Saturday, January 27, 2018

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, SATURDAY, JANUARY 27, 2018

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Please make 3 phone calls to demand
health care for Mumia
If you're sick, you can go to a doctor or an emergency room to be examined and treated, in a hospital if necessary. If you're being held behind bars, getting sick can be a death sentence. Profits come before prisoner care for the Dept. of Correction's medical contractors.
SCI Mahanoy political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal needs your help in getting treatment for a severe skin disease so bad he told his wife Wadiya he "can't take it any more." For more than 2 years, he
has suffered from intense itching all over his body.
The treatment for hepatitis C which we fought for and won has not cleared up his skin conditions.He is also concerned about his cirrhosis of the liver and neuropathy. People suspect tainted water may be causing problems for many prisoners.
Mumia and recent visitors report he can't sleep because the itching is so overpowering and relentless. His condition is worsening: his back, chest and arms have become rough and leathery, alligator-like. There appear to be hairline cracks in his skin that show bleeding.
Instead of a hands-on exam by an expert dermatologist, the DOC's doctor had a teleconference with Mumia, after which Ultra Violet (UVB) treatment and Dupixent were recommended.
Mumia stopped unsupervised, self-administered UVB treatment last year because his skin got burned. Mumia's UVB treatment should be safely administered at a hospital with a Narrow Band UVB, reducing the risk of burns and is more effective than Broad Band UVB.
Mumia needs a full diagnostic work-up before he receives a new medicine like Dupixent, which can have serious side effects if administered incorrectly outside of a hospital setting.
Mumia has been unjustly imprisoned for 36 years. The DOC's continuing failure to effectively diagnose and treat this severe skin disease is nothing less than torture and is one more reason Mumia should be released from prison, now.
1. Please call:

SCI Mahanoy Superintendent Theresa DelBalso: 570-773-2158

PA Secretary of Corrections John E. Wetzel:
717-728-4109

PA Dept of Health Acting Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine: 717-787-9857

Demand that Mumia be taken to an independent medical facility such as Geisinger Hospital, as in 2015, which has the expertise to provide thorough hands-on diagnostic evaluation and offer supervised patient care.

2. Pack the court on Jan 17 in Philadelphia to support his legal case eventually lead to Mumia's freedom.

Face Book Event

Mobilization4Mumia@gmail.com 215-724-1618;

Donate: mobilization4mumia.com/donate-1

International Concerned Family & Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal International Action Center,
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal (NYC),
Campaign to Bring Mumia Home
Educators for Mumia

This message was sent to info@socialistviewpoint.org

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International Letter in Support of Mumia Abu-Jamal

http://www.prisonradio.org/sites/default/files/ABBREVIATED%20INTL%20LETTER%20DEC%2031%2C%202017.pdf

December 9, 2017
To:
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner From:
Concerned Members of International Community
A CALL TO RELEASE THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY AND POLICE FILES RELEVANT TO MUMIA ABU-JAMAL'S CASEAND TO FREE ABU-JAMAL NOW
We, the undersigned individual and organizational members of the international community concerned with issues of human rights, call your attention to an egregious example of human rights violations in your respective jurisdictions: the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Specifically, we call on you both, key officials with the power to determine Abu-Jamal's fate, to:

Assure that all the District Attorney and police files relevant to Abu-Jamal's case, be released publicly as the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas is reviewing the potential involvement of retired Supreme Court Justice Ronald Castille in a conflict of interest when he reviewed Abu Jamal's case as a PA Supreme Court Justice.

Release Abu-Jamal now from his incarceration. That given the mounds of evidence of Abu-Jamal's innocence and even more evidence of police, prosecutorial, and judicial misconduct, his unjust incarceration, including almost 30 years on death row, his twice near-executions, his prison-induced illness which brought him to the brink of death, and the lack of timely treatment for his hepatitis-C which has left him with a condition, cirrhosis of the liver, which poses a potential threat to his life ... we call for the freedom of Mumia Abu-Jamal now.

Now, Abu-Jamal has a new legal challenge in the Pennsylvania courts on the grounds that PA Supreme Court Justice Ronald Castille had a conflict of interest when he denied Abu-Jamal's appeals from 1998-2014. The new action is based on a precedent setting U.S. Supreme Court decision, Williams v. Pennsylvania, that a judge who had been personally involved in a critical prosecutorial decision violates the defendant's right to an impartial judicial review if he then gets to rule on the case as a State Supreme Court Justice. Castille was the Philadelphia elected District Attorney during Abu-Jamal's first appeal process, after his conviction and death sentence, from 1986-1991. He was a PA Supreme Court Justice from 1994 to 2014, during which time Abu-Jamal's case came before him multiple times.
We demand: Public disclosure of the police and DA files! Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Now!!
To sign onto this letter please email infomumia@gmail.com with the subject line "International Letter for Mumia." Submit your full name as you want it listed and your organizational or professional identification.This identification is critical in a letter of this sort, as names alone carry little leverage.

frantzfanonfoundation@amail.com - 58. rue Daquerre, 75014 Paris. +336 86 78 39 20. frantzfanonfoundation-fondationfrantzfanon.com

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Artwork by Kevin "Rashid" Johnson

URGENT CALL ALERT
Prisoner Name:
Kevin “Rashid” Johnson #158039
DETAILS
Kevin “Rashid” Johnson (#158039) wrote an article about the Florida
prison strike, which was published online on January 9, 2018. The
following day warden Barry Reddish retaliated against Kevin’s use of his
First Amendment rights, ordering that he be given a disciplinary
infraction for “inciting a riot”. Further, on January 19th Johnson was
thrown in a cold cell, with a broken toilet, no heating, and with a
window that will not fully close, allowing cold wind to blow into the
cell. The cell has the same temperature as the outside, where
temperatures have been repeatedly at or below freezing. We have not
heard anything from Kevin since January 19th. Warden Barry Reddish must
be held accountable for illegal retaliation and, now, the torture of
Kevin “Rashid” Johnson.

