UPDATED NOTICE: POLICE STATE TERROR AGAINST AFRICAN AMERICAN CITIZENS CONTINUES UNABATED WITH NO END IN SIGHT!

All,

THIS IS NOTHING BUT MURDEROUS WHITE SUPREMACY RUN AMOK…BE AWARE THAT ONLY ALL WHITE TO 99% WHITE JURIES--AND/OR ALL WHITE SUPREMACIST JUDGES--ARE HANDING DOWN THESE VICIOUS RACIST VERDICTS IN ONE CASE AFTER ANOTHER THROUGHOUT THIS COUNTRY…AND ABSOLUTELY NOTHING IS BEING DONE ABOUT IT….

Kofi
     
http://www.nytimes.com/…/michael-brelo-cleveland-police-off…
 

U.S.

Cleveland Police Officer Acquitted of Manslaughter in 2012 Deaths

By MITCH SMITH and ASHLEY SOUTHALL
MAY 23, 2015
New York Times

Judge John P. O’Donnell with mannequins showing the gunshot wounds to Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams. Credit Tony Dejak/Associated Press      

CLEVELAND — A police officer who climbed onto the hood of a car after a chase in 2012 and fired repeatedly at its unarmed occupants, both of them black, was acquitted of manslaughter on Saturday by an Ohio judge.

The trial of the white officer, Michael Brelo, following harrowing episodes in communities such as Baltimore, Staten Island and Ferguson, Mo., played out amid broader questions of how the police interact with African-Americans and use force, in Cleveland and across the country.

Officer Brelo, 31, was one of 13 officers who fired 137 rounds at Timothy Russell and his passenger, Malissa Williams, who were killed after a chase through the area on Nov. 29, 2012. Officer Brelo fired his  Glock 17 pistol 49 times, including at least 15 shots after he reloaded and climbed onto the hood of Mr. Russell’s 1979 Chevrolet Malibu and the other officers had stopped firing.

Related Coverage:

Samaria Rice and her daughter Tajai, left, in Cleveland near where Ms. Rice’s son Tamir, 12, was killed by a police officer.

In Tamir Rice Case, Many Errors by Cleveland Police, Then a Fatal One
JAN. 22, 2015

A memorial for Tamir Rice, shot by the Cleveland police.
Cleveland Police Cited for Abuse by Justice Department
DEC. 4, 2014
 

The chase started downtown after reports of gunfire from the car; prosecutors said the noise apparently was the result of the car’s backfiring. More than 100 officers pursued the car for more than 20 miles at speeds that reached 100 miles an hour. They began firing when the car was stopped and cornered.

While Officer Brelo did fire lethal shots at the two people, testimony did not prove that his shots caused either death, according to the ruling of Judge John P. O’Donnell of the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court. “The state did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant, Michael Brelo, knowingly caused the deaths of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams,” he ruled.
 

Officer Brelo, a former Marine who had opted for a bench trial, sat stoically throughout the four-week trial. On Saturday, he could be seen shifting in his seat, at times sitting back, and at other times resting his head in his hands. At one point, he made a quick sign of the cross. He embraced his lawyers after the verdict. He remains on an unpaid suspension.

Defense lawyers said their client had feared for his life and believed gunfire was coming from Mr. Russell’s car. No gun was recovered, and prosecutors said Mr. Russell and Ms. Williams had been unarmed.

Patrick A. D’Angelo, one of Officer Brelo’s lawyers, said his team was “elated” with the verdict, and he blamed an “oppressive government” for bringing the charges. “We stood tall; we stood firm,” Mr. D’Angelo said, “because we didn’t do anything illegal. We didn’t do anything wrong.”

But the verdict does not mean the end of scrutiny of the case or of police issues in Cleveland.

Federal officials will review the trial testimony and evidence, and a city panel is investigating Mr. Brelo’s actions and police conduct in the episode. Five supervisors face misdemeanor charges for their oversight of the case.

There are also two ongoing investigations of police shootings in November. One is looking into the death of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old black boy who was holding a replica gun when a white Cleveland police officer shot him. That shooting, captured on video, has also garnered national attention and resulted in protests.

In the other, the Cuyahoga County prosecutor’s office is investigating the death of Tanisha Anderson. Ms. Anderson, a 37-year-old black woman whose family said she suffered from bipolar disorder, lost consciousness and died in police custody after being placed face down on the pavement. The medical examiner ruled her death a homicide

A Cleveland police officer who climbed onto the hood of a car after a chase and fired repeatedly at its unarmed occupants in 2012 was acquitted of manslaughter on Saturday by an Ohio judge. By Reuters on Publish Date May 23, 2015. Photo by Tony Dejak/Associated Press.
 

The verdict on Saturday was met with anger by many, particularly blacks. Last year, the Justice Department found a pattern of “unreasonable and unnecessary use of force” within the department.

Representative Marcia L. Fudge, a Democrat whose district is based in Cleveland, said Judge O’Donnell’s verdict was “a stunning setback.”

“The verdict is another chilling reminder of a broken relationship between the Cleveland police department and the community it serves,” she said. “Today we have been told — yet again — our lives have no value.”

At a midafternoon news conference, Cleveland’s mayor and police chief said there had been a number of nonviolent demonstrations in the city and that officers were working to keep the protests under control.

“So far, the protesters are making their voices heard, but they are doing it in a peaceful and very respectful way,” Mayor Frank Jackson said just after 4 p.m. “Police are doing an excellent job of monitoring the situation and protecting everyone’s rights — protesters and everyone else.”

A protest march continued into the evening, with more than 100 demonstrators chanting and blocking traffic downtown. There were several tense moments, including some minor scuffles and games of cat-and-mouse with the police, and unruliness with Cleveland Indians fans leaving the baseball stadium, but the event remained largely peaceful. The crowd dwindled as the evening went on, and the police first made a handful of arrests after 9 p.m., the time protesters were ordered to disperse.

DeVrick Stewart, 29, of Cleveland, said he had been marching since the morning and saw broad issues with how the police treat people.

“I came out because this seems to be a world issue,” said Mr. Stewart, who mentioned both the Brelo case and Tamir Rice’s death. “It’s not a white or black issue. It’s a police versus society issue.”

Timothy McGinty, the Cuyahoga County prosecutor, said in a news conference after the verdict that the investigation had led to several changes that he believed would prevent deaths, including better use-of-force training and increased penalties for officers who disregard department policies. As a result of the changes, “there will never have to be another Brelo trial,” he said.

Five police supervisors have been charged with dereliction of duty, a misdemeanor, for failing to bring the fatal chase under control. “We look forward to presenting another vigorous prosecution,” Mr. McGinty said.

In a statement, the United States attorney’s office, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice said they would review the testimony and evidence.

“We will continue our assessment, review all available legal options and will collaboratively determine what, if any, additional steps are available and appropriate given the requirements and limitations of the applicable laws in the federal judicial system,” the statement said.

In 2013, the Critical Incident Review Committee was formed to review the shooting. Cleveland’s police chief, Calvin D. Williams, said during a news conference that, so far, 72 officers had been suspended without pay. One supervisor was fired, and two more were demoted. Administrative charges against three officers were dismissed. The review was paused during Officer Brelo’s trial, but was expected to resume after the verdict.

Nine of the police officers disciplined for their roles in the shooting have filed a federal lawsuit against the city for racial discrimination. The officers — eight whites and one Hispanic — claim that they were disciplined more harshly because they were not black.

After the verdict, Officer Brelo’s future with the department remained unclear. Stephen S. Loomis, the president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association, said Officer Brelo was going on a vacation with his family, but it was not known if he would be able to return to work.

During the trial, prosecutors argued that Officer Brelo’s actions crossed the line from justifiable to reckless when he climbed onto the car’s hood, but the judge disagreed.

Protesters outside the Justice Center after Officer Brelo's acquittal in Cleveland on Saturday. Credit Aaron Josefczyk/Reuters
Before rendering his verdict, Judge O’Donnell spoke from the bench about widespread tensions between the police and African-Americans, mentioning Ferguson and Baltimore.

“In many American places, people are angry with, mistrustful and fearful of, the police,” he said. “Citizens think the men and women sworn to protect and serve have violated that oath or never meant it in the first place.”

But Judge O’Donnell said he would not let those sentiments cloud his verdict, and he found that Officer Brelo had reasonably perceived a threat from Mr. Russell’s car. The decision to continue firing from the hood was protected by law, he ruled, clearing Officer Brelo of all charges. The shooting was “reasonable despite knowing now that there was no gun in the car and he was mistaken about the gunshots,” Judge O’Donnell said.

“I reject the claim that 12 seconds after the shooting began, it was patently clear from the perspective of a reasonable police officer that the threat had been stopped,” he said, contrasting the prosecutors’ claims that the justifiable action ended when Officer Brelo climbed onto the hood.

Officer Brelo will remain on unpaid suspension while the review panel that was formed after the shooting continues its investigation into his actions and those of 12 other officers involved, Chief Williams said. In November, the City of Cleveland agreed to pay $3 million to settle wrongful-death lawsuits brought by the families of Mr. Russell and Ms. Williams.

Surrounded by members of Mr. Russell’s family on Saturday afternoon, Paul Cristallo, a lawyer for the family, said relatives were “hugely disappointed” with the verdict. He said that the police created the chaotic circumstances that ultimately led to Officer Brelo’s acquittal. Police officers are trained to de-escalate tensions with civilians, he said, but that “doesn’t include surrounding them with 62 cars and having 13 officers shooting at them.”

“Fleeing and eluding shouldn’t get you the death penalty,” he added.

Mr. Russell’s sister, Michelle, lamented that the trial had relied on the version of events told by police officers, and said her brother and Ms. Williams were never able to tell their side of the story. The police officers were angry, she said, and acted with a “mob mentality.”

“They knew that night that once they caught up to Tim and Malissa that they were going to let them have it,” she said. “And that’s exactly what happened.”

