Celebrity inmates who are citing coronavirus to try to get released – New York Post

Posted on April 18, 2020 by admin

From gun-toting rappers to sleazy politicians, criminals all over the world are using the coronavirus pandemic as way to weasel out of prison time.

Celebrity jailbirds from New York City to England including Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff, disgraced comic Bill Cosby and accused document-leaking spy Julian Assange are demanding to be sprung due to the deadly bug.

Here are their crimes, their excuses for release and what judges have to say about it.

Rap sheet: President Trumps disgraced former lawyer and fixer pleaded guilty to tax evasion and campaign finance violations in 2018. He was sentenced to three years behind bars and is serving time at Otisville Federal prison upstate.Why I should be free:Cohen argues that he should be released because the federal prison system is demonstrably incapable of safeguarding and treating B.O.P. inmates who are obliged to live in close quarters and are at an enhanced risk of catching the virus.Result:His request was first rejected but a judge later ruled that he will be allowed to finish his sentence in home confinement.

Rap sheet: The 53-year-old I Believe I Can Fly singer is accused of sexual exploitation of a minor and child pornography and is awaiting trial at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago.Why I should be free: Kelly argues that the fact he recently underwent surgery for a hernia along with his age put him at risk of contracting the virus. He also says some of his fellow inmates have been quarantined with with flu-like symptoms.Result: Rejected.

Rap sheet: The big mouthed 49-year-old lawyer, known for representing porn actress Stormy Daniels in her lawsuits against President Trump, tried to extort millions of dollars from the athletic wear company Nike. He was awaiting sentencing at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan.Why I should be free: Avenatti says hes at high risk of contracting coronavirus because he had a recent bout with pneumonia, and his cellmate was removed due to flu-like symptoms.Result: Approved. A judge allowed him to be temporarily freed in order to ride out the pandemic at a friends house in Los Angeles.

E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune via AP, Pool, File

Steven Hirsch

Damaso Garcia, a two-time All-Star and former Yankees second baseman,...

Rap sheet: Madoff ran the largest Ponzi scheme in history, scamming 4,800 clients out of $64.8 billion. He was sentenced to 150 years behind bars and is doing the time at the Federal Correctional Complex in Butner, N.C.Why I should be free: The disgraced 81-year-old Ponzi king says he has terminal kidney disease, which puts him at risk of contracting the virus, and the federal prison system has consistently shown an inability to respond to major crises.Result: Pending.

Rap sheet: The Brooklyn-born hip-hop star pleaded guilty to gang-related racketeering, assault, firearms offenses and drug trafficking. He was sentenced to two years behind bars and was serving time at a private prison in Queens.Why I should be free: The 23-year-old rainbow-haired rapper says his asthma puts him at risk of death if he contracts the virus behind bars.Result: Approved. A Manhattan federal court judge ordered him released immediately into home confinement, citing extraordinary and compelling medical reasons.

Rap sheet: The 82-year-old former comic great drugged and sexually assaulted Temple University employee Andrea Constand at his home in 2004. He was sentenced to three to 10 years in prison, and is behind bars at the State Correctional Institution Phoenix prison in Skippack Township, Penn.Why I should be free: Cosby, once considered Americas TV dad, says at least one prison officer has tested positive for COVID-19 at the Pennsylvania jail where hes incarcerated. His spokesman says he is elderly and blind and has close contact with prison workers who take him to his medical appointments.Result: Pending.

What he did: The notorious Pharma Bro jacked up the price of the AIDS drug Daraprim nearly 5,000 percent in 2015. He was convicted of fraud and is serving a seven-year prison sentence at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn for scamming investors in hedge funds he ran.Why I should be free: Shkreli, 37, always known as an online troll, claims he wants to help research a treatment for the coronavirus, saying that authorities should let him out for three months so he can do laboratory work under strict supervision.Result: Pending.

AP Photo/Matt Slocum, File

Damaso Garcia, a two-time All-Star and former Yankees second baseman,...

What he did: The disgraced New York state senator used his powerful position to get his son Adam cash and jobs. He was convicted, sentenced to five years behind bars and is doing time at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Conn.Why I should be free: He asked to finish his sentence in home confinement because the virus has spread through federal prisons.Result: Released. The 72-year-old former Albany powerbroker was allowed to go into home custody Wednesday after testing positive for the coronavirus.

What he did:The WikiLeaks founder is awaiting trial at the Belmarsh prison in London for allegedly violating espionage laws when he published a series of leaks given to him by US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.Why I should be free: Assange, 48, applied for bail, saying the virus caused him to fear for his life at the Belmarsh prison in London.Result: Pending.