We demand that Johnson is moved to a safe and clean cell, with normal
indoor temperatures and with a toilet that works. We demand that Johnson
be allowed to call his attorneys immediately. We demand that warden
Reddish and all other Florida Department of Corrections officials stop
retaliating against Kevin for his reporting on conditions in their prisons.

PLEASE CALL
Warden Barry Reddish
Florida State Prison
Raiford, FL 32083
904-368-2500

DEMANDS
Move Johnson to a properly climate controlled cell with a working toilet
Immediately allow Johnson to make phone calls to his attorneys
Stop retaliating against him for reporting on conditions in your prisons

Please report back on the response to your call
Send reports back to:
jaybeware@riseup.net

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https://www.change.org/p/12890315/u/22302313?utm_medium=email&utm_source=petition_update&utm_campaign=238543&sfmc_tk=8uMaVhDq8FRwh569pZnXi1VBo5MbLvMvRfD5rWq%2bkzztid4kTGMXd8jXS8vh763%2b&j=238543&sfmc_sub=163792548&l=32_HTML&u=43546722&mid=7259882&jb=114

SoCal & NorCal Rallies Planned to Protest New Offshore Drilling Plan

Heal the Bay, California Coastkeeper Alliance & Surfrider Foundation

JAN 27, 2018 — Major rallies are planned in California to Protect the Pacific and REJECT Washington's dangerous new offshore drilling draft proposal. There is ONLY ONE public meeting scheduled in California and as a result most people in the state are not able to access this opportunity to learn more about a huge proposal to give away ONE BILLION acres of U.S. coastal waters to potential oil and gas drilling. In fact, each state considered in the drilling plan only gets one public meeting. So, many Americans are out of luck. Which is why we must keep speaking out and making our voices heard.

In Southern California, a rally in protest of offshore drilling will take place on February 3 at the Santa Monica Pier. Please join us and make your voice heard - take the Metro or ride your bike to avoid traffic and parking fees.
RSVP: https://www.facebook.com/events/2264202686938806/

In Northern California, a similar rally will occur in Sacramento at the Capitol on the day of the public meeting, which is February 8. Bus transportation is available to the rally (while space lasts) and we encourage public transportation as well.
RSVP: https://www.facebook.com/events/1754774281233684/

San Francisco Bus Page:
https://www.universe.com/events/sf-bus-to-protest-against-offshore-drilling-at-boem-public-hearing-tickets-san-francisco-Y5FCBP

Oakland Bus Page:
https://www.universe.com/events/oakland-bus-to-protest-against-offshore-drilling-at-boem-public-hearing-tickets-oakland-HT789C

Santa Rosa Bus Page:
https://www.universe.com/events/santa-rosa-bus-to-protest-against-offshore-drilling-at-boem-public-hearing-tickets-santa-rosa-KGMWY5

Ventura Bus Page:
http://www.cfrog.org/protect_our_coast

There are many other rallies and protests planned throughout the state and nation. If you are attending an event near you, please share more details and the event link in the comments so others can consider joining too.

If you haven't already, please submit a public comment to federal officials by March 9.
https://www.boem.gov/National-Program-Comment/

We're taking a stand, we hope you can too!

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SOLIDARITY with SERVERS — PLEASE CIRCULATE!

From Clifford Conner

Dear friends and relatives

Every day the scoundrels who have latched onto Trump to push through their rightwing soak-the-poor agenda inflict a new indignity on the human race. Today they are conspiring to steal the tips we give servers in restaurants. The New York Times editorial appended below explains what they're trying to get away with now.

People like you and me cannot compete with the Koch brothers' donors network when it comes to money power. But at least we can try to avoid putting our pittance directly into their hands. Here is a modest proposal: Whenever you are in a restaurant where servers depend on tips for their livelihoods, let's try to make sure they get what we give them.

Instead of doing the easy thing and adding the tip into your credit card payment, GIVE CASH TIPS and HAND THEM DIRECTLY TO YOUR SERVER. If you want to add a creative flourish such as including a preprinted note that explains why you are doing this, by all means do so. You could reproduce the editorial below for their edification.

If you want to do this, be sure to check your wallet before entering a restaurant to make sure you have cash in appropriate denominations.

This is a small act of solidarity with some of the most exploited members of the workforce in America. Perhaps its symbolic value could outweigh its material impact. But to paraphrase the familiar song: What the world needs now is solidarity, sweet solidarity.

If this idea should catch on, be prepared for news stories about restaurant owners demanding that servers empty their pockets before leaving the premises at the end of their shifts. The fight never ends!

Yours in struggle and solidarity,

Cliff

The Trump Administration to Restaurants: Take the Tips!

The New York Times editorial board, December 21, 2017

Most Americans assume that when they leave a tip for waiters and bartenders, those workers pocket the money. That could become wishful thinking under a Trump administration proposal that would give restaurants and other businesses complete control over the tips earned by their employees.

The Department of Labor recently proposed allowing employers to pool tips and use them as they see fit as long as all of their workers are paid at least the minimum wage, which is $7.25 an hour nationally and higher in some states and cities. Officials argue that this will free restaurants to use some of the tip money to reward lowly dishwashers, line cooks and other workers who toil in the less glamorous quarters and presumably make less than servers who get tips. Using tips to compensate all employees sounds like a worthy cause, but a simple reading of the government's proposal makes clear that business owners would have no obligation to use the money in this way. They would be free to pocket some or all of that cash, spend it to spiff up the dining room or use it to underwrite $2 margaritas at happy hour. And that's what makes this proposal so disturbing.

The 3.2 million Americans who work as waiters, waitresses and bartenders include some of the lowest-compensated working people in the country. The median hourly wage for waiters and waitresses was $9.61 an hour last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Further, there is a sordid history of restaurant owners who steal tips, and of settlements in which they have agreed to repay workers millions of dollars.

