Friday, April 12, 2019

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, FRIDAY, APRIL 12, 2019

Don't extradite Assange!

To the government of the UK

Julian Assange, through Wikileaks, has done the world a great service in documenting American war crimes, its spying on allies and other dirty secrets of the world's most powerful regimes, organisations and corporations. This has not endeared him to the American deep state. Both Obama, Clinton and Trump have declared that arresting Julian Assange should be a priority. We have recently received confirmation [1] that he has been charged in secret so as to have him extradited to the USA as soon as he can be arrested.

Assange's persecution, the persecution of a publisher for publishing information [2] that was truthful and clearly in the interest of the public - and which has been republished in major newspapers around the world - is a danger to freedom of the press everywhere, especially as the USA is asserting a right to arrest and try a non-American who neither is nor was then on American soil. The sentence is already clear: if not the death penalty then life in a supermax prison and ill treatment like Chelsea Manning. The very extradition of Julian Assange to the United States would at the same time mean the final death of freedom of the press in the West.

Sign now!

The courageous nation of Ecuador has offered Assange political asylum within its London embassy for several years until now. However, under pressure by the USA, the new government has made it clear that they want to drive Assange out of the embassy and into the arms of the waiting police as soon as possible. They have already curtailed his internet and his visitors and turned the heating off, leaving him freezing in a desolate state for the past few months and leading to the rapid decline of his health, breaching UK obligations under the European Convention of Human Rights. Therefore, our demand both to the government of Ecuador and the government of the UK is: don't extradite Assange to the US! Guarantee his human rights, make his stay at the embassy as bearable as possible and enable him to leave the embassy towards a secure country as soon as there are guarantees not to arrest and extradite him. Furthermore, we, as EU voters, encourage European nations to take proactive steps to protect a journalist in danger. The world is still watching.

Sign now!

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/us/politics/julian-assange-indictment-wikileaks.html

[2] https://theintercept.com/2018/11/16/as-the-obama-doj-concluded-prosecution-of-julian-assange-for-publishing-documents-poses-grave-threats-to-press-freedom/

Sign this petition:

https://internal.diem25.org/en/petitions/1

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How to buy a gun in the U.S. and New Zeland:

New Zealand to Ban Military-Style Semiautomatic Guns, Jacinda Ardern Says

By Damien Cave and Charlotte Graham-McLay, March 20, 2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/business/boeing-safety-features-charge.html

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The Intercept.com: "Larry Krasner Responds to Progressive Critics" (Feb. 9, 2019)

www.RootsAction.org

Mumia Abu-Jamal

BREAKING NEWS! SHARE WIDELY!

On January 3, 2019 the office of District Attorney Larry Krasner filed a letter memorandum to Judge Leon Tucker. "DA [Larry Krasner], and members of his staff went to a remote and largely inaccessible of the DA's office marked "Storage" looking for office furniture." And found six boxes of files on Mumia Abu-Jamal's case that were not produced duringthe recent court proceedings.

The District Attorney Krasner's remarkable and suspicious discovery of six boxes of files marked Mumia or Mumia Abu-Jamal hidden in a storage room on December 28 was one day after Judge Tucker's historic decision granting Mumia Abu-Jamal new rights of appeal.

This is confirmation of what we've known for decades--the prosecution has hidden exculpatory evidence in Mumia's case. Evidence that is likely proof that Mumia's guilt was intentionally manufactured by the police and prosecution and the truth of his innocence suppressed.

These files should be released to the public. DA Krasner should take this as evidence of the total corruptness of this prosecution against an innocent man. The remedy for this is nothing less than dismissal of the charges against Mumia and his freedom from prison!

It took DA Krasner six days to report this find to Judge Tucker. Why? And who has gone through those six boxes of files on Mumia's case? What assurance can DA Krasner give that there hasn't been further tampering with and covering up of the evidence, which led to an innocent man being framed for murder and sentenced to death?

The DA's letter was not publicly available, nor was the January 3 docket filing shown on the court's public access web pages of docket filing, until January 9.

Rachel Wolkenstein, January 10, 2019

https://whyy.org/articles/philly-prosecutors-discover-mysterious-six-boxes-connected-to-mumia-abu-jamal-in-storage-room/

http://philly.com/news/mumia-abu-jamal-daniel-faulkner-boxes-case-files-20190110.html

WHYY (an affiliate of NPR)

https://whyy.org/articles/philly-prosecutors-discover-mysterious-six-boxes-connected-to-mumia-abu-jamal-in-storage-room/

Philly prosecutors discover mysterious 'six boxes' connected to Mumia Abu-Jamal in storage room

By Bobby AllynJanuary 9, 2019

A group of two dozen activists briefly block traffic during a rally outside the Philadelphia District Attorney's office on Friday. The group called on DA Larry Krasner to not challenge a Common Pleas court ruling that allows Mumia Abu-Jamal to file an appeal. (Bastiaan Slabbers for WHYY)

Days after Christmas, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner and some of his assistants went rummaging around an out-of-the-way storage room in the office looking for some pieces of furniture. What they stumbled upon was a surprising find: six boxes stuffed of files connected to the case of convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Five of the six boxes were marked "McCann," a reference to the former head of the office's homicide unit, Ed McCann. Some of the boxes were also marked "Mumia," or the former Black Panther's full name, "Mumia Abu-Jamal."

It is unknown what exactly the files say and whether or not the box's contents will shed new light on a case that for decades has garnered worldwide attention.

But in a letter to the judge presiding over Abu-Jamal's case, Assistant District Attorney Tracey Kavanagh wrote "nothing in the Commonwealth's database showed the existence of these six boxes," she said. "We are in the process of reviewing these boxes."

The surprise discovery comes just weeks after a Philadelphia judge reinstated appeals rightsto Abu-Jamal, saying the former radio journalist and activist should get another chance to reargue his case in front of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court due to a conflict-of-interest one of the justices had at the time Abu-Jamal's petition was denied.

Abu-Jamal's supportersare seizing on the mysterious six boxes as proof that his innocence has been systematically suppressed by authorities.

"There's no question in my mind that the only reason they could've been hidden like this is that this is the evidence of the frame-up of Mumia," said Rachel Wolkenstein, who has been a legal advocate and activist for Abu-Jamal for more than 30 years.

"What these missing boxes represent is confirmation of what we've known for decades: there's hidden, exculpatory evidence in Mumia's case, and that is evidence that Mumia's guilt was intentionally manufactured by the police and prosecution and the truth of his innocence was suppressed," Wolkenstein said.

The Philadelphia District Attorney's Office did not say anything at all about what is in the boxes, or whether there is evidence that the files are exculpatory, or capable of demonstrating that Abu-Jamal did not commit a crime. During his original trial three separate eyewitnesses testified Mumia did commit the murder of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner.

Wolkenstein's assessment is wild speculation, according to Ed McCann, the former homicide unit chief whose name was scrawled across the six boxes. McCann left the office in 2015 after 26 years there as a prosecutor. He was never directly involved in Abu-Jamal's case.

"I can't tell you 100% what is in these boxes," McCann said Wednesday night. "But I doubt there is anything in them that is not already in the public eye."

How and why did six boxes tied to one of the most legendary and racially-charged cases the office has ever handled get relegated to a dusty storage room?

McCann is not sure. But he said when the office moved locations in 2006, hundreds of boxes with his name written them were moved into the current headquarters on South Penn Square, just across the street from Philadelphia City Hall.

"I don't remember these six boxes. But nobody over there discussed this with me before filing this letter," McCann said. "I would think if they were really interested in what happened, they would have reached out to me."

In the two-page letter to the court, assistant district attorney Kavanagh wrote that if Judge Leon Tucker would like to review the boxes, prosecutors will turn them over.

Tucker, who is the same judge who ordered that Abu-Jamal should be given a new appeals argument, has not weighed in on the newly-discovered boxes.

