sudden has a ticket right before a hearing, there might be something going on there," said Milton Johnson, a former board member who was a Secret Service agent and served for a year ending in 2014.

While commissioners are allowed to take time to look into such cases, they almost always weigh inmates' claims on the spot, Mr. Johnson said.

"It's a very imperfect situation," he said.

Inmates have little recourse to challenge parole decisions. They can appeal to the State Supreme Court, but judges in New York can only order a new parole hearing, not overturn the original decision. Even if the decision is sent back, the appeal process can take two years, and by then an inmate is usually entitled to a new hearing anyway.

Last year, a State Supreme Court judge ordered a new hearing for Rudolph Williams, a convicted murderer, and criticized the board for basing its denial on a "boilerplate list of factors" that included letters opposing his release when, in fact, there were no letters at all.

Snap Decisions

An inmate named John Kelly had his hearing last January.

"It says here, since Aug. 25, you've been taking your associate's program in liberal arts," said Gail Hallerdin, the lead commissioner for the hearing.

"That's not me," Mr. Kelly responded.

"What is your first name?" Ms. Hallerdin said.

"John Kelly."

Ms. Hallerdin checked her file. "That was for Thomas Kelly," she said.

It was a jarring example of how unprepared the board can be. Commissioners have complained that they are not always given an inmate's complete criminal history, and sometimes cannot obtain out-of-state records. At times, two or more inmates with the same name were included in the same case file, they said.

John Kelly, who was 59 at the time, explained that he had completed only the sixth grade. "I can't read or write," he said. He is classified by the corrections department as seriously mentally ill and was homeless when he was arrested for shoplifting at Duane Reade.

Despite the confusion, the hearing proceeded, with the commissioners deciding to release Mr. Kelly, who is white.

Darryl Dent, a black inmate who, like Mr. Kelly, has an extensive history of petty crime and is severely mentally ill, was not so fortunate.

When he stood before the parole board in March, he was serving five to 11 years for stealing a wallet in a Manhattan church, his eighth prison stint for petty theft.

"Some people would have given you a life sentence, even though it's not what people call the crime of the century," said Ellen Alexander, a commissioner.

"I was a little confused because I was hearing voices," Mr. Dent explained. "They was telling me I should commit crimes before — to make money and get involved with girls and stuff — and I went along with it."

For people like Mr. Dent, the parole process can be especially hard to navigate. They have trouble making an argument for themselves.

In an interview with a reporter at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in September, Mr. Dent said that during his hearing, he felt rushed and could not think of the right answers quickly enough.

He had trouble making eye contact during the interview, continuously rubbed his face and stuck out his tongue compulsively, a possible side effect of antipsychotic medications.

He looked older than his years, walked with a limp as he came into the visiting room and said that if released, he would pose no danger to anyone. "I wouldn't be able to outrun the police," he said. "I couldn't lift a box."

"I really am sorry for the crimes I committed," he told the commissioners. "I'm tired of coming to jail. I'm 56 years old, and I don't want to spend the rest of my life in jail."

Mr. Kelly made an almost identical plea, explaining that he had had two strokes. "I'm done," he said. "I'll be 60 years old. I don't want to die in prison."

What tipped the scales in favor of Mr. Kelly and against Mr. Dent?

The commissioners who heard their cases? The inmates' mental health on the day of the hearing? The fact that Mr. Kelly was a rare inmate to be interviewed in person, while Mr. Dent spoke via video? Race?

Whatever the reason, the white inmate doing time for shoplifting walked out of prison.

And the black inmate who stole the wallet was sent back to spend at least two more years behind bars. "Your release would be incompatible with the welfare of society," the board's decision said.

Horse Trading

If there is one factor that drives the selection of commissioners, it is politics. Spots on the board are prime patronage gifts. Many board members have given generously to campaigns.

Diversity is seemingly an afterthought.

Since 2000, W. William Smith, who joined the board in 1996, has donated nearly $20,000, mostly to Republican campaigns in the Buffalo area. Commissioner G. Kevin Ludlow has given about $29,000 since 2004, primarily to conservative and Republican candidates, according to filings with the State Board of Elections.

Positions have also been given to Democratic supporters. Joseph Crangle, the son of a longtime Democratic leader, was appointed to the board by Gov. David A. Paterson, a Democrat, in 2008. Mr. Crangle and his family have donated nearly $14,000, mostly to Democratic candidates.