Rap sheet: The Gambino mob soldier conspired to whack a government witness at a Staten Island strip club in 1998. He pleaded guilty, was sentenced to 20 years and is serving time at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Conn.Why I should be free: He says hes sick as dog and suffering from COVID-19. He seeks immediate release into home confinement.Result: Pending.

Rap sheet: The ex-FIFA soccer honcho accepted tens of millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks in exchange for TV marketing rights and was convicted of racketeering conspiracy, money laundering and other charges. He was convicted, sentenced to nine years and doing time at the Federal Correctional Institution in Miami.Why I should be free: Napout, 61, says he filed a request for compassionate release because of the coronavirus pandemic.Result: Denied. A judge rejected him, saying the court does not find that defendants particular circumstances, as they relate to the COVID-19 pandemic, justify his release. He added that Napout is a flight risk.

Photo by JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP via Getty Images

REUTEREUTERS/Brendan McDermidRS

REUTERS

Damaso Garcia, a two-time All-Star and former Yankees second baseman,...

Rap sheet: Mexicos former top cop is awaiting trial at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn for allegedly taking millions of dollars in bribes stuffed inside suitcases from Joaquin El Chapo Guzmans notorious Sinaloa cartel.Why I should be free: The 51-year-old says he faces a high risk of contracting COVID-19 if he stays behind bars in Brooklyn, where inmates have tested positive for the coronavirus.Result: Denied. A judge says hes a flight risk.

Rap sheet: The Born to Kill gang kingpin was responsible for murdering a states witness, committing robberies engaging in an extortion scheme in Chinatown. He was convicted, sentenced to life and is being held at a federal medical facility in Massachusetts.Why I should be free: Thai says his ailing health puts him in danger of serious illness if he contracts COVID-19. If released, he plans to hole up with his sister and brother-in-law in Texas.Result: Pending

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Celebrity inmates who are citing coronavirus to try to get released - New York Post

Assange fathered two children while holed up in embassy, lawyer says – The Globe and Mail

Posted on April 15, 2020 by admin

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange speaks on the balcony of the Embassy of Ecuador in London on May 19, 2017.

JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/Getty Images

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange fathered two children with a lawyer representing him while he was sequestered in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, according to a British newspaper on Sunday.

The mother of his children, 37-year-old South African lawyer Stella Morris, told The Mail on Sunday the couple have two sons, aged 1 and 2, both conceived while Mr. Assange was in the embassy and kept secret from media and intelligence agencies monitoring his activity.

The paper said Ms. Morris has been engaged to Mr. Assange since 2017.

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Both of their children are British citizens. Mr. Assange watched the births on a video link, the paper said.

Australian-born Mr. Assange was dragged out of the embassy last year after a seven-year standoff and is now jailed in Britain fighting extradition to the United States on computer hacking and espionage charges.

His supporters say the U.S. case against him is political and he cannot receive a fair trial.

Ms. Morris said she had chosen to speak out now because she was worried about his susceptibility to the coronavirus in jail.

The paper quoted her as saying, I love Julian deeply and I am looking forward to marrying him.

She added, I am now terrified I will not see him alive again.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange fathered two children with a lawyer who was representing him while he was holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London fighting extradition, the lawyer told a British newspaper on Sunday. Lisa Bernhard has more. Reuters

Our Morning Update and Evening Update newsletters are written by Globe editors, giving you a concise summary of the days most important headlines. Sign up today.

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Assange fathered two children while holed up in embassy, lawyer says - The Globe and Mail

Donald Trump ‘offered Julian Assange a pardon if he denied …

Posted on April 12, 2020 by admin

Donald Trump offered Julian Assange a pardon if he would say Russia was not involved in leaking Democratic party emails, a court in London has been told.

The extraordinary claim was made at Westminster magistrates court before the opening next week of Assanges legal battle to block attempts to extradite him to the US, where he faces charges for publishing hacked documents. The allegation was denied by the former Republican congressman named by the Assange legal team as a key witness.

Assanges lawyers alleged that during a visit to London in August 2017, congressman Dana Rohrabacher told the WikiLeaks founder that on instructions from the president, he was offering a pardon or some other way out, if Mr Assange said Russia had nothing to do with the DNC [Democratic National Committee] leaks.

A few hours later, however, Rohrabacher denied the claim, saying he had made the proposal on his own initiative, and that the White House had not endorsed it.