But in his opinion last month, Tucker said former Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Ronald Castille should have recused himself from hearing Abu-Jamal's petitions, since Castille himself was Philadelphia's District Attorney when the case was actively on appeal. "True justice must be completely just without even a hint of partiality, lack of integrity or impropriety," wrote Tucker, saying a new hearing in front of the state's high court is warranted.

Prosecutors have not taken a position yet on Tucker's opinion. The files unearthed in the six boxes could influence whether Krasner's office supports or opposes a new hearing for Abu-Jamal.

Wolkenstein said the thousands of people who have joined the "Free Mumia" movement around the globe should be able to review the documents themselves.

"These files should be released publicly," Wolkenstein said. "The remedy for this is nothing less than dismissal of Mumia's charges and his release from prison."

Mumia Abu-Jamal Letter 1.3.19by on Scribd

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Statement: Academic Institutions Must Defend Free Speech

The International Committee for Peace, Justice and Dignity issued the following statement on 23 December, signed by 155 distinguished academics and human rights advocates.

Sign on and show your support: https://diy.rootsaction.org/petitions/academic-institutions-must-defend-free-speech?just_launched=true

Petition Text

Statement issued by the International Committee for Peace, Justice and Dignity:

We, the undersigned, oppose the coordinated campaign to deny academics their free speech rights due to their defense of Palestinian rights and criticism of the policies and practices of the state of Israel. Temple University in Philadelphia, USA and the University of Sydney, Australia have been under great pressure to fire, respectively, Marc Lamont Hill and Tim Anderson, both senior academics at their institutions, for these reasons. Steven Salaita and Norman Finkelstein have already had their careers destroyed by such attacks. Hatem Bazian, Ahlam Muhtaseb, William Robinson, Rabab Abdulhadi and others have also been threatened.

The ostensible justification for such action is commonly known as the "Palestinian exception" to the principle of free speech. One may freely criticize and disrespect governments – including one's own – religions, political beliefs, personal appearance and nearly everything else except the actions and policies of the state of Israel. Those who dare to do so will become the focus of well-financed and professionally run campaigns to silence and/or destroy them and their careers.

We recognize that much of the free speech that occurs in academic and other environments will offend some individuals and groups. However, as has been said many times before, the answer to free speech that some may find objectionable is more free speech, not less. We therefore call upon all academic institutions, their faculty and students, as well as the public at large, to resist such bullying tactics and defend the free speech principles upon which they and all free societies and their institutions are founded.

https://diy.rootsaction.org/petitions/academic-institutions-must-defend-free-speech?just_launched=true

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Updates from the Committee to Stop FBI Repression

Justice for Rasmea Odeh! Justice for Palestine!

The Committee to Stop FBI Repression strongly supports Rasmea Odeh's right to speak in Berlin about the Palestinian liberation struggle. We stand with the many other organizations who condemn the German, Israeli, and U.S. governments' attacks on Rasmea and their attempts to silence her by revoking her visa and prohibiting her from political activity (see article about the March 15 incident).

The actions of these governments blatantly reflect their racist anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim views. But we want to draw attention to the underlying reason for their targeting of Rasmea. The attack on her right to speak is deeply tied to U.S. and German support for the Israeli apartheid and settler colonialism in Palestine. Moreover, the attack on Rasmea reflects these countries' imperialist strategies for control of the Middle East. By the same token, these governments are clearly acting out of fear - fear that when Palestinian women and activists like Rasmea speak up, it chips away at such countries' grasp on Palestine and the surrounding region.

The attacks on Rasmea and Palestine also relate to political repression taking place across the globe. Germany, the U.S. and Israel are attempting to silence Rasmea for the same fundamental reasons that the Duterte government has murdered and attacked activists and human rights defenders in the Philippines; that the U.S. government is trying to forcibly install a new government in Venezuela; and that the NYPD's Strategic Response Group is surveilling and harassing leaders and activists in the Black Lives Matter movement. The imperialists who are in power are clearly afraid that people like Rasmea might inspire others to rise up and fight back against the racist and oppressive system in place.

We want to send a message to these imperialist powers, to say that fighting back is exactly what we plan to do. It is imperative that we fight back against this unjust system that tries to silence Palestinian women like Rasmea. We demand that Rasmea Odeh be permitted to speak in Germany, and we demand an end to state repression against all Muslim women, and all Palestinians who have boldly raised their voices against the imperialist and colonialist powers that are oppressing people across the world.

Activists are not terrorists! We stand in solidarity with Rasmea and all Palestinian people in their struggle for liberation.

-- NYC Committee to Stop FBI Repression

Copyright © 2019 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights reserved.
Thanks for your ongoing interest in the fight against FBI repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists!

Our mailing address is:

Committee to Stop FBI Repression

PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414

Add us to your address book

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Hi Bonnie. Courage to Resist is working closely with our new fiscal sponsor, the Objector Church, on a couple projects that we're excited to share with you.

Objector Registry launches as draft registration of women nears

The first ever Objector Registry (objector.church/register) offers a declaration of conscience for anyone to assert their moral opposition to war, regardless of age, gender, or religious affiliation. This serves to create a protective record of beliefs and actions with which to oppose a later forced draft. Given last week's release of the report by the Congressionally mandated commission on military service, this free registry is coming online just in time. Please sign up yourself and share with friends!

You're invited to join us online weekly

This is a great way to find out more about the Objector Church and why we might be the religious humanist interfaith peace and justice community you have been looking for! Our live meetups are lead by Minister James Branum from Oklahoma City. This Sunday at 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern, if your not excited by the NFL's "big game", pop online and check us out at objector.church/meetup

COURAGE TO RESIST ~ SUPPORT THE TROOPS WHO REFUSE TO FIGHT!
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland, California 94610 ~ 510-488-3559
www.couragetoresist.org ~ facebook.com/couragetoresist

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COURAGE TO RESIST

New "Refuse War" Shirts

We've launched a new shirt store to raise funds to support war resisters.

In addition to the Courage to Resist logo shirts we've offered in the past, we now have a few fun designs, including a grim reaper, a "Refuse War, Go AWOL" travel theme, and a sporty "AWOL: Support Military War Resisters" shirt.

Shirts are $25 each for small through XL, and bit more for larger sizes. Please allow 9-12 days for delivery within the United States.

50% of each shirt may qualify as a tax-deductible contribution.

Courage to Resist -- Support the Troops who Refuse to Fight!

484 Lake Park Ave. #41, Oakland, CA 94610, 510-488-3559

couragetoresis.org -- facebook.com/couragetoresist

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To: Indiana Department of Corrections

Kevin "Rashid" Johnson Should Have Access to His Personal Property

Petition Text

1. IDOC regulation 02-01-101-VIII must be respected! Kevin Johnson (IDOC# 264847) must be allowed to select from his property the items that he most immediately needs. He has been left without any of the material he requires for contacting his loved ones, his writing (this includes books), his pending litigation, and for his artwork.

2. Kevin Johnson (IDOC# 264847) should be released into General Population. Prolonged solitary confinement is internationally recognized as a form of torture. Moreover, he has not committed any infractions.

Why is this important?

Kevin "Rashid" Johnson (IDOC# 264847) – a Virginia prisoner – was transferred to Indiana on November 4. His transfer was authorized under the Interstate Corrections Compact, commonly used to ship prisoners out of state. Virginia is one of several states that make use of this practice as a tool to repress and isolate prisoners who speak up for their rights.

These transfers are extremely disruptive, and serve as an opportunity for prison officials to violate prisoners' rights, especially regarding their property. This is exactly what has been done to Rashid.

Rashid has 24 boxes of personal property. These are all of his possessions in the world. Much of these 24 boxes consist of legal documents and research materials, including materials directly related to pending or anticipated court cases, and his list of addresses and phone numbers of media contacts, human rights advocates, outside supporters, and friends.