Not to worry, says the Labor Department, which argues, oddly and unconvincingly, that workers will be better off no matter how owners spend the money. Enlarging dining rooms, reducing menu prices or offering paid time off should be seen as "potential benefits to employees and the economy over all." The department also assures us that owners will funnel tip money to employees because workers would quit otherwise.

t is hard to know how much time President Trump's appointees have spent with single mothers raising two children on a salary from a workaday restaurant in suburban America, seeing how hard it is to make ends meet without tips. What we do know is that the administration has produced no empirical cost-benefit analysis to support its proposal, which is customary when the government seeks to make an important change to federal regulations.

The Trump administration appears to be rushing this rule through — it has offered the public just 30 days to comment on it — in part to pre-empt the Supreme Court from ruling on a 2011 Obama-era tipping rule. The department's new proposal would do away with the 2011 rule. The restaurant industry has filed several legal challenges to that regulation, which prohibits businesses from pooling tips and sharing them with dishwashers and other back-of-the-house workers. Different federal circuit appeals courts have issued contradictory rulings on those cases, so the industry has asked the Supreme Court to resolve those differences; the top court has not decided whether to take that case.

Mr. Trump, of course, owns restaurants as part of his hospitality empire and stands to benefit from this rule change, as do many of his friends and campaign donors. But what the restaurant business might not fully appreciate is that their stealth attempt to gain control over tips could alienate and antagonize customers. Diners who are no longer certain that their tips will end up in the hands of the server they intended to reward might leave no tip whatsoever. Others might seek to covertly slip cash to their server. More high-minded restaurateurs would be tempted to follow the lead of the New York restaurateur Danny Meyer and get rid of tipping by raising prices and bumping up salaries.

By changing the fundamental underpinnings of tipping, the government might well end up destroying this practice. But in doing so it would hurt many working-class Americans, including people who believed that Mr. Trump would fight for them.

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Working people are helping to feed the poor hungry corporations!
Charity for the Wealthy!

GOP Tax Plan Would Give 15 of America's Largest Corporations a $236B Tax Cut: Report

By Jake Johnson, December 18, 2017

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/12/18/gop-tax-plan-would-give-15-americas-largest-corporations-236b-tax-cut-report

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Addicted to War:

And this does not include "…spending $1.25 trillion dollars to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and $566 billion to build the Navy a 308-ship fleet…"
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/18/funding-for-war-vs-natural-disasters/

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Kaepernick sports new T-shirt:

Love this guy!

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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter

Table of Contents:

A) EVENTS, ACTIONS AND ONGOING STRUGGLES

B) ARTICLES IN FULL

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A) EVENTS, ACTIONS AND ONGOING STRUGGLES

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Save the San Francisco Bay View Newspaper

From: SF Bay View <editor@sfbayview.com>
Date: December 19, 2017 at 6:42:58 PM PST
To: SF Bay View <sfbayview@lists.riseup.net>
Subject: [sfbayview] Bay View faces loss and challenge
Reply-To: SF Bay View <editor@sfbayview.com>

Bay View faces loss and challenge

With profound sadness, we bid farewell to Troy Williams, who we'd hoped would lead the Bay View's regeneration and build it into the New York Times of the Prison Abolition Movement he envisioned. Our challenge today is survival; we must face the fact that the fate of the Bay View is in your hands. To grow the number of hands willing to help, please share this message far and wide.

Please keep reading. There may not be a January paper without your help.

The problem: Advertising revenue is down for all newspapers still in print including the Bay View. Each monthly Bay View paper used to carry its own weight, with ads sufficient to pay the basic expenses of printing, distribution and mailing – and then some. Not any more. In 2017, total income from all sources – ads, subscriptions and donations – averaged only $8,000 per month. Those three basic expenses total almost $7,000 a month, and the Ratcliffs' social security barely covers the rent and a bit of the utilities.

People always ask, "Why not go web-only, like Black Agenda Report," an excellent and very influential source of news and analysis. The Bay View's role is different. The Bay View is the only publication in the country widely distributed both inside prison and out. Of the 20,000 papers we print every month, 3,000 are mailed to subscribers in prisons around the country (who pass them around to thousands more) and the other 17,000 are distributed in hoods around the Bay.

Therein lies the solution: The millions of people in prison and the hoods are our FREEDOM FIGHTERS. From the most intense oppression, like diamonds from coal, comes an unquenchable thirst for liberation – and the Bay View gives that force a voice and an organizing network. As a result, the Prison Abolition Movement is burgeoning everywhere and, to its leaders, the Bay View is essential. Similar energy in the hoods is making the Bay View fly off the stands faster than ever.

Subscription revenue is way up, but at just $24 for a year, that income is a big help but it's not sufficient to pay the big bills. For that, we need more advertising and donations.

Advertising – Are you or your friends or colleagues organizing an event for Martin Luther King Day in January or Black History Month in February? Email your flier or postcard and we'll quote you an affordable price for running it in the Bay View. Same for agencies and nonprofits with goods or services our readers should know about. Special low prices apply to Religious Directory ads and Black Pockets Directory ads for professionals and entrepreneurs. Call 415-671-0789 today to discuss an advertising campaign to support your project and your newspaper.

Donations – Hit the DONATE button near the top left side of the Bay View homepage to make a big donation if you're able or a smaller recurring donation. More and more readers are doing that, keeping the Bay View alive. The Bay View also has a nonprofit arm, so your donation can be tax deductible; read all about it HERE. I repeat: There may not be a January paper without your help. At the moment, we are flat broke.

The Ratcliffs are "older than dirt" and need to pass the torch to new leadership and a real newspaper staff. For that, we need a major fund drive. We hear about successful social media drives. Are you an expert on that or want to learn? Email editor@sfbayview.com to volunteer for a fundraising or development committee, and let's make it happen!