Another commissioner, Lisa Beth Elovich, is the daughter of a former Democratic political leader in Long Beach and a family friend of the former Republican senator Alfonse M. D'Amato. When she was appointed in 2006, she was married to Michael Avella, who was then a counsel to the Republican majority in the State Senate.

A request by The Times to interview individual commissioners was denied by the corrections department, which oversees the parole board.

Board members are nominated by the governor and confirmed by the State Senate. Selections are typically worked out ahead of time, and at the confirmation hearings nominees usually spend only a few minutes describing their credentials before being approved.

These hearings sometimes sound like reunions of upstate law enforcement veterans. At the 2012 hearing, State Senator Patrick M. Gallivan, then a Republican member of the corrections committee and a former sheriff of Erie County, backed the appointment of Marc Coppola, his former deputy sheriff.

They joked about it. A committee member asked Mr. Coppola, "Was former Sheriff Gallivan a good boss?"

"Yes, he was," Mr. Coppola said.

Henry Lemons, who was the lone black male commissioner for years, was not reappointed when his term expired in 2012, though he had strong credentials. He had spent 20 years with the New York Police Department, 10 years as a narcotics investigator with the Brooklyn district attorney's office, and five years as a deputy chief investigator for the state attorney general's office.

He said in an interview that while he would have liked to be reappointed, he was unwilling to play politics.

"Commissioners who want to play this game must go around to their senators and get letters of support — that's how it works," he said. "My work should be enough. My decisions, I think, were solid. I didn't want to have to ask people to write me letters saying, 'Reappoint Henry Lemons.' The result? Next year, I'm out."

Instead, on June 20, 2012, the State Senate confirmed one white woman, four white men and a Hispanic woman, for a time leaving the board without a single black man.

There was a rare dissent that day. State Senator Ruth Hassell-Thompson, a Democrat on the corrections committee at the time, declined to cast any confirmation votes.

"I have withheld my support of any of the candidates today in protest of the governor's failure to appoint anyone of African descent," said Ms. Hassell-Thompson, who is black and whose comments were recorded on video. "There is no way that I can sit here and vote for a board that does not constitute something that for me is about fairness to the numbers of prisoners that are in our prison system."

None of those on the committee, which is controlled by Republicans, responded to Ms. Hassell-Thompson's remarks.

In recent years, the board has become slightly more diverse — there is again a single black man, and the chairwoman, Tina Stanford, is also black — but nine of the 13 commissioners are white.

"The administration has been a strong proponent of bringing more diversity to the Board of Parole," Jason Elan, a spokesman for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, said in a statement. "This administration is committed to going even further and will continue to identify for appointment individuals with a broad range of professional expertise, such as social workers, defense attorneys, psychologists and others with criminal justice expertise."

In June, Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, nominated five more commissioners, including several minorities, but the corrections committee never held confirmation hearings.

Mr. Gallivan, who now leads the corrections committee, said the governor's office was at fault for submitting the nominations only a few days before the legislative session ended.

Diversity would make the parole process fairer, said Mr. Lemons, who was named to the board by Gov. Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat.

"If a commissioner is from the suburbs and is an attorney, he may not see things the way I did growing up in Bed-Stuy," Mr. Lemons said, referring to the neighborhood in Brooklyn. "I've spoken to commissioners who couldn't understand why a person committed a robbery. But you might interview the person and find out he or she has been on the streets since 16 or 17 because their parents were addicts and they had to live day by day."

He said he and his colleagues also differed in their views of white-collar crimes.

"Many commissioners would say, 'It's just a money crime; no one was hurt,'" he said. "Well, I'd say the person defrauded this woman out of her money and made off with a quarter of a million dollars. What's the difference between him and a kid snatching a purse with $15 in it, and he's doing 10 years? To me, a person with some advantages in life, some education, I expect his conduct to be better."

Hints of Reform

The promise of parole — early freedom for acknowledging mistakes and behaving well in prison — rarely lives up to reality. Around the country, 20 states have dismantled their boards altogether. A primary problem is the arbitrariness in decision making: Why do some inmates go free while others with nearly identical records stay in prison?