At Pendleton Correctional Facility, where Rashid is now being kept prisoner and in solitary confinement, only one guard is in charge of the property room. This is very unusual, as the property room is where all of the prisoners' belongings that are not in their cells are kept. The guard in charge, Dale Davis, has a dubious reputation. Prisoners complain that property goes missing, and their requests to access their belongings – that by law are supposed to be met within 7 days, or if there are court deadlines within 24 hours – are often ignored, answered improperly, or what they receive does not correspond to what they have asked for.

Despite having a need for legal and research documents for pending and anticipated court cases, his requests to receive his property have not been properly answered. The property officer, Dale Davis, is supposed to inventory the prisoners' property with them (and a witness) present, according to IDOC regulation 02-01-101-VIII; this was never done. When Rashid did receive some property, it was a random selection of items unrelated to what he asked for, brought to the segregation unit in a box and a footlocker and left in an insecure area where things could be stolen or tampered with.

On December 19th, Rashid received notice that Davis had confiscated various documents deemed to be "security threat group" or "gang" related from his property. Rashid has no idea what these might be, as (contrary to the prison regulations) he was not present when his property was gone through. Rashid does not know how much or how little was confiscated, or what the rationale was for its being described as "gang" related. None of Rashid's property should be confiscated or thrown out under any circumstances, but it is worth noting that the way in which this has been done contravenes the prison's own regulations and policies!

Dale Davis has been an IDOC property officer for 8 years. He has boasted about how he does not need any oversight or anyone else working with him, even though it is very unusual for just one person to have this responsibility. Prisoners' property goes "missing" or is tampered with, and prisoners' rights – as laid out by the Indiana Department of Corrections – are not being respected.

Rashid is not asking to have all of his property made available to him in his cell. He is willing to accept only having access to some of it at a time, for instance as he needs it to prepare court documents or for his research and writing.

After two months in Indiana, he has still not been supplied with his documents containing the phone numbers and addresses of his loved ones and supporters, effectively sabotaging his relationships on the outside. Rashid is not asking for any kind of special treatment, he is only asking for the prison property room to follow the prison's own rules.

We ask that you look into this, and make sure that Mr. Johnson's right to access his property is being respected, and that something be done about the irregularities in the Pendleton property room. We ask that the rules of the Indiana Department of Corrections be respected.

Sign the petition here:
https://diy.rootsaction.org/petitions/kevin-rashid-johnson-should-have-access-to-his-personal-property?bucket&source=facebook-share-email-button&time=1547257147&fbclid=IwAR3rjpTZog631Oxv6oqjZmaJQv1GLIMHMuhDaP4g0Xu_EajWwW6X1faBPbE

FOR UPDATES CHECK OUT RASHID'S WEBSITE AT RASHIDMOD.COM

you can also hear a recent interview with Rashid on Final Straw podcast here: https://thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org/post/tag/kevin-rashid-johnson/

Write to Rashid:

Kevin Rashid Johnson's writings and artwork have been widely circulated. He is the author of a book,Panther Vision: Essential Party Writings and Art of Kevin "Rashid" Johnson, Minister of Defense, New Afrikan Black Panther Party, (Kersplebedeb, 2010).

Kevin Johnson D.O.C. No. 264847

G-20-2C Pendleton Correctional Facility

4490 W. Reformatory Rd.

Pendleton, IN 46064-9001

krj.nabpppc@gmail.com

www.rashidmod.com

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Get Malik Out of Ad-Seg

Keith "Malik" Washington is an incarcerated activist who has spoken out on conditions of confinement in Texas prison and beyond: from issues of toxic water and extreme heat, to physical and sexual abuse of imprisoned people, to religious discrimination and more. Malik has also been a tireless leader in the movement to #EndPrisonSlavery which gained visibility during nationwide prison strikes in 2016 and 2018. View his work at comrademalik.com or write him at:

Keith H. Washington
TDC# 1487958
McConnell Unit
3001 S. Emily Drive
Beeville, TX 78102

Friends, it's time to get Malik out of solitary confinement.

Malik has experienced intense, targeted harassment ever since he dared to start speaking against brutal conditions faced by incarcerated people in Texas and nationwide--but over the past few months, prison officials have stepped up their retaliation even more.

In Administrative Segregation (solitary confinement) at McConnell Unit, Malik has experienced frequent humiliating strip searches, medical neglect, mail tampering and censorship, confinement 23 hours a day to a cell that often reached 100+ degrees in the summer, and other daily abuses too numerous to name.  It could not be more clear that they are trying to make an example of him because he is a committed freedom fighter. So we have to step up.

Phone zap on Tuesday, November 13

Mark your calendars for the 11/13 call in, be on the look out for a call script, and spread the word!!

Demands:

- Convene special review of Malik's placement in Ad-Seg and immediately release him back to general population

- Explain why the State Classification Committee's decision to release Malik from Ad-Seg back in June was overturned (specifically, demand to know the nature of the "information" supposedly collected by the Fusion Center, and demand to know how this information was investigated and verified).

- Immediately cease all harassment and retaliation against Malik, especially strip searches and mail censorship!

Who to contact:

TDCJ Executive Director Bryan Collier

Phone: (936)295-6371

Email:  exec.director@tdcj.texas.gov

Senior Warden Philip Sinfuentes (McConnell Unit)
Phone: (361) 362-2300

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Background on Malik's Situation

Malik's continued assignment to Ad-Seg (solitary confinement) in is an overt example of political repression, plain and simple.  Prison officials placed Malik in Ad-Seg two years ago for writing about and endorsing the 2016 nationwide prison strike. They were able to do this because Texas and U.S. law permits non-violent work refusal to be classified as incitement to riot.

It gets worse.  Malik was cleared for release from Ad-Seg by the State Classification Committee in June--and then, in an unprecedented reversal, immediately re-assigned him back to Ad-Seg. The reason?  Prison Officials site "information" collected by a shadowy intelligence gathering operation called a Fusion Center, which are known for lack of transparency and accountability, and for being blatant tools of political repression.

Malik remains in horrible conditions, vulnerable to every possible abuse, on the basis of "information" that has NEVER been disclosed or verified.  No court or other independent entity has ever confirmed the existence, let alone authenticity, of this alleged information. In fact, as recently as October 25, a representative of the State Classification Committee told Malik that he has no clue why Malik was re-assigned to Ad-Seg.  This "information" is pure fiction.

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Listen to 'The Daily': Was Kevin Cooper Framed for Murder?

By Michael Barbaro, May 30, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/podcasts/the-daily/kevin-cooper-death-row.html?emc=edit_ca_20180530&nl=california-today&nlid=2181592020180530&te=1

Listen and subscribe to our podcast from your mobile device: Via Apple Podcasts | Via RadioPublic | Via Stitcher

The sole survivor of an attack in which four people were murdered identified the perpetrators as three white men. The police ignored suspects who fit the description and arrested a young black man instead. He is now awaiting execution.

On today's episode:

• Kevin Cooper, who has been on death row at San Quentin State Prison in California for three decades.

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Last week I met with fellow organizers and members of Mijente to take joint action at the Tornillo Port of Entry, where detention camps have been built and where children and adults are currently being imprisoned.

I oppose the hyper-criminalization of migrants and asylum seekers. Migration is a human right and every person is worthy of dignity and respect irrespective of whether they have "papers" or not. You shouldn't have to prove "extreme and unusual hardship" to avoid being separated from your family. We, as a country, have a moral responsibility to support and uplift those adversely affected by the US's decades-long role in the economic and military destabilization of the home countries these migrants and asylum seekers have been forced to leave.

While we expected to face resistance and potential trouble from the multiple law enforcement agencies represented at the border, we didn't expect to have a local farm hand pull a pistol on us to demand we deflate our giant balloon banner. Its message to those in detention:

NO ESTÁN SOLOS (You are not alone).

Despite the slight disruption to our plan we were able to support Mijente and United We Dream in blocking the main entrance to the detention camp and letting those locked inside know that there are people here who care for them and want to see them free and reunited with their families.

We are continuing to stand in solidarity with Mijente as they fight back against unjust immigration practices.Yesterday they took action in San Diego, continuing to lead and escalate resistance to unjust detention, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and to ICE.

