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5 Most Horrifying Things About Monsanto -- Why You Should Join the Global Movement and Protest on Saturday

April M. Short, AlterNet — Wed, 22 May 2013 20:58:00 -0700

Fed up with health concerns, environmental threats and political corruption, a Utah mom organizes a global movement against the biotech giant.

Fed up with the fact that she has to spend “a small fortune” in order to feed her family things she says “aren’t poisonous,” Tami Canal of Utah has organized a global movement against the giant chemical and seed corporation Monsanto. Monsanto is the conglomerate mastermind behind many of the pesticides and genetically engineered seeds that pervade farm fields around the world. Monsanto produces the world’s top-selling herbicide; 40 percent of US crops contain its genes; it spends millions lobbying the government each year; and several of its factories are now toxic Superfund sites.

Canal, who has a 17-month-old baby and a six-year-old girl, cites concerns over public health, adverse affects on the environment, and political corruption as her motivation to organize against the biotech giant. And her concern has resonated. Protesters around the world have responded to Canal’s call to action, and will amplify their dissatisfaction with the corporation in a “March Against Monsanto” on May 25.

“Not only are they threatening our children and ourselves as well, but also the environment,” Canal says. “The declining bee population has been linked to the pesticides that they use, and that’s just the start. I’ve been reading studies recently that butterflies are starting to disappear, and birds. It’s only a matter of time, it’s pretty much a domino effect.”

What started as one mother’s call to action on a Facebook page has become a movement with more than 400 demonstrations scheduled in 50 countries and 250 cities around the globe. The events are organized online via an open Google Document, where people can find the protest nearest them. The March Against Monsanto Facebook page has received more than 105,000 “likes.” It has reached more than 10,000,000 people in the last week according to its website, which averages over 40,000 visitors per day.

One of the short-term goals of the march, Canal says, is to spread immediate awareness about the offenses Monsanto commits. Another is to inspire people to vote with their dollars by boycotting Monsanto-owned companies that put unsafe products—like genetically modified organisms (GMO) and pesticide-ridden foods—on the market. The effort also advocates for labeling of genetically modified products so consumers can make informed decisions, and demands further scientific research on the health effects of GMOs.

Canal is particularly interested in drawing attention to what she calls dangerous products that are marketed to children. “Like Kellogg's,” she says. “For example, Froot Loops is 100-percent genetically engineered, and that’s a children's cereal. That’s irresponsible and unacceptable on so many levels.”

The ultimate goal of the march is a complete ban on Monsanto within the US. At least 60 countries worldwide, including Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Peru, South Australia, Russia, France, and Switzerland, have implemented outright bans of Monsanto and its genetic modification of food products.

“I don’t understand why the US isn’t on the forefront of that thinking,” says Canal. “[Monsanto] has a long history of crimes against humanity.”

Here are the five most disturbing reasons you should join the March Against Monsanto:

1. Profiteering poisonous chemical company posing as agribusiness.

Remember the horrors of Operation Ranch Hand during the Vietnam War, when the US military designed a chemical warfare program and used the herbicide and defoliant Agent Orange to kill and maim 400,000 people (estimated by the Vietnam government), and ultimately cause birth defects for 500,000 children? Monsanto made that possible.

Monsanto began as a chemical company in 1901 and was responsible for some of the most damaging toxins in US history, like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB’s), and dioxin. Consumer advocacy group Food and Water Watch (FWW) released a report on APril 3 detailing Monsanto’s role in chemical disasters, Agent Orange, and the first genetically modified plant cell. The report shows that the “feed-the-world” agricultural and life sciences company Monsanto markets itself as today is only a recent development. The majority of Monsanto’s history is involved with heavy industrial chemical production, including the supply of Agent Orange to the US for Vietnam operations from 1962-'71.

