BAUAW NEWSLETTER, THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 2019

"This is a people's victory"  Pam Africa.  Who would ever think that we would see this headline, in our lifetime.  This is the press release up on the Philadelphia District Attorney's website posted minutes ago. The path to freedom is going to be hard and long, but we are on it.  When We Fight, We Win, Noelle Hanrahan, P.I. Prison Radio See below:  Statement: Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office withdraws appeal in Mumia Abu-Jamal case  PHILADELPHIA DISTRICT ATTORNEY’S OFFICE April 17, 2019 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Ben Waxman PHILADELPHIA (April 17th, 2019) — Today the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office withdrew its recent appeal of an opinion granting a re-hearing of some previously decided issues in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. We withdrew the appeal because the opinion we appealed has been modified consistent with our primary concern — -that ruling’s effect on many other cases. By way of background, Mumia Abu-Jamal was convicted of the murder of a young police officer, Daniel Faulkner, that occurred on December 9, 1981. Even after Maureen Faulkner, the wife of the victim, chose not to continue seeking the death penalty several years ago in hopes of closure, the case has evoked polarizing rhetoric and continues to assume a symbolic importance for many that is distinct from the factual and often technical legal issues involved in the case. The technical issue at stake here is simply whether or not some decided issues need to be re-heard by a Pennsylvania appellate court due to one former judge’s having worn two hats — -the hat of an apparently impartial appellate judge deciding Abu-Jamal’s case after he earlier wore the hat of a chief prosecutor in the same case. Although the issue is technical, it is also an important cautionary tale on the systemic problems that flow from a judge’s failing to recuse where there is an appearance of bias. Justice Castille did not recuse himself before deciding appeals in the Abu-Jamal case and several others, including the Williams case. In the Williams case, the United States Supreme Court decided that Castille should have recused himself because of the role he took as a chief prosecutor in Mr. Williams’s matter. The U.S. Supreme Court ordered that Mr. Williams’s appeal be re-heard by the Pennsylvania appeals judges, without the taint of Castille’s participation. A similar question of Castille’s role exists in the Abu-Jamal case. In order to help resolve it, our Office exhaustively searched hundreds of file boxes in relation to the Mumia Abu-Jamal matter, including six previously undisclosed boxes (now turned over to the defense, as required by law). While we did not find any document establishing the same level of involvement by Castille in the Abu-Jamal case as in the Williams case, we did find (and turned over) a June, 1990 letter from then-District Attorney Castille to then-Governor Robert Casey, urging that the Governor issue death warrants, especially in cases involving people who have killed police, in order to “send a clear and dramatic message to all police killers that the death penalty actually means something.” Although the letter does not mention Mr. Abu-Jamal or his case by name, at the time Justice Castille wrote to Governor Casey, there were only three cases involving people who had been convicted of killing police that were pending. One was Mr. Abu-Jamal’s. In the end, the trial-level judge considering this issue wrote an opinion that agreed with us that these indications of strong feelings on the part of Justice Castille did not rise to the level of the direct and active involvement Justice Castille took in the Williams case but went further, deciding there should be a re-hearing of Abu-Jamal’s decided issues anyway, based on more general principles of judges needing to recuse to avoid the appearance of bias. We appealed, making it extremely clear in our court papers that our primary concern was with the overly broad language of the opinion and its potentially devastating effect on hundreds of long settled cases, decades after their cases were resolved, including its hurtful effect on victims and survivors. We highlighted our concern with the overly broad language of that opinion in five specific respects and specifically noted that we would re-consider appealing if the trial-level court issued another decision addressing the concerns we raised. Although the judge was not required to do so, on March 27 he issued another decision that addressed the concerns we raised. The judge made clear that his opinion should not be read to mean that several hundreds of cases were disturbed — -it should be applied only to people convicted of killing police officers whose cases were in the District Attorney’s Office while Castille was District Attorney (the category of cases Castille highlighted in his June 1990 letter to Casey). Given that the trial-level court has now addressed the concerns that led us to appeal in the first place, we have withdrawn the appeal. Our decision to withdraw the appeal does not mean Mr. Abu-Jamal will be freed or get a new trial. It means that he will have the appeals that Justice Castille participated in deciding reconsidered by a new group of appellate court judges, untainted by former Chief Justice Castille participating in their decision. The trial-level judge has ordered the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office and the defense to re-submit the legal briefs done in the past (which were written under prior administrations), effectively setting the clock back to where it was in the past. The result will be that long-settled convictions in other cases will not be disturbed and that decisions made by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on the legal issues raised decades ago in the Abu-Jamal matter will no longer be tainted by the appearance of bias.  ===========end press release==================== Cuando luchamos, ganamos. When We fight, we win.  Noelle Hanrahan Director, Prison Radio

To give by check:  PO Box 411074 San Francisco, CA 94141 Stock or legacy gifts: Noelle Hanrahan

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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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Free Chelsea Manning (again)! U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning has been sent back to jail after refusing to answer questions before a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange. She could be jailed for up to 18 months this time. As she was being taken back into custody on March 8th, she declared, "I will not participate in a secret process that I morally object to, particularly one that has been historically used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech."  Here's how to offer your support. Podcast: Randy Rowland, GI resister "I was the reluctant guy who's bit by bit by bit, just had to face the facts that things weren't the way I had been raised to believe that they were. It wasn't like I planned to be a resister or a troublemaker or anything of the sort," explains Randy Rowland, an organizer of the "Presidio 27 Mutiny." This Courage to Resist podcast is the first in series to be produced in collaboration with the Vietnam Full Disclosure effort of Veterans for Peace — "Towards an honest commemoration of the American war in Vietnam." This year marks 50 years of GI resistance, in and out of uniform, for many of the courageous individuals featured. Listen to Randy's story here. D O N A T E to Support Resistance to War &  Empire We shared our new 75 second promotional video on Facebook this week. Yes, FB is kind of evil, but we still reach a lot of folks that way. Please check it out, share with friends, and "like" our FB page. During Sunday's Objector Church online meetup, James Branum discussed the heroism of US Army Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds (1919–1985). MSgt Edmonds was the ranking US NCO at the Stalag IX-A POW Camp when he was captured in Germany during WWII. At the risk of his life, he prevented an estimated 200 Jews from being singled out from the camp for Nazi persecution and likely death. Watch the video here.