While we were honored to offer on-the-ground support we see the potential to focus the energy of our Drop the MIC campaign into fighting against this injustice, to have an even greater impact. Here's how:

Call out General Dynamics for profiteering of War, Militarization of the Border and Child and Family Detention (look for our social media toolkit this week);

Create speaking forums and produce media that challenges the narrative of ICE and Jeff Sessions, encouraging troops who have served in the borderlands to speak out about that experience;

Continue to show up and demand we demilitarize the border and abolish ICE.

Thank you for your vision and understanding of how militarism, racism, and capitalism are coming together in the most destructive ways. Help keep us in this fight by continuing to support our work.

About Face: Veterans Against the War is a 501(c)(3) charity,

and welcomes your tax deductible contributions

Please make a one time or monthly donation to sustain this work.

In Solidarity,

Ramon Mejia

Field Organizer, About Face: Veterans Against the War

P.O. Box 3565, New York, NY 10008. All Right Reserved. | Unsubscribe

To ensure delivery of About Face emails please add webmaster@ivaw.org to your address book.

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Major George Tillery

MAJOR TILLERY FILES NEW LEGAL PETITION

SEX FOR LIES AND

MANUFACTURED TESTIMONY

April 25, 2018-- The arrest of two young men in Starbucks for the crime of "sitting while black," and the four years prison sentence to rapper Meek Mill for a minor parole violation are racist outrages in Philadelphia, PA that made national news in the past weeks. Yesterday Meek Mills was released on bail after a high profile defense campaign and a Pa Supreme Court decision citing evidence his conviction was based solely on a cop's false testimony.

These events underscore the racism, frame-up, corruption and brutality at the core of the criminal injustice system. Pennsylvania "lifer" Major Tillery's fight for freedom puts a spotlight on the conviction of innocent men with no evidence except the lying testimony of jailhouse snitches who have been coerced and given favors by cops and prosecutors.

Sex for Lies and Manufactured Testimony

For thirty-five years Major Tillery has fought against his 1983 arrest, then conviction and sentence of life imprisonment without parole for an unsolved 1976 pool hall murder and assault. Major Tillery's defense has always been his innocence. The police and prosecution knew Tillery did not commit these crimes. Jailhouse informant Emanuel Claitt gave lying testimony that Tillery was one of the shooters.

Homicide detectives and prosecutors threatened Claitt with a false unrelated murder charge, and induced him to lie with promises of little or no jail time on over twenty pending felonies, and being released from jail despite a parole violation. In addition, homicide detectives arranged for Claitt, while in custody, to have private sexual liaisons with his girlfriends in police interview rooms.

In May and June 2016, Emanuel Claitt gave sworn statements that his testimony was a total lie, and that the homicide cops and the prosecutors told him what to say and coached him before trial. Not only was he coerced to lie that Major Tillery was a shooter, but to lie and claim there were no plea deals made in exchange for his testimony. He provided the information about the specific homicide detectives and prosecutors involved in manufacturing his testimony and details about being allowed "sex for lies". In August 2016, Claitt reaffirmed his sworn statements in a videotape, posted on YouTube and on JusticeforMajorTillery.org.

Without the coerced and false testimony of Claitt there was no evidence against Major Tillery. There were no ballistics or any other physical evidence linking him to the shootings. The surviving victim's statement naming others as the shooters was not allowed into evidence.

The trial took place in May 1985 during the last days of the siege and firebombing of the MOVE family Osage Avenue home in Philadelphia that killed 13 Black people, including 5 children. The prosecution claimed that Major Tillery was part of an organized crime group, and falsely described it as run by the Nation of Islam. This prejudiced and inflamed the majority white jury against Tillery, to make up for the absence of any evidence that Tillery was involved in the shootings.

This was a frame-up conviction from top to bottom. Claitt was the sole or primary witness in five other murder cases in the early 1980s. Coercing and inducing jailhouse informants to falsely testify is a standard routine in criminal prosecutions. It goes hand in hand with prosecutors suppressing favorable evidence from the defense.

Major Tillery has filed a petition based on his actual innocence to the Philadelphia District Attorney's Larry Krasner's Conviction Review Unit. A full review and investigation should lead to reversal of Major Tillery's conviction. He also asks that the DA's office to release the full police and prosecution files on his case under the new "open files" policy. In the meantime, Major Tillery continues his own investigation. He needs your support.

Major Tillery has Fought his Conviction and Advocated for Other Prisoners for over 30 Years

The Pennsylvania courts have rejected three rounds of appeals challenging Major Tillery's conviction based on his innocence, the prosecution's intentional presentation of false evidence against him and his trial attorney's conflict of interest. On June 15, 2016 Major Tillery filed a new post-conviction petition based on the same evidence now in the petition to the District Attorney's Conviction Review Unit. Despite the written and video-taped statements from Emanuel Claitt that that his testimony against Major Tillery was a lie and the result of police and prosecutorial misconduct, Judge Leon Tucker dismissed Major Tillery's petition as "untimely" without even holding a hearing. Major Tillery appealed that dismissal and the appeal is pending in the Superior Court.

During the decades of imprisonment Tillery has advocated for other prisoners challenging solitary confinement, lack of medical and mental health care and the inhumane conditions of imprisonment. In 1990, he won the lawsuit, Tillery v. Owens, that forced the PA Department of Corrections (DOC) to end double celling (4 men to a small cell) at SCI Pittsburgh, which later resulted in the closing and then "renovation" of that prison.

Three years ago Major Tillery stood up for political prisoner and journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal and demanded prison Superintendent John Kerestes get Mumia to a hospital because "Mumia is dying." For defending Mumia and advocating for medical treatment for himself and others, prison officials retaliated. Tillery was shipped out of SCI Mahanoy, where Mumia was also held, to maximum security SCI Frackville and then set-up for a prison violation and a disciplinary penalty of months in solitary confinement. See, Messing with Major by Mumia Abu-Jamal. Major Tillery's federal lawsuit against the DOC for that retaliation is being litigated. Major Tillery continues as an advocate for all prisoners. He is fighting to get the DOC to establish a program for elderly prisoners.

Major Tillery Needs Your Help:

Well-known criminal defense attorney Stephen Patrizio represents Major pro bonoin challenging his conviction. More investigation is underway. We can't count on the district attorney's office to make the findings of misconduct against the police detectives and prosecutors who framed Major without continuing to dig up the evidence.

Major Tillery is now 67 years old. He's done hard time, imprisoned for almost 35 years, some 20 years in solitary confinement in max prisons for a crime he did not commit. He recently won hepatitis C treatment, denied to him for a decade by the DOC. He has severe liver problems as well as arthritis and rheumatism, back problems, and a continuing itchy skin rash. Within the past couple of weeks he was diagnosed with an extremely high heartbeat and is getting treatment.

Major Tillery does not want to die in prison. He and his family, daughters, sons and grandchildren are fighting to get him home. The newly filed petition for Conviction Review to the Philadelphia District Attorney's office lays out the evidence Major Tillery has uncovered, evidence suppressed by the prosecution through all these years he has been imprisoned and brought legal challenges into court. It is time for the District Attorney's to act on the fact that Major Tillery is innocent and was framed by police detectives and prosecutors who manufactured the evidence to convict him. Major Tillery's conviction should be vacated and he should be freed.

Major Tillery and family

HOW YOU CAN HELP

Financial Support—Tillery's investigation is ongoing. He badly needs funds to fight for his freedom.

Go to JPay.com;

code: Major Tillery AM9786 PADOC

Tell Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner:

The Conviction Review Unit should investigate Major Tillery's case. He is innocent. The only evidence at trial was from lying jail house informants who now admit it was false.

Call: 215-686-8000 or

Email: justice@phila.gov

Write to:

Security Processing Center

Major Tillery AM 9786

268 Bricker Road
Bellefonte, PA 16823

For More Information, Go To: JusticeForMajorTillery.org

Call/Write:

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

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

Obtain Updates: www.justice4majortillery.info

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On Monday March 4th, 2019 Leonard Peltier was advised that his request for a transfer had been unceremoniously denied by the United States Bureau of Prisons.