"The whole field of parole, when you shine a light on it, so much of it is unforgivable," said Kevin R. Reitz, a director of the Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice at the University of Minnesota Law School. Mr. Reitz was involved in revising the American Law Institute's Model Penal Code to recommend the elimination of parole release.

In 2014, a state judicial commission recommended the elimination of New York's parole board, but the political leadership in Albany has taken no action.

New York State officials over the past 20 years have adopted a hybrid system of release that is less reliant on parole. About half the state's inmates, including most drug offenders, now receive what is called a determinate sentence, a fixed period of incarceration with limited opportunity for early release. Instead of getting a two- to four-year sentence for selling drugs, an offender may receive a sentence of three years.

The Times analyzed a decade's worth of state prison data and found that doing away with parole eliminated the racial disparity in release rates. But it also kept inmates of all races in prison longer — which makes determinate sentences unpopular with inmate advocates.

A central purpose of parole is to give inmates an incentive to rehabilitate themselves, said Jack Beck, a director of the Correctional Association of New York, a watchdog group empowered by the state to monitor prison conditions.

"Determinate sentences undermine the whole philosophy that incarceration should be a time for people to prepare themselves to integrate back into society," Mr. Beck said.

In an effort to make the parole process more objective, New York implemented a risk-assessment tool called Compas in 2012 that seeks to measure an inmate's chances for success upon release. Prisoners fill out a 74-item assessment form that includes their criminal history, education background and mental health status. They also answer a long list of hypothetical questions about managing money, avoiding risky situations and controlling their tempers.

Based on their answers, they are assigned scores of one to 10 that assess how likely they are to commit new crimes. Theoretically, the lower the score, the lower the risk.

Commissioners are required to take Compas into consideration, but they can ignore the results if they find that other factors, including the severity of the original crime, are more compelling.

In the 109 parole hearing transcripts reviewed by The Times, Compas scores were usually given a perfunctory mention but rarely appeared to be the deciding factor.

The Cuomo administration recently proposed regulations that would require a detailed written explanation from commissioners if they decided to ignore Compas. The regulations would also require the board to give special consideration to inmates who were convicted when they were juveniles and sentenced to a potential maximum of life in prison, taking into account their age at the time of the crime as well as "any demonstrated growth and maturity."

But at a time when the state is specifying a detailed checklist of variables parole commissioners must consider, race is not even on the list. In fact, the state has never studied its effect on board decisions.

An Inscrutable Process

And so the inequities continue.

Braxton Bostic, a young black man, was 17 in 2014 when he and a group of friends stole money from a purse in a church. A judge gave him probation, but he missed two meetings with his probation officer and was sent to prison to serve one to three years.

Robert Summa, a 49-year-old white man, has a record dating to 1992 for theft and drug possession. In 2003, he was convicted of mugging and robbing a 56-year-old woman and sent to prison for nine years. Within a year of being released, he was convicted again, for robbing a Staten Island deli, and was sentenced to 3½ to 7 years. He has spent 12 of the past 15 years in prison.

The men had similar prison disciplinary records. Mr. Bostic had one minor infraction for creating a disturbance and being out of place; Mr. Summa had two minor infractions, according to the hearing transcript. But he also had a certificate indicating that he had completed all of his programs, which Mr. Bostic did not have. Both said they had family and jobs waiting if they were released.

Mr. Bostic expressed remorse, telling the board that he had been hanging around with the wrong crowd. "There's really no excuse for why I did it," he said. "I was hurting my mother, my father. They're the only ones sending me money and letters."

Mr. Summa was more vague about his crimes. "It is actually not that I am stealing," he told them. "It is that I buy these things from people in the neighborhood. I know they are stolen when I bought them, but for the price I get them, I can't say no."

The board sent Mr. Bostic back to prison for at least a year; he is incarcerated at Wyoming Correctional Facility.

Mr. Summa was freed in July.

But that did not last.

In September, he was caught on video robbing a Chinese restaurant on Staten Island.

He told the police he had been drinking heavily, blacked out and did not remember committing the robbery, though he pleaded guilty after seeing the security video.

Shortly afterward, a reporter visited him on Rikers Island to ask about the board's decision to release him.

Mr. Summa said that given his lengthy criminal history, he had not expected it. "I was surprised," he said.

Susan C. Beachy contributed research.