At no time did I talk to President Trump about Julian Assange, the former congressman wrote on his personal blog. Likewise, I was not directed by Trump or anyone else connected with him to meet with Julian Assange. I was on my own fact finding mission at personal expense to find out information I thought was important to our country.

At no time did I offer Julian Assange anything from the president because I had not spoken with the president about this issue at all. However, when speaking with Julian Assange, I told him that if he could provide me information and evidence about who actually gave him the DNC emails, I would then call on President Trump to pardon him, Rohrabacher added.

At no time did I offer a deal made by the president, nor did I say I was representing the president.

White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham told reporters: The president barely knows Dana Rohrabacher other than hes an ex-congressman. Hes never spoken to him on this subject or almost any subject.

It is a complete fabrication and a total lie, Grisham said. This is probably another never-ending hoax and total lie from the DNC.

Trump, however, invited Rohrabacher to the White House in April 2017 after seeing the then congressman on Fox TV defending the president.

In September 2017, the White House confirmed that Rohrabacher had called the then chief of staff, John Kelly, to talk about a possible deal with Assange, but that Kelly had not passed on the message to Trump. Rohrabacher confirmed that version of events on his blog on Wednesday.

I told him that Julian Assange would provide information about the purloined DNC emails in exchange for a pardon. No one followed up with me including Gen Kelly and that was the last discussion I had on this subject with anyone representing Trump or in his Administration, he wrote.

Even though I wasnt successful in getting this message through to the President I still call on him to pardon Julian Assange, who is the true whistleblower of our time.

Assange appeared in court on Wednesday by videolink from Belmarsh prison, wearing dark tracksuit bottoms and a brown jumper over a white shirt.

Before Rohrabachers denial, district judge Vanessa Baraitser, who is hearing the case at Westminster, said the claim of a deal was admissible as evidence.

Until he was voted out of office in 2018, Rohrabacher was a consistent voice in Congress in defence of Vladimir Putins Russia, claiming to have been so close to the Russian leader that they had engaged in a drunken arm-wrestling match in the 1990s. In 2012, the FBI warned him that Russian spies were seeking to recruit him as an agent of influence.

The publication of emails hacked from the Hillary Clinton campaign helped perpetuate an aura of scandal around the Democratic candidate a few weeks before the 2016 election.

WikiLeaks put them online hours after Trump had suffered an apparent public relations disaster with the emergence of a tape in which he boasted of molesting women.

Assange is wanted in America to face 18 charges, including conspiring to commit computer intrusion, over the publication of US cables a decade ago.

He could face up to 175 years in jail if found guilty. He is accused of working with the former US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to leak hundreds of thousands of classified documents.

The extradition hearing is due to begin at Woolwich crown court on Monday, beginning with a week of legal argument. It will then be adjourned and continue with three weeks of evidence scheduled to begin on 18 May.

The decision, which is expected months later, is likely to be appealed against by the losing side, whatever the outcome.

Assange has been held on remand in Belmarsh prison since last September after serving a 50-week jail sentence for breaching his bail conditions while he was in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

He entered the building in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over sex offence allegations, which he has always denied and were subsequently dropped.

Assanges claims of a deal emerged a day after Trump granted clemency to a string of high-profile figures convicted on fraud or corruption charges, including the former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich and the junk bond king Michael Milken. Trump has not excluded pardoning Roger Stone, a former aide who was convicted in November of obstructing a congressional investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential race, and in particular for lying to investigators about his relationship with Assange and WikiLeaks.

Stone once boasted that he had dinner with Assange but later said the claim was a joke.

Release Julian Assange, says woman who had two children with him while in embassy – The Guardian

Posted on April 12, 2020 by admin

The partner of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has revealed that she had two children with him while he was living inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Stella Moris, 37, a South African-born lawyer, issued a plea for the father of her two young sons, Gabriel, three, and Max, one, to be released from prison and said there were genuine fears for Assanges health.

Assange was forcibly dragged out of the embassy and arrested in April last year, after Ecuador revoked his political asylum and invited Metropolitan police officers inside their Knightsbridge premises. He had been living at the embassy for nearly seven years.

Assange has since been held in Belmarsh prison in London, where he is serving a 50-week jail term for violating his bail conditions. He is awaiting an extradition hearing on 18 May on behalf of the US, where he is wanted for questioning over the activities of WikiLeaks and likely facing espionage charges.

In a statement to the courts supporting an application for bail, Moris revealed that she met Assange in 2011 when she was a legal researcher and looking into ways to halt Assanges extradition.

