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Everything Americans Think They Know About Drugs Is Wrong: A Scientist Explodes the Myths

Kristen Gwynne, AlterNet — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 09:15:00 -0700

Columbia University scientist Carl Hart combines research and anecdotes from his life to explain how false assumptions have created a disastrous drug policy.

What many Americans, including many scientists, think they know about drugs is turning out to be totally wrong. For decades, drug war propaganda has brainwashed Americans into blaming drugs for problems ranging from crime to economic deprivation. In his new book High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society, Carl Hart blows apart the most common myths about drugs and their impact on society, drawing in part on his personal experience growing up in an impoverished Miami neighborhood. Hart has used marijuana and cocaine, carried guns, sold drugs, and participated in other petty crime, like shoplifting. A combination of what he calls choice and chance brought him to the Air Force and college, and finally made him the first black, tenured professor of sciences at Columbia University.

Intertwined with his story about the struggles of families and communities stressed by lack of capital and power over their surroundings is striking new research on substance use. Hart uses his life and work to reveal that drugs are not nearly as harmful as many think. For example, most people who use the most “addicting” drugs do not develop a problem. Rather, Hart says, drugs are scapegoated for problems related to poverty. The policies that result from this misconception are catastrophically misguided. AlterNet spoke with Hart about his life and research.

Kristen Gynne: What are some of the false conclusions about drugs you are challenging?

Carl Hart: There are multiple false conclusions. There is a belief, for example, that crack cocaine is so addictive it only took one hit to get hooked, and that it is impossible to use heroin without becoming addicted. There was another belief that methamphetamine users are cognitively impaired. All of these are myths that have have been perpetuated primarily by law enforcement, and law enforcement deals with a limited, select group of people—people who are, in many cases, behaving badly. But to generalize that to all drug users is not only shortsighted and naive, it’s also irresponsible. The impact of that irresponsible behavior has been borne primarily by black communities. Nobody really cares about black communities, and that's why this irresponsible behavior has been allowed to continue.

It's also true that we've missed critical opportunities to challenge our basic assumptions about drugs. If drugs really were as damaging as we are led to believe, a respectable society should do something to address that problem. But the thing is, the very assumptions driving our drug policy are wrong, and must be questioned.

KG:How does the lack of people of color in academia or research affect our understanding of drugs?

CH: I'd just like to be clear, I don't say people of color, I say black people, because people of color can mean a number of other [races]. I'm talking about black people who, like me, when we go back to our communities and we ask about people who we grew up with, the response is, "Well, they got caught up with a drug charge, they're upstate. They're doing some time” or, “Oh, he's doing better now that he got out of jail. He can't really find a good job, but he's doing his best.”

It would be nice if we had black scientists, more black people in science, to incorporate these kinds of experiences as they think about the questions they investigate. The problem is it’s so homogenous that critical questions about our community are ignored because they're not seen as being important.

KG:And the result is that they don't comprehend environment, or the other variables that are affecting someone's decisions or behavior, and miss the mark?

CH: That's exactly right. It's that if you don't contextualize what is happening with drugs in the country you might get the impression that drugs are so bad they're causing all these people to go to jail: “Let's find out how drugs are exerting these awful effects.” Now, you have just completely disregarded context in which all of these things occur, and that is what has happened in science. If you don't fully appreciate the context, and you think that drug users are awful, then you don't think about how a person takes care of their kid, takes care of their family, goes to work, but they also use drugs. If you don't think about all of those contextual factors, you limit the picture and that's what we've done.

It's not that science lies. Science doesn't lie. But when you look at your research with a limited view, you may erroneously draw conclusions about drugs, when in fact other variables you might not understand are what's really at play.

KG:You talk about how people are always blaming problems on drugs, when those issues really spring from the stress of poverty. What are some examples?

CH: I think crack cocaine is the easiest example In the 1980s, as I was coming of age in my teens and my early 20s, people—black people, white folks, a number of people in the country—said crack was so awful it was causing women to give up their babies and neglect their children such that grandmothers had to raise another generation of children.

Now, if you look at the history in poor communities—my community, my family—long before crack ever hit the scene, that sort of thing happened in my house. We were raised by my grandmother. My mother went away because she and my father split up. She went away in search of better jobs and left the state, but it wasn't just her. This sort of thing, this pathology that is attributed to drugs, happened to immigrant communities like the Eastern European Jews when they came to the Lower East SIde, but people simply blamed crack in the 1980s and the 1990s.

Another example is that, since the crack era, multiple studies have found that the effects of crack cocaine use during pregnancy do not create an epidemic of doomed black "crack babies." Instead, crack-exposed children are growing up to lead normal lives, and studies have repeatedly found that the diferences between them and babies who were not exposed cannot be isolated from the health effects of growing up poor, without a stable, safe environment or access to healthcare.

KG:What about the idea that drugs can turn people into criminals?

CH: The pharmalogical effects of drugs rarely lead to crime, but the public conflates these issues regardless. If we were going to look at how pharmalogical drugs influence crime, we should probably look at alcohol. We know sometimes people get unruly when they drink, but the vast majority of people don't. Certainly, we have given thousands of doses of crack cocaine and methamphetamine to people in our lab, and never had any problems with violence or anything like that. That tells you it's not the pharmacology of the drug, but some interaction with the environment or environmental conditions, that would probably happen without the drug. Sure, new markets of illegal activity are often or sometimes associated with increased violence, or some other illegal activity, but it is not specific to drugs like people try to make it out to be.

Other than crime, you have myths that drugs cause cognitive impairment, make people unable to be productive members of society, or tear families apart. If the vast majority of people are using these drugs without problems—and a smaller proportion of users do have problems—what that tells you if you're thinking critically is it can't be only the drug, or mainly the drug. It tells you it is something about the individual situations, environmental conditions, a wide range of factors.

KG:What about addiction? Won't some people who use drugs inevitably become dependent on drugs?

CH: Given the large percentage of people who are not addicted and try these drugs, it's something other than the pharmacology of the drugs that's causing addiction. We find that 85% of the people, for example, who use cocaine are not addicted, even though they use the same cosmetological substance as those who are. Somebody could say there may be something biologically predisposing people who get addicted, but there is no evidence to support that position. Certainly, that idea should be investigated, but there is far more evidence to support the view that there are other things going in the lives of people who are predisposed to addiction, that can predict their addiction as well as other problems.

KG:What kinds of environmental factors matter?

CH: Well, let's think about drug use. Drug effects are predictable, and some drugs are really good at increasing euphoria and feelings of positive reinforcement. Now, if you don't have anything competing with drugs for pleasure and happiness, all you have is deprivation. Why wouldn't you get high?

If you have competing reinforcers or alternatives, like the ability to earn income, learn a skill, or receive some respect based on your performance in some sort of way, those things compete with potentially destructive behavior. And so as a psychologist, you just want to make sure people have a variety of potential reinforcers. If you don't have that, you increase the likelihood of people engaging in behaviors that society does not condone.

Skills that are employable or marketable, education, having a stake or meaningful role in society, not being marginalized—all of those things are very important. Instead of ensuring that all of our members have these things, our society has blamed drugs, said drugs are the reasons that people don't have a stake in society, and that's simply not true.

KG:So if drugs aren't the problem, why do we say they are?

CH: They’re just an easy scapegoat. You can imagine if so few people have engaged in an activity, you can make up some incredible stories about that activity, and be believed. And that's what's happened with drugs. Note that you can't make up those incredible stories about marijuana today, but there was a time when we could: the 1930s. That has passed because more people have tried marijuana, but you can make up those incredible stories about methamphetamine because so few people have used methamphetamine.

Well, I should say so few people actually know that they use methamphetamine. All those people who use Adderall and those kinds of drugs, they are using methamphetamine, basically. It is the amphetamine, not the "D" [like Adderall] or "meth" in front of it, that creates the effects.

KG:What is actually responsible for problems often linked to drugs?

CH: Poverty. And there are policies that have played a role, too. Policies like placing a large percentage of our law enforcment resources in those communities, so that when people get charged with some petty crime, they have a blemish on their record that further decreases their ability to join mainstream, get a job that's meaningful, and that sort of thing.

The policy decisions that we make play a far bigger role than the drugs themselves. When I turned 14, for example, there was a federal government program that, in order to keep kids like me out of the streets, gave us jobs. Under these federal government programs, we had money for the summer, for clothing—it was great. When we cut these types of programs and kids have nowhere to go what do you expect to happen? It doesn't take rocket scientists to figure this out.