Good news: new website coming soon – An expert website designer is volunteering to build the Bay View a new website that can easily be read on your mobile device. A beautiful new website should convince potential donors, advertisers and subscribers that the Bay View will outlive the Ratcliffs!

Indulge in some recent stories and discover new ones every day at sfbayview.com ...

Find a friend among the Bay View Pen Pals, who write, "I would love to hear my name at mail call."

Looking for a job, a contract, affordable housing or a scholarship or other opportunity? Check theBayView Classifieds today.

Finally, follow the Bay View on Facebook and Twitter – and lead everyone you know to do the same.

To reach the Bay View, email editor@sfbayview.com.

To subscribe to this list, email sfbayview-subscribe@lists.riseup.net.

To unsubscribe, email sfbayview-unsubscribe@lists.riseup.net

Mary Ratcliff

SF Bay View

(415) 671-0789

www.sfbayview.com

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B) ARTICLES IN FULL

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1) How U.S. Tariffs Will Hurt America's Solar Industry
By VARUN SIVARAM JAN. 24, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/24/opinion/tariffs-us-solar-clean-energy.html?action=
click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=
opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region

A new tariff on solar panels is likely to reduce the number of jobs for installers, which is the fastest-growing job category in the country. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

President Trump's decision to impose sweeping tariffs on imports of solar panels and components is the opening salvo of his America First campaign to protect domestic manufacturers from Chinese competition. The stakes are high: Solar is the world's fastest-growingenergy industry, attracting over $160 billion in investment in 2017.

Yet these tariffs will do little to make American manufacturers competitive with dominant Chinese ones. Instead, they might actually discourage domestic investments in innovation, crucial to an American solar manufacturing revival. On top of this, the tariffs will cause collateral damage by slowing down the installation of solar panels in the United States, destroying more jobs than they create, and provoking trade disputes and retaliation.

The United States enacted tariffs on solar imports from China in 2012 (they were expanded to include Taiwan in 2014), when the Obama administration concluded that China had lavished generous subsidies on its domestic manufacturers, which dumped below-cost solar panels on global markets.

But by that point, established manufacturers as well as Silicon Valley start-ups developing solar technologies had already been washed away by a flood of cheap Chinese panels based on conventional silicon technology. American manufacturers' share of global solar-components production had plunged below 5 percent by 2011, down from over a quarter a decade earlier. What remained after the carnage was a hollowed-out American industry in no shape to compete with the huge scale of Asian producers.

Against this backdrop, the Trump administration hopes to breathe new life into the enfeebled domestic solar industry with tariffs of 30 percent on solar imports from nearly every country. This approach comes at the behest of two manufacturers, which complained that they couldn't compete with cheap solar panel imports.

Yet if the old tariffs represented closing the barn door after the horse has bolted, the new measures amount to putting a lock on the door. True, Chinese subsidies to its solar manufacturers clearly played an important role in driving American producers to ruin. But the low cost of Asian solar exports no longer depends as much on government largess. Producers there have wrung costs out of their factories to survive in a brutally competitive market. Those that couldn't keep up collapsed when the Chinese government stopped propping them up.

Because Asian manufacturers are now so far ahead, Mr. Trump's tariffs are unlikely to stimulate much investment in domestic production. These tariffs are set to ramp down gradually and expire within four years — with no guarantee of extension — leaving a vanishing window for businesses to recoup investments in expensive factories (which would be highly automated and create few jobs).

Overall, the tariffs will likely destroy more jobs than they create. That's because most solar jobs in the United States are in the installation of solar panels, 80 percent of which are produced abroad. By raising prices, tariffs could shave American demand for panels by over 10 percent over the next five years. That would not only cost solar panel installer jobs, the fastest-growing job category in the country, but also set back progress on reducing carbon emissions.

Moreover, the tariffs could set off trade disputes. South Korea has already announced it will appeal the tariffs to the World Trade Organization. And China may well retaliate by imposing its own tariffs on American exports, including airplanes and agricultural products.

Tariffs also threaten to erode the one advantage the United States does have: technological superiority. The most efficient solar panels in the world are still made by American companies serious about research and development. But even before the news of the tariffs, the chief executive of one such company — which produces panels abroad that would be subject to the new tariffs when sold in the United States — told me that any hit to short-term cash flow would force cuts in research-and-development spending.

Yet innovation is the only hope for the American solar manufacturing industry to wrest back market share from Asian giants. New solar technologies have recently made astounding strides in the laboratory. A front-runner, a material known as perovskite, could be printed in dirt-cheap rolls and achieve far higher efficiencies than today's solar panels. The Trump administration should redouble government investment in solar research to seed the pipeline with breakthrough technologies and should also provide facilities and funding to support American companies.

Tariffs might be satisfying and flashy, but they won't promote the innovation that the solar industry in the United States desperately needs to get back on its feet.

Varun Sivaram is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of the forthcoming book, "Taming the Sun: Innovations to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet."

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2) Video Shows U.S. Park Police Firing 9 Times in Fatal Shooting of Driver
By MATT STEVENS JAN. 25, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/us/virginia-police-shooting.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=
click&contentCollection=us&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=10&pgtype=sectionfront

The United States Park Police officers who fatally shot a 25-year-old Virginia man last fall after a minor car collision and a brief chase fired at him at least nine times at close range, a video released on Wednesday shows.

The man, Bijan Ghaisar, died on Nov. 27 — 10 days after he was shot four times on the left side of his head, and once in his right wrist, one of his family's lawyers said in a telephone interview on Wednesday.

Video of the shooting, which revealed new information about the closely watched case, was released by Edwin C. Roessler Jr., the chief of the Fairfax County Police Department. Fairfax County officers provided backup during the Park Police pursuit of Mr. Ghaisar, but according to the chief, they did not discharge their weapons.