But in closing arguments, Mr. D’Angelo said his client believed he was under attack when he fired on the car. “What would make him want to shoot through the windshield at another human being?” Mr. D’Angelo said. “Could it be that he was shot at? Could it be that he reasonably perceived that the occupants of the Malibu were shooting at him? That’s what all the other officers perceived. That’s what Officer Brelo perceived.”

Mitch Smith reported from Cleveland, and Ashley Southall from New York. Rodney Bengston contributed reporting

THE TWO BLACK UNARMED OCCUPANTS OF THIS DESTROYED AUTOMOBILE WERE ATTACKED BY POLICE WHO FIRED 137 ROUNDS AT THE CAR AFTER IT WAS CORNERED BY 13 POLICE OFFICERS PROSECUTORS HAVE SAID, INCLUDING 49 BY OFFICER BRELO

REMEMBER THOSE HEINOUS FACTS THE NEXT TIME ANYONE MAKES THE UTTERLY FALSE AND LUDICROUS CLAIM THAT YOU TOO ARE WELL PROTECTED "CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES"

http://panopticonreview.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-relentless-deadly-national-assault.html

 FROM THE PANOPTICON REVIEW ARCHIVES

(Originally posted on December 5, 2014):

Friday, December 5, 2014

The Relentless Deadly National Assault of White Supremacy On Black America And Our Fiercely Determined National Fight Against It In All Of Its Guises

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/27832-state-terrorism-and-racist-violence-in-the-age-of-disposability-from-emmett-till-to-eric-garner
 

State Terrorism and Racist Violence in the Age of Disposability:  From Emmett Till to Eric Garner
05 December 2014
By Henry A. Giroux, Truthout | Op-Ed

"If you want a picture of the future imagine a boot stomping on a human face forever."

--George Orwell

REMEMBER THIS IMAGE BECAUSE IT TELLS US WHAT OUR REAL CIVIC STATUS IS IN THIS SAVAGE REPUBLIC:

A police officer atop an armored vehicle looks through the scope of a rifle towards a crowd of demonstrators gathered to protest the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., Aug. 12, 2014. The militarized police response to the protests over the shooting of an unarmed teenager has elicited a broad call from across the political spectrum for America’s police forces to be demilitarized. (Whitney Curtis/The New York Times)

The larger reasons behind Eric Garner's execution seem to be missed by most commentators. The issue is not simply police misconduct, or racist acts of police brutality, however deadly, but the growing use of systemic terror of the sort we associate with Hannah Arendt's notion of totalitarianism that needs to be explored.

When fear and terror become the organizing principles of a society in which the tyranny of the state has been replaced by the despotism of an unaccountable market, violence becomes the only valid form of control. The system has not failed. As Jeffrey St. Clair has pointed out, it is doing exactly what it is supposed to do, which is to punish those it considers dangerous or disposable - which increasingly includes more and more individuals and groups. Hannah Arendt was right in arguing that, "If lawfulness is the essence of non-tyrannical government and lawlessness is the essence of tyranny, then terror is the essence of totalitarian domination." 1

In an age when the delete button and an utterly commodified and privatized culture erase all vestiges of memory and commitment, it is easy for a society to remove itself from those sordid memories that reveal the systemic injustices that belie the presence of state violence and terrorism. Not only do the dangerous memories of bodies being lynched, beaten, tortured and murdered disappear in the fog of celebrity culture and the 24/7 entertainment/news cycle, but the historical flashpoints that once revealed the horrors of unaccountable power and acts of systemic barbarism are both disconnected from any broader understanding of domination and vanish into a past that no longer has any connection to the present.
 

The murder of Emmett Till; the killing of the four young black girls, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Denise McNair, in the 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama; the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr; the killing by four officers of Amadou Diallo; and the recent killings of countless young black children and men and women, coupled with the ongoing and egregious incarceration of black men in this country are not isolated expressions of specific, marginalized failures of a system. They are the system, a system of authoritarianism that has intensified without apology. Rather than being viewed or forgotten as isolated, but unfortunate, expressions of extremism, these incidents are part of a growing systemic pattern of violence and terror that has unapologetically emerged at a time when the politics and logic of disposability has been normalized in American society and violence has become the default position for solving all social problems, especially as they pertain to poor minorities of class and color.
 

When ethics and any vestige of social responsibility and the public good are trampled beneath the hooves of the finance state, there is no space for democratic values or justice. We live in an age of disposability - an historical period of increasing barbarism ruled by financial monsters, who offer no political concessions and are driven by a death-drive.
The aim of the terrorist state, as Arendt argues, is not only to instill fear, but to destroy the very capacity for convictions, rather than to instill them. Under such conditions, power is not only unaccountable, but it is free from any sense of moral and political conviction. Hence, the rise of the punishing state as a way to govern all of social life. In this context, life becomes disposable for most, but especially for poor minorities of class and color. I think bell hooks is right when she states that "the point of lynching historically was not to kill individuals but to let everybody know: 'This could happen to you.' " This is how a terrorist state controls people. It individualizes fear and insecurity and undercuts the formation of collective struggle. Fear of punishment, of being killed, tortured, or reduced to the mere level of survival has become the government's weapon of choice. The terrorist state manufactures ignorance and relies on induced isolation and privatization to depoliticize the population. Beliefs are reduced to the realm of the private allowing the public realm to sink into the dark night of barbarism, terror and lawlessness.

As an endless expression of barbarism and the ongoing elimination of any vestige of equality and democratic values, the killing of innocent black children and adults by the police makes clear that Americans now inhabit a state of absolute lawlessness, one that both fills the Hollywood screens with prurient entertainment and a culture of cruelty and, unfortunately, provides testimony to the ravaging violence that marks everyday life as well.

Calls for minor reforms such as retraining the police, hiring more minorities, or making the grand jury system more transparent will not change a political and social system that has lost its connection to the ideals, values and promises of a democracy. Just as calls for punishing the Wall Street crooks who caused the financial crisis will not reform the system that produced the financial debacle.

Calls for such reforms do not challenge the totalitarian politics and financial forces that rule American society, they simply give the system a veil of legitimacy, suggesting it can be fixed. It can’t be fixed. It is a death-dealing system ruled by political and moral zombies, and it has to be transformed through the ongoing, nonviolent mobilization and development of social movements that can imagine a democracy that is real, substantive and radical in its calls for justice, equality and freedom. The dark possibilities of our times are everywhere. Let's hope the killing of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Eric Garner provides the beginning of a political and social movement to fight what has become a dark and gruesome political state of governance in the United States.
1. Hannah Arendt, "Ideology and Terror: A Novel Form of Government," The Origins of Totalitarianism, (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York: 2001). pp. 464.
May not be reprinted without permission of the author.

Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ryerson University. His most recent books include: Youth in Revolt: Reclaiming a Democratic Future (Paradigm 2013), America's Educational Deficit and the War on Youth (Monthly Review Press, 2013) Neoliberalism's War on Higher Education (Haymarket Press, 2014), and The Violence of Organized Forgetting: Thinking Beyond America's Disimagination Machine (City Lights, 2014). The Toronto Star named Henry Giroux one of the 12 Canadians changing the way we think! Giroux is also a member of Truthout's Board of Directors. His website is www.henryagiroux.com.
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A police officer atop an armored vehicle looks through the scope of a rifle towards a crowd of demonstrators gathered to protest the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., Aug. 12, 2014. The militarized police response to the protests over the shooting of an unarmed teenager has elicited a broad call from across the political spectrum for America’s police forces to be demilitarized. (Whitney Curtis/The New York Times)

http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/darren-wilson-reportedly-receives-a-large-bounty-of-financial-support-for-killing-michael-brown
 

Advocates of justice for Michael Brown gathered in Minneapolis (Fibonacci Blue)

Darren Wilson Reportedly Received a Large Financial Gain as a Result of Killing Michael Brown

by MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
 
David Parkman reported the other day that unnamed sources claim that Darren Wilson, a former Ferguson police officer who murdered Michael Brown, was paid somewhere in the range of $500,000 for his exclusive "first" post-killing interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News. ABC News and Wilson both deny the reports of a fee, but it wouldn't be the first time that a major news network has paid big bucks for a grand spectacle sensationalist interview if Parkman is correct.
 

In addition, The Root recounted reports that more than one millions dollars was raised from supporters, as of November 30, for Wilson. If both these figures are approximately accurate, then it means that Wilson has financially benefitted to the tune of about $1.5 million, with more donations and "celebrity fees" no doubt to come.
It is worthy of note, as Parkman , that Stephanopoulos conducted a soft ball interview with Wilson. It was as much a dereliction of journalistic professional standards as the non-cross examination of Wilson before the grand jury by St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch was a perversion of prosecutorial legal practices.
 

Yes, there are those who will argue that Wilson - who received a salary of $45,302 as a 28 year old Ferguson police officer - is now out of a job and deserves financial remuneration. However, there's a more compelling and historical prism through which to see the alleged windfall that Wilson is receiving: it's basically a bounty for killing a black man, a reward for a lynching by bullets. Is that a hyperbolic charge? Not really.

BuzzFlash at Truthout posted a commentary yesterday on how even the head of the New York Police Department views people such as Eric Garner (and one can assume Michael Brown) as "pests" or vermin. What were the precipitating actions that led to their killings: selling single cigarettes and walking on the street? In reality, the context of who they were was more important in understanding why they were targeted: black males who have been branded as undesirables by urban police policy.
The deference that prosecutor McCulloch and then "journalist" Stephanopoulos gave to Wilson is the filter through which the public perception of Brown's death is framed, particularly to a large percentage of the US white population that views black males - as voiced by Wilson - as looking "like a demon." This is a legacy of racism that extends back to slavery and the Jim Crow era when black males could be brutalized or lynched for exhibiting even a perceived defiance of any white, even if it was just walking down the sidewalk and glaring at a white person.
That corporate mainstream "news" allegedly is a large contributor to the mass media-age bounty being paid for killing Michael Brown is abominable.