Now, I have an 18-year-old who, this summer, won't have anything to do. I'm trying to find him some sort of work. Having a federal government program for underpriveleged children, that was great. That let kids know that the society might care about you. We teach them work skills, we teach them something about responsibility, we make sure they have money in their pockets. Now, you take away all of this, and you miss the chance to teach them about responsibility. You miss the opportunity to help them put food on the table, to put clothes on their backs.

KG:In your acknowledgements, you thank Aid to Families with Dependent Children, which you call "welfare as we once knew it."

CH: All of my childhood, we were on welfare. My mom received aid for families with dependent children—welfare. Without that, we wouldn't have had subsidized housing. Most of my childhood we had a two-bedroom apartment, but eventually we got into the projects, where we had four bedrooms. That was great.

We got food stamps that helped make sure we had something to eat, even though it was little. Without that program, I wouldn't have developed physically. There would have been a lot more stress in the household.

Now, the interesting thing about it is that all of my sibling were all on that program because of my mom, and all of my siblings now have jobs and they're responsible, taxpaying citizens. That's the typical story on that program, but the conservatives, under Reagan, they began to perpetuate this narrative of the welfare queen, when in fact, we know who the biggest welfare kings are: the people on Wall Street. The federal government gives far money to them than to poor families, but welfare became so villified that we essentially got rid of it.

KG:How does institutional racism affect policy? In your book, you talk about how crack, which is pharmacologically almost identical to cocaine, is punished with an 18-1 (and once 100-1) sentencing disparity because of racially coded language linking the "crack scourge" to bad behavior in poor, black communities. There was also a recent ACLU report, which found that blacks are an average of four times more likely to be arrested for pot than whites.

CH: I often testify as an expert witness to help women who have used marijuana while pregnant to keep their children. Case after case is a black woman. Security in the court is all black; the judges are all white; and the lawyers are young and white, building careers. It's just slavery all over again.

When you have a group that’s already identified as an “other,” or a villified group that is a minority, it's easier to associate a behavior with them. But people don't see black people as being fully human. That’s what happens in the US, although people won't tell you that.

Because when we think about Trayvon Martin, when we think about Ramarley Graham, Sean Bell, these black kids who were killed at the hands of some security or law enforcement person—that almost never happens with white kids. If it did, it would be a national crises. But it's not a national crises because we really don't value black men and boys in the same way we value white boys and men. We don't see them as being equal.

I look at how people behave, and it's clear. As long as you view this group that way, you can continue to put large percentage of law enforcement resources in those communities, but not so much to make them better. If you want to make it better, you give people jobs. Instead, we put police in those communities to pretend that they care, to pretend that you're doing something. But that's not helping.

Whereas drug reactions are predictable, interactions with police are not and too often become deadly. As a parent of a black youth, I'd much rather my kids interact with drugs than law enforcement. White people don't need to think about that. Police officers too often see young, black boys as less than human. It creates a mentality where black kids are supposed to "know your place," and it affects your psyche. Indignities become part of who you are.

KG:How is meth changing this conversation?

CH: Meth is the new crack. It is the same thing as Adderall, but we are told it causes people's faces and teeth to decay. There is no evidence to suggest meth alone, versus poor hygiene, makes people look ugly. At the same time, because most people who use or arrested for meth are white people—poor of course, people we don't like—it creates an opportunity to say the drug war is not racist.

In Montana, they have invested in sentencing alternatives, like a maximum one-year sentence and treatment, for meth users. Could you imagine that happening with crack cocaine? Hell no. It's interesting because, with meth, we are doing our job, trying to seek alternatives to help people. Still, in some places, like Oklahoma, they're still locking white people up.

KG:In your book, it seems as though you feel some guilt for being successful, as if you have abandoned your community. How has your life changed?

CH: In terms of where I'm at now, I have money and I don't have to worry about where my next meal is coming from, so that's a really good thing. Whereas, when I was an adolescent, it was a good day if I ate two meals. Now, I expect to eat three meals, and that sort of thing. But, on the other hand, when I think about family, friends andthat sort of thing, it was a lot better where I was previously because you knew where everyone stood, you knew everyone had your back, you didn't have to worry about people backstabbing you or trying to go after you for a variety of reasons. Mainly, you were just being who you are—that's one of the things I bring with me from the past.

Whether I am there or here, I have this sense of community responsibility and I hope that will always be with with me. When it's no longer with me, perhaps it's time to die.

KG:How do you navigate two different cultures?

CH: That's very difficult, because I deal in mainstream and my family, they don't as much. Not only do I deal in mainstream society, I deal in mainstream as a fucking professor at Columbia. Now, when I take that mask off to go home, and it takes me a few days to acclimate, to be like OK, I'm no longer in the shark pit, I can relax, and relax my vernacular. And then I have to leave again.

So, my family might see this Columbia personality, and they may take it as a personal affront. I feel like a fraud, oftentimes, at home, but it has nothing to do with how I feel about my family. It's just that I'm catching hell in the mainstream. In the mainstream, I’m suspect because I’m black, I have dreadlocks, I have a goatee. I mean, I'm just suspect. In my classroom and at Columbia, I'm not as suspect because it's clear I know what I'm doing, but I am still suspect. And people are curious; they don’t know that I have the same dreams and aspirations as they do. They think that I may be different somehow.

This sort of issue would be a fascinating topic for research, particularly when we think about physical health or mental health, and how it manifests. But that will never be approved by National Institute of Health, because it's not of interest to white researchers. These are just things that I have to live my life with.

KG:How does this book adress your experience in academia and black America?

CH: I speak the language of both. And as a result, I think it speaks to both. And I’m hoping in the process, maybe along the way, the people who are back home, whose stories I'm trying to share, will see themselves in my story. And the people in my mainstream—I'm trying to help them see themselves in my story.

At some point, I just hope that it merges, that they see we're not that different. We have the same hopes and dreams and aspirations. The expression of those hopes and dreams may be slightly different but we are very similar. That's what I'm hoping.

KG:What would policy that reflects reality look like, and how do we get there?

CH: That is complex, but quite simple to start. The first thing is we decriminalize all drugs. More than 80% of people arrested for drugs are arrested for simple possession. Wen you decriminalize, now you have that huge number of people—we're talking 1.5 million people arrested every year—that no longer have that blemish on their record. That increases the likelihood that they can get jobs, participate in the mainstream.

Number two is dramatically increase realistic education about drugs—none of this "this is your brain on drugs" stuff, but real education, which looks like making sure people understand effects of drugs they're using, particularly potentially medical affects. Don't use heroin with another sedative because it increases the likelihood of respiratory depression. Realistic education, telling people what to do, how to prevent negative effects associated with drugs. We do it with alcohol—you shouldn't binge drink, don't drink on an empty stomach—and could do it with other drugs.

Obama and His Allies Say the Govt Doesn't Listen to Your Phone Calls -- But the FBI Begs to Differ

Max Blumenthal, AlterNet — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 17:03:00 -0700

Given FBI acknowledgment that it monitors phone calls on a massive scale, with help from the NSA, gov't denials are hard to understand.

Today, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Michigan) insisted the NSA has not been recording Americans’ phone calls under any surveillance program, and that any claim to the contrary was “misinformation.” Rogers’ comments countered remarks from Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), who said he was told in a House Judiciary Committee briefing by FBI Director Robert Mueller that private firms contracted by the NSA could listen to phone calls made by American citizens.

Since Nadler’s comments were reported by CNET, he has issued a subsequent statement backtracking on his original remarks: "I am pleased that the administration has reiterated that, as I have always believed, the NSA cannot listen to the content of Americans’ phone calls without a specific warrant.”

The full transcript of Nadler’s exchange with Mueller shows the FBI director claiming that “a particularized order from the FISA court directed at that particular phone and that particular individual” is required for the FBI to retrieve the content of any American’s call.

However, in a May 1 interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett– well before the scandal over NSA spying sent the White House and its allies into damage control mode – a former FBI agent named Tim Clemente made a startling revelation. According to Clemente, an April 18 phone call between Boston bombing perpetrator Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his wife was retrieved by the FBI as part of its surveillance of bulk US telecom data.

Here is the relevant section of Burnett and Clemente’s exchange:

BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It's not a voice mail. It's just a conversation. There's no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?  

CLEMENTE: No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It's not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.  

BURNETT: So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.  

CLEMENTE: No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.

Clemente’s comments completely undermine Rep. Rogers’ claim that the government is not recording Americans’ phone calls, and seem to contradict Mueller’s claim that any surveillance that exists is “particularized” according to court orders. Unfortunately, the remarkable statement was buried under the Boston bombings media frenzy, and seems to have been forgotten amidst the latest revelations of NSA domestic spying.