In a statement, Chief Roessler justified the release of the in-car video by calling it "a matter of transparency to all in our community, especially the Ghaisar family."

"The video does not provide all the answers," he said. "However, we should all have confidence in the F.B.I.'s investigation of this matter as I know it will be thorough, objective and professional."

The Department of the Interior's traffic crash report, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, says the episode began on Nov. 17 at 7:31 p.m. According to the report, Mr. Ghaisar was driving south on George Washington Memorial Parkway — a federal road — in a green Jeep when he abruptly "stopped in the roadway." The car behind Mr. Ghaisar then rear-ended him, according to the report, and Mr. Ghaisar drove away.

The driver who struck Mr. Ghaisar's Jeep got a citation for failing to "maintain proper control," according to the police report, which did not classify the episode as a hit-and-run.

It was not entirely clear why the Park Police sought Mr. Ghaisar, given that they cited the other driver.

The video captured by the Fairfax County police begins about six minutes later, at 7:37 p.m. It appears to show the Jeep being pursued by a Park Police car, its lights flashing and sirens blaring. A Fairfax County police officer follows behind.

Soon, the Park Police vehicle catches up to the Jeep, and after the Jeep stops, the police vehicle pulls up alongside it. An officer gets out of the passenger-side door and appears to point a gun at the Jeep's driver-side window and tug at the door. The Jeep, though, pulls away, and the officer bangs on the window as Mr. Ghaisar flees.

The Fairfax County police officer gives chase — its in-car camera still recording — until the Park Police vehicle catches up. All three vehicles then exit the parkway and stop.

The video then appears to show two Park Police officers approaching the Jeep's driver-side door. At least one of the officers appears to have his gun drawn. The officer kicks the door as the Jeep, once again, drives away.

The chase continues along several residential streets; at 7:41 p.m., the Jeep stops at a stop sign, and the Park Police vehicle wheels around in front of it, effectively blocking it.

The video then appears to show one officer approach the Jeep's driver-side door, with a gun drawn and pointed toward the Jeep door's window; the Jeep moves slightly forward; then one gunshot rings out.

After a brief pause, three more shots are fired as the car continues to lurch forward; another officer then approaches, and the sound of a fifth gunshot can be heard on the video.

After having come to a stop during the gunfire, the Jeep veers to the right — a few feet toward the stop sign and off the road. Two more gun shots can be heard on the video.

A third officer in a different uniform then appears onscreen with a gun drawn. The Jeep then lurches a few feet farther off the road and into a ditch, knocking over the stop sign as it begins listing; two more gunshots can be heard.

In a statement on Wednesday, lawyers for the Ghaisar family called the video "disturbing" and said it showed a "senseless killing."

The lawyers, Roy L. Austin Jr. and Thomas Connolly, also said the family was grateful to Chief Roessler "for all he has done to ensure the appropriate amount of transparency throughout this process."

"Bijan Ghaisar was repeatedly threatened by over-aggressive and out-of-control law enforcement officers, after he drove away from a minor traffic incident in which he was the victim and in which there was little property damage and no known injuries," the lawyers said in the statement.

Mr. Ghaisar was a college graduate who had been working as an accountant, Mr. Austin said in a phone interview on Wednesday night.

Asked to explain why Mr. Ghaisar had repeatedly fled when police officers attempted to stop him, Mr. Austin said that "his behavior is what a lot of people would do when they feel like they're threatened."

"I think it's fair to say he was finding a more populated, better-lit space to go to based on the behavior of the officers," he said.

Although the F.B.I. is leading the inquiry, Robert D. MacLean, the chief of the United States Park Police, said in a statement that he recognized that there is a "desire for more information and details" about it.

The statement said the chief had met with the Ghaisar family in the days after the shooting and pledged a fair and impartial investigation.

The Park Police did not appear to have released any identifying information about the officers involved in the shooting. They remain on administrative leave, a Park Police sergeant told The Washington Post.

"Public and community trust remain paramount to our agency and profession," Chief MacLean said in the statement.

In an email late Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the F.B.I.'s Washington field office said the agency was unable to provide additional information because the investigation was continuing.

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3) Hurricane-Torn Puerto Rico Says It Can't Pay Any of Its Debts for 5 Years
By PATRICIA MAZZEI and MARY WILLIAMS WALSH JAN. 24, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/24/us/puerto-rico-budget-hurricanes.html?rref=
collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=
rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront

San Juan, P.R., in November. The governor of Puerto Rico, citing the crippling aftermath of Hurricane Maria, said the island would not be able to pay any of its debts until 2022.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times

The devastation wrought by Hurricane Maria is making Puerto Rico's already dire financial situation even worse. The island's leaders acknowledged late Wednesday that they will not be able to pay down any portion of their more than 70 billion debt for the next five years because of the damage.

Just before the hurricane, Puerto Rico had made plans to pay creditors a total of $3.6 billion through 2022. That was just a fraction of the amount due, had the island, a United States commonwealth, not gone into default.

Now, Puerto Rico expects its budget to be $2 billion to $3 billion in the red, Gov. Ricardo A. Rosselló told reporters at a briefing on Wednesday — a deficit that will take five years to shrink. By then, he said, the cumulative effect of tough economic austerity measures will help the island's government achieve a balanced budget, as required by the federal oversight board that controls Puerto Rico's troubled finances.

Puerto Rico submitted an updated fiscal plan to the board, including the five-year debt moratorium. An earlier draft had been approved, with certain exceptions, before Hurricanes Irma and Maria slammed into the Caribbean island in September. But that plan had to be reworked in light of Maria's vast devastation, which prompted tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans to flee the island amid job layoffs and power blackouts. Nearly a third of customers remain without electricity, more than four months after the storm.

"We already had a recession in Puerto Rico," Mr. Rosselló said. He added that the hurricane's "social impact was significant, because of the exodus and population decrease we've had in Puerto Rico, and expect to have in the future."