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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DA Krasner: At long last, turn the page on Mumia Abu-Jamal case!  Share this action on Facebook  Share this action on Twitter In 1981, Mumia Abu-Jamal was a former Black Panther and respected public radio journalist in Philadelphia, when he was jailed after a disputed incident in which police officer Daniel Faulkner was killed. In 1982, Abu-Jamal was convicted of murder and sentenced to death by Judge Albert Sabo, known as a "hanging judge" who'd sent more people to Death Row than any other U.S. judge. Human rights groups like Amnesty International criticized the trial, pointing to racial bias and "possible political influences that may have prevented him from receiving an impartial and fair hearing." Unsuccessful appeals over the years have argued that prosecutors suppressed evidence and that blacks were systematically purged from the jury. But after 37 years behind bars, much of it on death row in solitary confinement, Abu-Jamal now has some real hope. Click here to tell Larry Krasner, Philadelphia's progressive District Attorney, that it's time to turn the page on Abu-Jamal's case. Last December, Abu-Jamal won a major victory when Philadelphia Judge Leon Tucker ruled that he had the right to re-appeal his case because of the appearance of bias during the appeals process – specifically that a former DA-turned-Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice who'd blocked Abu-Jamal's appeals should have recused himself from the case. This victory, clearing the path for a possible new trial, seemed especially hopeful because in 2017 Philadelphia voters, especially African American voters, had elected Krasner – a longtime foe of mass incarceration, the death penalty, and racism in criminal justice. Click here to urge DA Krasner not to resist Judge Tucker's ruling and let justice be served. At the end of January, Krasner shocked many by announcing that he would challenge Judge Tucker's decision to give Abu-Jamal the right to appeal, apparently over his concern that it might open up appeals for other convicted prisoners. Days later, Krasner was disinvited from a progressive law conference at Yale which he was to keynote, and conference organizers urged Krasner to drop his resistance to Abu Jamal's appeal: "We cannot understand how DA Krasner's decision in this case serves justice or the transformative vision that he ran on." Add your voice to those who want DA Krasner to reverse course on Abu-Jamal's case – and to ask the DA: "Isn't nearly four decades behind bars more than enough?!"  After signing the petition, please use the tools on the next webpage to share it with your friends. This work is only possible with your financial support. Please chip in $3 now.  -- The RootsAction.org Team P.S. RootsAction is an independent online force endorsed by Jim Hightower, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Klein, Bill Fletcher Jr., Laura Flanders, former U.S. Senator James Abourezk, Frances Fox Piven, Lila Garrett, Phil Donahue, Sonali Kolhatkar, and many others. Background: >> Amnesty International: "A Life in the Balance: The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal" (Feb. 2000) >> Essence: "Judge Rules Mumia Abu-Jamal Can Reargue Appeal To The Pennsylvania Supreme Court" (Dec. 28, 2018) >> Philly.com: "Philly DA Larry Krasner disinvited to speak at Yale Law conference" (Feb. 2, 2019) >> 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 ------- 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.    *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

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:

1. 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);
2. 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;
3. 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 *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 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. DONATE  ©2019 ILPDC | 116 W Osborne Avenue Tampa, FL 33603  Web Version  Preferences  Forward  Unsubscribe   Powered by GoDaddy Email Marketing ® Free Leonard Peltier! Art by Leonard Peltier Write to: Leonard Peltier 89637-132 USP Coleman 1,  P.O. Box 1033 Coleman, FL 33521 *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* Working people are helping to feed the poor hungry corporations!  Charity for the Wealthy!

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1) Demonizing Minority Women
Representative Ilhan Omar is the latest target in a trend of conservatives attacking women of color.
By Charles M. Blow, April 14, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/opinion/ilhan-omar-minority-women.html

Representative Ilhan Omar. White supremacy has routinely painted minority women as pathological and reprobate.CreditCreditJim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via Shutterstock

Last month at an event hosted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Representative Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat and one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress, delivered a speech in which she correctly derided Islamophobia, a real and persistent problem in this country and others.

In that speech, Representative Omar invoked the attacks of Sept. 11, saying the council was created "because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties."

(As The New York Times pointed out, "The Council on American-Islamic Relations was actually founded in 1994.)

The congresswoman could have used different, more severe language to describe the attacks, but she didn't. Maybe we could judge her use of language as inartful, but we all succumb to that occasionally, me included. Error is inevitable among the loquacious. But the Omar of the speech stands. I saw nowhere in it a thread of terror apologia.

And yet, conservative media has pounced on four of Omar's words — "some people did something" — as just that. Brian Kilmeade, one of the dull and delusional on "Fox & Friends," questioned her patriotism, saying, "You have to wonder if she's an American first."

Donald Trump upped the ante, retweeting a video of Omar saying, "Some people did something," interspersed with the still-chilling video of the 9/11 attacks. Some things should be too sacred to exploit for political gain, but Trump is an amoralist. Nothing is beyond the pale.

While the unrelenting attacks on Omar are newsworthy unto themselves as a conservative peculiarity, I believe that the attacks should be viewed through a wider and longer lens. Omar is only the most recent minority woman onto whom conservatives have trained their fire.

While white supremacy has historically tried to paint minority men as physically dangerous, it has routinely painted minority women, particularly those strong and vocal, as pathological and reprobate.

There is a pattern here. It is expressed not only in the attacks on, and in elevation of, Omar, but also on Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

Before them, Trump and his cohorts demonized Representative Maxine Waters, who Trump dubbed "Low I.Q.," and Representative Frederica Wilson of Florida.

And before they tried to make Omar and Ocasio-Cortez the face of the Democratic Party, they did the same to Wilson and Waters. In October 2017, Trump tweeted about Wilson:

"Wacky Congresswoman Wilson is the gift that keeps on giving for the Republican Party, a disaster for Dems. You watch her in action & vote R!"

In June, Trump said, "The face of the Democrats is now Maxine Waters."

The strategy is simple: While sexism and racism are potent individually, they are devastating in combination, particularly when appealing to a party dominated by white men and which exalts white supremacy and white patriarchy.

The only women they truly honor are white women who obsequiously condone or actively participate in the oppression.

All manner of inhumanity and barbarism have been conducted under the guise of protecting the honor and purity of these white women. There are untold rope-burned necks and fully burned bodies in American history to attest to this.

There is a reason that Trump launching his campaign by calling Mexicans murderers and rapists had such resonance among the people who came to support him.

One of the most memorable scenes in "The Birth of a Nation" was a white woman throwing herself off a cliff to keep from being raped by a black man.

There is a reason that many white people viewed slavery as the guard against the vulnerability of women, and black freedom as the gateway to white woman victimization.