The International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee appreciates and thanks the large number of his supporters who took the time to write, call, email, or fax the BOP in support of Leonard's request for a transfer.

Those of us who have been supporting Leonard's freedom for a number of years are disappointed but resolute to continue pushing for his freedom and until that day, to continue to push for his transfer to be closer to his relatives and the Indigenous Nations who support him.

44 years is too damn long for an innocent man to be locked up. How can his co-defendants be innocent on the grounds of self-defense but Leonard remains in prison? The time is now for all of us to dig deep and do what we can and what we must to secure freedom for Leonard Peltier before it's too late.

We need the support of all of you now, more than ever. The ILPDC plans to appeal this denial of his transfer to be closer to his family. We plan to demand he receive appropriate medical care, and to continue to uncover and utilize every legal mechanism to secure his release. To do these things we need money to support the legal work.

Please call the ILPDC National office or email us for a copy of the postcard you can send to the White House. We need your help to ask President Trump for Leonard's freedom.

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1) Black Hole Picture Revealed for the First Time
Astronomers at last have captured an image of the darkest entities in the cosmos.
By Dennis Overbye, April 10, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/science/black-hole-picture.html

The first image of a black hole, from the galaxy Messier 87.CreditCreditEvent Horizon Telescope Collaboration, via National Science Foundation

Astronomers announced on Wednesday that at last they had seen the unseeable: a black hole, a cosmic abyss so deep and dense that not even light can escape it.

"We've exposed a part of our universe we've never seen before," said Shep Doeleman, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and director of the effort to capture the image, during a Wednesday news conference in Washington, D.C.

The image, of a lopsided ring of light surrounding a dark circle deep in the heart of the galaxy known as Messier 87, some 55 million light-years away from here, resembled the Eye of Sauron, a reminder yet again of the power and malevolence of nature. It is a smoke ring framing a one-way portal to eternity.

To capture the image, astronomers reached across intergalactic space to a giant galaxy known as Messier 87, in the constellation Virgo. There, a black hole about seven billion times more massive than the sun is unleashing a violent jet of energy some 5,000 light years into space.

[Sign up to get reminders for space and astronomy events on your calendar.]

The image offered a final, ringing affirmation of an idea so disturbing that even Einstein, from whose equations black holes emerged, was loath to accept it. If too much matter is crammed into one place, the cumulative force of gravity becomes overwhelming, and the place becomes an eternal trap, a black hole. Here, according to Einstein's theory, matter, space and time come to an end and vanish like a dream.

On Wednesday morning that dark vision became a visceral reality. When the image was put up on the screen in Washington, cheers and gasps, followed by applause, broke out.

The image emerged from two years of computer analysis of observations from a network of radio antennas called the Event Horizon Telescope. In all, eight radio observatories on six mountains and four continents observed the galaxy in Virgo on and off for 10 days in April 2017.

The telescope array also monitored a dim source of radio noise called Sagittarius A* (pronounced Sagittarius A-star), at the heart of our Milky Way galaxy. There, 26,000 light-years from Earth, and buried in the depths of interstellar dust and gas, another black hole, with a mass of 4.1 million suns, almost certainly lurks.

The network is named after the edge of a black hole, the point of no return; beyond the event horizon, not even light can escape the black hole's gravitational pull.

For some years now, the scientific literature, news media and films such as "Interstellar" and the newly released "High Life" have featured remarkably sophisticated and highly academic computer simulations of black holes. But the real thing looked different. For starters, the black holes in movies typically are not surrounded by fiery accretion disks of swirling, doomed matter, as are the black holes in Virgo and Sagittarius.

Perhaps even more important, the images provide astrophysicists with the first look at the innards of a black hole. The energy within is thought to be powerful enough to power quasars and other violent phenomena from the nuclei of galaxies, including the jets of intense radiation that spew 5,000 light years from the galaxy M87.

As hot, dense gas swirls around the black hole, like water headed down a drain, the intense pressures and magnetic fields cause energy to squirt from either side. As a paradoxical result, supermassive black holes, which lurk in the centers of galaxies, can be the most luminous objects in the universe.

The unveiling, before a crowd at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. and five other venues around the world, took place almost exactly a century after images of stars askew in the heavens made Einstein famous and confirmed his theory of general relativity as the law of the cosmos. That theory ascribes gravity to the warping of space and time by matter and energy, much as a mattress sags under a sleeper, and allows for the contents of the universe, including light rays, to follow curved paths.

General relativity led to a new conception of the cosmos, in which space-time could quiver, bend, rip, expand, swirl like a mix-master and even disappear forever into the maw of a black hole.

To Einstein's surprise, the equations indicated that when too much matter or energy was concentrated in one place, space-time could collapse, trapping matter and light in perpetuity.

Einstein disliked that idea, but the consensus today is that the universe is speckled with black holes waiting for something to fall in.

Many are the gravitational tombstones of stars that burned up their fuel and collapsed. But others, crouching in the centers of nearly every galaxy, are millions or billions of times more massive than the sun.

Nobody knows how such behemoths of nothingness could have been assembled. Dense wrinkles in the primordial energies of the Big Bang? Monster runaway stars that collapsed and swallowed up their surroundings in the dawning years of the universe?

Nor do scientists know what ultimately happens to whatever falls into a black hole, nor what forces reign at the center, where according to the math we know now the density approaches infinity and smoke pours from God's computer.

Any lingering doubts about the reality of black holes vanished three years ago when the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, detected the collision of a pair of distant black holes, which sent a shiver through the fabric of space-time.

Since then, other collisions have been recorded, and black holes have become so humdrum that astronomers no longer bother sending out news releases about them.

Now the reality has a face.

The proof that these objects are really black holes would be to find that the darkness at the heart of Virgo was smaller than the mathematical predictions for a black hole. But the more astronomers narrowed it down, the harder they had to work.

Interstellar space is filled with charged particles such as electrons and protons; these scattered the radio waves emanating from the black hole into a blur that obscured details of the source. "It's like looking through frosted glass," said Dr. Doeleman, director of the Event Horizon Telescope..

To penetrate the haze and see deeper into the shadows of Virgo, astronomers needed to be able to tune their radio telescope to shorter wavelengths. And they needed a bigger telescope. The bigger the antenna, the higher the resolution, or magnification, it can achieve.

Enter the Event Horizon Telescope, named for a black hole's point of no return; whatever crosses the event horizon falls into blackness everlasting. The telescope was the dream-child of Dr. Doeleman, who was inspired to study black holes by examining the mysterious activity in the centers of violent radio galaxies such as M87.

By combining data from radio telescopes as far apart as the South Pole, France, Chile and Hawaii, using a technique called very long baseline interferometry, Dr. Doeleman and his colleagues created a telescope as big as Earth itself, with the power to resolve details as small as an orange on the lunar surface.

The network has gained antennas and sensitivity over the last decade. In the spring of 2015 an effort using seven telescopes took aim at the centers of the Milky Way and M87, but bad weather hampered the observations.

Two years later, in April 2017, the network of eight telescopes, including the South Pole Telescope, synchronized by atomic clocks, stared at the two targets off and on for 10 days.

It took the Event Horizon team two years to reduce and collate the results from their 2017 observations. The data were too voluminous to transmit over the internet, and so had to be placed on hard disks and flown back to M.I.T.'s Haystack Observatory, in Westford, Mass., and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, in Bonn, Germany.

The data from the South Pole could not arrive before December 2017, Dr. Doeleman said, "because it was Antarctic winter, when nothing could go in or out."

Last year the team divided into four groups to assemble images from the data dump. To stay objective and guard against bias, the teams had no contact with each other, Dr. Doeleman said.

In the meantime, the telescope kept growing. In April 2018, a telescope in Greenland was added to the collaboration. Another observation run was made of the Milky Way and M87, and captured twice the amount of data gathered in 2017.