Before the hurricanes, Puerto Rico figured it would lose 0.2 percent of its population of 3.4 million every year over the next five years, as a result of a recession that has lasted more than a decade. Now, the government projects its population will shrink by 7.7 percent — nearly 262,000 people — in fiscal year 2018 alone, with the exodus slowing over the next four years.

The fiscal plan must now be approved by the oversight board, which has been at odds with Puerto Rican leaders over how to restore fiscal balance after years of spending more than they had, and borrowing to make up the difference. The board, for example, has insisted on reducing public employee pensions by 10 percent, on average, as a way to spread the economic suffering evenly among Puerto Ricans. Mr. Rosselló maintained on Wednesday that the pensioners are too "vulnerable" a population.

Puerto Rico declared a form of bankruptcy last May, giving the island a way to decide how much to cut pensions, debt payments and other obligations under federal court supervision. The federal oversight board will represent the Puerto Rican government in the proceedings — but first it must accept the governor's fiscal plan. If it disagrees, it is empowered to impose its own fiscal plan on the island.

On Monday, Mr. Rosselló announced his intention to privatize the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, known as Prepa, saying it would make electricity cheaper and more reliable and attract more business to the island. Many Puerto Ricans blame Prepa, which is insolvent, and their government for their suffering during the long blackout. The utility hired a little-known contractor in Montana, Whitefish Energy Holdings, to handle repairs immediately after the storm, breaking with the usual procedure of allowing another utility to make repairs at cost after a natural disaster. Prepa was forced to cancel the contract after it came under intense federal scrutiny.

Prepa is so short on cash that it shut down two power plants on Tuesday night to save fuel. The government said people who had already gotten their power back would not be affected.

The federal government, however, has questioned whether Puerto Rico is as cash-poor as it says. On Jan. 9, the Treasury and the Federal Emergency Management Agency notified Puerto Rico it could not begin drawing on its share of a $4.9 billion disaster-relief loan approved by Congress because the commonwealth still has about $1.7 billion in cash available to spend on its own — as well as another $6.9 billion in cash "on deposit in over 800 accounts across all Commonwealth governmental entities."

Last Friday, the oversight board asked Puerto Rican officials about the $6.9 billion, which was discovered in December. About $4.3 billion was said to be tied up in funding for other government agencies, even as the power, water and sewer utilities struggle to make ends meet.

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4) Larry Nassar's Imprisonment and Lou Anna Simon's Resignation Are Not Nearly Enough
An institution turned a blind eye to serial sexual assault. An institution needs to be held accountable.

By Dave Zirin and David Tigabu

https://www.thenation.com/article/larry-nassars-imprisonment-and-lou-anna-simons-resignation-are-not-nearly-enough/

Larry Nassar, the former sports doctor who admitted molesting some of the nation's top gymnasts, sits at his sentencing hearing. (AP Photo / Carlos Osorio)

The serial sexual assaulter of USA Gymnastics and Michigan State, disgraced doctor Larry Nassar, was sentenced yesterday to 40-175 years after being convicted of seven counts of criminal sexual conduct in the first degree. Later that day, MSU President Lou Anna Simon announced her resignation, after student demonstrations and faculty resolutions called for her ouster.

While seeming to provide some justice to those who survived Nassar's abuses, these two outcomes are not enough. Not when institutions of USA Gymnastics—under the auspices of the US Olympic Committee—and Michigan State didn't believe the women who came forward and de facto let this continue again and again.

In the wake of massive calls on the Michigan State community for her resignation, Michigan State trustee Joel Ferguson issued a statement in defense of Lou Anna Simon. In it, he demonstrates everything wrong with the modern neoliberal university, and the role of college sports as an economic tentpole.

The meeting we had the other day was five hours. And talking Lou Anna was 10 minutes. We unanimously decided in that meeting right away… that we were going to support her staying as president. There's so many more things going on at the university than just this Nassar thing. When you go to the basketball game, you walk into the new Breslin, and the person who hustled and got all those major donors to give money was Lou Anna Simon. There's just so many things that make up being president at a university that keeps everything moving and everything right with the deans, everything at a school where we have a waiting list of people, of students who want to come. [Emphasis Deadspin's.]

To Ferguson, serial sexual assault is just "the Nassar thing." None of it matters, because there is a new athletic facility. But any attempt at plausible deniability by school officials was rendered obsolete after a recent investigation by The Detroit News uncovered that 14 university officials were notified about Nassar's misconduct 20 years before he was finally arrested in December 2016. The article is littered with accounts of young women athletes seeking medical counsel, experiencing assault and its resultant trauma, reaching out to various athletic staff at Michigan State–all to be brushed aside.

There's Larissa Boyce, a then-16-year-old high-school gymnast in Williamston who was a victim of Nassar, briefing Michigan State gymnastics coach Kathie Klages about an incidents of assault, only to be dismissed by the coach who would allegedly go on to give the doctor a heads up.

Then there's Tiffany Thomas Lopez, who in 2000 would move to East Lansing to play softball for the Spartans. After going to Nassar because of lower-back pain she was experiencing, Thomas Lopez was violated, and when she came forward to tell trainers Lianna Hadden (who is currently on staff at Michigan State) and Destiny Teachnor-Hauk, she was told by Teachnor-Hauk that this was normal medical treatment. Thomas Lopez was also told that coming forward would "cast a burden over my family."

As Keith Olbermann tweeted, "Fire Lou Anna Simon Fire this clown Joel Ferguson Fire the entire university management Convene a grand jury and indict everybody who turned a blind eye—or is now defending others who did—to Larry Nassar's institutionally-protected crimes."