During a March 11, 2011 briefing to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the FBI’s Mueller offered another clue that his bureau was seeking broad access to American phone records. Towards the end of his testimony, Mueller complained that, “our investigations can be stymied by the records preservations practices of private communications providers. Current law does not require telephone companies and Internet service providers to retain customer subscriber information and source and destination data for any set period of time.”

A year later, the FBI formally requested that Congress expand the 1994 Communications for Law Enforcement Assistance Act (CLEA) to ensure that instant messaging, VoIP, and email servers were “wiretap friendly.” FBI general counsel Andrew Weissman began the process by drafting legislation requiring online servers to add extra coding to their programs providing the FBI a backdoor into consumer data, including emails and online chats.

This April, at a luncheon for the American Bar Association, the FBI’s Weissman declared that the bureau’s “top priority this year” was to enhance its ability to monitor web based services like Gmail, Google Voice, and Dropbox.

According to Bill Binney, a former high-ranking NSA official who resigned in protest of the agency’s domestic surveillance operations, the FBI depends on the NSA for data on Americans’ phone calls and online communications.

“The FBI is asking for data on Americans – just look at the Verizon court order – and FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act special court] is ordering data to be sent to the NSA,” Binney told me. “So the NSA is becoming the central processor and storage facility for government surveillance. That means they are going into emails and chats. They are absolutely involved in collecting data the FBI uses to spy on Americans.”

Given open FBI acknowledgment that it monitors American phone calls on a massive scale, and that it almost certainly relies on the NSA to do so, it is hard to understand the denials by the White House and its allies. Perhaps, like Groucho Marx, they hope we will believe them instead of our own two lying eyes.

Texas Jailers Ran a 'Rape Camp' Behind Bars, Women Claim

Cameron Langford, Courthouse News — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 12:02:00 -0700

This is unbelievable.

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (CN) - Texas jailers ran a "rape camp" where they "repeatedly raped and humiliated female inmates," and forced them to masturbate and sodomize male guards, and one another, two women claim in court.

J.A.S. and J.M.N. sued Live Oak County and its former jailers Vincent Aguilar, Israel Charles Jr. and Jaime E. Smith, in Federal Court.

All three guards were arrested in August 2010 and charged with sexual assault, the Beeville Bee-Picayune reported at the time. The newspaper did not identify the victims.

Smith and Aguilar are in Texas state prisons today, according to the complaint, which says defendant Charles is living in Bee County.

Live Oak is a sparsely settled county in south central Texas. Its seat is George West.

"Beginning sometime in 2007 to at least August of 2010 the Live Oak County Sheriff's office ran a 'rape camp' known as the Live Oak County Jail," the complaint states. "In this facility, numerous jailers, all employed by the Live Oak County Sheriff's Office, repeatedly raped and humiliated female inmates over an extended period of time. These forced acts of lasciviousness included, but are not limited to, forcing female inmates to repeatedly perform oral sex on male guards, forcing female inmates to repeatedly masturbate the male guards, the male guards masturbating in view of the female inmates, male guards forcing digital penetrative sex acts in the female inmates', forcing female inmates to engage in sexual sex acts with other female inmates, including but not limited to forcing female inmates to have oral sex with each other, among other things.

"In addition to the repeated sexual assaults, numerous female inmates were sexually harassed. Certain male guards would strip the female inmates of their clothing and provide only shaving cream to conceal their genitalia. Certain male guards would sometimes force the female inmates to shower in front of them while instructing them to shave their vaginas. In other instances, while detailing their degenerate sexual fantasies, the jailers would pin the girls against a wall, grope their persons, verbally berate them, digitally rape their vagina and/or anus, then force them to perform oral sex.

"In order to facilitate their carnal impulses, these guards would withhold food and water, engage in physical abuse, restrict privileges and verbally and emotionally abuse the women - even threaten to kill them in order to compel their compliance."

J.A.S. says she was arrested on marijuana possession charges in July 2010, and transferred to the Live Oak County Jail after a brief stay at the Jim Wells County Jail.

"Not long after she was transferred, she was approached by a jailer known to her only as 'Jesse,'" the complaint states. "He warned plaintiff to stay away from defendants Aguilar and Smith. Naively, she asked why and he emphasized, 'trust me, stay away from them. I can't tell you why, I'd lose my job.'

"Sometime later, while waiting at the facility nurses' station, defendant Aguilar approached plaintiff and touched her on her shoulder and back. The nurse on duty observed this happening and told defendant Aguilar to stop. In fact, the abuse was so widespread and pervasive that defendant Aguilar felt comfortable enough to ask Ms. Smith if he could touch her vagina, right in front of the jail nurse.

"Another incident occurred later involving both defendant Smith and defendant

Aguilar. Both men forcibly and inappropriately touched plaintiff. During the incident, defendant Aguilar kissed plaintiff and attempted to penetrate her. Only when plaintiff defended herself by slapping defendant Aguilar's face did he relent."

J.A.S. claims the guards knew where to take inmates to avoid having their sexual assaults recorded by the jail's "grossly ineffective" camera system.

During her pre-trial incarceration, the three guards had their way with her, she says.

"Defendants Aguilar, Smith and Charles all assaulted plaintiff in numerous ways over the course of several incidents. As they told it to plaintiff, she 'belong[ed] to [them]' and was their 'sex slave or whatever they wanted her to be,'" the complaint states.

"Plaintiff was forced to perform various sexual acts on defendants Charles, Aguilar and Smith, including oral sex and manual stimulation - whatever time permitted for their amusement. These incidents also included their own lewd acts on themselves, including masturbation where plaintiff was forced to conceal their ejaculate by way of ingestion.

"These and similar acts occurred so frequently that plaintiff cannot account for the number of assaults she was forced to endure - during any given attack, there would be from one (1) to three (3) different guards present who were participating or watching plaintiff being denigrated.

"Finally, several incidents took place wherein plaintiff was forced to perform sexual acts on another female inmate, plaintiff [J.M.N.]. Specifically, one night defendants
     Aguilar and Smith provided razors and shaving cream to plaintiffs. They made the women strip naked and told them to shave their pubic hair. Next they made the women put 'shaving cream bikinis" on each other as they looked on.
     "Once that was accomplished, the women were directed to rinse off and that the guards would return. When defendants Aguilar and Smith returned [J.A.S.] and [J.M.N.] were told to give them 'a show.'
     "The defendants made the women perform oral sex on each other, touch and grope each other, penetrate each other's vaginas with their fingers, all while the guards soaked it in, grinning and flicking their tongues out at the humiliated women. As if forcing these two women to perform pornographic sex acts on each other was not enough, defendants Aguilar and Smith then forced the women to stop and come to the door to touch their penises and allow the guards to grope and penetrate their persons.
     "After defendants Aguilar and Smith concluded their session with [J.A.S.] and [J.M.N.], defendant Smith came back later that night and forced [J.A.S.] to perform oral sex on him.
     "To make matters even more tragic, the charge of possession of a controlled substance, for which [J.A.S.] was being detained, was dismissed and the case was dropped upon her release from custody."
     J.M.N. says she was booked into Live Oak County Jail in July 2010.
     "Upon introduction with [J.M.N.], defendant Aguilar remarked that she 'look(ed) wild' and that he could not wait to (have sex with) her. He pinned her against a wall face first then rubbed up behind her, grabbing her breasts and breathing into her ear while rubbing his face along the nape of her neck. From that point forward, things only got worse ...
     "Throughout her stay, [J.M.N.] was repeatedly sexually assaulted by defendants.
     For the first several weeks these assaults were in the form of the guards placing their hands through the food slot in the cell door and forcing her to lower her pants and undergarments and then anally and vaginally penetrating her with their hands. They would also make [J.M.N.] show the guards her breasts, buttocks and/or vagina or the guards would withhold food, drink, essential hygiene items, threaten to harm her or take away privileges." (Parentheses and ellipsis in complaint.)
     J.M.N. says the assaults escalated until the night the guards forced her to perform sex acts on J.A.S.
     The women seek punitive damages for civil rights violations, assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
     They are represented by Ronald W. Armstrong II of San Antonio.

Edward Snowden Q and A: "The US Government Destroyed Any Possibility of a Fair Trial at Home"

Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 12:12:00 -0700

The whistleblower behind the biggest intelligence leak in NSA history answered questions about the NSA surveillance revelations.

It is the interview the world's media organisations have been chasing for more than a week, but instead Edward Snowden is giving Guardian readers the exclusive.

The 29-year-old former NSA contractor and source of the Guardian's NSA files coverage will – with the help of Glenn Greenwald – take your questions today on why he revealed the NSA's top-secret surveillance of US citizens, the international storm that has ensued, and the uncertain future he now faces. Ask him anything.

Snowden, who has fled the US, told the Guardian he "does not expect to see home again", but where he'll end up has yet to be determined.