Ronnie Cummins, executive director of the Organic Consumers Association told Common Dreams, in response to the FWW report:

Despite its various marketing incarnations over the years, Monsanto is a chemical company that got its start selling saccharin to Coca-Cola, then Agent Orange to the U.S. military, and in recent years, seeds genetically engineered to contain and withstand massive amounts of Monsanto herbicides and pesticides. Monsanto has become synonymous with the corporatization and industrialization of our food supply.

Another example, according to the FWW corporate profile, is a Monsanto plant in Sauget, Illinois that produced 99 percent of PCBs until they were banned in 1976. PCBs are carcinogenic and harmful to multiple organs and systems, but they're still illegally dumped into waterways. They accumulate in plants and food crops, as well as fish and other aquatic lifeforms, which enter the human food supply. The Sauget plant is now home to two Superfund sites.

Monsanto’s chemicals continue to impact the world, both inside and outside of the United States, and Monsanto has settled a number of chemical lawsuits in the last couple of years alone. Scientific studies have linked the chemicals in Monsanto’s Roundup pesticides to Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimers disease, autism and cancer.

Another example of Monsanto’s chemical folly came in February when a French court declared Monsanto guilty of chemical poisoning of French grain grower, Paul Francois. The farmer suffered neurological problems including memory loss, headaches and stammering after inhaling Monsanto's Lasso weedkiller in 2004, and blames the agri-business giant for not providing adequate warnings on the product label.

AlterNet published an article in April titled, “Exposed: Monsanto’s Chemical War Against Indigenous Hawaiians,” which details a series of protests on the five Hawaiian Islands Monsanto and other biotech companies have turned into the world’s “ground zero” for chemical testing and food engineering.

2. Building a monopoly, putting farmers out of work.

There is nothing more quintessentially American than the independent family farmer; and there is nothing more un-American than stomping out that farmer’s livelihood to bolster your corporate monopoly. Monsanto is attempting this as it sues small farmers out of their livelihoods time and again.

You might have heard about the 75-year-old soybean farmer from Indiana, Vernon Hugh Bowman, who was ordered in the beginning of May to pay Monsanto $85,000 in damages for using second-generation seeds genetically modified with Monsanto’s pesticide resistant “Roundup Ready,” treatment. He pulled the seeds from the local grain elevator, which is usually used for feed crop, and planted them. The court decided Monsanto’s patent extends even to the offspring of its seeds, and the farmer had violated the company’s patent.

Bowman is by no means the only US farmer to be sent into debt at Monsanto’s hands. Monsanto reported enormous profits from 2012 to shareholders in January, while American farmers filed into Washington, DC to challenge the corporation’s right to sue farmers whose fields have become contaminated with Monsanto’s seeds. Oral arguments began on January 10 before the U.S. Court of Appeals to decide whether to reverse the cases' dismissal last February. The corporation’s total revenue reached $2.94 billion at the end of 2012, and its earnings nearly doubled analysts' projections.

In the article, “Monsanto's Earnings Nearly Double as They Create a Farming Monopoly”—originally published in Al Jazeera and reprinted on AlterNet on January 16—Charlotte Silver outlines how Monsanto has increased the price of the Roundup herbicide and exploiting its patent on transgenic corn, soybean and cotton, to gain control over those agricultural industries in the US, “…effectively squeezing out conventional farmers (those using non-transgenic seeds) and eliminating their capacity to viably participate and compete on the market.” The company also uses its power to coerce seed dealers out of stocking many of its competitor products.

Monsanto was under investigation by the Department of Justice for violating anti-trust laws by practicing anticompetitive activities towards other biotech companies until the end of 2012. The investigation was quietly closed before the end of last year.

Monsanto exerts vast control over the seed industry. It started buying out seed companies as early as 1982. Some of Monsanto’s most significant purchases were Asgrow (soybeans), Delta and Pine Land (cotton), DeKalb (corn), Seminis (vegetables) and Holden’s Foundation Seeds (in 1997). Monsanto is unmatched in its tactics for squashing its competition, but the US has not put its antitrust laws into practice to clamp down on the corporate monopoly it's forming.