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12) Artists and Advocates Say Deadly Oakland Fire is Product of
Housing Crisis
By Sam Levin
December 5, 2016
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/05/oakland-warehouse-fire-ghost-ship-housing-crisis

devastating warehouse fire that killed at least 36 people has shone a harsh light on a housing crisis in Oakland and its consequences for artists and low-income residents.

The fire, which broke out during a party at the 'Ghost Ship' warehouse on Friday night, sent shockwaves through the underground arts and music scene in the northern California city where rapidly rising rents have forced people to live and make art in shared and sometimes hazardous spaces.

Some reports have cast blame on the artists and residents associated with the warehouse where so many people died, trapped in a building that lacked basic fire safety mechanisms.

Long-time Oaklanders and tenants' rights activists, however, said the tragedy was a symptom of a major affordability crisis and the long-term failure of urban housing policy to protect the most vulnerable people.

Grieving artists – many still waiting for official news about friends who went missing in the fire – said on Sunday the city must find a way to ensure that underground performance spaces, "live-work" warehouses and overcrowded homes were safe, without shutting down venues and evicting tenants.

"The scope of the loss is terrifying," said Sarah Carlberg, assistant director of a local book festival. She was priced out of Oakland last year and had friends who were at the Ghost Ship party.

"Each one of these people were only at that venue by virtue of the fact that they were very engaged artists – the people who make Oakland what it is."

'Vital to the fabric of Oakland'

Oakland sits across the bay from San Francisco, the most expensive city in the US. Experimental musicians and independent artists have long made use of its unconventional venues and cooperative living spaces.

"Warehouse parties have been a central part of Oakland for decades," said Nihar Bhatt, a DJ and record label owner who survived the Ghost Ship fire.

The city's underground spaces, which may lack traditional permits or business licenses, are particularly vital for LGBT artists and people of color often excluded from the mainstream industry, dominated by white men, he added.

"There's a movement in Oakland of experimental black and brown and queer people who don't necessarily want to be in a bar or a club," Bhatt said.

Russell Butler, a musician who was outside the venue and witnessed the fire, said in an email interview that underground venues were "vital to the fabric of Oakland", not only because of the opportunities they provided for under-represented artists, but also because many functioned as welcoming spaces for marginalized people who felt unsafe in licensed clubs "where they may be harassed or assaulted for just trying to live their lives".

Sometimes the buildings have not been inspected and are not up to code. The consequences can be fatal. In 2015, a fire killed two artists in an Oakland live-work building and displaced two well-known publishing organizations.

But when residents raise concernsabout dangerous conditions, the results can be devastating in other ways. Earlier this year, dozens of renters lost their homes in an Oakland warehouse space after the city deemed it unsafe for habitation.

When the city determines a living situation is hazardous – which can often happen when an industrial warehouse is not permitted or built for residential living – it can create a pathway for real-estate developers to remove a low-income arts community and replace it with more profitable, market-rate housing.

"That's a slumlord landlord's best-case scenario," said Tarik Kazaleh, a long-time Oakland musician who feared the Ghost Ship tragedy could lead the city to close other spaces. "They'll just get a tech firm and get more money."

A life or death choice

Fires and city shutdowns are not the only threat to the underground art scene. Many artists simply cannot afford to live here any more.

Oakland has some of the fastest-rising rents in the US, and activists have been increasingly concerned about gentrification and displacement caused by the technology boom in nearby San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

The spaces that make up Oakland's thriving DIY arts scene have been vanishing,as artists have moved away.

"The best spaces have been wiped out," said Jonah Strauss, a recording engineer who was displaced in the 2015 fire that killed two people. "Lack of affordable living spaces is the single greatest threat to Oakland arts and music."

Some people refuse to leave, said María Poblet, executive director of Causa Justa, a housing rights group. She said she was upset by the way some people were "blaming the victims" of the fire.

"We shouldn't have to choose between affordable housing and safe housing," she said. "It's really insufficient to look at the situation and not look at the structural problems that we have.

"If you can't afford to buy a million-dollar home, then you can't afford to live in this city unless you're willing to risk your safety. And that's unconscionable."

Housing activists in Oakland have long fought for better protections for renters and for the construction of new housing for very low-income people. Artists have argued that there are ways the city and underground communities can make venues safe without mass displacement.