Over time Julian and I developed a strong intellectual and emotional bond. He became my best friend and I became his, she wrote.

In 2015, Moris and Assange began a relationship despite the extraordinary circumstances, she said, and became engaged in 2017.

She said she had gone to great lengths to protect the couples children from the climate that surrounds Assange, adding that she was making the statement now because their lives were on the brink and she feared Assange could die.

According to Moris, Assange is in isolation for 23 hours a day and all visits have stopped.

My close relationship with Julian has been the opposite of how he is viewed of reserve, respect for each other and attempts to shield each other from some of the nightmares that have surrounded our lives together, Moris said.

In an interview with the Mail on Sunday, Moris said Assange had watched the births of both children in London hospitals via live video link and met Gabriel after he was smuggled into the embassy.

She further revealed that both boys had visited their father in prison, and that the couple were planning to marry, whether Assange is released or not.

Friends and supporters of Assange, among them celebrities including Pamela Anderson, have said he has been in poor health for many months and have expressed growing concern for his wellbeing since the coronavirus outbreak.

HMP Belmarsh has repeatedly come under scrutiny in recent years, lastly after a remand prisoner was found dead in his cell in January, triggering an investigation by the prisons and probation ombudsman.

The man was the third prisoner to have died in Belmarsh within the past year. Another inmate was found dead there in November.

A judge at Westminster magistrates court rejected the request for an adjournment of Assanges extradition hearing in May until September over what his legal team said were insuperable difficulties preparing his case because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Release Julian Assange, says woman who had two children with him while in embassy - The Guardian

A year since the arrest of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange – World Socialist Web Site

Posted on April 11, 2020 by admin

By Oscar Grenfell 11 April 2020

Today marks 12 months since WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested by British police and security officers after being illegally expelled from Ecuadors London embassy, where he had lived and worked as a political refugee for seven years.

The sight of a physically-unwell journalist being manhandled by six British cops in the heart of London shocked millions of people around the world. Assange was carried from the building, wincing at his first exposure to sunlight for some time. The operation appeared to be directed by undercover officers who had been filmed skulking around the embassy for days.

Even as he was being brutalised by the police, Assange was defiant, calling for opposition to his persecution. The UK must resist this attempt by the Trump administration, he declared.

Assange removed from Ecuadorian embassy in London, UK on April 11, 2019

Assange had been subjected to a violent attack, even before the 55 seconds of footage of his expulsion from the embassy was filmed by the sole journalist outside the building, a reporter for the Ruptly news video service.

The German program Panorama cited an account by an anonymous WikiLeaks staffer who had been by Assanges side.

Assange had been called into the embassys conference room on the morning of April 11. Ambassador Jaime Marchan walked into the room, flanked by security guards and Ecuadorian secret service personnel. He read aloud a letter declaring that Assanges asylum and Ecuadorian citizenship had been revoked and that he needed to exit the embassy immediately. Marchan and his security detail walked out of the room.

Panorama reported that when Assange and his colleague opened the door of the conference room, they could see that a group of men and women, including members of the Metropolitan Police, were just outside, apparently waiting for him.

Assange declared that the reversal of his asylum and citizenship were a violation of the Ecuadorian constitution, and that he wanted to appeal. He got up to return to his room.

Assanges assistant was shoved aside; Julian Assange was tackled, handcuffed and brought to the front door of the embassy.

A year later, there can be no doubt that the assault last April 11 marked the beginning of an attempted US-British political assassination. Assange sits in the maximum-security Belmarsh Prison, dubbed the UKs Guantnamo Bay, as the coronavirus pandemic sweeps through the facility.

In a phone call to his friend Vaughan Smith on Thursday night, Assange said he is held in his cell 23-and-a-half hours a day. His half hour of exercise is in a yard crowded with other prisoners. At least 150 prison staff members have either been infected with COVID-19 or are self-isolating. Assange revealed that there have been more deaths of inmates than the one admitted by prison authorities. He said the virus was ripping through the prison.

The WikiLeaks founder has been denied bail, despite the fact that he is on remand and is imperilled by the virus as a result of his raft of serious medical problems. Magistrate Vanessa Baraitser has even decreed that his extradition show-trial will proceed in May, despite a national lockdown, mass coronavirus deaths and Assanges inability to consult with his lawyers.

This lawless treatment, which recalls the actions of the fascist regimes of the 20th century, and Assanges arrest, is the culmination of a years-long campaign to destroy the WikiLeaks publisher, spearheaded by the US and supported by all its allies.