He will be online today from 11am ET/4pm BST today. An important caveat: the live chat is subject to Snowden's security concerns and also his access to a secure internet connection. It is possible that he will appear and disappear intermittently, so if it takes him a while to get through the questions, please be patient.

To participate, post your question below and recommend your favorites. As he makes his way through the thread, we'll embed his replies as posts in the live blog. You can also follow along on Twitter using the hashtag #AskSnowden.

We expect the site to experience high demand so we'll re-publish the Q&A in full after the live chat has finished.

11.07am ET

Question:

Guardian staff

GlennGreenwald

17 June 2013 2:11pm

Let's begin with these:

1) Why did you choose Hong Kong to go to and then tell them about US hacking on their research facilities and universities?

2) How many sets of the documents you disclosed did you make, and how many different people have them? If anything happens to you, do they still exist?

Answer:

1) First, the US Government, just as they did with other whistleblowers, immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home, openly declaring me guilty of treason and that the disclosure of secret, criminal, and even unconstitutional acts is an unforgivable crime. That's not justice, and it would be foolish to volunteer yourself to it if you can do more good outside of prison than in it.
Second, let's be clear: I did not reveal any US operations against legitimate military targets. I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous. These nakedly, aggressively criminal acts are wrong no matter the target. Not only that, when NSA makes a technical mistake during an exploitation operation, critical systems crash. Congress hasn't declared war on the countries - the majority of them are our allies - but without asking for public permission, NSA is running network operations against them that affect millions of innocent people. And for what? So we can have secret access to a computer in a country we're not even fighting? So we can potentially reveal a potential terrorist with the potential to kill fewer Americans than our own Police? No, the public needs to know the kinds of things a government does in its name, or the "consent of the governed" is meaningless.
2) All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.

11.13am ET

Question:

Guardian staff

ewenmacaskill

17 June 2013 3:07pm

I should have asked you this when I saw you but never got round to it........Why did you just not fly direct to Iceland if that is your preferred country for asylum?

Answer:

Leaving the US was an incredible risk, as NSA employees must declare their foreign travel 30 days in advance and are monitored. There was a distinct possibility I would be interdicted en route, so I had to travel with no advance booking to a country with the cultural and legal framework to allow me to work without being immediately detained. Hong Kong provided that. Iceland could be pushed harder, quicker, before the public could have a chance to make their feelings known, and I would not put that past the current US administration.

11.17am ET

Question:

ActivistGal

17 June 2013 2:15pm

You have said HERE that you admire both Ellsberg and Manning, but have argued that there is one important distinction between yourself and the army private...

"I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest," he said. "There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn over, because harming people isn't my goal. Transparency is."

Are you suggesting that Manning indiscriminately dumped secrets into the hands of Wikileaks and that he intended to harm people?

Answer:

No, I'm not. Wikileaks is a legitimate journalistic outlet and they carefully redacted all of their releases in accordance with a judgment of public interest. The unredacted release of cables was due to the failure of a partner journalist to control a passphrase. However, I understand that many media outlets used the argument that "documents were dumped" to smear Manning, and want to make it clear that it is not a valid assertion here.

11.20am ET

Question:

D. Aram Mushegian II

17 June 2013 2:16pm

Did you lie about your salary? What is the issue there? Why did you tell Glenn Greenwald that your salary was $200,000 a year, when it was only $122,000 (according to the firm that fired you.)

Answer:

I was debriefed by Glenn and his peers over a number of days, and not all of those conversations were recorded. The statement I made about earnings was that $200,000 was my "career high" salary. I had to take pay cuts in the course of pursuing specific work. Booz was not the most I've been paid.

11.23am ET

Question:

Gabrielaweb

17 June 2013 2:17pm

Why did you wait to release the documents if you said you wanted to tell the world about the NSA programs since before Obama became president?

Answer:

Obama's campaign promises and election gave me faith that he would lead us toward fixing the problems he outlined in his quest for votes. Many Americans felt similarly. Unfortunately, shortly after assuming power, he closed the door on investigating systemic violations of law, deepened and expanded several abusive programs, and refused to spend the political capital to end the kind of human rights violations like we see in Guantanamo, where men still sit without charge.

11.27am ET

Question:

Anthony De Rosa

17 June 2013 2:18pm

1) Define in as much detail as you can what "direct access" means.

2) Can analysts listen to content of domestic calls without a warrant?

Answer:

1) More detail on how direct NSA's accesses are is coming, but in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on - it's all the same. The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based, and can change at any time. Additionally, audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily fooled by fake justifications. For at least GCHQ, the number of audited queries is only 5% of those performed.

Updated

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11.40am ET

Anthony De Rosa

17 June 2013 2:18pm

1) Define in as much detail as you can what "direct access" means.

2) Can analysts listen to content of domestic calls without a warrant?

2) NSA likes to use "domestic" as a weasel word here for a number of reasons. The reality is that due to the FISA Amendments Act and its section 702 authorities, Americans’ communications are collected and viewed on a daily basis on the certification of an analyst rather than a warrant. They excuse this as "incidental" collection, but at the end of the day, someone at NSA still has the content of your communications. Even in the event of "warranted" intercept, it's important to understand the intelligence community doesn't always deal with what you would consider a "real" warrant like a Police department would have to, the "warrant" is more of a templated form they fill out and send to a reliable judge with a rubber stamp.

Glenn Greenwald follow up: When you say "someone at NSA still has the content of your communications" - what do you mean? Do you mean they have a record of it, or the actual content?

Both. If I target for example an email address, for example under FAA 702, and that email address sent something to you, Joe America, the analyst gets it. All of it. IPs, raw data, content, headers, attachments, everything. And it gets saved for a very long time - and can be extended further with waivers rather than warrants.

11.41am ET

Question:

HaraldK

17 June 2013 2:45pm

What are your thoughts on Google's and Facebook's denials? Do you think that they're honestly in the dark about PRISM, or do you think they're compelled to lie?

Perhaps this is a better question to a lawyer like Greenwald, but: If you're presented with a secret order that you're forbidding to reveal the existence of, what will they actually do if you simply refuse to comply (without revealing the order)?

Answer:

Their denials went through several revisions as it become more and more clear they were misleading and included identical, specific language across companies. As a result of these disclosures and the clout of these companies, we're finally beginning to see more transparency and better details about these programs for the first time since their inception.
They are legally compelled to comply and maintain their silence in regard to specifics of the program, but that does not comply them from ethical obligation. If for example Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple refused to provide this cooperation with the Intelligence Community, what do you think the government would do? Shut them down?

11.55am ET

Question:

MonaHol

17 June 2013 4:37pm

Ed Snowden, I thank you for your brave service to our country.

Some skepticism exists about certain of your claims, including this:

I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you, or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President if I had a personal email.

Do you stand by that, and if so, could you elaborate?

Answer:

Yes, I stand by it. US Persons do enjoy limited policy protections (and again, it's important to understand that policy protection is no protection - policy is a one-way ratchet that only loosens) and one very weak technical protection - a near-the-front-end filter at our ingestion points. The filter is constantly out of date, is set at what is euphemistically referred to as the "widest allowable aperture," and can be stripped out at any time. Even with the filter, US comms get ingested, and even more so as soon as they leave the border. Your protected communications shouldn't stop being protected communications just because of the IP they're tagged with.
More fundamentally, the "US Persons" protection in general is a distraction from the power and danger of this system. Suspicionless surveillance does not become okay simply because it's only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%. Our founders did not write that "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all US Persons are created equal."

12.04pm ET

Question:

Guardian staff

Spencer Ackerman

17 June 2013 4:16pm

Edward, there is rampant speculation, outpacing facts, that you have or will provide classified US information to the Chinese or other governments in exchange for asylum. Have/will you?

Answer:

This is a predictable smear that I anticipated before going public, as the US media has a knee-jerk "RED CHINA!" reaction to anything involving HK or the PRC, and is intended to distract from the issue of US government misconduct. Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now.

12.10pm ET

Question:

Answer:

US officials say this every time there's a public discussion that could limit their authority. US officials also provide misleading or directly false assertions about the value of these programs, as they did just recently with the Zazi case, which court documents clearly show was not unveiled by PRISM.
Journalists should ask a specific question: since these programs began operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks were prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicionless surveillance that could not be gained via any other source? Then ask how many individual communications were ingested to acheive that, and ask yourself if it was worth it. Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it.
Further, it's important to bear in mind I'm being called a traitor by men like former Vice President Dick Cheney. This is a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis dead. Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein, and King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school.

Updated

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12.12pm ET

Question:

Mathius1

17 June 2013 2:54pm

Is encrypting my email any good at defeating the NSA survelielance? Id my data protected by standard encryption?