3. Controlling the food, privatizing the water.

Half of the Earth’s population will live in an area with significant water stress by 2030, according to estimates from the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development. Corporations like Monsanto (along with Royal Dutch Shell and Nestle) are vying for a future in which free water supply is a thing of the past, and private companies control public water sources.

According to a government report titled "Intelligence Community Assessment; Global Water Security," by 2025, the world's population will likely exceed 8 billion people, and the demand for water will be 40 percent higher than sustainable water supplies available, with water needs of around 6,900 billion cubic meters due to population growth.

Private corporations already own 5 percent of the world's fresh water. Billionaires and companies, including Monsanto, are purchasing the rights to groundwater and aquifers. In an even more ominous twist, Monsanto is accused of dumping its plethora of toxic chemicals, including PCBs, dioxin and glyophosate (Roundup) into the water supply of various nations worldwide. Then, seeing a profitable market niche, it has begun privatizing those water sources it polluted, filtering the water, and selling it back to the public.

4. Running the FDA, writing its own protection laws.

Ex-Monsanto executives run the United States Food and Drug Administration, the agency tasked with ensuring food safety for the American public.

This obvious conflict of interest could explain the lack of government-led research on the long-term effects of GM products. Recently, the U.S. Congress and president together passed the law that has been dubbed “Monsanto Protection Act.” Among other things, the new law bans courts from halting the sale of Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds.

The pro-Monsanto “Farmer Assurance Provision, Section 735,” rider was quietly slipped into Agricultural Appropriations provisions of the HR 933 Continuing Resolution spending bill, designed to avert a federal government shutdown. It states that the department of agriculture “shall, notwithstanding any other provisions of law, immediately grant temporary permits to continue using the [GE] seed at the request of a farmer or producer [Monsanto].”

Obama signed the law on March 29. It allows the agribusiness giant to promote and plant GMO and GE seeds free from any judicial litigation that might deem such crops unsafe. Even if a court review determines that a GMO crop harms humans, Section 735 allows the seeds to be planted once the USDA approves them.

Public health lawyer Michele Simon told the New York Daily News the Senate bill requires the USDA to “ignore any court ruling that would otherwise halt the planting of new genetically mengineered crops.”

5. Continuing environmental nightmares.

As Tami Canal points out, studies have linked Monsanto and other biotech conglomerates to the decline of bee colonies in the US and abroad.

Their environmental blunders don’t stop there. In 2002 the Washington Post published a piece titled “Monsanto Hid Decades of Pollution,” outlining the corporation’s pollution of an Alabama town with toxic PCBs for decades without disclosure.

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) published an articledebunking Monsanto’s claim that it is a “leader and innovator in sustainable agriculture.”

While Monsanto advertises its technology as important to achieving such goals as adequate global food production and “reducing agriculture's negative impacts on the environment,” the UCS says in reality, the corporate giant stands in the way of sustainable agriculture.

For one, Monsanto’s policies promote pesticide resistance. “Their RoundupReady and Bt technologies lead to resistant weeds and insects that can make farming harder and reduce sustainability,” reads the UCS article.

The article also notes that Monsanto’s policies increase herbicide use, which can cause health effects, and perpetuates gene contamination, as engineered genes tend to show up in non-GE crops. Additionally, the UCS says Monsanto is a purveyor of monoculture because it focuses only on limited varieties of a few commodity crops, reducing biodiversity, and as a result, increasing pesticide and fertilizer pollution.

The union points out that Monsanto’s lobbying, advertising and stronghold over research on its products makes it difficult for farmers and policymakers to make informed decisions about more sustainable agriculture.

Finally, UCS says Monsanto contributes little to helping the world feed itself, and has failed to endorse science-backed solutions that don't give its products a central role.

***

Tami Canal encourages those who can’t make it to the March Against Monsanto on Saturday to support and foster relationships with their local farmers, buy organic, plant a vegetable garden, and become more self-sustainable. “That is definitely the one way to break the bond Monsanto has on us,” she says. “People should get involved because this is basically an outright attack on humanity.”