As early as 2008, the US military had prepared a secret report detailing the means that could be used to suppress Assange and WikiLeaks.

The WikiLeaks 2010 publications, for which Assange has now been chargedincluding the Collateral Murder video, the US armys Iraq and Afghan war logs, and hundreds of thousands of damning American diplomatic cableshad been greeted with declarations by senior US political figures that Assange was a cyber-terrorist who needed to be taken out.

The Obama administration impanelled a secret Grand Jury with the aim of concocting Espionage Act charges against Assange and his colleagues. Members of Obamas administration, including Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, publicly called on US allies to initiate criminal proceedings against Assange.

That appeal was answered by the Swedish state and judiciary, which had already collaborated in the US Central Intelligence Agencys illegal war on terrorism program of extraordinary renditions. Swedish police and prosecutors fabricated sexual misconduct allegations against Assange.

One of the complainants was a prominent figure in the countrys US-aligned social-democratic party. Her lawyer, Claes Borgstrm, who successfully appealed the finding of the initial prosecutor that Assange had no case to answer, had been a senior official in previous Swedish governments with close ties to the US.

Contrary to all legal precedent and to domestic and international legal norms, successive British courts decreed that Assange be extradited to Sweden at the request of a prosecutor, not a judge, merely to answer questions. It was never explained why this questioning could not take place in London. The Swedish authorities refused to guarantee that they would not dispatch Assange to the US for prosecution over his publishing activities.

Under these conditions, Assange sought asylum in Ecuadors London embassy on June 19, 2012. Police besieged the embassy and successive British governments declared that Assange would be arrested if he set foot outside. His status as a political refugee, however, was repeatedly upheld by the United Nations and he was able to continue his work.

The US campaign against WikiLeaks intensified in 2016, when it published evidence of Hillary Clintons pledges of loyalty to Wall Street and of the Democratic National Committees illegal subversion of the primary campaign of Bernie Sanders.

The US operation was ramped up still more in early 2017, when WikiLeaks exposed the hacking and cyberwar operations of the CIA. Then CIA director and current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared WikiLeaks a non-state hostile intelligence service and Assange a demon. President Correa, who granted Assange asylum in 2012, was replaced by Lenn Moreno in May 2017.

Illegal spying operations against Assange were escalated inside the embassy, including by the CIA. The US put immense pressure on Ecuador to rescind Assanges asylum. In March 2018, Ecuadors government responded by severing Assanges internet access, banning him from receiving visitors and transforming the embassy into a de facto prison, before expelling him from the building a year later.

Assanges expulsion was an historic crime, carried out in defiance of the internationally-enshrined right to political asylum. It was the high-point of an ongoing campaign to censor the internet and alternative viewpoints being conducted by governments around the world, amid an upsurge of the class struggle and immense social opposition. It marked a turning point in a protracted assault on press freedom and freedom of speech.

As the US National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden wrote at the time: Images of Ecuadors ambassador inviting the UKs secret police into the embassy to drag a publisher oflike it or notaward-winning journalism out of the building are going to end up in the history books. Assanges critics may cheer, but this is a dark moment for press freedom.

The experiences of the past year have proven that Assanges freedom and the defence of democratic rights cannot be taken forward through appeals to, or support for, any section of the capitalist political, media or state establishment.

The British courts have subjected him to one abuse after another. The corporate media, which has slandered Assange for the best part of a decade, now pretends that he does not exist.

Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of the British Labour Party, was held up as the initiator of a new socialist revival. As part of his continuous capitulations to the right-wing of his own party, Corbyn refused to mount any campaign in defence of Assange and promoted the Swedish frame-up. Corbyn has departed the scene, handing the Labour leadership to Keir Starmer, who as head of the British Crown Prosecution Service, played a central role in the international political conspiracy against Assange.

In the US, Bernie Sanders, who claimed to be waging a political revolution inside the Democratic Party, refused to say a word about Assange. He has all but endorsed Joe Biden as the Democrats presidential candidate. Biden was vice president in the Obama administration which initiated the US pursuit of Assange.

In Australia, all the official parties, including Labor and the Greens, have refused to defend Assange, despite the fact that he is a persecuted Australian citizen and journalist. This is in keeping with the role of every Australian government, and the entire establishment, since 2010 in supporting the US-led vendetta against the WikiLeaks publisher.

It is clear that the fight for Assanges freedom must be waged by the international working class, the only social force capable of mounting a struggle for the defence of all social and democratic rights.