Strauss said the city should move away from a punitive system in which officials "red tag" buildings and kick out tenants, and instead help underground spaces become safe for existing residents. "We need a new pathway to legitimacy," he said.

In the current system, artists and low-income tenants working and living in dangerous conditions often have an impossible choice. Asking a landlord or city official for help can result in homelessness.

"The city comes in and penalizes people," said Carlberg. "It doesn't accomplish anything. It just puts people in another cycle of poverty."

Kazaleh said artists needed to rely on each other to ensure their spaces were safe: "There's no easy answer. We have to be completely self-policing now. We don't want city inspectors snooping around."

'Music saves people'

In the wake of the latest tragedy, artists and community groups were gathering and looking for ways to assist each other, said Lisa Aurora, co-founder of Naming Gallery in Oakland.

Some were organizing to provide fire extinguishers for venues that may need them, she said, adding: "We come back and continue to do what we're doing and support each other."

Some artists said creative expression and community parties were a form of survival and coping.

"It's already essential to so many people but we're forced to feel like criminals," said Bhatt, adding that there should be more publicly funded art spaces.

Butler said: "This music is more than someone's good time. It's more than another night out. It is healing, it saves people. It saved me and many others."

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13) As North Dakota Pipeline Is Blocked, Veterans at Standing Rock Cheer
By JACK HEALYDEC. 5, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/us/veterans-north-dakota-standing-rock.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=5&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0

FORT YATES, N.D. — After four deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, after being hit by a roadside bomb and losing two friends to explosions, Jason Brocar floated from job to job, earning enough to pay for long solo hikes where his only worries were what he would eat and where he would sleep. He was deep into a rainy trek through Scotland when he noticed friends back home talking about a place called Standing Rock.

He decided to join them, which is why he was lined up inside a huge shed this weekend with hundreds of other veterans, some of them Native Americans, who have come to North Dakota to join the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s fight to block an oil pipeline.

On Sunday, they cheered the Department of the Army’s announcementthat it would seek other routes for the pipeline and would not allow a crucial section to be drilled under the Missouri River just upstream from the tribe’s reservation, where there were worries it could pollute their drinking water and cross near sacred burial sites.

But President-elect Donald J. Trump’s support for finishing the pipeline means the saga is far from over. His administration could undo the Sunday decision and order the pipeline through, though the tribe and environmental activists would almost surely sue to stop him. Reflecting the continued uncertainty, the veterans were out singing and marching on Monday in gale-force winds and driving snow.

The presence of many hundreds of veterans — organizers were anticipating 2,000 or more — adds another potent layer to a fight that is already steeped in sharp contrasts, between a tribe and an oil company, between environmentalists and pro-energy advocates, between tan-shirted sheriff’s deputies armed with rubber bullets and water cannons and protesters wearing traditional dress and feathers in their hair.

“Fall in!” came a cry one night this weekend. Hundreds of men and women packed into the building to get their orders from Brenda White Bull and Loreal Black Shawl, who are leading the veterans’ groups at the protest camps.

The orders, they said, were “peace and prayer.” No confrontations between veterans and law enforcement officers who are guarding a still-closed highway at what protesters call the front lines. On Monday, many protesters defied an order by the Army Corps of Engineers to leave a campsite north of the Cannonball River.

“You guys are very symbolic,” Dave Archambault II, the Standing Rock Sioux tribal chairman, told the lines of veterans at a meeting at Sitting Bull College here on the tribe’s reservation. “What you’re doing is sacred.”

Law enforcement officials leading the response to the monthslong protest in Morton County say they have only used force when threatened or attacked by protesters.

Sheriff Paul Laney of Cass County said that officers wanted to calm things down after weeks of rising tensions and violent flare-ups, and that they were willing to pull back from a blockaded bridge where several confrontations had occurred. He said protesters first needed to meet conditions like agreeing not to cross the bridge and not to tear down barriers or wires that law enforcement had put up.

“We all want this to de-escalate and end peacefully,” Sheriff Laney said.

Veterans’ views are hardly monolithic, and as the veterans began to arrive, the Morton County Sheriff’s office — whose ranks include veterans — sought to show it had the support of local veterans. The county released a video featuring Raymond Morrell, a Marine veteran. He criticized the protests and questioned why veterans arriving from outside North Dakota would join what the sheriff has called an unlawful protest.