As the Binghamton University historian Diane Miller Sommerville put it in her book, "Rape & Race in the Nineteenth-Century South": "Black-on-white rape figured prominently in these historical treatments of Reconstruction. Portraying Freedmen as intoxicated with new political power, historians like Claude Bowers described how 'an awful fear rested upon the [white] women of the communities.' "

Sommerville would quote Bowers saying, "Rape is the foul daughter of Reconstruction."

To advance their oppression, these white men treated white women as victims, and many white women reciprocated by playing the role of victim. In that way, barbarity could be passed off as chivalry.

But for the women who fall outside this constraint — minority women, lesbian and transgender women, liberal women, "nasty" women — the rebuke is brutal. They didn't need protection, but rather, suppression.

These women herald calamity — both the dislodging of white supremacy and the subversion of male supremacy. Conservatives attack these women because the threat they pose is existential.

We can fuss over the language any of these women have used, and whether some remarks crossed lines of propriety, but to have them as the only arena of discussion about why conservatives are so offended is to be intentionally blind.

These people hate women like Omar because they see them as omens.

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2) Insurers Want to Know How Many Steps You Took Today
The cutting edge of the insurance industry involves adjusting premiums and policies based on new forms of surveillance.
By Sarah Jeong, April 10, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/opinion/insurance-ai.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

CreditCreditClaire Merchlinsky

A smartphone app that measures when you brake and accelerate in your car. The algorithm that analyzes your social media accounts for risky behavior. The program that calculates your life expectancy using your Fitbit. 

This isn't speculative fiction — these are real technologies being deployed by insurance companies right now. Last year, the life insurance company John Hancock began to offer its customers the option to wear a fitness tracker — a wearable device that can collect information about how active you are, how many calories you burn, and how much you sleep. The idea is that your Fitbit or Apple Watch can tell whether or not you're living the good, healthy life — and if you are, your insurance premium will go down. 

This is the cutting edge of the insurance industry, adjusting premiums and policies based on new forms of surveillance. It will affect your life insurance, your car insurance and your homeowner's insurance — if it hasn't already. If the Affordable Care Act's protections for people with pre-existing conditions should vanish, it will no doubt penetrate the health insurance industry as well.

Consumers buy insurance from companies to protect against possible losses. But this contractual relationship is increasingly asymmetrical. The insurance companies once relied on a mix of self-reported information, public records and credit scores to calculate risk and assess how much to charge. But thanks to advances in technology, the capacity to collect, store and analyze information is greater than ever before.

A 2018 report from the consulting firm McKinsey notes that "smart" devices — fitness trackers, home assistants like Alexa, connected cars and smart refrigerators — are proliferating in homes. The "avalanche of new data" they can provide will change the face of insurance.

In 2014, the insurance company State Farm filed a patent applicationfor a system that "aggregates and correlates" data for "life management purposes." The application lists a wide range of information, such as "home data, vehicle data and personal health data associated with the individual."

Some of the changes heralded by these new technologies will be better for everyone, like faster claims processing. But the use of data collection and artificial intelligenc also raises serious questions about what McKinsey calls "personalized pricing" and what the State Farm patent application calls "personalized recommendations" and "insurance discounts."

Before the A.C.A., data brokers bought data from pharmacies and sold it to insurance companies, which would then deny coverage based on prescription histories. Future uses of data in insurance will not be so straightforward.

As machine learnin works its way into more and more decisions about who gets coverage and what it costs, discrimination becomes harder to spot.

Part of the problem is the automatic deference that society has so often given to technology, as though artificial intelligence is unerring. But the other problem is that artificial intelligence is known to reproduce biases that aren't explicitly coded into it. In the field of insurance, this turns into "proxy discrimination." For example, an algorithm might (correctly) conclude that joining a Facebook group for a BRCA1 mutation is an indicator of high risk for a health insurance company. Even though actual genetic information — which is illegal to use — is never put into the system, the algorithmic black box ends up reproducing genetic discrimination.

A ZIP code might become a proxy for race; a choice of wording in a résumé might become a proxy for gender; a credit card purchase history can become a proxy for pregnancy status. Legal oversight of insurance companies, which are typically regulated by states, mostly looks at discrimination deemed to be irrational: bias based on race, sex, poverty or genetics. It's not so clear what can be done about rational indicators that are little but proxies for factors that would be illegal to consider.

Placing those biases inside a secret algorithm can prevent critical examination of inequality. ProPublica found that people in minority neighborhoods paid higher car insurance premiums than residents of majority-white neighborhoods with similar risk, but its reporters could not determine exactly why, since the insurance companies would not disclose their proprietary algorithms or data sets.

A handful of lawsuits in other arenas have challenged this practice. After Idaho's Medicaid program started using an automated system to calculate benefits, recipients suddenly saw their benefits cut by as much as 30 percent. When the state refused to disclose its algorithm, claiming it was a trade secret, the A.C.L.U. of Idaho sued to gain access to the code, and ultimately discovered that the formula was riddled with flaws.

Artificial intelligence, in all its variations, holds great promise. The automated processin of car accident photos or machine reading of medical scans can help cut down costs, and even save lives. But the opacity around many applications of automation and artificial intelligence are reason for pause. Not only do people have limited access to the code that determines key facets of their lives, but the bar to understanding the "reasoning" of algorithms and data sets is high. It will get higher as more industries begin to use sophisticated technologies like deep learning.

A. I. research should march on. But when it comes to insurance in particular, there are unanswered questions about the kind of biases that are acceptable. Discrimination based on genetics has already been deemed repugnant, even if it's perfectly rational. Poverty might be a rational indicator of risk, but should society allow companies to penalize the poor? Perhaps for now, A.I.'s more dubious consumer applications are better left in a laboratory.

My New York Times comment to this article:

Well, this sure brings me back to the 1983 song by the Police from their album, "Synchronicity" titled "Every Breath You Take:"

Every breath you take

Every move you make

Every bond you break

Every step you take

I'll be watching you

Only I don't think the group ever imagined how aptly it would apply to the corporate surveillance each and every one of us are under today. Of course, when I say "each and every one of us," it must be understood that the wealthy are exempted—perhaps not from the surveillance—but from the dire health, welfare and financial consequences of it. If you're wealthy, you don't have to worry about affording healthcare, or housing, or education, or transportation, or food, or, even the right to abortion. (Wealthy women were always able to get abortions from private physicians—even if they had to travel to other countries!)  It's all the rest of us that will and are being dictated by the never-ending corporate grab for more wealth for the tiny few who need it the least. It is we, the masses of working people that are under their pompous and greedy thumb. —Bonnie Weinstein

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/opinion/insurance-ai.html#commentsContainer&permid=100033840:100033840

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3) Anti-Zionists Deserve Free Speech
The Trump administration bars a critic of Israel from America.
By Michelle Goldberg, April 15, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/15/opinion/omar-barghouti-bds-israel.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

Omar Barghouti, a permanent resident of Israel, last week was denied entry to the United States.CreditCreditMohamad Torokman/Reuters

The Palestinian activist Omar Barghouti, one of the founders of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, was supposed to be on a speaking tour of the United States this week, with stops at N.Y.U.'s Washington campus and at Harvard. He was going to attend his daughter's wedding in Texas. I had plans to interview him for "The Argument," the debate podcast that I co-host, about B.D.S., the controversial campaign to make Israel pay an economic and cultural price for its treatment of the Palestinians.