Copyright Truthout. May Not Be Reprinted Without Permission.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/04/obama-police-killings-eric-garner-decision

Obama under pressure over response to police killings after Eric Garner decision
 
President creates task force and pledges to work with New York mayor after latest police killing of an unarmed black man prompts more unrest

The real problem in Ferguson, New York and all of America is institutional racism
by Paul Lewis in Washington
Thursday 4 December 2014
The Guardian

President Barack Obama and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio will join forces to improve relations between police and minority communities, the  White House announced on Thursday, after the two leaders discussed protests surrounding the death of Eric Garner.

There are growing questions about Obama’s response to a prominent set of police killings of unarmed black men and children that have raised questions about alleged discriminatory policing and impunity.

Obama has not visited any of the communities affected by the high-profile killings. They include Staten Island, where Garner died after being placed in a chokehold by NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo, and Ferguson, the St Louis suburb where Michael Brown was fatally shot by officer Darren Wilson.

In both cases, grand juries decided not to indict the police officers, prompting large – and, in the case of Ferguson, violent – protests. Nor has Obama visited Cleveland, Ohio, where 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot dead by police officer Timothy Loehmann.

“As the president of the United States and as the mayor of its largest city, the two pledged to work together to help strengthen the trust and bond between law enforcement and the local communities that they serve,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said.

“The two leaders also discussed how this is not just an issue for New York or Ferguson, Missouri, but a problem that extends to communities across the country.”

In brief remarks on Thursday, Obama said he had spoken with De Blasio about the Garner case and added: “Too many Americans feel a deep unfairness when it comes to the gap between our professed ideals and how laws are applied on a day-to-day basis.”

“Beyond the specific issue, that has to be addressed – making sure that people have confidence that police and law enforcement and prosecutors are serving everybody equally – there is a larger question of restoring a sense of common purpose.”

Critics of Obama complain he has failed to implement concrete proposals. On Monday the president lamented how there have been “commissions before, there have been task forces, there have been conversations, and nothing happens”.

Obama’s solution was the creation of another task force. He also resisted curtailing controversial federal programs that transfer military-grade weaponry to local police forces, which became an issue after the extremely forceful response to protests immediately after Brown’s death. Earnest said the country should give “the benefit of the doubt” to Obama’s task force and evaluate its recommendations.

Democrats were united in their dismay at the decision not to indict Pantaleo and over the broader questions emerging about police accountability in the US.

One of the most forceful denunciations of the decision came from the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, Marcia Fudge. “Even in the face of video footage, it appears justice will not be served for Mr Garner or his family,” she said.

“In the span of two weeks, this nation seems to have heard one message loud and clear: there will be no accountability for taking black lives,” she said. “As an American, it is growing increasingly difficult to believe that there is justice for all.”

Dena Wessel stands near police officers during protests in Seattle, Washington, after the Eric Garner grand jury decision was released. Photograph: Matt Mills McKnight/EPA

Republicans were split over the wisdom of the New York grand jury’s decision and the existence of wider problems of discriminatory policing, which Obama and his attorney general Eric Holder argue persist in some communities across the country.

The Republican speaker of the House, John Boehner, said he would “not rule in or out” the suggestion from one of his deputies, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, for congressional hearings.

“Clearly both of these are serious tragedies that we’ve seen in our society,” Boehner said about the Garner and Brown deaths. “I do think the American people deserve more answers about what really happened here and was our system of justice handled properly.”

McMorris Rodgers, chair of the House Republican conference, said in an MSNBC interview earlier on Thursday that the House should “absolutely” hold hearings into the Garner case. “We need to understand why this decision was made,” she said. “I would call for the House to have those hearings.”

Staten Island’s Republican congressman, Michael Grimm, defended the grand jury’s decision.

“There’s no question that this grand jury had an immensely difficult task before them, but I have full faith that their judgment was fair and reasoned and I applaud [district attorney Daniel] Donovan for overseeing this case with the utmost integrity.” Grimm, a former FBI agent, won re-election last month despite facing an imminent trial over federal indictments for fraud, charges he denies.

The most trenchant defence of Pantaleo came from the Republican New York representative Peter King. “I feel strongly the police officer should not have been indicted,” he said. He claimed that had Garner “not had asthma and a heart condition or was so obese, almost definitely he would not have died from this”.

“I know people are saying that he said eleven times or seven times ‘I can’t breathe,’” King added in a CNN interview. “Well the fact is that if you can’t breathe, you can’t talk. If you’ve ever seen people locked-up resisting arrest – and I’ve seen it, and it has been white guys – and they’re always saying ‘You’re breaking my arm,’ ‘You’re choking me’ during this. So police hear that all the time.”

Eric Garner protest

Students at Emory University participate in a mass ‘die in’ during a protest on campus against the decision of a grand jury not to indict a police officer involved in the death of Eric Garner, in Atlanta, Georgia. Photograph: Erik S Lesser/EPA

Garner, a father of six, was arrested in July under suspicion of peddling untaxed “loose” cigarettes. Moments before he was apprehended, Garner told police: “Every time you see me, you wanna harass me, you wanna stop me…I’m minding my business, officer.”

An autopsy found Garner died as a result of the chokehold, compressions to the chest, and prone positioning during his restraint by police. The New York grand jury could have considered multiple charges, from murder to a lesser offense such as reckless endangerment, but the Staten Island district attorney, Daniel Donovan, said jurors found “no reasonable cause” to bring charges.

Hours after the grand jury decision was made public, Holder announced a federal Department of Justice investigation into whether Garner’s civil rights were violated.

King, the son of a police officer, also rejected the notion there was a racial or civil rights dimension to Garner’s treatment by the NYPD and took aim at African Americans civil rights leaders representing the families of Garner, Brown and a string of other victims of alleged police brutality in recent months. The Rev Al Sharpton was among those who met with Obama at a White House meeting dealing with the fallout from unrest in Ferguson on Monday, along with law enforcement officials and clergy.

“President Obama, if he’s serious about trying to bring racial peace to this country, the last thing he should be doing having Al Sharpton sit in the White House,” King said. “When he says that people in the African American community don’t trust the police, one of the reason is because agitators like Al Sharpton are constantly criticising and attacking and denouncing the police.”

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2014/12/cleveland_police_officer_who_s.html

Cleveland officer who shot Tamir Rice had 'dismal' handgun performance for Independence police

By Adam Ferrise, Northeast Ohio Media Group
Email the author | Follow on Twitter
December 03, 2014

http://video-embed.cleveland.com/services/player/bcpid1949055968001?bctid=3911294683001&bckey=AQ

Full surveillance video captures a Cleveland police officer fatally shooting 12-year-old Tamir Rice Warning: May contain disturbing footage. Police officials release surveillance video that captures a Cleveland police officer fatally shooting 12-year-old Tamir Rice at a West Side recreation center
 
CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Cleveland police officer who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice had issues with handling guns during his brief tenure with a suburban police department.

A Nov. 29, 2012 letter contained in Tim Loehmann's personnel file from the Independence Police Department says that during firearms qualification training he was "distracted" and "weepy."

"He could not follow simple directions, could not communicate clear thoughts nor recollections, and his handgun performance was dismal," according to the letter written by Deputy Chief Jim Polak of the Independence police.

The letter recommended that the department part ways with Loehmann, who went on to become a police officer with the Cleveland Division of Police.
 

"I do not believe time, nor training, will be able to change or correct the deficiencies," Polak said.

Cleveland police said on Wednesday that they never reviewed the Independence file and changed their policies to include checking publicly available records for potential hires.

Loehmann is currently under investigation by the Cleveland police department's use of deadly force investigation team, made up of homicide detectives, several internal units and city and Cuyahoga County prosecutors in the Nov. 22 shooting outside the Cudell Recreation Center.
Loehmann shot Tamir less than two seconds after he arrived to investigate a complaint about Tamir carrying what turned out to be a fake gun.

Independence released Loehmann's personnel file Wednesday, the day after Cleveland police released files for him and his partner during the shooting.

In an interview with the Northeast Ohio Media Group, Loehmann's father said that his son left Independence to pursue a job with Cleveland police because he wanted "more action."

It is unclear if Cleveland officials saw the Independence files before Loehmann was hired in Cleveland. A message left for Cleveland police spokesman Sgt. Ali Pillow was not immediately returned.

Loehmann's Cleveland personnel file shows someone marked a letter from Loehmann in which he wrote that he resigned from Independence one day after graduating from the Cleveland Heights Police Academy.

Someone also jotted down the name and phone number for Polak and Independence Police Chief Michael Kilbane. The file does not say if Cleveland officials contacted Independence.

Loehmann was allowed to resign from the Independence police. He tendered his resignation Dec. 4, 2012 after six months with the department. He was hired in March of this year by Cleveland police.

The Independence report details a host of issues with Loehmann's performance as an officer during his short stint with the department.

Loehmann's troubles began in 2012 while he attended the Cleveland Heights Police Academy. An issue with an on-again, off-again girlfriend caused Loehmann distress and, in one case, he fell asleep during  training, according to a written report from Independence Police Sgt. Greg Tinnirello.

Loehmann told Tinnirello that he cried often about his personal issue during training and Loehmann's mother told Tinnierello that her son's study papers "would be soaked in tears nightly for three months."

On Nov. 26, 2012, Loehmann was ordered to stay in the Independence police dispatch center. Loehmann left without authorization and lied to Tinnierello that the dispatchers told him he could leave, the letter says.
Loehmann eventually admitted to lying.

The problems at Independence erupted on Nov. 28, 2012, the records say. Loehmann showed up "sleepy and upset" for a 6 a.m. state gun qualification session.

Tinnierello wrote that Loehmann "was distracted and was not following simple instructions" at the shooting range.
At one point, he went to the back of the range to reload his magazine and could not return to the line where he was supposed to shoot from, Tinnierello wrote. Loehmann appeared to be crying and was emotionally upset so Tinnierello said they would stop the exercise for the day.
 