At a news conference, Sheriff Laney said he had received information that an “element” within the protest camps wanted to exploit veterans with post-traumatic stress and goad them into acts of violence. Tribal leaders and protesters say they are nonviolent and have no weapons.

Several of the veterans who lined up wore caps saying, “Native Veteran.” Some were old men, veterans of Korea and postwar Europe, who said they had grown up in Indian boarding schools where they were beaten for speaking their language. Some drove in from reservations across the Plains.

Some of the arriving veterans have spent years in the antiwar movement after returning from Vietnam or Iraq. They said they saw the pipeline protests as a new chapter in that activism. They came with open letters and leaflets, and they raised flags in the camp that fluttered alongside the names of Native American nations.

Many said they came ready to form a barrier between protesters and law enforcement.

“A lot of people here are willing to sacrifice their body, willing to give their life,” said Vincent Emanuele, 32, a former Marine who served in Iraq and has spoken out extensively against what he called a futile war. “You might as well die for something that means something.”

Others said they did not care much about politics and had never joined a protest. But they said they had been moved by the tribe’s fight to block a crucial section of the 1,170-mile pipeline. Or they said they were angry at seeing images of violent clashes between lines of law enforcement and Native Americans.

“I just couldn’t believe what was happening in the United States,” Mr. Brocar, 44, said. “Even in Iraq, there was some rule of engagement. If these guys don’t have weapons, it just doesn’t make sense to me that it’s a shooting gallery.”

Like other veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who came here — any many who did not — he said he had grown disillusioned with the grinding wars and their human toll. On his wrist were two metal bracelets with the names of his two dead friends — “hometown guys who joined to save the world.”

After the meeting ended, the veterans dispersed across the dark plains to sleep, some heading to tents and yurts at the camp, others to borrowed beds. Robert Abbey, 37, a former soldier who joined the military at 17 and deployed once to Iraq, ended up sleeping at the community college.

He said he came because he wanted to help, and to see what was unfolding five hours north of his home in Hermosa, S.D. Some of the veterans here said they might stay for weeks, but Mr. Abbey had to get back home for an appointment at the local Veterans Affairs agency.

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14) A Bigger Economic Pie, but a Smaller Slice for Half of the U.S.
"Stagnant wages have sliced the share of income collected by the bottom half of the population to 12.5 percent in 2014, from 20 percent of the total in 1980. Where did that money go? Essentially, to the top 1 percent, whose share of the nation’s income nearly doubled to more than 20 percent during that same 34-year period. Average incomes grew by 61 percent. But nearly $7 out of every additional $10 went to those in the top tenth of the income scale. Inequality has soared over that period. In 1980, the researchers found, someone in the top 1 percent earned on average $428,200 a year — about 27 times more than the typical person in the bottom half, whose annual income equaled $16,000. ...Today, half of American adults are still pretty much earning that same $16,000 on average — in 1980 dollars, adjusted for inflation — while members of the top 1 percent now bring home $1,304,800 — 81 times as much."
By PATRICIA COHENDEC. 6, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/business/economy/a-bigger-economic-pie-but-a-smaller-slice-for-half-of-the-us.html?ref=business

Even with all the setbacks from recessions, burst bubbles and vanishing industries, the United States has still pumped out breathtaking riches over the last three and half decades.

The real economy more than doubled in size; the government now uses a substantial share of that bounty to hand over as much as $5 trillion to help working families, older people, disabled and unemployed people pay for a home, visit a doctor and put their children through school.

Yet for half of all Americans, their share of the total economic pie has shrunk significantly, new research has found.

This group — the approximately 117 million adults stuck on the lower half of the income ladder — “has been completely shut off from economic growth since the 1970s,” the team of economists found. “Even after taxes and transfers, there has been close to zero growth for working-age adults in the bottom 50 percent.”

The new findings, by the economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, provide the most thoroughgoing analysis to date of how the income kitty — like paychecks, profit-sharing, fringe benefits and food stamps — is divided among the American population.

Inequality has been a defining national issue for nearly a decade, thanks in part to groundbreaking research done by Mr. Piketty at the Paris School of Economics and Mr. Saez at the University of California, Berkeley.

But now a new administration in Washington is promising to reshape the government’s role in curbing the intense concentration of wealth at the top and improving the fortunes of those left behind.