Yet when Barghouti, a permanent resident of Israel, showed up for his flight from Israel's Ben Gurion International Airport last week, he was informed that the United States was denying him entry. When I spoke to him on Sunday, he still didn't know exactly why the country where he went to college and lived for many years wasn't letting him in, but he assumed it was because of his political views. If that's the case, Barghouti said, it was the first time someone has been barred from America for B.D.S. advocacy. He has proceeded with his public events, but he's been appearing at them via Skype.

In recent years, the American right has presented itself as a champion of free expression. Conservatives are constantly bemoaning a censorious campus climate that stigmatizes their ideas; last month, Donald Trump signed an executive order on campus free speech, decrying those who would keep Americans from "challenging rigid far-left ideology." The president said, "People who are confident in their beliefs do not censor others."

If that last line is true — and, uncharacteristically for Trump, I think it is — it says something about the insecurity of Israel's defenders. There have indeed been illiberal attempts to silence conservative voices on college campuses, but they pale beside the assault on pro-Palestinian speech, particularly speech calling for an economic boycott of Israel. Around two dozen states have laws and regulations denouncing, and in many cases penalizing, B.D.S. activities, and the Senate recently passed a bill supporting such measures. According to the American Association of University Professors, some public universities in states with such laws require speakers and other contractors to "sign a statement pledging that they do not now, nor will they in the future, endorse B.D.S." It's hard to think of comparable speech restrictions on any other subject.

What are pro-Israel forces afraid of? The B.D.S. movement doesn't engage in or promote violence. Its leaders make an effort to separate anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism; the Palestinian B.D.S. National Committee recently demanded that a Moroccan group stop using the term "B.D.S." in its name because it featured anti-Semitic cartoons on its Facebook page.

Barghouti couches his opposition to Zionism in the language of humanist universalism. The official position of the B.D.S. movement, he says, is that "any supremacist, exclusionary state in historic Palestine — be it a 'Jewish state,' an 'Islamic state,' or a 'Christian state' — would by definition conflict with international law and basic human rights principles."

The movement is agnostic on a final dispensation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But it calls for the right of Palestinian refugees — both those displaced by the creation of Israel and their descendants — to return to their familial homes, which would likely end Israel's Jewish majority. Barghouti told me he personally believes in the creation of a single state in which Israeli Jews, as individuals, would have civil rights, but Jews as a people would not have national rights.

I'd planned to argue with him about this view, which is largely dismissive of Jewish claims on Israel, and would likely lead to oppression or worse for Israeli Jews. My guess is that many if not most Jews find such a position offensive, even frightening.

But for years now, the right has been lecturing us all about the need to listen to and debate ideas we might consider dangerous. Barghouti wants this sort of dialogue. "We've been dying to debate anyone on the other side," he told me. "We would debate anyone except Israeli government officials and professional lobbyists." A government that tries to prevent Americans from engaging with his views cannot claim a commitment to free speech. 

You could argue, I suppose, that Israel's legitimacy as a Jewish state should not be up for discussion. If you do, realize it's the exact same sort of argument that certain campus leftists make when they refuse to debate people they see as racist, sexist or otherwise bigoted. Sometimes this refusal is justified, because certain ideas shouldn't be dignified with discussion. But sometimes it just makes the people unwilling to test their ideas in public look scared.

Ultimately, Barghouti threatens Israel's American defenders not because he's hateful, but because he isn't. Israel has aligned itself with the global far right. Recently re-elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to unilaterally annex the West Bank, which would create a single state where Jews rule over Arabs. That prospect makes it ever more difficult for Israel's American defenders to make coherent arguments against the sort of one-state solution that Barghouti espouses. "Israel is winning the far right around the world," Barghouti said at an N.Y.U. event last week, where the journalist Peter Beinart interviewed him remotely. But, he added, "it is losing its moral stature around the world." American authorities may be able to quash this message on some college campuses, but it won't stop being true.

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4) When Slaveowners Got Reparations
Lincoln signed a bill in 1862 that paid up to $300 [$7,550.55 today] for every enslaved person freed.
By Tera W. Hunter, April 16, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/16/opinion/when-slaveowners-got-reparations.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

The Capitol stands in the background of this 1830 engraving.CreditCreditLibrary of Congress/Corbis, via VCG, via Getty Images

On April 16, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill emancipating enslaved people in Washington, the end of a long struggle. But to ease slaveowners' pain, the District of Columbia Emancipation Act paid those loyal to the Union up to $300 for every enslaved person freed. 

That's right, slaveowners got reparations. Enslaved African-Americans got nothing for their generations of stolen bodies, snatched children and expropriated labor other than their mere release from legal bondage.

The compensation clause is not likely to be celebrated today. But as the debate about reparations for slavery intensifies, it is important to remember that slaveowners, far more than enslaved people, were always the primary beneficiaries of public largess.

The act is notable because it was the first time that the federal government authorized abolition of slavery, which hastened its demise in Virginia and Maryland as runaways from these states fled to Washington. It offered concrete proof to enslaved people and their allies that the federal government might facilitate the destruction of slavery everywhere. And it confirmed the worst fears of their foes about an interloping tyrannical president.

Abraham Lincoln, however, was anxious to preserve his fragile alliance with loyal slaveholders. He had advocated abolition of slavery in Washington in 1849 as a congressman, to no avail. As president, he encouraged the border states to voluntarily end slavery. He chose Delaware as an ideal place to take the lead in late 1861. But it became clear that Union slaveowners could not be so easily persuaded. This reinforced the need to make congressional emancipation conditioned on compensating them, which put abolitionists in a bind. 

They welcomed the end of slavery in the capital, but chafed at payments that validated the right to own property in the form of human beings. "If compensation is to be given at all," the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison said at the National Anti-Slavery Convention in Philadelphia in 1833, "it should be given to the outraged and guiltless slaves, and not to those who have plundered and abused them."