Answer:

Encryption works. Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on. Unfortunately, endpoint security is so terrifically weak that NSA can frequently find ways around it.

12.24pm ET

Question:

Answer:

Binney, Drake, Kiriakou, and Manning are all examples of how overly-harsh responses to public-interest whistle-blowing only escalate the scale, scope, and skill involved in future disclosures. Citizens with a conscience are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they'll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it. Instead, these draconian responses simply build better whistleblowers. If the Obama administration responds with an even harsher hand against me, they can be assured that they'll soon find themselves facing an equally harsh public response.
This disclosure provides Obama an opportunity to appeal for a return to sanity, constitutional policy, and the rule of law rather than men. He still has plenty of time to go down in history as the President who looked into the abyss and stepped back, rather than leaping forward into it. I would advise he personally call for a special committee to review these interception programs, repudiate the dangerous "State Secrets" privilege, and, upon preparing to leave office, begin a tradition for all Presidents forthwith to demonstrate their respect for the law by appointing a special investigator to review the policies of their years in office for any wrongdoing. There can be no faith in government if our highest offices are excused from scrutiny - they should be setting the example of transparency.

12.28pm ET

Question:

Ryan Latvaitis

17 June 2013 2:34pm

What would you say to others who are in a position to leak classified information that could improve public understanding of the intelligence apparatus of the USA and its effect on civil liberties?

What evidence do you have that refutes the assertion that the NSA is unable to listen to the content of telephone calls without an explicit and defined court order from FISC?

Answer:

This country is worth dying for.

12.34pm ET

Question:

AhBrightWings

17 June 2013 2:12pm

My question: given the enormity of what you are facing now in terms of repercussions, can you describe the exact moment when you knew you absolutely were going to do this, no matter the fallout, and what it now feels like to be living in a post-revelation world? Or was it a series of moments that culminated in action? I think it might help other people contemplating becoming whistleblowers if they knew what the ah-ha moment was like. Again, thanks for your courage and heroism.

Answer:

I imagine everyone's experience is different, but for me, there was no single moment. It was seeing a continuing litany of lies from senior officials to Congress - and therefore the American people - and the realization that that Congress, specifically the Gang of Eight, wholly supported the lies that compelled me to act. Seeing someone in the position of James Clapper - the Director of National Intelligence - baldly lying to the public without repercussion is the evidence of a subverted democracy. The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed.

12.37pm ET

Follow-up from the Guardian's Spencer Ackerman:

Regarding whether you have secretly given classified information to the Chinese government, some are saying you didn't answer clearly - can you give a flat no?

Answer:

No. I have had no contact with the Chinese government. Just like with the Guardian and the Washington Post, I only work with journalists.

12.41pm ET

Question:

So far are things going the way you thought they would regarding a public debate? – tikkamasala

Answer:

Initially I was very encouraged. Unfortunately, the mainstream media now seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history.

12.43pm ET

Final question from Glenn Greenwald:

Anything else you’d like to add?

Answer:

Thanks to everyone for their support, and remember that just because you are not the target of a surveillance program does not make it okay. The US Person / foreigner distinction is not a reasonable substitute for individualized suspicion, and is only applied to improve support for the program. This is the precise reason that NSA provides Congress with a special immunity to its surveillance.

9 Ways the Right’s Ayn Randian Experiment Screws Over the Young

RJ Eskow, Blog for Our Future — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 08:07:00 -0700

The decades-long assault on our core social values is on the verge of consuming its first complete generation of Americans.

Conservatives keep claiming liberals want a “cradle-to-grave nanny state.” That rhetoric has distracted us from the real social re-engineering taking place all around us. The right, along with its “centrist” collaborators, is transforming our nation into a bloodless and soulless Randian State.

Their decades-long assault on our core social values is on the verge of consuming its first complete generation of Americans. Born at the dawn of the Reagan era, Millennials were the first to be fully subjected to this all-out attack on the idea that we take care of each other in this country, and they’ll pay for it from the cradle to the grave.

Some of us are the parents of Millennials. Who’ll fight with them, and for them?

The Psychosis

The Simpsons made a running joke out of Springfield’s “Ayn Rand School for Tots,” where toddlers fend for themselves in playrooms whose signs say things like “Helping is Futile.” That’s very funny. What is happening to our country isn’t.

A successful social contract has bound us together since the FDR era. The Randian State is an effort to dismantle it, replacing our nation’s web of mutual trust and support with a lifelong helplessness and dependence on the whims and generosity of corporations and ultra-wealthy individuals.

The Randian State is built in the morally depraved mold of right-wing über-heroine Rand, who reviled the less fortunate – and even those who tried to help them – as “parasites,” while at the same time idolizing sociopathic killers.

That last statement isn’t rhetoric. It’s reporting. “He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman,” Rand wrote admiringly of child murderer and dismemberer William Edward Hickman. “He can never realize and feel ‘other people.’”

As Mark Ames points out, this echoes Rand’s description of her hero in The Fountainhead: “He was born without the ability to consider others.”

Hickman’s actions were certainly not those of a “nanny.” But, while most conservatives undoubtedly disapprove of his deeds, the glorification of sociopathic selfishness represents the mentality with which the Administration is perpetually seeking “compromise.” It has infected everything from the Beltway’s “bipartisan” consensus to the content of our national media.

Where’s Julia?

Conservatives went into rhetorical overdrive last year after the Obama campaign released an “infographic” ad called “The Life of Julia,” depicting ways Obama’s policies help women throughout their lives.

A typical reaction came from self-declared moralizer, former Reagan official, and chronic excessive gambler William Bennett. Bennett intoned that “Julia’s entire life is defined by her interactions with the state … Notably absent in her story is any relationship with a husband, family, church or community … Instead, the state has taken their place and is her primary relationship.”

That’s deceptive, of course. The presentation focused on government because it wasabout government. The Obama campaign wasn’t proposing to marry her or drive her to church. But reason rarely intrudes on such arguments. The Romney campaign quickly prepared a counter-slide show and the “socialist” debate was on.

Obama won.

Curiously, “Julia’s” story seems to have disappeared from the BarackObama.Com and Organizing For Action websites now that victory’s been achieved. Old links to it are dead, and attempts to click on this introduction only lead back to the site’s main page.

Anti-Social.

Bennett’s phrasing was drawn from conservative avatar Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher represented a radically un-American vision of life which lacks either our sense of community or our bonds of mutual trust, and which denies even the existence of society itself.

“Who is society?” demanded Thatcher. “There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families …”

Conservatives went searching for evidence that centrist Obama was really pushing cradle-to-grave socialism. The only target they could find for their faux outrage was Michelle Obama’s campaign to encourage breastfeeding, an embarrassing right-wing misfire which suggests there may be Freudian overtones to their “nanny” outrage.

Instead of pushing “cradle to grave” statism, the Administration pivoted immediately after the election to government-shrinking Grand Bargains. A “sequester” agreed to by both parties began slashing services on both ends of life. And the Administration’s attempting to end the sequester, not by calling for its straight repeal (as it should), but by offering cuts to Social Security at the later end of that “cradle to grave” span.

Come to think of it, maybe that’s why “Julia” has disappeared from the Obama website.

The Manifesto

The Randian State’s first manifesto may have been the startling document produced by Ronald Reagan’s “blue ribbon” education commission in 1983, which proposed to use schools as factories for more effectively turning Millennials – and every generation that follows – into usable raw material for corporate production.

The commission approached American education in a self-declared state of crisis, saying it was asked to address “the widespread public perception” – held by whom, exactly? – “that something is seriously remiss in our educational system.”

The sternly ideological report which resulted was called “A Nation At Risk.” Though right-wing in content, it reads like a Soviet proclamation on industrial production. Students are redefined as inputs in a system to maximize American corporate competitiveness, productivity and profits.

“History is not kind to idlers,” says the report. “We live among determined, well-educated, and strongly motivated competitors. We compete with them for international standing and markets …”

The rhetoric is hectoring and fierce:

“(T)he educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”

The “problem” was stated in terms that were both militaristic – “We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament” – and moralistic: “Our Nation’s schools and Colleges … are routinely called on to provide solutions to personal, social, and political problems that the home and other institutions either will not or cannot resolve.”

That was an assault on an idea that had been uncontroversial among Americans of all political persuasions for generations: that education can and should help children learn to participate more effectively in society. The authors had more concrete objectives in mind. Like Communist commissars plumping next year’s wheat harvest, their goal was productivity, productivity, productivity.

“Knowledge, learning, information, and skilled intelligence are the new raw materials of international commerce,” wrote the Commission. And by “raw materials,” Millennials, they meant you.