During his tenure in the White House, President Obama pushed to address income stagnation by shifting more of the tax burden from the middle class to the rich and expanding public programs like universal health insurance.

Both strategies are now targeted by President-elect Donald J. Trump and Republicans in Congress, led by House Speaker Paul Ryan. Like many conservatives, Mr. Ryan argues that aid to the poor is ultimately counterproductive because it undermines the incentive to work. Proposals put forward by Republican leaders, though short on details, make clear that they want to roll back benefits like Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, which primarily help the poor, and direct the largest tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.

About 30 percent of the country’s income is channeled to federal, state and local taxes. Apart from military spending and performing basic public services, much of that is distributed back to individuals through various programs and tax benefits in the form of Social Security checks, Medicare benefits and veterans’ benefits. But until now, no one has truly measured the full impact that tax payments, government spending, noncash benefits and nontaxable income together have on inequality.

Abundant documentation of income inequality already exists, but it has been challenged as incomplete. Studies have excluded the impact of taxes and value of public benefits, skeptics complained, or failed to account for the smaller size of households over time.

This latest project tries to address those earlier criticisms. What the trio of economists found is that the spectacular growth in incomes at the peak has so outpaced the small increase at the bottom from public programs intended to ameliorate poverty and inequality that the gap between the wealthiest and everyone else has continued to widen.

Stagnant wages have sliced the share of income collected by the bottom half of the population to 12.5 percent in 2014, from 20 percent of the total in 1980. Where did that money go? Essentially, to the top 1 percent, whose share of the nation’s income nearly doubled to more than 20 percent during that same 34-year period.

Average incomes grew by 61 percent. But nearly $7 out of every additional $10 went to those in the top tenth of the income scale.

Inequality has soared over that period. In 1980, the researchers found, someone in the top 1 percent earned on average $428,200 a year — about 27 times more than the typical person in the bottom half, whose annual income equaled $16,000.

That ratio, the authors point out, “is similar to the gap between the average income in the United States and the average income in the world’s poorest countries, the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic and Burundi.”

The growth of incomes has probably increased a bit since 2014, the latest year for which full data exists, said Mr. Zucman, who, like Mr. Saez, also teaches at the University of California, Berkeley. But it is “not enough to make any significant difference to our long-run finding, and in particular, to affect the long-run stagnation of bottom-50-percent incomes.”

He was to present the findings at a close-door workshop at the City University of New York on Tuesday.

Tax credits and programs like Medicare and disability payments have helped families at the lower half of the income scale. But they have just nipped at the heels of the underlying trend.

“It confirms the surge in income at the top,” said Raj Chetty, an economist at Stanford unaffiliated with the project, who called the work “terrific and very important. And it shows government redistribution doesn’t really change the picture.”

Lawrence Katz, an economist at Harvard who also independently reviewed the research, agreed that the data underscored the inadequacies of programs that try to redress inequities after the fact. “It suggests that if you don’t do something earlier in the market, before distribution, through better education or greater bargaining power, it’s really tough to offset completely,” Mr. Katz said. “Countries with less inequality do some of both.”

Mr. Katz and Claudia Goldin, a Harvard economist, have argued that advances in technology, while crucial to improving productivity and generating economic growth, also have exacerbated inequality by driving down wages of low-skilled workers. The rewards of education are greater than they have ever been, but advancement nationwide has slowed and the system confers many of its favors on the children of the affluent.

If there is a bright spot in the new comprehensive research, it is that after taxes and government spending, the middle class is in better shape than previous studies had shown. That earlier research had missed growth in nontaxable income like employee benefits. “The real income of the middle class is a bit better than we thought,” Mr. Katz said.

As troubling as some may find inequality, it is not necessarily the fault of a rigged system, said N. Gregory Mankiw, an economist at Harvard who is familiar with the new research. He argues that large disparities in income more often than not accurately reflect widely varying economic contributions.

“Inequality is a symptom of a variety of things,” Mr. Mankiw said. Technological progress may be a cause, but it benefits society over all, whereas the weakness of the educational system is clearly negative.

Edward Conard, the author of “The Upside of Inequality” and a former business partner of Mitt Romney, agreed. “People say this is zero-sum game, and you’re taking money that would have gone to the other 50 percent,” he said. “That’s not what happened.”