Tinnierello and Loehmann talked about Loehmann's personal problems as they made the 40-minute drive to Atwells Police Supply to pick up a bulletproof vest for Loehmann.
Loehmann told Tinnierello that he "was unclear where his future was headed" and thought about quitting when Tinnierello told him he would continue training until Independence police thought he could handle the job.
"Loehmann stated 'that just makes me want to quit,'" Tinnierello replied, according to Tinnierello.

Tinnierello reported the information to Polak. The two decided to send Loehmann home for the day and call his parents because they were concerned for his well-being. The three met the next day.

Loehmann told his supervisors that he spoke with two friends, a priest and a Cleveland police officer about how to deal with personal stress at work. Loehmann expressed his frustration about for a small police department in Independence instead of living in New York where he could be close to friends.

He told Polak that he wanted to work at the New York Police Department where his father worked for 20 years.
Polak concluded his report by saying that Loehmann lacked the maturity to understand the severity of his breakdown on the shooting range.

"Unfortunately in law enforcement there are times when instructions need to be followed to the letter and I am under the impression that Ptl. Loehmann, under certain circumstances, will not react in the way instructed," Polak wrote.

Cudell Rec center shooting:

Justice Department report likely little comfort to Tamir Rice family and others: Mark Naymik

Tamir Rice shooting should be rallying point for real community policing: Mark Naymik

Cleveland officer who shot Tamir Rice had 'dismal' handgun performance for Independence police

Personnel files of officers involved in Tamir Rice shooting released by Cleveland officials

Some Cleveland Council members declare police shooting of Tamir Rice unjustified
Full surveillance video captures a Cleveland police officer fatally shooting 12-year-old Tamir Rice Warning: May contain disturbing footage. Police officials release surveillance video that captures a Cleveland police officer fatally shooting 12-year-old Tamir Rice at a West Side recreation center

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/26/us/cleveland-police.html…
 

The New York Times
BREAKING NEWS ALERT
NYTimes.com
Monday, May 25, 2015

Cleveland Is Said to Settle Justice Department Lawsuit Over Policing

The city of Cleveland has reached a settlement with the Justice Department over what federal authorities said was a pattern of unconstitutional policing and excessive use of force, people briefed on the case said Monday.

The settlement, which could be announced as early as Tuesday, comes days after a judge declared a Cleveland police officer not guilty of manslaughter for climbing onto the hood of a car and firing repeatedly at its unarmed occupants, both of them black. The verdict prompted hours of protests and reignited discussions about how police officers treat the city’s African-American residents.

READ MORE »
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/26/us/cleveland-police.html…

Cleveland Reaches Settlement With Justice Department Over Police Conduct

Federal authorities had cited a pattern of unconstitutional policing and excessive use of force in a report on the Cleveland Division of Police.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/26/us/cleveland-police.html?emc=edit_na_20150525&_r=0
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Panopticon-Review/342702882479366
 

U.S.

Cleveland Reaches Settlement With Justice Department Over Police Conduct
By MITCH SMITH and MATT APUZZO
MAY 25, 2015
New York Times

Demonstrators pause on Saturday at the entrance to the Cuyahoga County Justice Center as police stand guard during a protest against the acquittal of Michael Brelo, a patrolman charged in the shooting deaths of two unarmed suspects. Credit John Minchillo/Associated Press

CLEVELAND — Cleveland has reached a settlement with the Justice Department over what federal authorities said was a pattern of unconstitutional policing and excessive use of force, people briefed on the case said Monday.

The settlement, which could be announced as early as Tuesday, comes days after a judge declared a Cleveland police officer not guilty of manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a car’s two unarmed occupants, both of them black.

The verdict prompted a day and night of protests and reignited discussions about how police officers treat the city’s African-American residents.

The details of the settlement were not immediately clear, but in similar talks in recent years, the Justice Department has required cities to allow independent monitors to oversee changes in police departments. Settlements are typically backed by court orders and often call for improved training and revised policies for the use of force.

Related Coverage:
 

A car with dozens of bullet holes after the police in Cleveland chased and killed two people in November 2012. The episode led to a manslaughter indictment against one officer and a broad civil rights investigation by the Justice Department.

As Justice Department Scrutinizes Local Police, Cleveland Is Latest Focus

JUNE 17, 2014
 

A memorial for Tamir Rice, shot by the Cleveland police.
Cleveland Police Cited for Abuse by Justice Department

DEC. 4, 2014
 

A demonstrator was arrested during protests Saturday in Cleveland after the acquittal of Michael Brelo, a police officer who stood trial in the shooting deaths of a black couple.

Cleveland Streets Are Calm, but Anger Lingers Day After Officer’s Acquittal

MAY 24, 2015 

Judge John P. O’Donnell with mannequins showing the gunshot wounds to Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams.

Cleveland Police Officer Acquitted of Manslaughter in 2012 Deaths

MAY 23, 2015
 

Samaria Rice and her daughter Tajai, left, in Cleveland near where Ms. Rice’s son Tamir, 12, was killed by a police officer.

In Tamir Rice Case, Many Errors by Cleveland Police, Then a Fatal One

JAN. 22, 2015

A spokeswoman for the Cleveland Division of Police referred questions to the mayor’s office, which would not comment on Monday. Dena Iverson, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, also had no comment.

Video
Verdict in Cleveland Police Shooting
A Cleveland police officer who climbed onto the hood of a car after a chase and fired repeatedly at its unarmed occupants in 2012 was acquitted of manslaughter on Saturday by an Ohio judge.

By Reuters on Publish Date May 23, 2015. Photo by Tony Dejak/Associated Press.

The Justice Department opened an inquiry into the Cleveland police force months after the 2012 shooting of the unarmed occupants in a car, and issued its report in December. Cleveland is among several cities, including Ferguson, Mo., New York and Baltimore, that have become focal points of a national debate over policing and race.

On Saturday, demonstrators spent hours marching through Cleveland after a judge acquitted Officer Michael Brelo of manslaughter for his role in the 2012 shooting, which began with a police chase of the car. While several officers fired a combined 137 shots, Officer Brelo was singled out for manslaughter charges because he climbed onto the hood of the car after the pursuit ended and fired 15 shots into the vehicle.

The occupants, Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, died from gunshot wounds. The judge ruled that the actions of Officer Brelo, who is white, were lawful.

Cleveland’s streets have stayed calm since Saturday, when the police reported 71 arrests, some on felony charges.

Dozens of protesters appeared in court here Monday on misdemeanor charges. Some still wore T-shirts with messages like “I Can’t Breathe,” a reference to Eric Garner, who died after being put in a police chokehold in Staten Island last year, and “Black Lives Matter.”

For Cleveland, a settlement with the Justice Department averts a long and costly court fight and the appearance that city leaders are resisting change. Mayor Frank Jackson faces a recall petition from city activists who say, among other grievances, that he has not done enough to prevent police abuses.

The Justice Department has called Mr. Jackson a full partner in its effort to improve the police force.

The Justice Department has opened nearly two dozen investigations into police departments under the Obama administration. Federal investigators found patterns of unconstitutional policing in cities including  Seattle, Newark, Albuquerque and Ferguson. Federal authorities recently announced they would investigate the Baltimore police after Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man, died of injuries he suffered while in custody.

In Seattle, the federal inquiry led local officials to overhaul training and focus on how officers can calm tense situations without using force. In Albuquerque, city officials agreed to change the way the police are trained, outfit officers with body cameras and improve how the department investigates officer-involved shootings.

Mayor Frank Jackson and Police Chief Calvin Williams held a news conference Sunday after Officer Michael Brelo’s acquittal. Credit Michael F. McElroy for The New York Times

Officials in Ferguson are negotiating a possible settlement over accusations that officers routinely violated the Constitution.
The Justice Department’s report on the Cleveland police was among its most scathing, finding that they engaged in a pattern of “unreasonable and unnecessary use of force.”
Investigators said officers unnecessarily used deadly force; used excessive force against mentally ill people; and inappropriately resorted to stun guns, chemical sprays and punches.

It detailed tactical blunders, and said officers too often imperiled bystanders when they used force.

The Justice Department also criticized a “structurally flawed” discipline policy that it said made it too hard to punish officers for improperly using force.

The report highlighted one case in which officers kicked an African-American man in the head while he was handcuffed and on the ground, then did not report having used force during the arrest.

“Supervisors throughout the chain of command endorse questionable and sometimes unlawful conduct by officers,” Vanita Gupta, the Justice Department’s top civil rights prosecutor, said in December. “Officers are not provided with adequate training, policy guidance and supervision to do their jobs safely and effectively.”

The report was compiled too early to cover the death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was playing with a replica gun in a Cleveland park in November when the police shot him. Prosecutors have yet to decide whether to charge officers in his death or in the case of Tanisha Anderson, 37, who died after she was restrained in a prone position on the pavement.

Most of the protesters arraigned Monday were charged with refusal to disperse, and 35 pleaded no contest to an amended charge of disorderly conduct, which carries no jail time. Twenty people pleaded not guilty and will contest the charges. More protesters are expected to appear in court on Tuesday.

Talis Gage, 31, a Cleveland native now living in a different part of Ohio, was among those who pleaded no contest and was released Monday morning. As with others who pleaded no contest, he was sentenced to time served and was not issued a fine. Mr. Gage said he joined the Saturday protest because he believed that Officer Brelo was guilty of a crime.

“What happened was not justice,” Mr. Gage said outside the courthouse shortly after his release. “It was unfair for this man to walk away with no jail time at all.”

Mitch Smith reported from Cleveland, and Matt Apuzzo from Washington.

A version of this article appears in print on May 26, 2015, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Makes Deal With Cleveland on Police Abuses. 

The Disturbing Persistence and Expansion Of Major Domestic and Foreign Policy Crises in the National Government of the United States in 2015 and Our Ongoing Collective Complicity in Them

https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Panopticon-Review/342702882479366

All,

NATAMBU'S LAW states: "No matter how bad things are or appear to be, one can rest assured upon further investigation that in reality things are FAR WORSE than anything one could possibly imagine."