The rest of the Commission’s report is largely taken up by a) platitudes, and b) statistical studies which soon challenged aggressively. But the Randian State moved on, Millennials firmly in its maw. And while A Nation At Risk only targeted students, it soon had Americans of all ages in its sights.

Birth School Work Death

During the Thatcher years a British punk group called The Godfathers put out a song called “Birth School Work Death.” Here are nine ways the Cradle to Grave Randian State is harming Millennials in those four stages of life.

1. Prenatal Nutrition

For some the new regime began even before they were born. The Reagan Administration moved to cut nutrition funding for 600,000 pregnant women, a particularly hypocritical act for a movement which claims to be concerned about the rights of unborn children.

2. Early Childhood Nutrition

The same cuts also lowered food budgets for children in 4.6 million households, eighty-seven percent of which lived below the poverty line.

3. School lunches

The National School Lunch Act of 1946 and the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 both promoted healthy meals for America’s schoolchildren. Seems benign and even wise – unless you’re a Randian, of course. The Reagan Administration added to cuts in 1980 budget, then passed into infamy when it stated that ketchup and pickle relish could be considered “vegetables” when designing a balanced diet.

Few, if any, parents adopted this approach at the family dinner table. “Kids, finish your vegetables!” never became “Kids, finish sucking the factory produced, sugar-drenched condiments out of those little folding packets!”

4. Cutting education funds.

The Reagan Administration’s cuts to the Department of Education, some occurring under Education Secretary William Bennett, eventually totaled $19 billion.

The right has continued to mount an assault on school funding at every level ever since, from local school boards up to the state and Federal level. They’ve been joined by “centrist” Democrats like Rahm Emanuel in their efforts to demonize teachers and privatize schools.

5. Making college unaffordable.

The University of Virginia’s Miller Center conducted a study for the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education and found that “Since the mid-1980s” – roughly the start of the Millennial Generation -”the costs of higher education in America have steadily shifted from the taxpayer to the student and family.”

Median family income have risen by 147% since then, while college tuition and fees rose 439%, a tripling of education costs in real dollar terms. The impact has been greatest on lower-income families, sounding a potential death knell for social mobility.

From the New York Times: “Among the poorest families … the net cost of a year at a public university was 55 percent of median income, up from 39 percent in 1999-2000.”

6. Leaving graduates drowning in debt.

The misguided ‘privatization’ of Sallie Mae, the government’s student loan enterprise, led to a series of political and financial scandals. (See “Sallie Mae’s Jets.”) It also contributed to an explosion of student loans, many of which went to highly dubious ‘colleges’ which issued high-cost, worthless degrees. Many other students went to more legitimate institutions, but found themselves drowning in debt.

Now 7.4 million students are about to see a doubling of their interest rates unless something is done. Elizabeth Warren has proposed given them access to the Fed’s ultra-low rates for banks, while more modest proposals would keep current rates in place.

The student debt situation for Millennials would be morally unconscionable even if rates remain at current levels. Anything else is shocking to contemplate. The UPI reports today that Sen. Lamar Alexander said the President and Republicans “agree” on what should be done.

That’s not reassuring.

7. Massive unemployment.

There are 10 million unemployed young people in the United States. The official youth unemployment rate is 16.2 percent, the adjusted rate (including discouraged workers) is22.9 percent – not much better than the Eurozone’s – and the anemic ‘jobs recovery’ is even weaker for Millennials.

The crisis covers everything from high-school-age summer and after-school jobs to employment after graduation.

Studies show that youth unemployment lowers income for the rest of a person’s life. That means this crisis is urgent as well as massive. Every passing month harms the future of an entire generation. What immediate, major measures are being proposed to address this emergency?

None.

8. An increasingly inequitable, wage-stagnating economy.

When Millennials do find jobs – hopefully – they’ll enter a marketplace and economy plagued by historic levels of wage inequality and stagnation.

That’s not an accident: It’s policy.Tax rates favor inequality. Right-wing Republicans and “centrist” Democrats have savaged unions, an effective counterweight against growing inequality. And both parties have served the growing financialization of our economy (although the GOP does it with more gusto), making things worse for everybody except Wall Street.

9. Greater fear and insecurity in old age.

Now the President has proposed cutting Social Security benefits through the cynical “chained CPI.” The “Chain” is also a tax increase, but only on income below the highest level, which means it will aggravate the inequalities that are hurting the vast majority of Americans.

Every generation will suffer if it passes, including those who have already retired. But for Millennials it will be a final late-life kick from the Randian State.

A Letter to Millennials

The year was 1984. Wham! and Cyndi Lauper were topping the charts. The top movie of the year was, appropriately enough, The Terminator. And the nation was re-electing Ronald Reagan. Americans are now suffering from birth to death as a result of this triumphal year for Randians, which plunged us deeper into a red-in-tooth-and-claw world and left millions struggling with its social consequences.

As they used to say back then: Have a nice day!

Dear Millennials: We tried to stop them. We failed. We’re sorry. Now we need a party – and more importantly, a movement – that will refuse to allow the continued destruction of government’s vital role in our social fabric.

Until we do, every generation will suffer. But you, the Millennials, will continue to carry the dubious distinction of being the first generation of Americans to have been assaulted from the cradle to the grave. For your sake and everyone’s else, you must fight back.

This Father’s Day, here’s a promise: Some of us will be right there beside you.

(This piece has been edited slightly since first published, mostly to replace the awkward phrase ‘Rand-y’ with ‘Randian.’)

15-Year-Old Girl Humiliated By TSA Officer Who Told Her to 'Cover Yourself'

Alex Kane, AlterNet — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 08:40:00 -0700

The daughter of the founder of Boing Boing was 'shamed' and 'humiliated' by a Transportation Security Agency officer at LAX.

The daughter of the founder of the website Boing Boing was “shamed” and “humiliated” by a Transportation Security Agency (TSA) officer who told her to “cover” herself up. Now, the TSA is investigating the incident.

Mark Frauenfelder detailed the story of his daughter’s experiencewith the TSA yesterday evening. The account comes from his 15-year-old daughter’s text messages.

He wrote that while she was at the Los Angeles airport with other high school students going on a college tour, an officer glared at her. Then, after his daughter saw that he was mumbling, she said: “Excuse me?” The officer replied harshly: “You're only 15, COVER YOURSELF!" (The daughter was not wearing anything that would warrant the outburst, though Frauenfelder notes: “It doesn't matter what she was wearing, though, because it's none of his business to tell girls what they should or should not wear. His creepy thoughts are his own problem, and he shouldn't use his position of authority as an excuse to humiliate a girl and blame her for his sick attitude.”)

Maureen Herman, one of Frauenfelder’s friends and a women’s rights activist, wrote a blog post lambasting the TSA’s behavior. “Things like this need to matter, because they inject shame (or try to) in a young woman who is just living her life, going to check out colleges, and throws on the first of what will unfortunately be many layers of sexism she will encounter in her life,” she wrote on the website of A Is For..., an organization that works to protect reproductive rights.

5 Ways the Global Security State Can't Stop Itself from Abusing Our Privacy and Destroying People's Lives

Tom Engelhardt, Tom Dispatch — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 14:56:00 -0700

We face a strangely contradictory future in which ever more draconian regimes of secrecy will confront urges for ever greater transparency.

As happens with so much news these days, the Edward Snowden revelations about National Security Agency (NSA) spying and just how far we’ve come in the building of a surveillance state have swept over us 24/7 -- waves of leaks, videos, charges, claims, counterclaims, skullduggery, and government threats. When a flood sweeps you away, it’s always hard to find a little dry land to survey the extent and nature of the damage. Here’s my attempt to look beyond the daily drumbeat of this developing story (which, it is promised, will go on for weeks, if not months) and identify five urges essential to understanding the world Edward Snowden has helped us glimpse.

1. The Urge to be Global

Corporately speaking, globalization has been ballyhooed since at least the 1990s, but in governmental terms only in the twenty-first century has that globalizing urge fully infected the workings of the American state itself. It’s become common since 9/11 to speak of a “national security state.” But if a week of ongoing revelations about NSA surveillance practices has revealed anything, it’s that the term is already grossly outdated. Based on what we now know, we should be talking about an American global security state.

Much attention has, understandably enough, been lavished on the phone and other metadata about American citizens that the NSA is now sweeping up and about the ways in which such activities may be abrogating the First and Fourth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. Far less attention has been paid to the ways in which the NSA (and other U.S. intelligence outfits) are sweeping up global data in part via the just-revealed Prism and other surveillance programs.