Moderate antislavery advocates like Lincoln did not agree. To the contrary, they believed that any manumission plan had to placate property rights that were buttressed by the Fifth Amendment, which required "just compensation" for government seizure of private assets.

Lincoln appointed a board of commissioners to oversee the process of compensation, headed by the North Carolina abolitionist and New York Times reporter Daniel Reaves Goodloe. The board reviewed more than 1,000 slaveholders' petitions to claim more than 3,000 enslaved people, close to the entirety of the dwindling population. Most of the petitioners received the full amount allowed. The largest individual payout was $18,000 for 69 [$453,033.27 today] slaves. 

Although the District of Columbia Emancipation Act marked the only time the federal government would compensate slaveowners, there is a longer history of slaveowners requesting and receiving indemnification for the loss of their chattel.

Slaveowners felt entitled to and often received compensation from local, colonial and state legislatures, especially in times of crisis — when enslaved women and men ran away, participated in rebellions or were executed for crimes. During the American Revolution, owners asked to be compensated when bondspeople had died while working in lead mines in Virginia, for example, and when they sided with the British and ran away.

After the revolution, as Northern states carried out gradual-emancipation plans, compensation was attractive to slaveowners seeking to ease their financial burdens. The 1804 Gradual Abolition Act in New Jersey, for example, did not free anyone immediately. It allowed children of enslaved women to be treated as "apprentices" (slavery by another name) until they reached a certain age and would be freed. The law included a clause that allowed slaveowners to gain compensation by letting their bondspeople go free and then reclaiming them as "bound out labor," which gave them access to state funds for their troubles.

In a break from tradition in the 1850s, the abolitionist Elihu Burritt organized the National Compensated Emancipation Convention in Cleveland to advocate payments to slaveowners, as well as smaller sums to be paid to the people they had enslaved. Nothing came of his dual proposal, however.

To be sure, the major benefactors of slaveowner reparations within the Atlantic slave system were Europeans. When England abolished slavery in its Caribbean colonies, it offered compensation to 46,000 slaveowners at the cost of around $26.2 million. 

France went further by penalizing Haiti for the revolution that abolished slavery in its former colony St. Domingue. It levied a huge sum on the island, which crippled it in decades of debt. Former slaves were forced to pay indemnities to former slaveowners in exchange for official recognition as the first black independent nation-state in the Western Hemisphere.

The long and insistent coupling of compensation for slaveowners with emancipation is useful for consideration in current debates about reparations for the descendants of the enslaved. Critics and skeptics are fond of saying that enslaved people should have asked for recompense back then. African-Americans did precisely that, going back to the colonial era. They petitioned for "freedom dues," they sued the estates of former masters for their unrequited toil, and they asked for land to restart their lives as free men and women. Relatively few of those efforts were successful.

An overwhelming majority of white people believed that slaveowners, not enslaved African-Americans, deserved recompense for the benevolence of manumission. The only "reward" that was widely supported was colonization: a trip "back to Africa." The act allocated $100,000 for the voluntary removal of the newly freed people (at $100 per person) to go to Liberia or Haiti, which rarely happened. 

Preserving sacred property rights and moving the Negro problem offshore meant that there was no justice for enslaved African-Americans. All of the candidates running for president must support the federal government's issuing of reparations to African-Americans who were economically affected by slavery. Justice requires this.

Tera W. Hunter (@TeraWHunter) is a professor of history and African-American studies at Princeton and the author of "Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century."

My NYT Comment:

"This is the part of American history not taught to children in this country. Every Black person in this country deserves reparations in today's dollars for having endured generations of degradation and exploitation at the hands of capital. Things are not that different today. Black, Brown and poor people are paid pittance for work that brings corporate CEOs billions. And the banks that fraudulently stole homes from millions were rewarded with bailouts—also paid for off the backs of poor working people. I say hell yes to reparations—to all former and current slaves!" —Bonnie Weinstein
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/16/opinion/when-slaveowners-got-reparations.html#commentsContainer&permid=100049985:100049985

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5) Israel Invokes Anti-Boycott Law to Order Human Rights Worker Deported
By Isabel Kershner, April 16, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/16/world/middleeast/israel-boycott-deport-hrw.html

Omar Shakir, Human Rights Watch's Israel and Palestine director, at work in Ramallah last year.CreditCreditAbbas Momani/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

JERUSALEM — An advocate for Human Rights Watch must leave the country by May 1, an Israeli court ruled on Tuesday, upholding a deportation order issued under a contentious law that bars entry to foreigners who have publicly called for a boycott of Israel or its settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The deportation order against Omar Shakir, an American citizen and the organization's Israel and Palestine director, is the first application of the law against a person lawfully present in Israel.

The case against Mr. Shakir comes as part of a broader Israeli clampdown against the international movement to boycott Israel, a campaign that the government, empowered by the staunch support of President Trump, says delegitimizes the country and smacks of anti-Semitism.

Activists defend the movement as a nonviolent means to protest Israel and its policies toward Palestinians, along with its settlements, which most of the world considers to be a violation of international law. Last week, the United States barred entry to Omar Barghouti, one of the co-founders of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, also known as B.D.S., without explanation.

Human Rights Watch, which is based in New York, said it would file an appeal with Israel's Supreme Court. The Jerusalem District Court said its May 1 deadline would not be enforced pending an injunction and resolution of the appeal.

"Israel portrays itself as the region's only democracy, but is set to deport a rights defender over his peaceful advocacy," Tom Porteous, deputy program director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

The Israeli authorities have accused Human Rights Watch of anti-Israel bias in the past and compiled a dossier on Mr. Shakir documenting his activities in support of a boycott, mostly from before he joined the advocacy group.

Like the dossier, the Jerusalem District Court ruling also pointed to reports and advocacy by Human Rights Watch that called on businesses to cease activities that benefit Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The judgment cited recent Twitter posts written by Mr. Shakir, including some promoting a decision by Airbnb to stop listing properties in West Bank settlements — a decision Airbnb has since reversed.

"The decision sends the chilling message that those who criticize the involvement of businesses in serious abuses in Israeli settlements risk being barred from Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank," Mr. Porteous said.

Human Rights Watch described Tuesday's decision as "a new and dangerous interpretation" of the entry law.

In her ruling on Tuesday, Judge Tamar Bazak-Rappaport of the district court wrote, "It has been proven that the petitioner continues to call publicly for a boycott against the state of Israel or parts within it, and in the same breath requests that it will open its gates to him."

The decision came the same day that a Jewish-American board member of an organization that promotes cooperation between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel was questioned at length on her way out of the country.