Please take some time to read and think very hard about the previous nine (9) articles that I have posted on this site over the past 90 minutes dealing with police brutality, major labor battles, the ongoing environmental crises, the incredibly brazen and lethal CRIMINAL INJUSTICE SYSTEM, extremely exploitive corporate and governmental "trade deals" engineered by both the White House and Congress (and the fierce political opposition to them), and the ongoing arrest, conviction, and incarceration of whistleblowers and other courageous citizens, functionaries, and journalists who put their lives and professional reputations on the line to tell the very ugly truth about what "our" government is doing to initiate and carry out bad and destructive policies that exploit us all as citizens, workers, and human beings and then blatantly and/or covertly COVERUP AND LIE about what exactly they are doing to us and why (led once again folks by the President, both national political parties in Congress, the corporations, the venal reactionary "Gang of Five" in the Supreme Court, Wall Street, and the largest, wealthiest corporations and banks (and their servile and greedy political flunkies in (again!) the White House, Congress, Wall Street, Mass Media/Madison Avenue).

Then after thoroughly investigating the horrific evidence presented here and elsewhere and reflecting on "what it all means" THINK hard as well about WHO is in the White House, Congress, the Supreme Court, the criminal injustice systems, the corporations etc. et al AND HOW THEY GOT THERE...It's called COMPLICITY folks and until we seriously address that monumental problem in all of its deceptive/delusional guises we will continue to be used, victimized, and discarded...

Kofi

http://m.thenation.com/blog/206897-why-so-many-democrats-rejected-obamas-lobbying-trans-pacific-trade-deal

Why So Many Democrats Rejected Obama's Lobbying on the Trans-Pacific Trade Deal
by John Nichols
May 11, 2015
The Nation 

A protestor at the hearing on "President Obama's 2015 Trade Policy Agenda" (Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)

President Obama takes it personally when Americans disagree with his free-trade fundamentalism. He keeps griping about the Democrats who usually support his agenda but are ardently opposed to his request for "fast track" authority to bypass congressional input and oversight on a sweeping Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.

The president has from the start of the debate over fast track and the TPP had a practical problem: If most congressional Democrats align with labor, environmental, and human-rights activists rather than the White House—as they appear intent upon doing— they can block Obama's trade agenda. In the Senate, just 40 votes are required to erect a procedural barrier to fast-track legislation. In the House, a reasonably united Democratic caucus could align with the significant number of Republicans who have traditionally opposed unrestricted free trade to thwart fast track and/or the TPP itself.

On Tuesday, the first major test came in the Senate, and the president lost. Sixty votes were required to open a debate on fast track, but only 52 senators voted to go forward. Forty-two Democrats and two independents who caucus with the Democrats, Vermont's Bernie Sanders and Maine's Angus King, voted "no."

The trade fight is not finished; negotiations with Senate Republicans who favor Obama's agenda could make the fast-track proposal more attractive to at least a few wavering Democrats. And if that happens, expect Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell to exercise the option he has retained to bring the issue up again.

Unless and until that happens, however, the president has taken a hard hit. It happened because a number of traditionally pro–free trade Democrats, who had been expected to vote with Obama and the Republicans, joined with the Senate's growing caucus of fair-trade Democrats to block action.

This was what the president feared would happen.

In the run-up to Tuesday's vote, the president made no secret of his frustration with his fellow Democrats.

"There have been a bunch of critics about trade deals generally and the Trans-Pacific Partnership," he griped to the crowd that was assembled last week for his appearance at the corporate headquarters of Nike, a US-based firm that (with its contractors) now employs roughly 40 overseas workers for every one American. And, the president explained, a lot of the critics are Democrats who he has traditionally thought of as his partisan and ideological allies.

Instead of listening to their objections, however, Obama simply announced that he was right and the Democrats who have backed him on so many other issues were wrong.

The problem is that the "evidence" the president has mustered on behalf of fast track and the TPP is unconvincing. In part that's because, as Bernie Sanders warned with regard to proponents of free-trade deals during Tuesday's Senate debate, "These folks have been proven wrong time after time after time." But there is also the fact that the current promises are so hollow. Consider the case of Nike and that 40-1 ratio. Even if every promise about the benefits of free trade and the TPP were to come true—an exceptionally unlikely prospect if the history of trade pacts is any guide—the ratio of overseas workers to Americans employed by Nike and its contractors would shift to somewhere in the range of 30-1. That best-case scenario, everyone admits, would take more than a decade to be achieved. And, though fewer admit it, much of the new employment would likely involve technical workers developing automated production schemes that reduce rather than increase living-wage employment in the US and abroad.

These are points that foes of Trade Promotion Authority and the TPP have made in precise and thoughtful detail, and with substantial support from economists and policy analysts.

Yet Obama has dismissed those who disagree with him as somehow wrongheaded and ignorant. "[What's] interesting is typically they're my friends coming from my party," he said of the fast-track and TPP critics. "And they're my fellow travelers on minimum wage and on job training and on clean energy and on every progressive issue, they're right there with me. And then on this, they're like whupping on me."

Why does the president think this is so? "[On] this issue, on trade," he says, "I actually think some of my dearest friends are wrong. They're just wrong."

Obama's criticisms of fellow Democrats, which became more and more intense as Tuesday's Senate vote approached, disregarded not just the honest concerns of Democratic members of the House and Senate but the sincere objections of union members, environmentalists, civil-rights, and human-rights activists.

Ultimately, the president's approach harmed his own credibility, as his comments created the impression that he was unaware of the long experience, and the deep insight, possessed by progressive critics of free-trade absolutism. The largest and steadiest public-education project on a major economic issue in modern history has played out over the past quarter-century in union halls and church basements and community centers across the country, as Americans have wrestled with the promises and realities of trade policy.

The people the president keeps saying are "wrong"—a group that includes Senate minority leader Harry Reid, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, Sanders and most House Democrats—are not unthinking protectionists or crude isolationists. They are supporters of workers, the environment, and human rights in the United States and abroad. They have come to recognize that, while fair trade holds immense promise, free trade along the lines the United States has practiced it in recent decades has done immense damage.

The most ardent opponents of fast track and the TPP have firsthand experience with failed trade policies. They have seen what the North American Free Trade Agreement, the permanent normalization of trade with China and other trade arrangements have done to their communities.Their current position is rooted in an understanding that, as Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison (a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and an early supporter of Obama's 2008 presidential run) says, "We cannot afford to rush through another NAFTA that values corporate profits above families."

As a presidential candidate in 2008, Obama visited many of those communities and stood side by side with many of the leading opponents of ill-conceived and poorly administered trade agreements. He decried "a Washington where decades of trade deals like NAFTA and China have been signed with plenty of protections for corporations and their profits, but none for our environment or our workers who've seen factories shut their doors and millions of jobs disappear…"

Now Obama suggests that those he sided with in 2008 are clueless in 2015.

That is not the case.

"American workers have seen the effects of unfair foreign trade on their jobs and manufacturing facilities—they don't need their elected leaders making personal attacks on each other during an important policy debate," says Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat who remembers when Obama stood with the critics of failed free-trade policies.

"During the 2008 presidential primary, I watched President Obama argue in Cleveland that we should renegotiate NAFTA. Instead, we've seen more empty promises of jobs through exports while American workers are hit with a flood of imports and jobs shipped overseas," says Brown. "It's clear that the American public doesn't support these trade deals and I am disappointed the president has resorted to name calling in an attempt to shift the debate."

Brown's opposition to fast track and the TPP is inspired by what he has seen happen to Ohio communities like his hometown of Mansfield, and in statistics that confirm the failure of trade deals to live up to promises made by Republican and Democratic presidents:

The Obama Administration predicted that the South Korea Free Trade Agreement would create 70,000 jobs and deliver up to $11 billion in exports. Instead, it only increased U.S. exports to Korea by $1 billion, while Korean imports have skyrocketed to more than $12 billion. The growing good trade deficit with Korea has eliminated over 75,000 jobs in the last three years.

The U.S. already has a trade deficit with Japan and 10 other countries included in the TPP. Since 1997, the deficit with these countries has increased by $151.4 billion.

Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, a Democrat who has worked on trade policy since the 1980s, explains that the president's suggestion that his critics do not understand the issue is "absolutely inaccurate."

"We know exactly what we're talking about," says Slaughter, the daughter of a coal miner who has charted trade-related factory closings and job losses in her upstate New York district for decades. "My concern is that he does not understand what's in it."

Congressman Mark Pocan, D-Wisconsin, explains that "Over the last three decades, in large part because of bad trade deals like NAFTA and CAFTA, Americans have worked harder than ever for less. In fact, hundreds of thousands of jobs—factory jobs, middle-class jobs—in states across the country were lost."

Pocan's a native of Kenosha, Wisconsin, an auto-making town for more than a century that saw the closing of its Chrysler plant in 2010—despite the fact that the plant had been recently modernized and rated as one of the most efficient in the United States. "Anyone who does not see the connection between our economy and the failed trade agreements of the past," says the congressman, "will remain on the wrong side of the future."

It is not ignorance but experience that has caused so many progressive members of Congress to join activist groups that have developed deep expertise on trade policy to oppose the president's embrace of the trade agenda of Senate majority leader McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner.

Major unions have developed research teams to study trade and worked closely with experts on trade policy for decades now. They have also aligned with international trade unions to oppose the free-trade absolutism of the president and his Wall Street backers. Labor's opposition to fast track and a TPP deal that the Communications Workers of America union refers to as "NAFTA on Steroids" is driven by fact—not fantasy.

The same goes for the criticism of current trade policies expressed by environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth, and for the outspoken opposition to fast track by progressive farm groups such as the National Farmers Union.

Opposition to fast track and the TPP is rooted in the fact of trade deficits and in the facts on the ground witnessed by those who voice the criticism. Yet critics of free trade do not see the current wrangling over fast track and the TPP merely from the perspective of the past. As Pocan says, "People recognize that this is a fight for the future."

The president has every right to side with Wall Street in trade debates. But he does his cause no favors by suggesting that those who sincerely disagree with him are unaware of what is at stake. In fact, the reason they are opposing Obama's fast-track request is because they know precisely what is at stake.