10 Most Absurd Sex Tips from the Christian Right

Amanda Marcotte, AlterNet — Thu, 23 May 2013 10:42:00 -0700

Modern conservatives can't stop talking about sex. And what they say opens a window into the strange, sexist worldview of patriarchal religion.

Modern conservative Christianity is obsessed with marriage, relationships, and sexuality to the point where these concerns crowd pretty much everything else out. Much of their obsession is directed towards trying to get the government to force you to live by their rules, but they also spend a great deal of time offering advice on these issues to each other. Unfortunately, most of their advice is utter garbage that puts prudery, unfair expectations, and strict gender policing over actual advice that can make your life better. Here are ten examples of evangelical advice that show how far adrift the Christian right advice industry is from the real world:

1) Be a better housekeeper to prevent cheating. Recently, Pat Robertson addressed a question that haunts many a woman who has a husband with a wandering eye: How to get past his cheating? Robertson all but told women not to worry their pretty little heads about their husband’s infidelities, suggesting that male infidelity in nigh-inevitable. He did, however, make some suggestions on how to minimize the straying: “What you want to do is make a home so wonderful that he doesn’t want to wander.” On top of implying that clean floors and the smell of baking bread can prevent men from looking for strange women, Robertson asked women to sympathize with how hard it is for men, saying that they are “captured” by their sexual desires and it’s up to women to “get him free”. In general, Robertson takes the line that all problems in marriage are the fault of wives and never husbands. While most Christian advice-givers rarely go that far, most do adhere generally to the belief that keeping a marriage together is mostly a wife’s job.

2) Women need to submit to their husbands. Throughout fundamentalist Christianity, one piece of advice rings out above all others, which is that marriage only works if wives submit to their husbands. When speaking to outsiders, they often play it off like “submission” is just a bit of Biblical-language goofiness isn’t to be meant in the secular sense, but in practice “submit to your husbands” means exactly what it sounds like. Richard Strauss from Bible.org made it clear that women are to obey their husbands at all times, even when he’s being cruel. “Obedience is not to be practiced only when you feel like it, or when you wholeheartedly agree with your husband, or when he is treating you with Christ-like love, but in everything!” Michelle Duggar, right wing Christian icon and reality TV star, summarized some of the points of practicing wifely submission. She specifically singled out financial independence as something women should never have, saying, “Love is killed by self-sufficiency.” Sheryl Sandberg’s loving husband would be surprised to hear that!

3) How to make sex interesting in a Christian marriage. Conservative Christians are expected to abstain from sex until marriage, but for evangelicals, at least, as soon as you get married, you’re supposed to immediately drop years of prudish sexual avoidance and throw yourself completely into your intimate relationship. (Indeed, many proponents of wifely submission come down hard on women who are reluctant to have sex as often as their husbands want to.) In an attempt to overcome the obvious problems with these expectations, some Christians have created sex advice websites like Christian Nymphos, to get their readers in touch with those sexual desires they spent years repressing. Sadly, despite their best intentions, their advice is often the opposite of erotic. “Wake up each day, look in the mirror and ask Jesus to tell you what is beautiful about you,” they advise. Despite the winking permission to let yourself have some fun now that you’re married, Christian Nymphos can’t quite let go of the constant sex policing, either, particularly coming down hard on sexual fantasy, because it’s rarely “about a married couple enjoying each other exclusively, in a loving manner”.

4) If you’re gay, marry someone of the opposite sex and try not to think about it too much. While most people are familiar with the “ex-gay” movement that encourages people to try to turn straight, the new strategy is a bit more subtle: Encourage gay Christians to just live like they’re straight and ignore their real desires. Josh Weed, a gay Mormon married to a woman, is one of the most straightforward examples. He claims his marriage is better than ones where there’s sexual attraction, claiming that their sex life is “about more than just visual attraction and lust”, insinuating that a marriage without lust in it might even be better. Even the head of the infamous ex-gay organization Exodus International has embraced the “gay but not acting on it” line, having his wife write on their website that she doesn’t even want a heterosexual husband, because his lack of attraction to other women means “I am the only person he chooses to direct his attraction toward.” Marry a gay man and rest assured he won’t sleep with other women! It’s more foolproof than Pat Robertson’s advice to keep him at home with good housekeeping.