Over the past two years, the WSWS, the International Committee of the Fourth International, and its sections, the Socialist Equality Parties around the world, have waged an unyielding campaign to defend Assange and to secure his freedom. Amid the imminent dangers to his life, we will intensify this fight over the coming months, and urge all workers, young people and defenders of civil liberties to take part.

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A year since the arrest of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange - World Socialist Web Site

ASSANGE EXTRADITION: Assange Not Sick With Covid-19, But Says Many in Belmarsh Are – Consortium News

Posted on April 11, 2020 by admin

April 10, 2020

In a phone conversation with Vaughan Smith, Julian Assange, apparently uninfected, says the virus is ripping through Belmarsh prison and that he spends 30 minutes a day in a crowded prison yard.

Consortium News

Julian Assange has told a friend in a telephone conversation on Wednesday that he is living in a prison in which the coronavirus is ripping through the population. He told photojournalist Vaughan Smith, founder of Londons Frontline Club, that he is isolated 23 1/2 hours a day and spends 30 minutes in a prison yard packed with other inmates. More than 150 Belmarsh guards are in self-isolation and the prison is barely functioning, Smith said.

Assange did not show up for a video link to his case management hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court on Tuesday. A court official was overheard by three people present in the courtroom saying that Assange was unwell. He is not infected with Covid-19, but Vaughan says his life is threatened by it in prison.

Julian Assange called me yesterday from Belmarsh prison. His incarceration in the time of Covid 19 threatens his

Posted by Vaughan Smith onThursday, April 9, 2020

Tags: Belmarsh Prison Julian Assange Vaughn Smith

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ASSANGE EXTRADITION: Assange Not Sick With Covid-19, But Says Many in Belmarsh Are - Consortium News

Today in History – Clinton Herald

Posted on April 11, 2020 by admin

Today is Saturday, April 11, the 102nd day of 2020. There are 264 days left in the year.

On April 11, 1980, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued regulations specifically prohibiting sexual harassment of workers by supervisors.

In 1814, Napoleon Bonaparte abdicated as Emperor of the French and was banished to the island of Elba. (Napoleon later escaped from Elba and returned to power in March 1815, until his downfall in the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815.)

In 1865, President Abraham Lincoln spoke to a crowd outside the White House, saying, We meet this evening, not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart. (It was the last public address Lincoln would deliver.)

In 1921, Iowa became the first state to impose a cigarette tax, at 2 cents a package.

In 1945, during World War II, American soldiers liberated the Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald in Germany.

In 1951, President Harry S. Truman relieved Gen. Douglas MacArthur of his commands in the Far East.

In 1961, former SS officer Adolf Eichmann went on trial in Israel, charged with crimes against humanity for his role in the Nazi Holocaust. (Eichmann was convicted and executed.)

In 1965, dozens of tornadoes raked six Midwestern states on Palm Sunday, killing 271 people.

In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which included the Fair Housing Act, a week after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

In 1970, Apollo 13, with astronauts James A. Lovell, Fred W. Haise and Jack Swigert, blasted off on its ill-fated mission to the moon.

In 1974, Palestinian gunmen killed 16 civilians, mostly women and children, in the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shemona.

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan returned to the White House from the hospital, 12 days after he was wounded in an assassination attempt. Race-related rioting erupted in the Brixton district of south London.

In 1996, 7-year-old Jessica Dubroff, who hoped to become the youngest person to fly cross-country, was killed along with her father and flight instructor when their plane crashed after takeoff from Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Thousands of people stood in the streets of Polands cities in a silent tribute to President Lech Kaczynski and the other 95 people killed in a plane crash the day before. After a five-month hiatus, golfer Tiger Woods tied for fourth at the Masters, as Phil Mickelson earned his third green jacket.

President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raoul Castro sat down together on the sidelines of the Summit of the Americas in Panama City in the first formal meeting of the two countries leaders in half a century.

British police brought Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he had taken refuge for nearly seven years, and the U.S. charged the WikiLeaks founder with conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to get their hands on government secrets; the arrest came after Ecuador revoked the political asylum that had protected Assange in the embassy. (Assange continues to fight extradition to the United States.)

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Today in History - Clinton Herald

Review: ‘Final Draft: The Collected Work of David Carr,’ edited by Jill Rooney Carr – Minneapolis Star Tribune

Posted on April 10, 2020 by admin

The mystique surrounding Minneapolis native David Carr has grown since his death, at 58, in 2015. He now bears the complex aura of devoted friend and mentor, tough editor, redeemed junkie, author of the bestselling memoir The Night of the Gun and celebrated face of the New York Times, where his intelligence, compassion and humor won the admiration of peers. We have sorely needed the grounding provided by Final Draft, in which his widow gathers more than 50 features and other pieces written throughout Carrs 25-year career.