Sometimes, naming practices are revealing in themselves, and the National Security Agency’s key data mining tool, capable in March 2013 of gathering “97 billion pieces of intelligence from computer networks worldwide,” has been named “boundless informant.” If you want a sense of where the U.S. Intelligence Community imagines itself going, you couldn’t ask for a better hint than that word “boundless.” It seems that for our spooks, there are, conceptually speaking, no limits left on this planet.

Today, that "community" seeks to put not just the U.S., but the world fully under its penetrating gaze. By now, the first “heat map” has been published showing where such information is being sucked up from monthly: Iran tops the list (14 billion pieces of intelligence); then come Pakistan (13.5 billion), Jordan (12.7 billion), Egypt (7.6 billion), and India (6.3 billion). Whether you realize this or not, even for a superpower that has unprecedented numbers of military bases scattered across the planet and has divided the world into six military commands, this represents something new under the sun. The only question is what?

The twentieth century was the century of “totalitarianisms.” We don’t yet have a name, a term, for the surveillance structures Washington is building in this century, but there can be no question that, whatever the present constraints on the system, “total” has something to do with it and that we are being ushered into a new world. Despite the recent leaks, we still undoubtedly have a very limited picture of just what the present American surveillance world really looks like and what it plans for our future. One thing is clear, however: the ambitions behind it are staggering and global.

In the classic totalitarian regimes of the previous century, a secret police/surveillance force attempted, via every imaginable method, including informers, wire tappers, torture techniques, imprisonment, and so on to take total control of a national environment, to turn every citizen’s life into the equivalent of an open book, or more accurately a closed, secret file lodged somewhere in that police system. The most impressive of these efforts, the most global, was the Soviet one simply because the USSR was an imperial power with a set of disparate almost-states -- those SSRs of the Caucasus and Central Asia -- within its borders, and a series of Eastern European satellite states under its control as well. None of the twentieth-century totalitarian regimes, however, ever imagined doing the same thing on a genuinely global basis. There was no way to do so.

Washington’s urge to take control of the global communications environment, lock, stock, and chat room, to gather its “data” -- billions and billions of pieces of it -- and via inconceivably powerful computer systems, mine and arrange it, find patterns in it, and so turn the world into a secret set of connections, represents a remarkable development. For the first time, a great power wants to know, up close and personal, not just what its own citizens are doing, but those of distant lands as well: who they are communicating with, and how, and why, and what they are buying, and where they are travelling, and who they are bumping into (online and over the phone).

Until recently, once you left the environs of science fiction, that was simply beyond imagining. You could certainly find precursors for such a development in, for instance, the Cold War intelligence community’s urge to create a global satellite system that would bring every inch of the planet under a new kind of surveillance regime, that would map it thoroughly and identify what was being mapped down to the square inch, but nothing so globally up close and personal.

The next two urges are intertwined in such a way that they might be thought as a single category: your codes and theirs.

2. The Urge to Make You Transparent

The urge to possess you, or everything that can be known about you, has clearly taken possession of our global security state. With this, it’s become increasingly apparent, go other disturbing trends. Take something seemingly unrelated: the recent Supreme Court decision that allows the police to take a DNA swab from an arrestee (if the crime he or she is charged with is “serious”). Theoretically, this is being done for “identification” purposes, but in fact it's already being put to other uses entirely, especially in the solving of separate crimes.

If you stop to think about it, this development, in turn, represents a remarkable new level of state intrusion on private life, on your self. It means that, for the first time, in a sure-to-widen set of circumstances, the state increasingly has access not just -- as with NSA surveillance -- to your Internet codes and modes of communication, but to your most basic code of all, your DNA. As Justice Antonin Scalia put it in his dissent in the case, “Make no mistake about it: As an entirely predictable consequence of today’s decision, your DNA can be taken and entered into a national DNA database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason.” Can global DNA databases be far behind?

If your DNA becomes the possession of the state, then you are a transparent human being at the most basic level imaginable. At every level, however, the pattern, the trend, the direction is the same (and it’s the same whether you’re talking about the government or giant corporations). Increasingly, access to you, your codes, your communications, your purchases, your credit card transactions, your location, your travels, your exchanges with friends, your tastes, your likes and dislikes is what’s wanted -- for what’s called your “safety” in the case of government and your business in the case of corporations.

Both want access to everything that can be known about you, because who knows until later what may prove the crucial piece of information to uncover a terrorist network or lure in a new network of customers. They want everything, at least, that can be run through a system of massive computers and sorted into patterns of various potentially useful kinds. You are to be, in this sense, the transparent man or transparent woman. Your acts, your life patterns, your rights, your codes are to be an open book to them -- and increasingly a closed book to you. You are to be their secret and that “you” is an ever more global one.

3. The Urge to Make Themselves Opaque

With this goes another reality. They are to become ever less accessible, ever more impenetrable, ever less knowable to you (except in the forms in which they would prefer you to know them). None of their codes or secrets are to be accessed by you on pain of imprisonment. Everything in the government -- which once was thought to be “your” government -- is increasingly disappearing into a professional universe of secrecy. In 2011, the last year for which figures are available, the government classified 92 million documents. And they did so on the same principle that they use in collecting seemingly meaningless or harmless information from you: that only in retrospect can anyone know whether a benign-looking document might prove anything but. Better to deny access to everything.

In the process, they are finding new ways of imposing silence on you, even when it comes to yourself. Since 2001, for instance, it has become possible for the FBI to present you with a National Security Letter which forces you to turn over information to them, but far more strikingly gags you from ever mentioning publicly that you got such a letter. Those who have received such letters (and 15,000 of them were issued in 2012) are legally enjoined from discussing or even acknowledging what’s happening to them; their lives, that is, are no longer theirs to discuss. If that isn’t Orwellian, what is?

President Obama offered this reassurance in the wake of the Snowden leaks: the National Security Agency, he insisted, is operating under the supervision of all three branches of the government. In fact, the opposite could be said to be true. All three branches, especially in their oversight roles, have been brought within the penumbra of secrecy of the global security state and so effectively coopted or muzzled. This is obviously true with our ex-professor of Constitutional law and the executive branch he presides over, which has in recent years been ramping up its own secret operations.

When it comes to Congress, the people’s representatives who are to perform oversight on the secret world have been presented with the equivalent of National Security Letters; that is, when let in on some of the secrets of that world, they find they can’t discuss them, can’t tell the American people about them, can’t openly debate them in Congress. In public sessions with Congress, we now know that those who run our most secret outfits, if pushed to the wall by difficult questions, will as a concession respond in the “least untruthful manner” possible, as Director of National Intelligence James Clapper put it last week.

Given the secret world’s control over Congress, representatives who are horrified by what they’ve learned about our government’s secrecy and surveillance practices, like Democratic Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, can only hint at their worries and fears. They can, in essence, wink at you, signal to you in obscure ways that something is out of whack, but they can’t tell you directly. Secrecy, after all.

Similarly, the judiciary, that third branch of government and other body of oversight, has, in the twenty-first century, been fully welcomed into the global security state’s atmosphere of total secrecy. So when the surveillance crews go to the judiciary for permission to listen in on the world, they go to a secret court, a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) court, locked within that secret world. It, in turn, notoriously rubberstamps whatever it is they want to do, evidently offering no resistance whatsoever to their desires. (Of the 6,556 electronic surveillance requests submitted to the court in Obama’s first term in office, for instance, only one was denied.) In addition, unlike any other court in America, we, the American people, the transparent and ignorant public, can know next to nothing about it. And you know perfectly well why: the overriding needs of secrecy.

What, though, is the point of “oversight” if you can’t do anything other than what that secret world wants you to do?

We are, in other words, increasingly open to them and they are increasingly closed to us.

4. The Urge to Expand

As we’ve known at least since Dana Priest and William Arkin published their stunning series, “Top Secret America,” in the Washington Post in 2010, the U.S. Intelligence Community has expanded post-9/11 to levels unimaginable even in the Cold War era. Then, of course, it faced another superpower, not a small set of jihadis largely located in the backlands of the planet. It now exists on, as Arkin says, an “industrial scale.” And its urge to continue growing, to build yet more structures for surveillance, including a vast $2 billion NSA repository in Bluffdale, Utah, that will be capable of holding an almost unimaginable yottabyte of data, is increasingly written into its DNA.

For this vast, restless, endless expansion of surveillance of every sort and at every level, for the nearly half-million or possibly far more private contractors, aka “digital Blackwater,” now in the government surveillance business -- about 70% of the national intelligence budget reportedly goes to the private sector these days -- and the nearly five million Americans with security clearances (1.4 million with top security clearances, more than a third of them private contractors), the official explanation is "terrorism." It matters little that terrorism as a phenomenon is one of the lesser dangers Americans face in their daily lives and that, for some of the larger ones, ranging from food-borne illnesses to cars, guns, and what’s now called “extreme weather,” no one would think about building vast bureaucratic structures shrouded in secrecy, funded to the hilt, and offering Americans promises of ultimate safety.