5) Men, do not masturbate. Women, either, I suppose, but most anti-masturbation materials on the Christian right focus on men and casually assume women don’t have the same urge towards hearty self-loving. To prevent themselves from masturbating, young men are encouraged to start “accountability groups” where they try to de-lust themselves, mostly by telling each other to think of Jesus when they’d rather think of boobs. (Unlike the Christian Nymphos, these groups understand that thinking of Jesus is not sexy.) But while there’s some small attempt to make men responsible for their own behavior, most of the attention on preventing male lust is given to young women, who are mostly told to wear more clothes.

6) If husbands want more sex, women should do everything they can to give it to them. Focus on the Family’s marriage counselor Juli Slattery is blunt about: Married men need sex, and so wives who aren’t providing enough need to step up. While she claims she isn’t trying to guilt trip women into having more sex, she argues that sex is a physical, emotional, spiritual, and relational need men have. (Though apparently not when they’re single and can’t even fill this need on their own time.) “You cannot love him as a husband but reject him sexually,” she says, suggesting that regardless of the hold-up, women whose husbands want sex more need to find a way to provide it.

7) However, if wives want more sex, they should learn to go without. Slattery has very different advice for wives whose problem is that they want to get laid more, but have unwilling husbands. While you should move heaven and earth to drum up more desire for a husband who wants more sex, if you’re the undersexed one, you’re instructed to tell yourself “friendship, seasoned love, and shared history are often enough to maintain a marriage in which sex is no longer possible”. Men who want more sex are entitled to wives who try to provide it, women who aren’t getting any are told to be happy with “forms of physical affection that don't involve the pressure of sexual intercourse, such as back rubs, holding hands, playful touching, and hugging”.

8) Men should not believe their partners who say they want abortions. While the Christian right doesn’t like to talk about it, plenty of Christian women want abortions, at about the same rate as other women. Anti-abortion activists then turn to men in an effort to prevent these abortions. Daybreak Crisis Pregnancy Center encourages men to disbelieve women who tell them they want abortions, instead saying the women were secretly “waiting for their boyfriends/husbands to stop them”, even if that means “rush through the door to rescue me and take me away somewhere safe”. Luckily for women who, generally, aren’t playing mind games by choosing abortion, most clinics have enough security to stop men who have crazed Christian right-induced white knight fantasies.

9) Handy tips to keep from screwing. The Christian right loves to chastise and scold the unmarried for having sex, but beyond a purity ring and encouragement to just say no, there’s surprisingly little advice to those who want to be abstinent on how to do it. What little advice there is out there is vague and useless. These ten tips on purity by Ron Hutchcraft at Christianity Today are typical. “You do not own the person you're dating,” he says, as if a feeling of ownership is necessary to feel desire. “That person belongs to God.” Knowing that kind of abstraction may not be that helpful, he also suggests not spending time alone with your dates, and “avoid French kissing and petting—anything that is sure to ignite the fires of passion”. Wait until you’re married, at what point you are expected to go from 0 to 60 in one night.

10) Be extremely paranoid about your teenager’s sexuality. Needless to say, parenting advice from conservative Christians is obsessed with the haunting fear that your kids are interested in sex, and no amount of guilt-tripping and shaming them for it will keep them away from it forever. Today’s Christian Woman recommends a Big Brother approach when teens bring dates home: “[T]here should never be a moment when they are alone without an adult in the house.” Turn your back for one second, and that’s the second penis slips into vagina! What Christians Want To Know recommends adding some thought policing duties to the pile. “What are you allowing your teen to watch on the TV or at the movie theatre?”, they ask. “Anything that has a rating now-a-days above “G” has sexual content.” History has long demonstrated that rebellion cannot be prevented by telling your teenager they can’t watch anything that’s not a cartoon produced by Disney. The frequency with which this useless tactic is recommended by Christians, however, suggests that playing censorship cops with your teen is its own reward.