Take Action: Demand that Congress Reject ‘fast track' for the Trans-Pacific Partnership 

http://m.thenation.com/blog/207041-could-fast-track-ultimately-destroy-dodd-frank-yes

Could Fast Track Ultimately Destroy Dodd-Frank? (Yes.)
by George Zornick
May 12, 2015
The Nation

Senator Elizabeth Warren (Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)

Senator Elizabeth Warren opened up a new battle in the war against the Obama administration's trade policy last week, when she charged that the fast-track trade authority now being considered by Congress could ultimately allow a Republican president to gut many of the Dodd-Frank financial reforms.

This provoked a heated response from the White House and its allies, who not only disputed Warren's claim but bizarrely (and under the cover of anonymity) suggested she was just trying to juice up the Draft Warren presidential movement.

So who's right? This is an important question to litigate, as the Senate prepares to vote on fast-track authority Tuesday.

The short answer: Warren. All it would take is a Republican president and Congress (or any president and Congress inclined to weaken financial regulations), and indeed fast-track authority could be used as a glide path to dismantle not only Dodd-Frank but potentially other important regulations as well.

First, what is fast track?

Presidents generally want to negotiate trade pacts with a promise to other countries that the US Congress won't later change what they agreed upon, and so they ask Congress to pre-approve Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), colloquially known as a fast track. The fast-track legislation now up for a vote in Congress says that for the next six years, any trade deal proposed by an administration cannot be amended. The deals also cannot be filibustered in the Senate, and would pass with a simple-majority vote.

In exchange for ceding this authority, Congress writes into the fast-track bill all kinds of requirements about what it wants to see in future trade deals: This version of the legislation, worked out between Senators Orrin Hatch and Ron Wyden and Representative Paul Ryan, has a number of guidelines on environmental, labor, and regulatory standards.

Democrats complain that in the case of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the fast-track guidelines come too late—much of the deal has already been agreed upon. In fact, when I spoke with Representative Sander Levin last week, he said that when he raised concerns recently with the US Trade Representative about TPP's highly controversial investor-state dispute process, he was told that the TPP chapter on it is already "closed." (A representative for USTR declined to comment on the record.)

There is also a near-universal belief among congressional Democrats that guidelines in the fast-track bill are far too soft—that they are much more suggestion than requirement. This is of great concern since fast-track authority will almost certainly be in effect for six years, spanning not only the rest of Obama's term but the first term of the next president, and some of the following president's term as well, if Obama's successor is voted out after four years.

It's that unease Warren is speaking to when she raises concerns about fast track and a Republican president. "[H]e wants us to vote on a six-year, grease-the-skids deal," she told NPR this week. Congress is making a blind promise of faith here, particularly if you believe—as most Democrats do—that this fast-track bill doesn't really force the White House to adhere to very much. And beyond TPP, Senator Orrin Hatch said there are 43 different trade bills that could pass in this six-year window.

The final thing to understand about fast-track authority is how unique it is during this era of gridlocked American legislating. Over the past several years, spending on lobbying has actually decreased as Congress routinely fails to agree on much beyond basic funding of the government and naming some post offices. Trade deals contain vast amounts of regulation and economic rulemaking, and fast-track authority is like a magic-carpet ride through the deadlocked Congress.

How specifically could Dodd-Frank be changed?

Warren pointed to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a proposed trade deal between the United States and the European Union that's been under negotiation for several years.

Major financial institutions have been lobbying heavily on this deal—which is not surprising, since the major financial centers in the United States and Europe would be affected. JPMorgan Chase, MasterCard, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and VISA have all lobbied Congress on fast track and TTIP, along with TPP, in the past six months, according to company disclosure forms.

What might they want? Like with TPP, we don't know all the details of TTIP yet, but advocates have many fears. One is that the Federal Reserve's plan to impose separate liquidity requirements on foreign banks might be scotched; Inside US Trade reported in 2013 that the EU wanted to address that rule, which it thinks is "discriminatory." Liquidity requirements were a crucial part of Dodd-Frank and force banks to have a certain level of assets they can sell off in the event of a crisis. European regulators have traditionally taken a lighter touch on such requirements. That same report suggested that compliance rules on derivatives—another key part of Dodd-Frank—were under negotiation.

Relatedly, there is a fear common to many trade deals: If TTIP is enacted with lower financial regulations than what exist under Dodd-Frank, and with exemptions for foreign banks, American banks could reincorporate in signatory countries to sidestep US regulations.

And it's not just Dodd-Frank: the leaked EU proposal for TTIP has a provision that new regulations first be "analyzed" to determine if they have an unacceptable impact on trade. Americans for Financial Reform (AFR) worries that this could "impose a presumption that regulations must be judged on the basis of their trade impact rather than their effectiveness as public interest policies promoting financial stability."

Reported talks on "regulatory cooperation" would mean regulators in different countries have to consult each other on new rules before respective legislative bodies are presented with a reform. AFR has said, "At best, this mechanism would delay implementation of needed financial reforms. At worst, it would result in a watering down or outright blockage of said reforms."

So why does Obama think Warren is wrong?

I reached out to the US Trade Representative's office, and was directed to a statement from the Treasury Department that "The Dodd-Frank Act is a signature achievement of the Obama Administration that the President fought long and hard to pass into law. Nothing we're doing in any of our trade agreements would weaken our ability to implement Wall Street Reform now or in the future."

I was also guided to a quote from Obama, when he told members of Organizing for American that "every single thing we've done—from Obamacare, to Wall Street reform, to student loan reform, to credit card reform, to fighting for a fairer tax code, to higher minimum wages, to a smarter workplace—all it's focused on making sure it's a good deal for middle-class families and folks who are working hard to get into the middle class."

Let's file that response under "not detailed nor convincing."

It is true, however, that the Obama administration has drawn a hard line on gutting Dodd-Frank through TTIP; Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said in late 2013 that he opposes including financial services in TTIP because "Normally in a trade agreement, the pressure is to lower standards on things like that and that's something that we just think is not acceptable."

That's comforting, but also a frank admission that TTIP could indeed weaken financial regulations. Warren's point isn't that Obama might do it, but that President Scott Walker would decline to take the same hard line against deregulation.

There's one other rebuttal made by administration allies. Here's Politico's Ben White: "The problem, White House and pro-trade officials on the Hill say, is that the fast-track bill currently before Congress includes language that expressly forbids changing U.S. law without congressional action."

That claim is highly misleading, and has unfortunately been repeated in several other outlets. Trade deals, by their very nature, change US law—that's the whole point.

Specifically, this happens when Congress passes the implementing legislation of the trade deal. The fast-track legislation makes clear that "if changes in existing laws or new statutory authority are required to implement" a trade deal, then the implementing legislation will include provisions "either repealing or amending existing laws or providing new statutory authority." When Congress passes a trade deal, it changes US law at the same time, and it should be noted that those changes to the law are inherently also on a fast track.

Therefore the provision cited by the administration—that says trade deals can't change US law without congressional action—is a total misdirection and one White House officials should be embarrassed to advance. It's a relevant point, right up until it becomes completely irrelevant.

That provision exists just in case the implementing language doesn't sufficiently change US law, though it almost surely would. But it still only applies to domestic law, meaning that people couldn't challenge an American bank in a US federal court for violating a trade deal.

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Ben Beachy of Public Citizen pointed out to me, however, that international law still very much applies—and that trade agreement partners could use international tribunals to sanction the United States until it changed its laws to conform to the trade deal it signed onto.

But would President Walker actually do it?

The fairest critiques of Warren's allegation acknowledge that fast track and future trade deals could indeed weaken Dodd-Frank, but that a Republican president might not choose that route. That came up in some of my conversations with pro-trade officials, and can be found in other media accounts as well.

"[T]he new president would likely just choose to roll back Dodd-Frank directly through changes to U.S. law, with ordinary legislation through the Republican-controlled Congress, assuming the GOP maintains control of both the House and Senate after 2016. No trade deal or fast track would be needed to take that route," wrote William Mauldin in The Wall Street Journal. Matthew Yglesias made a similar point at Vox, and added that the hypothetical Republican president could also weaken or undermine Dodd-Frank through regulatory discretion.

That's true enough, but remember that fast track is a much easier glide path for changes than a simple congressional bill to repeal all or part of Dodd-Frank, which would presumably go through the normal committee and amendment process in Congress, and face a 60-vote threshold in the Senate. The only advantage to the congressional route is that it (might) be quicker, if President Walker feels he has the votes, as opposed to concluding TTIP negotiations and waiting for Congress's 90-day review under fast-track.

President Walker might also choose to weaken financial reform through lax regulation, but that isn't mutually exclusive to seeking changes through TTIP—particularly because lax enforcement only lasts as long as Walker is in office, whereas the trade deal would be binding in perpetuity.

Moreover, many of the ways TTIP would weaken financial reforms are oblique. Regulatory cooperation and rules that encourage US banks to reincorporate in lesser-regulated countries aren't labeled with bright-red "REPEAL DODD-FRANK" language. They are also attached to a trade bill, which generally would generate more overall, bipartisan support than a simple measure to repeal Dodd-Frank.

One final point: It's not just Dodd-Frank. Remember those 43 trade deals Hatch spoke about. Important environmental and labor regulations could be at risk through this same fast-track process as well. Warren is focused on financial reform because it's her wheelhouse—and if I had one major critique of her comments, it would be not that they are overstated but that they are not broad enough.
 
Take Action: Demand that Congress Reject ‘Fast Track' for the Trans-Pacific Partnership
Read Next: George Zornick on Bernie Sanders's bill to break up the big banks

http://m.thenation.com/article/207017-cia-officer-jeffrey-sterling-sentenced-prison-latest-blow-governments-war-journalism

CIA Officer Jeffrey Sterling Sentenced to Prison: The Latest Blow in the Government's War on Journalism
by Norman Solomon
May 12, 2015
The Nation

Former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling with his wife after being convicted of leaking classified details to a New York Times reporter (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)

The sentencing of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling on May 11 for espionage ends one phase of a long ordeal and begins another. At age 47, he has received a prison term of 42 months—three and a half years—after a series of ever more improbable milestones.