The organization, the Abraham Initiatives, said the authorities at Ben-Gurion International Airport had tried to use "intimidation" against its board member, Laura Mandel, writing in a Twitter post, "We will continue to work for a shared and inclusive Israel, free from discrimination against Arab citizens and those who support #Shared_Society."

Last year, Israel's Supreme Court ordered the government to permit entry to an American woman, Lara Alqasem, who arrived with a valid student visa, overruling the Interior Ministry, which had sought to deport her because of her pro-Palestinian advocacy while she was an undergraduate at the University of Florida.

The Israeli government has also sought to curb the activities of Israeli nongovernmental organizations that have been critical of the country's policies toward Palestinians.

One of them, B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, issued a statement on Tuesday in support of Mr. Shakir.

"The government," it said, "seems to expect all those arriving in Israel to swear allegiance to its policy of endless occupation, settlements and blockade, basically stating: Take it, or leave."

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6) As Rich Lavish Cash on Notre-Dame, Many Ask: What About the Needy?
By Liz Alderman and Steven Erlanger, April 17, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/world/europe/yellow-vest-notre-dame-fire-donations.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

The north face of Notre-Dame cathedral after the fire.CreditChristophe Petit Tesson/EPA, via Shutterstock

PARIS — The pledges came in quick succession.

François-Henri Pinault, France’s second-richest man, put up an eye-popping 100 million euros to rebuild Notre-Dame, just as firefighters were dousing the last flames at the cathedral early Tuesday morning. Not to be outdone, Bernard Arnault, France’s wealthiest scion and a fierce rival to Mr. Pinault and to his father, François Pinault, upped the ante with a 200-million-euro gift a few hours later.

By Wednesday, the government had welcomed some 850 million euros — more than $960 million — offered in the patriotic name of salvaging the cultural treasure, as money from wealthy French families, French companies and international corporations poured in.

But the spectacle of billionaires trying to one-up one another quickly intensified resentments over inequality that have flared during the Yellow Vest movement, just as President Emmanuel Macron was looking to transform the calamity into a new era of national unity. There were accusations that the wildly rich were trying to wash their reputations during a time of national tragedy.

“Can you imagine, 100 million, 200 million in one click!” said Philippe Martinez, the head of the militant CGT labor union. “It really shows the inequalities in this country.”

“If they’re able to give dozens of millions to rebuild Notre Dame,” he added, “they should stop telling us that there is no money to pay for social inequalities.”

Ollivier Pourriol, a French philosopher and novelist, summed up the sentiment more drolly.

“Victor Hugo thanks all the generous donors ready to save Notre Dame and proposes that they do the same thing with Les Misérables,” he wrote on Twitter, referring to another one of Hugo’s famous novels, about the lives of the poor.

Manon Aubry, a senior figure in France Insoumise, the main radical left party, called the funding an “exercise in public relations.” She said the donors’ list “looks like the rankings of companies and people located in tax havens.”

She added: “I want to tell them: Start by paying your taxes. That will add to the state culture budget.”

The bickering was about as far as possible to imagine from the image of a united France the president painted when he gave a national address on Tuesday. Mr. Macron said “it is up to us to transform this catastrophe” into a moment to become “better than what we are.”

The firestorm began when Jean-Jacques Aillagon, a former culture minister and now adviser to Mr. Pinault’s father, went on Twitter after Mr. Pinault announced his gift Tuesday to suggest that corporate contributions to Notre-Dame’s restoration be given a 90 percent tax deduction, rather than the 60 percent that corporations normally get for charitable contributions.

“That’s when the whole thing exploded,” said Pierre Haski, a commentator for France-Inter, the public radio station. “That produced outrage, that this act of generosity turns into fiscal advantage.”

The reaction was so intense that Mr. Aillagon went on the radio Wednesday morning to retract his suggestion. The Pinault family then announced that they would seek no tax deduction at all for the gift.

“It was very revealing about the sensitivity of the whole issue,” Mr. Haski said, coming in the midst of a great national debate about the Yellow Vests and their protests against inequality and fiscal privileges.

In general many are relieved that Notre-Dame still stands, and if there is now a billion euros to reconstruct it, without calling too deeply on an already stretched national budget, that may be enough.

But taxes have been one of the pressing issues in the Yellow Vest movement, and the one that Mr. Macron has had most trouble defusing.

The protests that began last autumn were originally over a gasoline tax, but morphed into a larger collective outcry over declining living standards that many average French people complained were rooted in high taxes, while the upper-middle classes in the big cities, let alone the rich, were doing just fine.

The protesters have lashed out at Mr. Macron for favoring the very rich by eliminating a wealth tax, among other inducements as part of his plan to stimulate the economy.

While he has since announced a series of modest tax cuts to help people struggling to make ends meet, he has refused to reinstate the wealth tax, a symbolic slap in the face of the protesters that redoubled their anger.

Ingrid Levavasseur, a founding leader of the Yellow Vests, said France should “get back to reality.”

“There is growing anger on social media over the inertia of big corporations over social misery while they are proving able to mobilize a crazy amount of dough overnight for Notre-Dame,” she added.

The companies contributing are among the largest in France, and account for tens of thousands of jobs at home and abroad in the luxury, energy and construction industries.

But for many, they are also symbols of an untouchable class of superrich who keep getting richer, thanks to a host of fiscal advantages.

Both Mr. Arnault and Mr. Pinault made fortunes in the world of luxury — Mr. Arnault built the LVMH Louis Vuitton empire, and Mr. Pinault’s family owns Kering, the second-largest luxury group in France.

The two billionaires’ families have been rivals ever since the so-called “handbag wars,” when they sparred for control of the Italian luxury group Gucci. Mr. Pinault’s family eventually won.

They have both amassed huge personal fortunes, although Mr. Arnault’s, which Forbes estimated at 76 billion, far outpaces Mr. Pinault’s, estimated at a mere 26 billion euros.

Both families have built up priceless art collections and have scrambled to outdo one another over the years with new museums in France and Italy to house their treasures.

So when the billionaires announced their generous donations to Notre-Dame, critics were quick to note that the ample deductions would be made up for by the French taxpayers.

“These billionaires want to pass for heroes,” Esther Benbassa, a senator with the Green party, said on Twitter. “They would do better to renounce tax evasion and fiscal optimization.”

In the past, Mr. Pinault’s father had declined to take a tax break on the refurbishment of Paris’s historic commercial bourse in the center of Paris, which he is converting into a modern art museum, saying French taxpayers shouldn’t foot the bill for his personal spending.