Terrorism certainly rears its ugly head from time to time and there’s no question that the fear of some operation getting through the vast U.S. security net drives the employees of our global security state. As an explanation for the phenomenal growth of that state, however, it simply doesn’t hold water. In truth, compared to the previous century, U.S. enemies are remarkably scarce on this planet. So forget the official explanation and imagine our global-security-state-in-the-making in the grips of a kind of compulsive disorder in which the urge to go global, make the most private information of the citizen everywhere the property of the American state, and expand surveillance endlessly simply trumps any other way of doing things.

In other words, they can’t help themselves. The process, the phenomenon, has them by the throat, so much so that they can imagine no other way of being. In this mood, they are paving the way for a new global security -- or rather insecurity -- world. They are, for instance, hiking spending on “cybersecurity,” have already secretly launched the planet’s first cyberwar, are planning for more of them, intend to dominate the future cyber-landscape in a staggering fashion, continue to gather global data of every sort on a massive scale, and more generally are acting in ways that they would consider criminal if other countries engaged in them.

5. The Urge to Leak

The massive leaks of documents by Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden have few precedents in American history. Daniel Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers leak is their only obvious predecessor. They are not, however, happenstances of our moment. They are signs of what’s to come. If, in surveillance terms, the urge to go global and impose ultimate secrecy on both the state’s secrets and yours, to prosecute whistleblowers to the maximum (at this point usually via the Espionage Act or, in the case of Manning, via the charge of “aiding the enemy,” and with calls of “treason” already in the air when it comes to Snowden), it’s natural that the urge to leak will rise as well.

If the surveillance state has reached an industrial level of operations, and ever more secrets are being brought into computer systems, then vast troves of secrets exist to be revealed, already cached, organized, and ready for the plucking. If the security state itself goes global, then the urge to leak will go global, too.

In fact, it already has. It’s easy to forget that WikiLeaks was originally created not just for American secrets but any secrets. Similarly, Manning uploaded his vast trove of secrets from Iraq, and Snowden, who had already traveled the world in the service of secrecy, leaked to an American columnist living in Brazil and writing for a British newspaper. His flight to Hong Kong and dream of Icelandic citizenship could be considered another version of the globalizing impulse.

Rest assured, they will not be the last. An all-enveloping atmosphere of secrecy is not a natural state of being. Just look at us individually. We love to tell stories about each other. Gossiping is one of the most basic of human activities. Revealing what others don’t know is an essential urge. The urge, that is, to open it all up is at least as powerful as the urge to shut it all down.

So in our age, considering the gigantism of the U.S. surveillance and intelligence apparatus and the secrets it holds, it’s a given that the leak, too, will become more gigantic, that leaked documents will multiply in droves, and that resistance to regimes of secrecy and the invasion of private life that goes with them will also become more global. It’s hard from within the U.S. to imagine the shock in Pakistan, or Germany, or India, on discovering that your private life may now be the property of the U.S. government. (Imagine for a second the reaction here if Snowden had revealed that the Pakistani or Iranian or Chinese government was gathering and storing vast quantities of private emails, texts, phone calls, and credit card transactions from American citizens. The uproar would have been staggering.)

As a result of all this, we face a strangely contradictory future in which ever more draconian regimes of secrecy will confront the urge for ever greater transparency. President Obama came into office promising a “sunshine” administration that would open the workings of the government to the American people. He didn’t deliver, but Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden, and other leakers have, and no matter how difficult the government makes it to leak or how hard it cracks down on leakers, the urge is almost as unstoppable as the urge not to be your government’s property.

You may have secrets, but you are not a secret -- and you know it.

Christian College Expels Student Over Lesbian Relationship--And Then Demands $6,000 in Tuition

Alex Kane, AlterNet — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 07:02:00 -0700

Nebraska-based Grace University is billing Danielle Powell for tuition after Powell was expelled for being in a same-sex relationship.

At Grace University, a conservative Christian college in Nebraska, students are not allowed to even give prolonged hugs. So when 24-year-old Danielle Powell fell in love with a woman, it meant trouble for her.

Powell now says she was expelled because of the same-sex relationship. But that’s not all: she was also sent a $6,000 bill the school said she owed in federal loans and grants because she didn’t finish the semester, the Associated Press reports, and copies of her transcript weren’t given when initially requested. She is being asked to pay even after she went through counseling and mentoring over to the lesbian relationship she was in. The school says the payment is required by federal law, but the U.S. Department of Education contradicted that claim.

The school had initially re-admitted Powell after she was suspended because Powell went through the required counseling. But the school quickly went back on that, and she was kicked out permanently.

Powell is now battling Grace over the bill. She says her school costs were covered by a scholarship.

Powell’s wife has started a Change.org petition in protest of the tuition bill.

“I shouldn’t have this debt hanging over me from a school that clearly didn’t want me,” Powell told the AP.

A staffer at the gay rights organization Lamba Legal told the AP that Powell’s case was unique because the school wanted money back. Usually, Christian universities are just glad to be rid of students like Powell.

The U.S. Department of Education told the news outlet that the money issue is between Powell and her school, but not because of federal law. Some Christian schools like Grace are not required to adhere to all federal guidelines if it conflicts with their faith.

“Grace and other private colleges that accept federal student aid — sometimes called Title IV funding — must abide by the Civil Rights Act that forbids discrimination on the basis of race, national origin, sex, age or physical handicap. But sexual orientation is not included in that list,” the Associated Press notes.

How Corporate Greed Is Starving Our Public School System

Paul Buchheit, AlterNet — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 19:32:00 -0700

The total cost of K-12 educational cutbacks in recent years is about equal to the amount of state taxes left unpaid by these companies.

We hear a lot about corporations avoiding federal taxes. Less well known is their non-payment of state taxes, which along with local taxes make up 90% of U.S. education funding.

Pay Up Now just completed a review of 2011–12 tax data from the SEC filings of 155 of the largest U.S. corporations. The results show that the total cost of K-12 educational cutbacks in recent years is approximately equal to the amount of state taxes left unpaid by these companies.

Corporations Neglect Their State Tax Responsibilities

For 2011 and 2012, the 155 companies paid just 1.8 percent of their total income in state taxes, and 3.6 percent of their declared U.S. income. The average required rate for the 50 states is 6.56 percent.

Similar results were found in a Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) report on 2008–10 state taxes. In their evaluation of 265 large companies, CTJ determined that an average of 3% was paid in state taxes, less than half the average state tax rate. The results are summarized at Pay Up Now.

How much money is this? The 2011–12 underpayment, for just 155 top-earning companies, is about $14 billion per year. In the 2008–10 study, CTJ noted that "these 265 companies avoided a total of $42.7 billion in state corporate income taxes over the three years." That's also about $14 billion per year.

Unpaid State Taxes Are More Than ALL the K-12 Cuts

A comparison of the above results with educational cutbacks shows the devastating impact of tax avoidance on our children. A Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) report revealed that total K-12 education cuts for fiscal 2012 were about $12.7 billion. A separate analysis of CBPP data shows total 2008–12 cutbacks of about $20 billion. According to the Census Bureau, K-12 funding rose about 5% a year from 1998 to 2008, after which it leveled off and began to decline.

More stunningly, higher education experienced a nearly $17 billion state appropriations cut in 2012–13, in comparison to 2007–8. Much of the shortfall was made up by tuition increases. As noted by the CBPP, "The entire increase in tuition at public colleges and universities over the last 25 years has gone to make up for declining state and local revenue." Tuition has risen almost 600% over those 25 years.

Games Corporations Play to Take Our State Funds

Maddening as this is, a look at behind-the-scenes corporate subterfuge makes it even worse. A Good Jobs First report describes how companies play one state against another, holding their home states hostage for tax breaks under the threat of bolting to other states, with the whole process masked in inspirational language: "business recruitment" and "retention incentives" instead of the more accurate description of transferring jobs to the state that offers the most generous subsidies. The report notes that "This is a net loss game, with footloose companies shrinking the tax base necessary for the education and infrastructure investments that benefit all employers."

Good Jobs First also reported on the personal income tax (PIT) subsidy, through which employers simply take the state tax paid by their workers. States are pressured into such agreements to keep corporations from moving out. Employees, as a result, are effectively "paying taxes to their boss."

The Impact on All of Us

The end result of this hostage-taking is a breakdown in public services, most notably in education. Schools are deemed to be "not working," and a frantic rush toward privatization leads to even more tax cuts for the business interests charged with the responsibility of "fixing" the broken system. But rarely are we informed that it's our self-serving business and political leaders who broke the system.

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