"We've hitched our wagon to a bandwidth rocket," Dr. Doeleman said last week. The new observations weren't included in Wednesday's reveal, but they will allow the astronomers to check the 2017 results and to track changes in the black holes as the years go by.

"The plan is to carry out these observations indefinitely," said Dr. Doeleman, embarking on his new career as a tamer of extragalactic beasts, "and see how things change."

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2) California Today: How Large Is the Bay Area's Homeless Population?
By Jill Cowan, April 10, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/us/bay-area-homeless-population.html

The Jungle, a homeless encampment in San Jose, in 2014.CreditCreditMarcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press

Good morning.

(Here's the sign-up, if you don't already get California Today by email.)

In recent years, journalists and advocates have tried to capture the scope of the Bay Area's homelessness crisis — a problem that often feels unfathomable in its depth and complexity.

Still, much of the discussion has centered on San Francisco, or on the efforts of individual cities throughout the region.

[Read about a debate over a homeless services center proposed for a waterfront location in San Francisco.]

Today, the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, the think-tank arm of a business group, is set to release a report that examines the issue through a regional lens.

"One of the things about the Bay Area is, it's a wonderful place, but it's very divided up," Jim Wunderman, the council's president and chief executive, told me. "We have 101 cities in nine counties around this very large bay and there's no one city that dominates the landscape."

But that isn't how programs aimed at moving people into housing have been implemented, he said, even as more people in smaller suburbs find themselves in tenuous housing situations, and more people live out of their cars, which means they're mobile.

The group wanted to explore ways to scale up successful programs and boost coordination among communities. To do that, Mr. Wunderman said, the group needed to better understand what was at stake.

The report found:

• Roughly 28,200 people were homeless across the Bay Area, according to point-in-time counts in 2017. That was the third largest population in the country, after New York (76,500) and Los Angeles (55,200). The next largest overall number was 11,600 in Seattle and King County.

• But the Bay Area has a relatively large percentage of homeless people without shelter (indicating there's a shortage of subsidized housing, short-term shelters and transitional housing). That was 67 percent.

That's compared with just 5 percent in New York and 47 percent in Seattle and King County. Once again, though, Los Angeles had the largest percentage of unsheltered homeless people: 75 percent.

• The analysis found that spending on services for people experiencing homelessness or people who were at risk varied widely across the region. Part of that stems from the fact that the costs to build vary widely.

For instance, the report said, building new permanently supportive housing costs $730,560 on average per unit in San Francisco County, compared with $393,580 per unit on average in Solano County.

However, Mr. Wunderman said that particular finding shouldn't be taken as a sign that services, housing and emergency shelter should be concentrated in the least expensive parts of the Bay.

"We're going to continue to need to develop programs locally," he said. "I think this is a burden that has to be shouldered by everyone."

Mr. Wunderman suggested one way to persuade communities to do their part: Tie state money to initiatives.

[Here's what Californians said about our state's housing affordability.]

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3) How Capitalism Betrayed Privacy
By Tim Wu, April 10, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/opinion/sunday/privacy-capitalism.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

For much of human history, what we now call "privacy" was better known as being rich. Privacy, like wealth, was something that most people had little or none of. Farmers, slaves and serfs resided in simple dwellings, usually with other people, sometimes even sharing space with animals. They had no expectation that a meaningful part of their lives would be unwatchable or otherwise off limits to others. That would have required homes with private rooms. And only rich people had those.

The spread of mass privacy, surely one of modern civilization's more impressive achievements, thus depended on another, even more impressive achievement: the creation of a middle class. Only over the past 300 years or so, as increasingly large numbers of people gained the means to control their physical environment through the acquisition of wealth and private property, did privacy norms and eventually privacy rights come into existence. What is a right to privacy without a room of your own?

The historical link between privacy and the forces of wealth creation helps explain why privacy is under siege today. It reminds us, first, that mass privacy is not a basic feature of human existence but a byproduct of a specific economic arrangement — and therefore a contingent and impermanent state of affairs. And it reminds us, second, that in a capitalist country, our baseline of privacy depends on where the money is. And today that has changed.

The forces of wealth creation no longer favor the expansion of privacy but work to undermine it. We have witnessed the rise of what I call "attention merchants" and what the sociologist Shoshana Zuboff calls "surveillance capitalism" — the commodification of our personal dat by tech giants like Facebook and Google and their imitators in telecommunications, electronics and other industries. We face a future in which active surveillance is such a routine part of business that for most people it is nearly inescapable. In this respect, we are on the road back to serfdom.

That future, however, is not preordained, for Americans overwhelmingly want stronger privacy protections. But that will require laws that do not merely tinker with but fundamentally alter the economics of privacy.

To be sure, ours is not the first era in which privacy has come under attack. American moralists at the height of the temperance movement pushed for laws that gave the police broad authority to break into homes and arrest drinkers, adulterers and gay men. Authoritarian and totalitarian states, insecure in their power, have always fought mass privacy with their spies and extensive networks of secret police, as have democratic countries at war or in times of unrest.

But none of these opponents of privacy had capitalism firmly on its side. In the United States, it is safe to say, privacy "won" the 20th century. Its crowning triumph was the Supreme Court's recognition in 1965 of a constitutional right to privacy, but the legal victory should not obscure the economic forces that were its foundation.

By the 1960s the rise of a propertied middle class had put each man in his "castle," each drinker in his saloon, each worker in his own office and each child in her own bedroom. Private physical spaces, along with semiprivate spaces like motels, bathhouses and dance clubs, created their own expectations of privacy (as did, later, virtual spaces like personal computers and hard drives). It was on those foundations that legal thinkers and activists began to speak of the masses enjoying a right to privacy, to be unwatched — a right to be "left alone." Capitalism was on privacy's side.

In those earlier times, surveillance wasn't particularly profitable, but over the last two decades, new technologies coupled with new theories of value have transformed the economics of privacy. A drastic decrease in the cost of mass surveillance (thanks to the internet) has increased the value of two types of asset: our data and our attention. The race to maximize those assets by companies big and small has made surveillance a growth industry. It is in this sense that capitalism has begun to change sides.

[As technology advances, will it continue to blur the lines between public and private? Sign up for Charlie Warzel's limited-run newsletter to explore what's at stake and what you can do about it.]

You can, of course, still make plenty of money in more traditional ways. But the richest companies in the world now generate wealth by putting as many trackers, devices and screens inside our homes and as close to our bodies as possible. Accumulated data creates competitive advantage, and money can be made by consolidating everything that is known about an individual.

This business model was pioneered by Facebook, Google and the online advertising industry, but other sectors of the economy now want in. Amazon is a convert, as are cable and telecom companies like Comcast and Verizon, as well as the electronics industry with its "smart" devices that spy as they serve. Many employers also now constantly watch their employees. There is good reason to believe that, if nothing is done, gratuitous surveillance will be built into nearly every business and business model.

Some have argued that there's no need to be concerned. After all, even in an age of constant surveillance, we're talking about being watched not by the secret police but by advertisers and other commercial enterprises. This "spying," the argument goes, only makes products better and advertisements more "personalized." The end result is selling people stuff, not sending them to Siberia.

But this argument ignores several hard truths that we have learned in the last decade. One is that data and surveillance networks created for one purpose can and will be used for others. You must assume that any personal data that Facebook or Android keep are data that governments around the world will try to get or that thieves will try to steal.

A similar lesson can be drawn from the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Facebook collected information from millions of users for one set of purposes, but Cambridge Analytica, a political data company working for Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, used that information to try to influence American voters.

Perhaps the hardest truth we've learned is that once you realize you're being watched, it is a tough sensation to shake. As our experiences with social media have made all too clear, we act differently when we know we are "on the record." Mass privacy is the freedom to act without being watched and thus in a sense, to be who we really are — not who we want others to think we are. At stake, then, is something akin to the soul.