When it looked like other wealthy donors might be able to benefit from a generous tax perk for their largess, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe sought to douse tensions at a news conference on Wednesday.

“We must be delighted that very low-income individuals, very wealthy individuals as well as companies want to participate in the effort to rebuild a cathedral that is at the heart of our history,” he said.

So far, other wealthy donors have stayed mum on the issue. Mr. Arnault, who quickly doubled down on Mr. Pinault’s pledge, has not issued any further statement.

Nor has another wealthy donor, the global cosmetics giant L’Oréal. The company’s heirs, the Bettencourt-Meyers, announced a 200-million-euro donation for Notre-Dame on Tuesday through the Bettencourt Schueller Foundation.

“Of course there is reputation washing involved,” said Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, a French commentator, who saw the initial gifts as fundamentally sincere.

“There’s a muscle memory of Catholicism in France and it came back,” she said. “We’re a secular country, but when push comes to shove,” religious feelings come forward.

For some French people, like Grâce Kitoudi, a customer service representative working in an airport, the issue seemed overblown.

In her view, the Yellow Vest crisis and the Notre-Dame fire “are two very different debates,” she said. “We must not confuse everything. If we can have donations to rebuild this incredible monument, that’s all good.”

Constant Meheut contributed reporting.

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7) How Banning Abortion in the Early Weeks of Pregnancy Suddenly Became Mainstream
By Sabrina Tavernise, April 18, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/18/us/ohio-abortion-heartbeat-bill.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage

“Now is our time,” said Michael Gonidakis, president of Ohio Right to Life in Columbus. “This is the best court we’ve had in my lifetime, in my parents’ lifetime.”

COLUMBUS, Ohio — For years, Ohio Right to Life, the state’s largest and oldest anti-abortion group, steered clear of a bill that would ban abortion in the very early weeks of pregnancy — after a fetal heartbeat is detected.

The reason was simple. The bill, which would have been the toughest abortion restriction on record, would be dead on arrival once it reached an unfriendly Supreme Court.

But after seven years of avoiding the ban, Ohio Right to Life’s board gathered in an office building outside Toledo in November and voted unanimously to support it.

The reversal is evidence of a fundamental shift in the landscape of abortion in America. The math on the Supreme Court has changed with President Trump’s choice of Brett Kavanaugh last year. And now, in the first legislative cycle after the midterm elections last fall, states are rushing to make changes. Newly confident red states are passing some of the strictest prohibitions the country has ever seen. Blue states are enacting ever stronger protections, like ones for later-term abortions in New York and Virginia.

“Now is our time,” said Michael Gonidakis, president of Ohio Right to Life in Columbus. “This is the best court we’ve had in my lifetime, in my parents’ lifetime.”

In their sights is overturning Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that established a federal protection for abortion in 1973. And many in the movement believe that the so-called heartbeat bill — a ban on abortion as early as six weeks of pregnancy, often before a woman even knows she is pregnant — is the way to do it. The bill flies in the face of decades of Supreme Court decisions, like a dare to the American legal system.

“It’s a pretty bold step, I’ll be honest,” said William Seitz, a state representative in Ohio who voted for the bill, which was signed into law last week. “But at least there is some chance that this would provide an opportunity to either further limit Roe, or perhaps jettison it entirely.”

In the first three months of this year, heartbeat bills, which had been at the fringes of the anti-abortion movement for years, have passed in four states — Kentucky, Mississippi, Georgia and Ohio. More are moving through the legislatures of 11 others, according to Elizabeth Nash, a policy expert at the Guttmacher Institute.

“You weren’t seeing the six-week bans move before,” Ms. Nash said. “Now it’s a front burner issue.”

In 2011, Ohio became the first state to attempt such a ban. Its main proponent was a determined activist named Janet Porter, who has a long history of taking on conservative Christian causes.

As president of an anti-abortion group called Faith 2 Action, Ms. Porter became the gadfly of the anti-abortion movement in Ohio, giving news conferences denouncing anyone who did not support her bill, even if they were friendly to the cause.

“She disparaged a lot of good elected officials and members of the pro-life community along the way,” said Mr. Gonidakis, who at times was the target of her attacks.

(Ms. Porter agreed to an interview but when she answered the door at a house in suburban Cleveland on Monday, she said she would give it only if she was allowed to videotape it.)

Despite all this, the bill remained alive, occasionally coming up for a vote. In the early years, Mr. Seitz, a Republican from Cincinnati, remembers thinking that pushing it did not make much sense, given the composition of the Supreme Court, which as late as 2016 sided with abortion clinics in a prominent case in Texas.

“I didn’t detect any appetite on part of the court majority to significantly limit Roe,” he said. “I just didn’t see it.”

Then came President Trump’s election. Mr. Gonidakis remembers meeting with him and other anti-abortion activists in New York and being surprised at the language Mr. Trump used. He sounded more like an activist than a presidential candidate, Mr. Gonidakis said.

“He said, ‘I’m only going to nominate pro-life judges,’” he recalled. “That’s language we use. To hear the candidate use it was astonishing. In a good way.”

Right away, Mr. Trump nominated Judge Neil Gorsuch — replacing one conservative, Justice Antonin Scalia, with another. Then the bombshell dropped: Justice Anthony Kennedy, who had voted with the liberal majority in 2016 on the Texas case, announced he would retire.

“Our phones started lighting up,” said Mr. Gonidakis, who was in Columbus at the time. He started calling friendly lawmakers in Washington and Ohio. “There were a lot of unknowns right away and a lot of excitement.”

At the center of the Ohio bill is a legal strategy based on questioning one of the standards that federal abortion protections rest on: fetal viability. The Supreme Court has ruled that states can regulate abortion only after a fetus could survive outside a mother’s womb. The bill suggests that standard be scrapped, and replaced with something else: a heartbeat.

Kristina Roegner, a Republican state senator who sponsored the bill, said viability was a flawed standard because medical technology had changed so much since 1973.

“I don’t think the Supreme Court realized what a moving target they were creating,” she said. “We need a new standard. A heartbeat doesn’t change. It’s there or it’s not.”

B. Jessie Hill, a lawyer who plans to challenge the law in court on behalf of one of the abortion clinics in the state, thinks the argument is a long shot. The court was not persuaded in the past by arguments that a fetus is a person under state law. Surviving outside the womb is key, and forbidding a woman to end a pregnancy before that is “like the state telling you that you have to give someone a kidney or bone marrow because you have it and they need it to survive,” she said. “The law can’t — and doesn’t — do that.”