David Carr was a quintessential journalist, with an endless curiosity about life.

In sentences as clear and straight as spring water, to borrow a phrase from Rudyard Kipling, he wrote about media, politics, popular culture and other topics with an honest, often blunt, sometimes biting style that eviscerated phoniness, especially when it besmirched the craft he loved. He lambasted TV talk shows for welcoming the pirate sensibilities of Ann Coulter because seeing hate speech pop out of a blonde who knows her way around a black cocktail dress makes for compelling viewing. He called the New Republic in its plagiarism-plagued years a hotbed of adolescently malevolent con artists with notepads.

But in lengthy profiles, he could embrace gifted celebrities, often addicts, with understanding: serial relapser Robert Downey Jr. and his romance with mind-altering chemicals, Neil Young, whose brokenness has annealed rather than slowed him at age 66, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, who got in the ring with his addiction and battled it for two decades successfully.

The articles, arranged chronologically, trace Carrs work from his days as a writer and editor in Minnesota in the 1980s, at the Twin Cities Reader, Family Times and elsewhere, including personal accounts of a fishing trip with addicts from Eden House, his battles with cancer and his friendship with comedian Tom Arnold. Twin Cities journalism fills one-third of the book.

In 1995, Carr moved on to editing Washington City Paper, where he mentored Ta-Nehisi Coates (who provides a warm foreword) and demonstrated his versatility by profiling singer Lucinda Williams and parsing a badly reported account of suburban preteen oral sex.

As media columnist for the New York Times beginning in 2000, Carr wrote about Bill Cosbys enablers (including Carr himself) who ignored the comics harassment of women, Fox News, the Chicago Tribune, Julian Assange and the rise of digital publishing. There are also deeply reported stories from the Atlantic (on the dubious value of homeland security) and New York Magazine as well as lighter outings on cats and commuting.

In an unexpected gift to young journalists, the book contains the engaging syllabus for a communications class Carr taught at Boston University in 2014. Filled with knockout reading lists, the 12-page outline offers Carrs credo: Who you are and what you have been through should give you a prism on life that belongs to you only.

His own hard-won prism illuminates much of this gratifying book.

Joseph Barbato, an author and journalist, has reviewed for the Washington Post and USA Today. He is a former contributing editor at Publishers Weekly.

Final Draft: The Collected Work of David CarrEdited by: Jill Rooney Carr.Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 400 pages, $28.

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Review: 'Final Draft: The Collected Work of David Carr,' edited by Jill Rooney Carr - Minneapolis Star Tribune

Julian Assange still held on remand as coronavirus spreads through UK prisons – World Socialist Web Site

Posted on April 9, 2020 by admin

By Thomas Scripps 3 April 2020

Just one week after Julian Assanges request for bail in recognition of the threat posed to his life by COVID-19 was denied, the spread of the coronavirus through the prison system is escalating alarmingly.

The WikiLeaks founder, held in Belmarsh prison facing extradition to the US for exposing war crimes, has a chronic lung condition and has had his health destroyed by a decade of mistreatment by the British state, amounting to psychological torture.

Already on Monday, 55 inmates were reported infected across 21 different prisons in the UK, plus 18 prison staff and four escort staff. The number of prisoners testing positive was double the total just three days before. By Tuesday, the number had risen again to 65, across 23 prisons. According to the Mirror, around 6,000 prison and probation staff are currently in self-isolation12 percent of the workforce. Two prisoners have already been killed by the virus, the first on March 22 and the second on March 26.

The direction of travel is indicated by Rikers Jail in New York city. On March 31 there were 180 reported cases in the prison out of a population of 4,604, meaning an infection rate eight times higher than the already severely affected city itself.

In the UK, the barbaric response of the authorities has been to cohort prisoners who display coronavirus-type symptoms, like a fever or cough, with confirmed cases of COVID-19.

The Guardian reports that last week in Wandsworth prison in South West London, 12 coronavirus patients were kept with another 40 inmates with coughs and respiratory problems in the same isolation wing and in shared cells. This is in line with Ministry of Justice (MoJ) virus guidelines which read, If facing multiple cases of those displaying symptoms, cohorting, or the gathering of potentially infected cases into a designated area, may be necessary. There are apparently no plans for more tests at the prison and one wing has had no hot water supply for a week.