Some 92 percent of Americans say they want stronger privacy protections. This is why there has been a spate of new state privacy laws and new privacy bills in Congress. But too many of these interventions are small bore — more notices and disclaimers to read and click through, more excessively complex options for how to manage your account. Tinkering around the edges will not work.

To be truly effective, privacy laws must seek to change the incentives that foster gratuitous surveillance and the reckless accumulation of personalized data. We need strong bans, including those that prohibit companies from sharing their customers' personal informatio. New rights for consumers have to be easy to understand (like the European Union's "right to be forgotte") and easy to use (like a national "do not track" list). And companies that repeatedly fail to protect sensitive data need to face dire consequences.

Nor is there any reason not to use our buying power strategically. Those who want privacy should support and reward the companies who respect it. The economics of privacy would change if enough consumers bought from companies that don't spy on us and whose products actually help people avoid an unwanted gaze.

Privacy is sometimes characterized as the concern only of an overly sensitive elite. But it was once only an overly sensitive elite that cared about public literacy or stopping child labor. The driving ambition of modern civilization has been to pull us out of a feudal existence, to extend what were once thought of luxuries to everyday people.

Now is no time to drift backward — especially not in the name of progress.

Tim Wu is a law professor at Columbia, the author of "The Attention Merchants: The Epic Struggle to Get Inside Our Heads" and a contributing opinion writer.

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4) Global Executions Fall 31 Percent, Driven by Iran, Report Finds
"While even repressive governments like Iran's have taken steps to reduce death sentences, executions still rose, albeit in small numbers, in Belarus, Japan, Singapore, South Sudan and the United States."
By Niraj Chokshi, April 10, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/world/death-penalty-iran-amnesty-international.html

People protesting Iran's use of the death penalty in London in October.CreditCreditJohn Keeble/Getty Images

The number of executions around the world fell by about a third in 2018, reaching the lowest level in at least a decade as several countries scaled back or abolished the death penalty, Amnesty International said in a report released on Wednesday.

The global decline was driven largely by Iran, where executions were halved because of legal reforms that included eliminating the death penalty for a number of drug-related crimes.

"The trend points toward a world ridding itself of the death penalty," said Oluwatosin Popoola, Amnesty International's adviser on the death penalty.

Over all, at least 690 people were executed last year, compared with 993 the year before, the organization said. Despite the reforms, Iran still executed more than 250 people last year, second only to China. Iran was followed by Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and Iraq in executions.

Critically, though, the report's headline figure omits the thousands of estimated annual executions carried out by China, which Amnesty International calls "the world's top executioner." The group stopped providing estimates for China a decade ago, after the government there began misrepresenting the numbers, which are only minimum estimates.

The country-by-country figures, published annually by Amnesty International since 2008, are based on what the group can reasonably confirm through official and informal sources. Some countries, such as China, consider death sentences to be a state secret, while little information can be gathered on others that are too restrictive or marred by conflict, such as North Korea or Syria.

While even repressive governments like Iran's have taken steps to reduce death sentences, executions still rose, albeit in small numbers, in Belarus, Japan, Singapore, South Sudan and the United States.

In the United States, 25 people were executed last year, slightly up from the year before. Executions in the country peaked in 1999, when 98 people were put to death, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

In Sri Lanka, President Maithripala Sirisena announced plans to resurrect the death penalty after a 40-year moratorium, while Thailand carried out its first execution in a decade.

Amnesty International also expressed concern about an increase in death sentences in some countries. In Iraq, for example, the number of people sentenced to death last year quadrupled to 271. In Egypt, 717 were sentenced to death last year, compared with 402 the year before.

Still, the group found that the death penalty is generally on the decline, with a growing number of countries limiting its use or banning it outright, as Gambia and Malaysia announced last year. By the end of last year, 142 countries had abolished the death penalty by law or in practice.

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5) Suspect Arrested in Fires at Black Churches in Louisiana
By Alan Binder and Karen Zraick, April 10, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/us/arrest-fires-black-churches-louisiana.html

The Greater Union Baptist Church in Opelousas, La., after a fire on April 2.CreditCreditWilliam Widmer for The New York Times

BATON ROUGE, La. — A suspect has been arrested in the burnings of three historically black churches in one south Louisiana parish in the last month, a federal prosecutor said Wednesday night.

David C. Joseph, the United States attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, confirmed in a statement that a suspect was in custody. He did not elaborate.

Representative Clay Higgins of Louisiana said the suspect was the son of a St. Landry Parish deputy sheriff.

The fires, which destroyed the three churches, occurred on March 26, April 2 and April 4 in St. Landry Parish, north of Lafayette. The first was at St. Mary Baptist in Port Barre; the two others were at Greater Union Baptist Church and Mount Pleasant Baptist in Opelousas, the St. Landry Parish seat. Officials had said they found "suspicious elements" in each case.

"They burned down a building," the Rev. Harry J. Richard of the Greater Union church said as he preached at a gathering on April 7 after the fire. "They didn't burn down our spirit."

['They didn't burn down our spirit': black churches in Louisiana were worried but defiant after the fires.]

A fourth fire, a small blaze that officials said was "intentionally set," was reported on March 31 at a predominantly white church in Caddo Parish, about a three-hour drive north. It was unclear if that fire was connected to the others.

Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana and law enforcement officials were scheduled to provide details on the arrest at a news conference on Thursday morning in Opelousas.

The F.B.I. and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had been involved in the investigation, as well as the Louisiana and Florida state fire marshals, the cybercrime unit of the Louisiana attorney general's office, and state and local police.

Since the 1950s, black churches across the South have been the targets of racist attacks, from arson and bombing to armed assault.

John Eligon contributed reporting

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6) 'I Don't Want to Stay Here': Half a Million Live in Flood Zones, and the Government Is Paying
By Sarah Mervosh, April 11, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/us/houston-flooding.html

Residents of Arbor Court evacuating in 2016. Nationwide, about 450,000 government-subsidized households are in flood plains, according to a 2017 report by the Furman Center at New York University.CreditBrett Coomer/Houston Chronicle, via Associated Press

When a deadly rainstorm unloaded on Houston in 2016, Sharobin White's apartment complex flooded in up to six feet of water. She sent her toddler and 6-year-old to safety on an air mattress, but her family lost nearly everything, including their car.

When Hurricane Harvey hit the next year, it happened all over again: Families rushed to evacuate, and Ms. White's car, a used Chevrolet she bought after the last flood, was destroyed.

"It's not safe," said Ms. White, now 29. "Everybody gets to panicking when it rains. You can't live like that."

But Ms. White and many of her neighbors cannot afford to leave. They are among hundreds of thousands of Americans — from New York to Miami to Phoenix — who live in government-subsidized housing that is at serious risk of flooding, a danger that is becoming increasingly urgent in the era of climate change.

Global warming has been linked to heavier rainfall, making record-breaking flooding more likely. But the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees some of the at-risk properties, does not currently have a universal policy against paying for housing in a designated flood zone.

There may be good reason for that: Much of the nation's affordable housing stock was built before climate change was well understood, and many properties already sit in flood zones. So the government continues to pay — a strategy that keeps a roof over families' heads, but potentially leaves them in harm's way.

Nowhere is that tension more acute than in Houston, where residents of the nation's fourth-largest city have been pounded by severe storms in recent years — and where HUD is facing a lawsuit brought by Ms. White and a dozen of her neighbors. The residents say they are trapped in a dangerous area because their housing vouchers can be used only at that apartment complex, which sits in a particularly flood-prone area next to a bayou.

Daija Jackson, left, and Sharobin White at Arbor Court. "I don't want to stay here," Ms. Jackson said. "Period."

CreditWilliam Chambers for The New York Times

The complex, Arbor Court Apartments, which is run by a private landlord that contracts with HUD, has been in a flood plain since 1985 and under HUD's oversight since at least 1991, according to the lawsuit, filed in federal court last year.

After the 2016 flood, HUD renewed its contract with the owner, for about $1.6 million a year. Only a year later, Hurricane Harvey wiped out the first floor, leaving many families displaced and others complaining of major problems, including mold.