I would add that calls for congressional investigation into not only the USAG but the IOC could be necessary as well. I spoke with Nancy Hogshead Makar, three-time Olympic gold medalist turned attorney and she said: "Congress should investigate Scott Blackmun and the USOC because of their deliberate indifference to the safety of athletes. The Olympic sports movement is a pedophile's dream set-up. Families are expected to give complete control over to the coach, often times banning parents from watching practices. Emotional abuse is considered 'motivation,' and there is almost no coaching oversight from sport governing bodies like US Soccer. To make matters worse, the US Olympic Committee's official legal position is that the organization doesn't protect athletes from sexual abuse, that removing pedophiles from the Olympic movement isn't their job. Really. If that doesn't raise the hair on your neck, consider that club owners are for-profit businesses and have zero economic incentive to report sexual abuse to police or child services. The bad PR could cost them dearly if word of the abuse got out. Club owners frequently fire the abusing coach quietly, and he is hired at another club, becoming someone else's problem. In 2014, I represented 19 victims of coach sex abuse in swimming, who were protesting Chuck Wielgus's induction into the hall of fame, because of his miserable handling of sexual abuse. One week later Blackmun announced that the USOC would create 'SafeSport.' It took him almost three years to open its doors. No business can wait three years to start an HR department. Meanwhile, his pay and expense account ballooned. Think of the hundreds—if not thousands—of victims that could have been saved."

It has to end. Under the current set up, instead, we are just waiting for the next scandal. When handing down the sentencing to Larry Nasser, Judge Rosemarie Aquilina said, "Justice requires more than what I can do on this bench." She's right. That will be up to us.

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5) The Mysterious Interior World of Exercise
By Gretchen Reynolds, January 24, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/24/well/move/the-mysterious-interior-world-of-exercise.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

When we exercise, far-flung parts of our bodies apparently communicate with one another, thanks to tiny, particle-filled balloons that move purposefully through the bloodstream from one cell to another, carrying pressing biochemical messages, according to an important new study of the biology of exercise.

The study helps to clarify some of the body-wide health effects of working out and also underscores just how physiologically complex exercise is.

For some time, scientists have suspected that the body’s internal organs are as gossipy and socially entangled as any 8th-grade classroom. It is thought that, under the right conditions, fat cells chat with muscle cells, and muscle cells whisper to brain cells and everybody seems to want to be buddies with the liver.

These interactions are especially abundant during exercise, when continued movement demands intricate coordination of many different systems within the body, including those that create cellular energy.

But the precise mechanics of how different parts of the body communicate during exercise (or at other times) have remained surprisingly mysterious. Scientists have shown that many tissues pump out hormones, such as insulin, and other proteins that move through the blood and jump-start physiological processes elsewhere in the body.

But these actions do not explain all of the seeming coordination between organs during exercise.

So recently, an international group of scientists from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, Australia, and other institutions began to consider vesicles.

Vesicles are microscopic globules within cells that contain tiny bits of biological material. Released into the blood, they once were thought to hold cellular garbage, as if the cells were heaving out their trash.

But scientists now know that vesicles also can contain useful matter, including tiny amounts of genetic material and proteins that convey biological messages to other cells.

Some researchers have speculated that exercise must cause an upsurge in such vesicles, resulting in inter-body communications that allow the body to keep moving.

But that idea had remained speculative until, for the new study, which was published this month in Cell Metabolism, the Australian scientists and others applied new technologies to the blood of exercising people.

They began by inserting tubes into the thighs of 11 healthy men and drawing blood from their femoral arteries. Then they had them ride a stationary bicycle for an hour at an increasingly strenuous pace, while they continued to draw blood. The men then rested for four hours, after which the scientists drew more blood.

The researchers next used sophisticated new sampling techniques to quantify the proteins and vesicles in the men’s blood.

And they noted striking differences before, during and after exercise. They found that about 300 types of protein-containing vesicles grew more common during exercise, and then largely disappeared after four hours of rest.

The majority of these proteins were already known to be important for metabolism and the body’s ability to regulate energy. But they had not previously been found in people’s bloodstreams during exercise.

It wasn’t clear from this sampling, though, where these vesicles and their proteins went within the body and what happened when they arrived.

So the scientists subsequently turned to laboratory mice, having some run and others remain sedentary.

They carefully isolated vesicles from the blood of both groups of animals, added a fluorescent marker to make the vesicles glow, injected them into the bloodstreams of other mice, and tracked where the glowing little bubbles went.

Most of the vesicles from the runners made a beeline for the animals’ livers, the scientists found, directed by biological signals that were not obvious but insistent.

This journey made biological sense, the scientists realized, since the liver helps to make energy during exercise.

When the scientists next added vesicles from the blood of the running mice directly into liver cells isolated from other mice, they watched as the vesicles’ exterior walls dissolved and their protein payload became absorbed into the liver cell, its biochemical message effectively delivered.

In essence, the scientists had found that exercise prompts the creation of vesicles that somehow know to head for the liver and tell it to ramp up energy production.

“This study reveals a huge amount of complexity in the circulating blood during exercise that we might have previously underestimated,” says Martin Whitham, a biologist at the Garvan Institute who, with his fellow Garvan researcher Mark Febbraio, led the new study.

The results also provide some new insights into how exercise pervasively affects our metabolisms, Dr. Whitham says. It has not been altogether clear before, for instance, how the liver knows that exercise is underway and that cells far, far distant from that organ need energy. This study provides added clarity about that issue.

Still, many questions remain, Dr. Whitham says, including what specific tissues are creating these vesicles and what else the little bubbles probably contain, including portions of genes or even bits of fat that could convey their own unique messages to other cells.

But the fundamental message of the findings is that our bodies contain a different interior world when we move than when we do not.

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6) BBC, Criticized Over Pay Gap, Cuts Salaries of Some Male Journalists
By KIMIKO de FREYTAS-TAMURAJAN. 26, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/26/business/media/bbc-pay-gap.html?rref=
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The BBC presenter Jeremy Vine was one of several male journalists at the British broadcast to take a salary cut. Neil Hall/Reuters

LONDON — The BBC said on Friday that it was reducing the salaries of several of its most prominent male journalists following Carrie Gracie’s decision this month to leave her position as the British broadcaster’s China editor to protest unequal pay between men and women at the organization.