Even before the confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh, conservatives had made considerable progress in appointments to federal appeals courts, often a critical last stop before the Supreme Court. Today, Republicans have appointed 69 percent of the active judges on the Sixth Circuit, which encompasses Ohio, compared with 45 percent in 2001, according to Russell Wheeler, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Other states in the Sixth Circuit are Tennessee, Kentucky and Michigan.

“Judicial philosophy has been the dominant issue for appellate nominations in Republican administrations for the last 30 years in a way that it has not been for Democrats,” said Jonathan Adler, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University.

That unwavering focus has helped to turn the tide on abortion in a broad swath of the country’s middle and the south: Six states are down to one abortion clinic. In Ohio, there were 16 abortion clinics in the early 2000s. Today there are 7.

Just last month in Ohio, in a rare move that was a major victory for anti-abortion activists, the full Sixth Circuit panel of judges reversed its own decision from a year ago, ruling against Planned Parenthood in a funding case.

Ms. Hill, the lawyer who will challenge Ohio’s new ban in court, said she had reasonable confidence that the law will be struck down in lower courts and not make it to the Supreme Court, at least in the near term. Taking such a case could be seen as political, and tarnish the reputation of the court, she said. But the long-term outcome is less clear. If Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg retires and Mr. Trump is able to appoint a third justice, that could be the decisive blow against Roe.

Mr. Gonidakis said he was cautiously optimistic.

“We haven’t won but we are winning,” he said. “We are winning a battle that we always used to lose.”

My NYT Comment:

"How many times have we heard 'if you can't feed your babies, you shouldn't have had them!' This is also the rallying cry of the ruling elite every time a single parent needs food, healthcare or housing assistance. You hear it every day. That's the thing about the anti-abortionists that is so unconscionable and so hypocritical. The wealthy never worry about food, housing, healthcare or about getting an abortion. They've done it safely and securely even before Roe v. Wade. They just hired private doctors or traveled to places where it was legal—offshore hospitals like their offshore bank accounts. No one wants an abortion for the fun of it. But it is our right, our bodies and our lives to determine what's best for us and our families. I sure wish men could get pregnant!" —Bonnie Weinstein

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/18/us/ohio-abortion-heartbeat-bill.html#commentsContainer&permid=100066413:100066413

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8) 10 Years After an Exercise Study, Benefits Persist
By Gretchen Reynolds, April 17, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/well/move/10-years-after-an-exercise-study-benefits-persist.html?action=click&module=Discovery&pgtype=Homepage

The workouts we completed years ago may continue to influence and improve our health today, according to a fascinating new study of the current lives and health of people who joined an exercise study a decade before. 

The findings suggest that the benefits of exercise can be more persistent than many of us might expect, even if people are not exercising to the same extent as they previously did. But the impacts also may depend on the types and amounts of exercise involved.

In medicine, lingering health consequences from experiments, known as legacy effects, are common and often commendable. Participants in past diabetes experiments, for instance, whose blood sugar was tightly controlled with diet, drugs or other methods, often had better heart health years later than diabetics outside of the study, even though the volunteers’ blood-sugar levels had risen in the interim.

But whether exercise studies likewise produce legacy effects has been unknown, although the issue matters. We know from other science and disheartening personal experience that we lose much of our fitness and associated health benefits if we stop or reduce how much we exercise over the years.

But do all of those gains disappear, or might exercise change us in some ways that stick with us?

For the new study, which was published this week in Frontiers in Physiology, scientists at Duke University decided to find out. Most of the researchers had been involved a decade earlier in a large-scale exercise experiment called Strride (for Studies Targeting Risk Reduction Interventions through Defined Exercise). 

In that experiment, which ran from 1998 to 2003, hundreds of sedentary, overweight volunteers between the ages of 40 and 60 had remained inactive as a control group or begun exercising.

Their exercise was either moderate, such as walking, or more vigorous, comparable to jogging, and lasted until people had burned at least several hundred calories per workout. Volunteers completed three session of their assigned workout each week for eight months, while scientists tracked changes to their aerobic fitness, blood pressure, insulin sensitivity and waist circumference.

In general, each of those health markers improved in the people who exercised and not in the controls.

The scientists then said farewell and did not get in touch with the participants again until about a decade later, when they contacted volunteers who still lived near Duke and asked if they would join a reunion study. More than a hundred, representing each of the exercise and control groups, said, sure.

These men and women returned to the lab for new tests of their aerobic fitness and metabolic health. They also completed questionnaires about their current medical condition and medications and how often they exercised each week.

Then the researchers started comparing results and found telling differences.

Most of the men and women from the control group, who had not exercised 10 years before, had larger waistlines now, while the exercisers displayed little if any middle-aged spread compared to their decade-earlier selves.

Those from the control group also were less fit now. Most had lost about 10 percent of their aerobic capacity, which is typical of the declines seen after about age 40, when most of us will lose about 1 percent of our fitness annually.

But those men and women who had exercised vigorously for eight months during Strride retained substantially more fitness. On average, their aerobic capacity had fallen by only about 5 percent, compared to when they had joined the Strride study, and those few who reported still exercising at least four times a week were more fit now than they had been a decade before.

Interestingly, those Strride volunteers who had walked — meaning their exercise had been moderate, not intense — did not seem to have enjoyed the same lasting fitness benefits as those who had exercised more vigorously. Most of them had shed about 10 percent of their aerobic capacity during the past decade, much like the controls.

On the other hand, they showed surprisingly persistent improvements in their metabolic health, more so than among the intense exercisers. The walkers from 10 years ago still had healthier blood pressures and insulin sensitivity than they had had before joining Strride, even if they rarely exercised now. They had also had relatively healthier metabolisms than the men and women who had exercised intensely all those years before.

Taken as a whole, these results suggest that “exercise is a powerful modulator of health, and some effects can be quite enduring,” says William Kraus, a professor of medicine and cardiology at Duke, who oversaw the new study.

But the effects also can differ, depending on how hard someone works out, he says. To build and maintain high endurance, we may have to sweat and strain. But to better our metabolic health, a walk likely will do.

Of course, this study does not explain how exercise alters our body in ways that last. We may, in part, be building a physiological reserve, Dr. Kraus says. Raise aerobic capacity or improve insulin sensitivity with exercise, and even as those measures decline later with inactivity and age, we will be better off than if we had never worked out.

Exercise also probably leaves long-lasting imprints on our genes and cells that affect health, Dr. Kraus says.

He and his colleagues hope to investigate those issues in coming studies, so that we can better appreciate how past exercise might echo through our bodies well into the future.

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Posted by: bonnieweinstein@yahoo.com

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