Unsanitary conditions are commonplace throughout the prisons system. A report from the National Audit Office earlier this year revealed a general state of chronic disrepair, including leaking rooms, broken heating systems and rat infestations. Last year, prison inspectors found that ten out of the thirty-five institutions they inspected did not meet minimum standards of cleanliness and infection-control compliance.

Belmarsh prison has a poor record on infection control. Noting that Assange has previously had significant dental problems, the Daily Maverick writes that a 2007 report by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons discovered that infection control was inadequate, citing a lack of infection control measures in the dental suite.

The Daily Maverick article also references inspections from 2009 and 2011 which concluded that infection control and decontamination standards were still not sufficiently good and that the dental surgery should be refurbished to meet infection control guidelines. In 2013, another report found that this recommendation was not achieved. Last year, the Independent Monitoring Boards reported that major safety and decency concerns remain, while the state of the showers and many of the toilets across the prison is appalling.

Given these appalling conditions, prisoners rights groups have called for the release of older, non-violent and vulnerable inmates.

Deborah Coles, director of the charity Inquest, sent an open letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson saying, People in prison are already dying. Many detention settings already have the virus within their walls, with thousands of frontline staff self-isolating the prison service is making plans to store the bodies of prisoners who will die in the coming months The government has a legal and moral obligation to protect the lives of detained persons from a foreseeable danger to their health.

Emily Bolton, legal director of advocacy group Appeal, stated, For the government to leave prisoners to die of Covid-19 behind bars when these deaths could be avoided is like leaving prisoners to drown in Orleans parish prison when the waters rose after Hurricane Katrina time is running out to avoid minor offences becoming capital crimes, and life sentences from becoming death sentences.

Faced with a catastrophe, the government is making a few very limited moves to release some prisoners.

Around 200 inmates in Northern Irelandroughly 7 percent of the totalwho are currently in the last three months of their sentence for non-violent offences will be released soon, under curfew and conditions which restrict their contacts with others. Scottish prisons are considering similar plans, with Scottish Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf saying, We are actively looking at options to do that. It could happen as early as next week. The situation is increasingly alarming.

In England and Wales, the Ministry of Justice has said pregnant women not considered a high risk to the public will be temporarily issued with an electronic tag within days.

Any additional releases are understood to have been ruled out. The Justice department insists that robust contingency plans have been put in place. No consideration whatsoever will be given to Assangeone of only two prisoners held on remand, as an innocent man, in Belmarsh maximum security prison.

In a video released on Wednesday, WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson said, A week ago, Magistrates Court Judge Vanessa Baraitser denied the request to set Julian Assange free on bail because of the extraordinary circumstances of Covid-19. She did so by citing that there were no known cases of Covid-19 in Belmarsh prison and that she had full faith in the prison authorities.

Only a few hours later that same day those authorities had to admit that there were numerous cases of Covid-19 in the UK prisons. And those numbers have been going up day by day. Last week we knew that more than a hundred guards in Belmarsh were staying at home in self-isolation, and those numbers have now escalated. We have learned now that they doubled over the weekend

The media reports today that prisoners with flu-like symptoms are forced to share cells with other inmates. This is outrageous if not criminal. This cannot go on. No one knows how widespread the virus is at the prison. No one is testing

It doesnt take an expert to understand that the prison environment is the worst environment for illnesses such as Covid-19. The parliamentary group of the Council of Europe has said that theres only one journalist in a UK prison. That journalist is Julian Assange. He has to be released immediately. Do not forget that he is on remand. He is innocent according to the law. Release Julian Assange right now.

Doctors for Assange have released a statement saying, [District Judge] Baraitser did not address the increased risk to Mr Assange relative to the general UK prison population, let alone prisoners at HMP Belmarsh where Assange is incarcerated. Nor did she address the rapidly emerging medical and legal consensus that vulnerable and low-risk prisoners should be released, immediately

Baraitsers assurance that government measures were adequate to protect Mr Assange rang hollow on the very day the UK government announced that Prince Charles tested positive for Covid-19. If the UK government cannot protect its own royal family from the disease, how can it adequately protect its most vulnerable prisoners in prisons, which have been described as breeding grounds for coronavirus?

The British ruling class are using one monstrous crime to achieve another. Their inaction in response to the pandemic has created a time-bomb in UK prisons whose consequences they now intend Assange to suffer. They would be happy to see him die. More than ever, his life depends on the defence of WikiLeaks and democratic rights becoming a mass issue in the international working class. We encourage everyone to join the Global Defence Campaign and publicise its work and material widely.