“The BBC has agreed to pay cuts with a number of leading BBC News presenters and others have agreed in principle,” the organization said Friday, although it was unclear how much they had agreed to reduce their salaries. The BBC said that an independent audit into equal pay will be published next week.

Among those receiving pay cuts are the presenters Jeremy Vine, Huw Edwards and John Humphrys. A tape of a conversation Mr. Humphrys had with a colleague in which he seemed to be making light of Ms. Gracie’s concerns over the pay gap was recently reported on in the British press. Ms. Gracie left her post in Beijing this month and returned to the BBC newsroom in London, where she said she would be “paid equally.”

Her resignation revived criticism of Britain’s publicly funded broadcaster, which last summer published the salaries of its top stars. The data revealed a startling gap in pay between its most senior male and female journalists. After that became public, the BBC’s most senior female journalists demanded the organization take action.

Mr. Vine described his decision to take a wage cut as a “no-brainer.”

“I think it needs to be sorted out and I support my female colleagues who have rightly said they should be paid the same when they’re doing the same job,” he told the BBC. “I think the BBC’s on it and this story is part of it.”

According to the BBC’s annual report, Mr. Vine earned up to 750,000 pounds, or $1.1 million, last year. Mr. Humphrys earned about £650,000 and Mr. Edwards around £600,000.

The highest earner at the BBC, the presenter Chris Evans, earned about £2.3 million. By contrast, the highest paid woman, the presenter Claudia Winkleman, earned roughly £500,000.

A report commissioned by the BBC last year found the gender pay gap at the organization was 9.3 percent, about half that of the national average. While the wage gap grew as job levels rose, the audit found “no question of any systemic gender discrimination” among rank-and-file employees.

Ms. Gracie had been one of four international editors at the BBC. For the year that ended in March 2017, Jon Sopel, the North America editor, was paid between £200,000 and £249,999 annually, according to the data released by the BBC. Jeremy Bowen, the Middle East editor, was paid between £150,000 and £199,999. She was paid under £150,000, the threshold to have salaries made public.

Ms. Gracie said that she was offered a raise before quitting, but not one that would have paid her equally to her male counterparts.

“I was not interested in more money,” Ms. Gracie said at the time. “I was interested in equality”

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7) Julian Assange Asks U.K. Court to Drop His Arrest Warrant
By SEWELL CHANJAN. 26, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/26/world/europe/julian-assange-asks-uk-court-to-drop-his-arrest-warrant.html?rref=
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Julian Assange speaking at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London last year.Daniel Leal-Olivas/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Lawyers for the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange asked a British judge on Friday to drop a 2012 arrest warrant, a request that if granted could allow Mr. Assange to leave the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he has been living for five and a half years, and fly to Ecuador, which has granted him citizenship.

Mr. Assange, a 46-year-old native of Australia, was ordered extradited to Sweden in February 2011 to face a charge of rape, which he denied. After his challenges to the extradition order were refused, he skipped bail and fled to the embassy in June 2012. He was granted asylum two months later and has remained at the embassy, in the wealthy Knightsbridge district of West London, ever since.

Mr. Assange feared that Sweden would turn him over to the United States to face prosecution over WikiLeaks’ publication of troves of classified government documents on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, classified diplomatic cables and electronic hacking by the C.I.A., among other subjects.

Sweden dropped the rape inquiry in May, and withdrew the European arrest warrant it had requested. But the British authorities insist that Mr. Assange could still be arrested, for bail violations, if he leaves the embassy.

Britain has turned down Ecuador’s request to grant Mr. Assange diplomatic immunity, which would allow him to leave the embassy without fear of arrest. So he is now trying to quash the British warrant.

No known charges have been filed against Mr. Assange in the United States, but the Justice Department has contemplated prosecuting him, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions has said that arresting Mr. Assange was a priority.

On Friday, Mr. Assange’s lawyer, Mark Summers, told the Westminster Magistrates’ Court that Sweden’s withdrawal of the European arrest warrant meant that the British arrest warrant for violating bail no longer applied.

“It’s lost its purpose and its function,” he said.

He argued that the purpose of the British warrant was to let the extradition case — now moot — continue, not to charge Mr. Assange with violating bail.

And even if the court disagrees, Mr. Summers said, it should find that it was “not in the public interest” to charge Mr. Assange with bail violations.

Mr. Assange had “reasonable grounds” for having sought refuge in the embassy, his lawyer argued, citing the case of Chelsea Manning, the former Army soldier who was imprisoned for leaking documents to WikiLeaks, until her sentence was commuted last year; calls by Mike Huckabee for Mr. Assange to be executed; and findings by United Nations experts that his stay in the embassy amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment.

“He has spent 5½ years in conditions which, on any view, are akin to imprisonment, without access to adequate medical care or sunlight, in circumstances where his physical and psychological health have deteriorated and are in serious peril,” Mr. Summers wrote in a note to the court.

Aaron Watkins, representing the Crown Prosecution Service, asked the court to deny Mr. Assange’s request. He said that the warrant should stand and that Mr. Assange could be arrested and prosecuted for the crime of skipping bail.

He said it could not be in the public interest for Mr. Assange — having evaded arrest for so long that Swedish prosecutors dropped their case — “not to be arrested or punished for his failure to surrender and for his contempt for the court process.”

Mr. Assange’s hypothetical fear of extradition to the United States was “not a reasonable explanation” for his contempt of court, Mr. Watkins added.

The court’s chief magistrate, Emma Arbuthnot, who noted doctors’ statements that Mr. Assange suffered from depression, tooth pain and a stiff shoulder, adjourned the hearing until Feb. 6.

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