The youngest of six children raised by a single mother, Sterling was the only member of his family to go to college. He graduated from law school in 1993, worked briefly at a public defender's office, and then entered the CIA, where he became one of the agency's only African-American case officers. In August 2001, Sterling became the first one ever to file a lawsuit against the CIA for racial discrimination. (His suit, claiming that he was denied certain assignments because of his race, was ultimately tossed out of court on grounds that a trial would jeopardize government secrets.) Soon afterward, the agency fired him.

Sterling returned to his home state of Missouri and restarted his life. After struggling, he found a professional job and fell in love. But the good times were short-lived. One day in 2006, the FBI swooped in for a raid, seizing computers and papers at the small home that Sterling and his fiancée shared in a suburb of St. Louis. Slowly, during the next four years, without further action from the government, the menacing legal cloud seemed to disperse. But suddenly, a few days into 2011, Sterling was arrested for the first time in his life—charged with betraying his country.

The indictment included seven counts under the Espionage Act, the 1917 law that President Obama's Justice Department has used to prosecute more whistleblowers than all other administrations combined. The key charges accused Sterling of "unauthorized disclosure of national defense information," alleging that he gave details of a secret CIA operation to a journalist while falsely characterizing it in negative terms. The government contended that Sterling should remain in custody until trial because—with "underlying selfish and vindictive motivations"—he would try to "retaliate in the same deliberate, methodical, vindictive manner." A judge rejected that argument and released him on bond. But Sterling's arrest had triggered his immediate firing by Anthem Healthcare (where his work as a medical fraud investigator won a national award for uncovering $32 million in bogus charges), and suddenly even low-wage employment was out of reach. As a breadwinner, Sterling was toast. His wife, Holly, a social worker, continued to bring in a modest income as they waited for the trial.

The wait lasted four years. Most of the pre-trial legal maneuvers had to do with James Risen, the New York Times reporter whose 2006 book, State of War, had spurred the FBI leak investigation that ended with Sterling's arrest. The book included a chapter with classified information about Operation Merlin, a CIA program that in 2000 provided Iran with flawed design information for a nuclear weapon component. Despite subpoenas and jail threats, Risen kept refusing to identify any confidential source. The government prevailed on appeal with its claim that journalists have no right to such a refusal, but—after growing pushback from press-freedom advocates and worsening optics in the court of public opinion—the Justice Department finally gave up on forcing Risen to cooperate. (For background, see Norman Solomon and Marcy Wheeler, "The Government War Against Reporter James Risen," October 8, 2014.)

The federal courtroom in northern Virginia where Holly and Jeffrey Sterling returned for the sentencing on May 11 was the scene of a disturbing, though scantly reported, simulation of justice in late January. At the outset, covering the trial, I noted that "prospective jurors made routine references to ‘three-letter agencies' and alphabet-soup categories of security clearances." Steeped in a local atmosphere of deference to mega-employers like the CIA and Pentagon along with numerous big contracting firms nearby, "the jury pool was bound to please the prosecution."

* * *

In the government's opening statement, head prosecutor James Trump told jurors that Sterling had committed crimes of betrayal due to his "anger, bitterness, selfishness"—a theme and theory of the case that the Obama Justice Department was to reprise often with its mosaic of CIA testimony and its boffo PowerPoint closing argument: claiming that Sterling became vengeful against the agency when he failed to win his legal complaint against it for racial discrimination. The prosecution was gratified two weeks later when the nearly all-white jury, which included no African-Americans, voted guilty on all counts.

Few news reports about the verdict provided any context, but that was true of the entire trial's overall sparse coverage. During the seven days of proceedings, I rarely saw more than five other journalists in the courtroom. But the trial for United States of America v. Jeffrey Alexander Sterling was extraordinary, for reasons far beyond the fact that it was the first time a jury considered Espionage Act charges that a CIA employee had leaked classified information to news media.

During the first half of the trial, the prosecution was often fixated on insisting that Operation Merlin was a nearly perfect program implemented by a nearly perfect agency. The government condemned Sterling for having a very bad attitude in addition to doing a very bad thing. Hour after hour, he stood accused of wrongly disparaging the CIA's über-wise competence—legally to Senate Intelligence Committee staffers, and then illegally to the world, via Risen.

A cast of twenty-three CIA witnesses played their "national security" roles as agents of patriotic virtue. And Condoleezza Rice did a dramatic star turn (the press showed up for that one). Rice testified to the great importance of Operation Merlin, explaining that she carefully stuck to the talking points provided to her by the CIA when, as President George W. Bush's national security adviser, she hosted a meeting with Times reporter Risen and Washington bureau chief Jill Abramson—an intervention by the White House that succeeded in keeping the scoop out of the newspaper (and away from the public, until Risen's book came out more than two and a half years later). The meeting took place at the end of April 2003, just a few weeks after the invasion of Iraq.

During a trial that revolved around Washington spin about specters of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, the government was able to shield the CIA and the former secretary of state from scrutiny, even though—and precisely because—testimony in the courtroom could have illuminated their actual records of crying nuclear wolf while laying the groundwork for war. During cross examination, the government was able to nip in the bud an effort by defense lawyer Barry Pollack to provide the jury with some key background on the Bush administration that Rice served:

Q: [P]reventing working nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of rogue states is one of the most important missions of your, the administration you worked for certainly—

Rice: Yes.

Q:—and any other administration, correct?

Rice: That's correct.

Q: And certainly counter proliferation was of great interest at this particular time, correct?

Rice: That's correct.

Q: The United States had invaded Iraq the earlier month?

Prosecutor Eric Olshan: Objection.

Judge Leonie Brinkema: Well, we've heard that before. Let's just move this along, Mr. Pollack. Sustained.

And so it went, during a trial that alternately expanded and contracted its purview to accommodate prosecution needs. The scope went global, to vaguely yet emphatically assert vast harm from Sterling's alleged disclosures. Yet it narrowed to tunnel vision whenever convenient to exclude information that could explain why anyone might not defer to the judgments of an agency that had skewed its intelligence for war, or might doubt the credibility of a former Bush national security adviser who had called for the invasion of Iraq while warning, "We don't want the smoking gun to become a mushroom cloud."

On the trial's last day—in the same closing argument that insisted "this case is not about politics" and "it's not about salvaging the reputation of the CIA"—the prosecution began with a quote from Rice about the US government's grave responsibility to prevent nuclear proliferation. Three months later, in late April, the Justice Department filed a 24-page sentencing memo that began with a bold-italics quote from Rice's testimony: "I was deeply concerned because this was not just a sensitive program, but it was one of the only levers that we believed we had, that the President had, to try to disrupt the Iranian nuclear program."

Rice's superstar appearance was in sync with what one attorney called the "hocus pocus" of the trial, complete with a tall office divider that kept many of the CIA witnesses screened off from public view. For no evident reason other than to impress jurors with the sanctity and gravity of classification, the prosecution distributed to the jury a file stamped "SECRET" in big letters across the front, before the judge ordered a bailiff to take the file back only minutes later. The heavy-handed message was that top officials who knew best were operating with the kind of essential secrecy that the defendant had dangerously breached.

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In a trial with twists and shadowy subplots that seemed countless, two aspects—nearly hidden in plain sight—are among those in greatest need of scrutiny. What passed for incriminating proof amounted to nothing more than circumstantial evidence in the form of metadata about e-mails and phone calls. And the government won guilty verdicts for some of the Espionage Act charges on the mere basis that Sterling "did willfully cause" Risen to disclose classified information. In effect, the cumulative ambiance in the courtroom was white noise in the service of a prosecution that not only arranged a crescendo of circumstantial evidence but also of circumstantial allegations. The government impugned Sterling's motives and character while encouraging the jurors to assume that he would have tried to steer Risen toward classified information—despite the complete absence of evidence that the defendant had actually given him any. The circumstantial evidence, implying that Sterling had "caused" the release of such information, was enough. (Disclosure: After the guilty verdict, I used my frequent-flier miles to get plane tickets for Holly and Jeffrey Sterling so they would be able to go home to St. Louis.)

* * *

The successful prosecution of Jeffrey Sterling has given more leverage to the information clampdown that the Obama administration continues to implement. With a multi-count Espionage Act conviction, it serves as yet another warning shot—not only against whistleblowing and disclosure of classified information, but also against basic communication with journalists by government employees and contractors.

Over decades, while interviewing sources with security clearances, hundreds of journalists have had the experience of asking questions and receiving a reply along the lines of: I can't tell you the answer because it's classified, but I can tell you (fill in the blank). Such responses mean that sources can be helpful to a reporter's investigative process without disclosing any classified information. But one of the evident aims of the Sterling prosecution was to strengthen government efforts to choke off such communications. The not-so-subtle gist: Telling a journalist anything that might lead to coverage of classified information could be a basis for prosecution and conviction. The Sterling case stands as a calculated warning to government employees that Espionage Act charges could result from assisting any journalist for a story that might wind up reporting classified information.

Such legal constructions fit tongue-in-groove with the agenda of the intelligence hierarchy under Obama. For years now, the administration's "Insider Threat" program has formally encouraged millions of government employees to monitor each other for—and report on—signs of ideological or attitudinal deviance. An order from National Intelligence Director James Clapper warned employees of all intelligence agencies not to give any journalist non-classified information without first getting authorization. Such measures are part of a calculated progression that aims—via bureaucratic edicts as well as legal harassment and criminal prosecutions—to normalize an atmosphere of fear and reflexive self-constraint, blocking the unauthorized delivery of information to the public.

For prospective whistleblowers, the Sterling case is yet more proof that they can "go through channels" to express concerns only at their peril. Particularly in security-state realms—as the experiences of NSA whistleblowers William Binney, Thomas Drake, Edward Loomis and Kirk Wiebe have shown—using the much-ballyhooed official channels to report concerns is a flag that draws official retribution. During Sterling's trial, the prosecution repeatedly used against him—as supposed indications of hostility toward the agency and motive for wrongdoing—the fact that he had gone through legal channels to file suit alleging racial bias and to report his concerns about Operation Merlin to Senate Intelligence Committee staffers.