"Arbor Court is not a close question," said Michael M. Daniel, a civil rights lawyer whose firm has worked with Lone Star Legal Aid and the affordable-housing group Texas Housers on behalf of the residents. "How in the world it hasn't flunked the 'decent, safe and sanitary' test — it's beyond belief."

Kenneth B. Chaiken, a lawyer for Arbor Court, said his client was a "terrific owner" that was deeply committed to offering affordable housing to families who need it. And he said the property's location in a flood plain alone did not make it unsafe.

"People can safely live there," he said. While families may occasionally suffer damage or displacement in an unusual storm, he said, "those are all the same risks that everybody else everywhere in Houston that suffered flooding experienced."

HUD, citing the dire shortage of rental homes for extremely low-income families, says its goal is to preserve affordable housing whenever possible. So while the agency takes flood risk into account for new and substantially rehabilitated housing, it continues to fund existing properties in flood plains.

A senior HUD official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations, said the agency was evaluating that strategy.

"Properties like Arbor bring that policy into question," the official said. But if the agency institutes a blanket "we're not going to renew in flood plains" policy, the official added, "then communities and residents lose that housing."

450,000 households in flood zones, sponsored by the government

Nationwide, about 450,000 government-subsidized households — about 8 to 9 percent — are in flood plains, according to a 2017 report by the Furman Center at New York University.

Many of those, including traditional public housing, low-income housing for older people and Section 8 properties like the one in Houston, are financed by HUD. There are also properties in flood plains that receive tax credits to rent to low-income tenants, which are subsidized with other federal money allocated to states.

But the federal government's maps to assess risk are based partly on historical data and don't necessarily account for climate effects, like increased local precipitation, said Laurie Schoeman, a disaster recovery and resilience specialist for Enterprise Community Partners, a nonprofit group based in Maryland.

"If anything," she said, "that is an underestimate of areas that are at risk."

Climate change is putting everyone at greater risk for natural disasters, including flooding, wildfires and drought. Low-income and minority communities are especially vulnerable. Families like those at Arbor Court, who qualify for assistance and are 95 percent black, are not only among the least able to recover when disaster strikes, but they also tend to live in flooding-prone areas because the land was historically cheaper to build on.

Robert D. Bullard, an environmental justice advocate and a professor at Texas Southern University in Houston, said that subsidizing low-income families in flood zones overlaid with the government's record of redlining and placing African-American families near industrial sitesand other undesirable areas.

"It's the same history," he said.

'We were trying to get on our feet, but then the storm hit'

When Ms. White moved into Arbor Court, she said, she had no idea it was at risk of flooding. But one night in 2016, water came bursting through a wall in her bathroom, she said, sending her and her two children fleeing to a neighbor's apartment upstairs. By daylight, the area around the complex looked like a lake.

"They were putting kids in refrigerators, in baskets — that's how bad the water was," she said.

Her belongings destroyed, Ms. White shuffled among relatives' houses — a trauma that was compounded because she had recently been fired from her warehouse job after missing work when her son was hospitalized for a fever, she said.

She returned to Arbor Court a few months later, unaware that flooding would come again so soon.

When Hurricane Harvey dumped staggering amounts of rain on the city in 2017, another young mother, Daija Jackson, had recently moved into what she hoped would be a starter apartment for her young family. Flooding soaked their clothes and toys, and more precious items, like her newborn daughter's bassinet, she said.

"We were trying to get on our feet, but then the storm hit," said Ms. Jackson, now 22. "It pushed us way back."

They lived in a hotel for months, only to return to find that their new apartment had problems with mold, according to the lawsuit.

Although moving isn't ideal for everyone — it can be especially disruptive for seniors and people with disabilities — Ms. Jackson is among those leading the fight to get out.

"I don't want to stay here," she said. "Period."

Where will they go?

As the nation grapples with both its affordable housing crisis and the realities of living on a warming planet, the tensions gripping Arbor Court could soon play out in other communities across the country.

"It's not something that is going to go away," Dr. Bullard said. "You can point to this apartment and say, How many times or how much damage and harm must those residents fare? And how many times do we have to say, Not again?"

Ms. Schoeman acknowledged that the government could not suddenly withdraw support from all properties in flood plains without creating a new crisis of homelessness. But she said HUD could lead the way by coming up with creative solutions.

The agency could incentivize communities to use grant money to come up with local plans, a strategy a housing authority in North Carolina hopes to use to relocate two public housing properties out of flood zones. Last year, HUD allocated nearly $16 billion for states to use on disaster mitigation.

Ms. Schoeman also raised the possibility of "climate vouchers," to give people living in vulnerable areas the choice to relocate.

In Houston, Arbor Court has requested to move its contract to another apartment complex 25 miles away and on the other side of town. Mr. Chaiken said that his client was working on fixing up the property and that it would be ready for families to live in soon.

Residents' lawyers argue that would perpetuate racial segregation — the new address is in a ZIP code that is about 70 percent black. They are instead asking for portable housing vouchers, often thought of as "golden tickets" that allow families to move into better neighborhoods of their choosing. But in reality, many landlords refuse to accept them, particularly in hot housing markets.

Officials said HUD was working toward a solution, which could include giving the residents a choice between the two options.

Until then, Ms. White is still living at Arbor Court, waiting out each new rainstorm. She also worries about safety and roaches in the kitchen. But she hopes not for much longer.

Her vision for her next home is simple.

"No roaches, no gunshots, no flooding," she said. "Everything opposite from where I am now."

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7) Julian Assange Charged by U.S. With Conspiracy to Hack a Government Computer

By Eileen Sullivan and Richard Richard Pérez-Peña, April 11, 2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/world/europe/julian-assange-wikileaks-ecuador-embassy.html

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, was arrested Thursday at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he had sheltered since 2012.

CreditCreditHenry Nicholls/Reuters

WASHINGTON — The United States has charged WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with one count of conspiracy to hack a computer related to his role in the 2010 release of reams of secret American documents, according to an indictment unsealed Thursday just hours after British authorities arrested him in London.

The single charge, conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, stems from what prosecutors said was his agreement to break a password to a classified United States government computer. It is not an espionage charge, a significant detail that will come as a relief to press freedom advocates. The United States government had considered until at least last year charging him with an espionage-related offense.

Mr. Assange, 47, has been living at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London since 2012. British authorities arrested him after he was evicted by the Ecuadoreans. The Metropolitan Police said that Mr. Assange had been detained partly in connection with an extradition warrant filed by the authorities in the United States.

Mr. Assange, born in Australia, has long been in the sights of the United States government since his 2010 release of American documents and videos about the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq, and confidential cables sent among diplomats.

Mr. Assange has most recently been under attack for his organization's release during the 2016 presidential campaign of thousands of emailsstolen from the computer systems of the Democratic National Committee, leading to a series of revelations that embarrassed the party and Hillary Clinton's campaign. United States investigators have said that the systems were hacked by Russian agents.

Mr. Assange will have the right to contest the United States extradition request in British courts. Most people who fight extradition requests argue that the case is politically motivated rather than driven by legitimate legal concerns.

Eileen Sullivan reported from Washington, and Richard Pérez-Peña from London. David D. Kirkpatrick contributed reporting from London, Adam Goldman and Katie Benner from Washington, and Raphael Minder from Madrid.

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BAUAW Newsletter

Friday, April 12, 2019

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, FRIDAY, APRIL 12, 2019

Don't extradite Assange!

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Statement: Academic Institutions Must Defend Free Speech

Justice for Rasmea Odeh! Justice for Palestine!

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To: Indiana Department of Corrections

Kevin "Rashid" Johnson Should Have Access to His Personal Property

Petition Text

Why is this important?

Listen to 'The Daily': Was Kevin Cooper Framed for Murder?

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450,000 households in flood zones, sponsored by the government

'We were trying to get on our feet, but then the storm hit'

Where will they go?

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