Instead, Mr. Conrad said, entrepreneurs in the United States have been willing to take big risks that have helped foster an infrastructure that promotes innovation, not just in Silicon Valley but in many other growing places around the country. “When rewards go up, people are more inclined to take risks,” he said. Some of those risks pay off and create wealth for everyone.

The new research challenges that contention, at least in part.

Mr. Piketty, Mr. Saez and Mr. Zucman concluded that the main driver of wealth in recent years has been investment income at the top. That is a switch from the 1980s and 1990s, when gains in income were primarily generated by working.

That divergence can slow innovation and further entrench inequities, said Heather Boushey, an economist at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. When labor income provides the primary route to riches, it creates incentives for people to improve their education and work harder, Ms. Boushey explained. But if getting ahead requires already having a stockpile of cash or inheriting a windfall from your parents, then it is much harder to work your way up.

“If you’re closing off entryways, then you are basically shutting off avenues to competitiveness, innovation and growth,” Mr. Boushey said, “even if you don’t care about fairness.”

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Tuesday, December 06, 2016

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2016

CONTRASTS:

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Ace Hardware statement on North Dakota protest and product sales

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North Dakota: Stop Using Cold Water to Blast Unarmed Protestors in Sub-Freezing Temperatures

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Bay Area United Against War NewsletterTable of Contents:A. EVENTS AND ACTIONSB. ARTICLES IN FULL *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

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In Philadelphia on December 9th: 3-6pm - Rally outside next to the hated Rizzo statue across from City Hall in Thomas Paine Plaza 6-9pm - Indoor event at Arch Street Methodist Church, Arch and N. Broad Street streets (food will be available.)

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January 20, 2017, 7:00 A.M. Freedom Plaza 1355 Pennsylvania Ave N.W. (14th Street and Pennsylvania Ave.) Washington, D.C. Here in San Francisco:

Fri. Jan. 20, 5pmSF Protest: Say NO to Trump and the Trump Program on Inauguration DayFight Racism, Sexism and Bigotry—Defend Immigrants!UN Plaza, near Civic Center BART, San Francisco

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Read more about this action at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_lsTTIlJff6anpUaUdoYWUwVU0/view

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Support Chelsea's petition to reduce sentence to time served Is this email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser.

Support Chelsea's petition to Obama:Reduce sentence to time served

Sign the whitehouse.gov petition insupport of Chelsea's request today!

Chelsea tried committing suicidea second time in October

Sign the whitehouse.gov petition insupport of Chelsea's request today!

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Defying the Tomb: Selected Prison Writings and Art of Kevin "Rashid" Johnson featuring exchanges with an Outlaw Kindle Edition

TAKE ACTION: Mumia is sick

Take Action for Mumia

Imam Jamil (H.Rap Brown) moved

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, THE Bureau of Prisons, The Governor of Georgia

The Palm Oil Boom

A Deadly Haze

Confronting Child Labor

Running Out of Refuges

DUTERTE'S ANTI-DRUG CAMPAIGN BY THE NUMBERS

712

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The Hearings

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'Music saves people'

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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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In Philadelphia on December 9th:

3-6pm - Rally outside next to the hated Rizzo statue across from City Hall in Thomas Paine Plaza

6-9pm - Indoor event at Arch Street Methodist Church, Arch and N. Broad Street streets (food will be available.)

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January 20, 2017, 7:00 A.M.

Freedom Plaza

1355 Pennsylvania Ave N.W.

(14th Street and Pennsylvania Ave.)

Washington, D.C.

Here in San Francisco:

Fri. Jan. 20, 5pm
SF Protest: Say NO to Trump and the Trump Program on Inauguration Day
Fight Racism, Sexism and Bigotry—Defend Immigrants!
UN Plaza, near Civic Center BART, San Francisco

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Read more about this action at:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_lsTTIlJff6anpUaUdoYWUwVU0/view

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Support Chelsea's petition to reduce sentence to time served

Is this email not displaying correctly?
View it in your browser.

Support Chelsea's petition to Obama:
Reduce sentence to time served

Sign the whitehouse.gov petition in
support of Chelsea's request today!

Chelsea tried committing suicide
a second time in October

Sign the whitehouse.gov petition in
support of Chelsea's request today!

follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend

unsubscribe from this list| view email in browser

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