* * *

While defending the rights of journalists, some press-freedom advocates haven't seemed to mind much when a whistleblower goes to prison. Others, even more disturbingly, seemed to express satisfaction at the Sterling verdict, as proof that the government had been wrong in its claims in prior years that it needed Risen's testimony to gain a conviction. This theme was sounded by Attorney General Eric Holder right after Sterling's conviction, when he issued a statement that crowed: "As this verdict proves, it is possible to fully prosecute unauthorized disclosures that inflict harm upon our national security without interfering with journalists' ability to do their jobs." This attitude is a wedge being driven between journalists and whistleblowers—shorn of euphemisms, it often amounts to journalists good, whistleblowers not. But to support journalists and not the whistleblowers who provide them with information is akin to cheering only the last baton-holder in a relay race.

In an essay that went to press while the Sterling trial was under way, veteran journalist Steve Coll explained that "the Obama administration's resort to the draconian provisions of the Espionage Act against Sterling was just one case in a series of overreaching prosecutions of journalistic sources carried out by Eric Holder's Justice Department." Coll added: "In more than one instance, the Justice Department took positions that came close to criminalizing the act of professional reporting on classified subjects. In a pretrial filing in the Sterling matter, for example, prosecutors in the US Attorney's office for the Eastern District of Virginia argued vehemently that Risen was an important eyewitness to a felony because the reporter had allegedly interviewed Sterling, who had given him classified information."

Supporters of press freedom who denounce the government's threats against journalists should fight just as hard against efforts to imprison the whistleblowers whom journalists depend on—that, after all, is how the flow of vital information reaches the public. But so far, overall, the media establishment has failed to defend the whistleblowers who make possible the "professional reporting on classified subjects."

The Justice Department's legal siege of Sterling, which has spanned two administrations and 10 years, can be understood as part of a regimen that winks and nods, or wrist-slaps, when classified information is leaked from on high—often to manipulate public opinion—while fiercely prosecuting alleged leakers who expose government officials or policies as inept, destructive or mendacious. The Senate Intelligence Committee's recent report on torture documented that the CIA press office itself gave classified material to favorite journalists to make the agency look good. Even when major leaks from powerful officials are unauthorized, the penalties are nonexistent or tiny—as exemplified by the April 23 sentencing of former CIA Director David Petraeus, who gave briefing books with highly classified information to his journalist paramour and then lied to the FBI about it. Petraeus received no jail time after a cozy plea deal with the Justice Department. The same Justice Department declared that an appropriate prison sentence for Sterling would be in a range of 19-24 years.

There was grim symbolism in the eleventh-hour postponement of Sterling's sentencing until May 11, rather than the long-scheduled date of April 24. The original date—just one day after Petraeus's sentencing—would have provided an especially stark contrast.

The Petraeus plea deal has provoked criticism and even outrage from some newspaper editorial boards. In an understated editorial titled "Gen. Petraeus's Light Punishment," The New York Times observed that "top officials, who often seek to advance self-serving political agendas in their dealings with the press, appear to enjoy significant leeway in disclosing classified information"—while, "in sharp contrast, the government has been unsparing in its prosecution of lower­ ranking officials who have shared sensitive information for more defensible reasons." The Los Angeles Times editorialized that "the whiff of a double standard is overwhelming" and concluded, "That may be the way of the world, but it's not justice."

A more caustic response came from New Jersey's largest newspaper, the Star-Ledger, under a headline that summarized the status quo this way: "Whistleblowers wacked, all-star generals walk." Noting the sweet deal that Obama's Justice Department had gifted to Petraeus, the Star-Ledger editorial said: "What makes it galling is how Petraeus compares to men like Jeffrey Sterling, who was convicted by a jury for being the main source of James Risen's book about a CIA op designed to sabotage Iran's nuclear program. There were nearly 100 people who could have been the source, but Sterling was convicted on circumstantial evidence because the DOJ likes to go after whistleblowers."

Such clarity from big media remains unusual. But similar assessments are becoming more frequent and vehement—as more people recognize the grim injustices for whistleblowers and the dire consequences for democracy.

Amid all the convoluted doublespeak from the Obama administration, Jeffrey Sterling is paying a tragic price.

Read Next: John Kiriakou on how he took a stand against torture and the CIA 

http://m.thenation.com/blog/206913-how-can-you-get-ethical-manicure-support-worker-organizing

How Can You Get an Ethical Manicure? Support Worker Organizing
by Michelle Chen
May 11, 2015
The Nation

Leticia James and labor advocates address the media
Leticia James and members of the New York Healthy Salons Coalition discuss their efforts to reform the working conditions at nail salons on May 1, 2015. (Photo courtesy of the New York Healthy Salons Coalition.)

For an industry that's all about covering up flaws, perhaps it's not surprising that major harm lurks just below the polished surface of New York City's nail-salon industry. Sarah Maslin Nir's recent New York Times investigation reveals epidemic wage theft and abuse of workers across the roughly 2,000 under-regulated manicure shops dotting the city, where cheap mani-pedis are provided by Asian and Latina women workers who scrub and pamper fingers and toes amid noxious fumes.

But the real eye-opener of this piece should be the fact that change in the industry is possible, and some community-led solutions are within reach. Following the Times's extensive report, both state and city authorities are now weighing policies to tighten oversight. Governor Andrew Cuomo just announced plans to expand regulations for safety protections and labor standards. Public Advocate Leticia James has recommended granting the city licensing authority in order to directly oversee local salons, rather than relying on deeply understaffed state regulators. A bill before the City Council would initiate a certification program based on voluntary "best practices" standards.

A new campaign led by community and labor groups in collaboration with Public Advocate James, the New York Healthy Salons Coalition, aims to create a "Healthy Salons Incentive" certification program for businesses that adhere to best practices for workplace health and safety. The idea is to encourage shops to take measures like minimizing exposure to toxins and improving ventilation. The program would mirror the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative, which started around 2010 in the Vietnamese immigrant community, and has since certified salons across the state and collaborated on nationwide worker training and community education efforts.

On the workers' side, the Nepali community organization Adhikaar just published a colorful pamphlet—designed in collaboration with the Center for Urban Pedagogy—to educate communities about both public-health and labor-rights issues in the sector. The cartoon graphics, designed for accessibility, present general advice on workplace hygiene, health and safety, guidance on labor laws for workers, and advice for customers ("Be generous—tip at least 20%").

Pamphlet by Adhikaar, Center for Urban Pedagogy and Welcome Workshop

The distribution of the material itself—in English, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, and Nepali—is an organizing project; Adhikaar has incorporated the pamphlet into Know-Your-Rights training for members, many of whom are domestic workers and nail salon workers.

But on a day-to-day level, Adhikaar observes that while chemical threats loom over workers, they often identify sheer physical exhaustion as an immediate health issue. "Many people have health concerns, but they've sort of normalized it and they're [seen as] just sort of the cost of doing business," says Executive Director Luna Ranjit. "But more and more people are getting aware of it and saying this is not okay."

Labor and health crises overlap: Workers coerced into exhausting and abusive jobs are clearly not in a position to call out their boss on poor ventilation. And when suffering illness along with poverty—living on tips (reportedly often starting at zero base pay) and crammed into communal housing—workers face crushing pressure to stay in those unhealthy jobs. Many of the Nepali workers are semiliterate or undocumented, and are isolated from the mainstream workforce and mired in the salon industry's caste-like ethnic labor hierarchy.

A September 2014 Public Advocate's Office report started to uncover the daily horrors workers face: "A survey consisting of one hundred nail salon employees in New York City concluded that 57 percent developed an allergic reaction, 37 percent experienced pains from eye irritation, and 37 percent developed skin problems." The environmental hazards range from glaring UV lamps to fetid footbaths to the "toxic trio" of nail polish: dibutyl phthalates, toluene, and formaldehyde. Manicurists work long hours without proper protective gear, with studies showing over seven in ten "never or rarely wear face masks" and nearly half "never or rarely wear gloves." Chemical studies draw links between common products for treating hair and nails with cancer, reproductive problems, and respiratory illness.

But health-incentive programs for these semi-underground shops may not be enough. Beyond relying on employers' voluntary efforts, health and labor advocates urge stronger mandates for health and labor protections.

Despite the Times's depiction of workers as victims of the industry, advocacy groups involved with the initiative, including Adhikaar, National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum and New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health are putting workers' at the forefront of the safety debate by calling on lawmakers to incorporate labor standards into the certification program—including "excluding nail salon businesses that have had a history of wage and hour violations, or that have unpaid [Occupational Safety and Health] violations." Another proposal is to amend licensing procedures to help prevent discrimination against undocumented workers.

At a recent City Council hearing, nail-salon worker and Adhikaar activist Siru Malla testified about how her nose gets clogged with dust and chemicals as she and co-workers works without masks or gloves:

It makes it hard to breathe. Many of my friends who work in nail salons have become used to this.… Nail salons need to change these conditions. My friends complain about developing allergies. Nail salons need to change these conditions.… This is a place where people come to feel beautiful. This shouldn't happen at the expense of workers like us.

Adhikaar's pamphlet tries to fuse its messages of safety and of worker empowerment by presenting the advice to workers and consumers together. For example, the brochure advises workers to take regular breaks and eat meals, while encouraging consumers to wait for an appointment when appropriate and respect workers' schedule.

Through the design, Ranjit says, "we wanted them to see that it affects both workers and consumers. The health concerns are the same but for workers it's so much more amplified." Consider the consequences for workers and clients, for example, of having biweekly appointments versus never-ending workdays. The pamphlet aims to highlight "how to look at it from two different perspectives."

In an industry that forces one woman's chronic pain to subsidize the momentary glamor of another, maybe that brief touch during a modest cosmetic ritual could reveal a shared labor and health consciousness: In the city's struggle for beauty, everybody's troubles go hand in hand.