The wide, weird world of Christian advice, when taken together, paints a grim view of what they expect out of love and sex. Mainly, it’s a world where men have very little responsibility in relationships, and women are given the job of doing most of the sacrificing and emotional work. The wedding ring is given almost magical qualities that are expected to turn nearly-asexual beings into hump monsters that nonetheless have no non-monogamous urges at all. One gets the impression that setting their followers up to fail---and therefore to turn to the church’s power for forgiveness and absolution---is the point behind all these impossible rules.

Best Thing of the Day: WikiLeaks Leaks Transcript of Hollywood's Doc on the Online Activists

Steven Hsieh, AlterNet — Fri, 24 May 2013 07:14:00 -0700

"We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks" premieres today -- but the transcript hit the internet last night.

Beating the entertainment industry in the message control race, Wikileaks leaked the transcript of the new documentary, “We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks,” one night ahead of its worldwide release. The leaked transcript includes annotations that allege factual errors, misrepresentations and misguided framing in the film, directed by Academy Award winner Alex Gibney.

An unnamed annotator disputes several over-arching conclusions drawn in Gibney’s film, starting with its title, which implies that Wikileaks “steals secrets.” “In fact, the statement is made by former CIA/NSA director Michael Hayden in relation to the activities of US government spies, not in relation to WikiLeaks,” the annotator writes.

The annotator also addresses Gibney’s characterizations of Bradley Manning, the private accused of leaking classified information to WikiLeaks. By focusing on Manning’s alleged sexuality, rather than political motivations, the writer says, “Gibney's portrayal of Manning is as a disempowered individual, rather than as someone courageous and principled.” As a press release from Wikileaks notes, these details are especially relevant now, as Manning’s 12-week-trial continues on Monday. “The premiere of "We Steal Secrets" is opportunistically timed,” the release states. “Manning may face life in prison and could potentially face the death penalty. Charges include espionage and aiding the enemy.”

The annotator also takes issue with suggestions in the film that Manning was in contact with Wikileaks-founder Julian Assange and claims misinformation about the sexual allegations against Assange. Wikileaks not only hit Gibney for the what’s in his documentary, but also its omissions. “Gibney's film could have been an important and timely project,” the release states, “The film barely touches on the US investigation against WikiLeaks, never mentions the words "grand jury", and trivialises the larger issues, perhaps because the film-maker could not secure an interview with Julian Assange.”

According to Reuters, Gibney sought to include Assange in the film, but chose to proceed without him due to difficulties in securing an interview. Media accounts suggest a dispute between Gibney and Assange over framing in the filmmaker’s final product. "He likens himself as the puppet master, the one who's pulling the strings on the media. I think he took some offense at the idea that I was independent," Gibney told Reuters, adding that Assange allegedly asked for money to be interviewed.

Firedoglake’s Kevin Gosztola, who has extensively covered WikiLeaks and Manning’s trial, wrote a detailed analysis of the film and this annotated transcript. “As someone who has extensively covered the story of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange and Bradley Manning, there are multiple aspects of the film that happen to be misleading, disingenuous or seem to be the product of a director who has an axe to grind,” Gosztola writes.

Judge Forbids Lesbian Woman From Living with Partner

David Lee, Courthouse News — Fri, 24 May 2013 06:07:00 -0700

In Texas, a judge is enforcing a morality clause in one of the women's divorce papers to prevent the lesbians from living together.

A Texas judge has ordered a lesbian couple to stop living together due a morality clause in one of the women's divorce papers. 

Judge John Roach of the 296th District Court in Collin County enforced the clause from Carolyn Compton's 2011 divorce decree on May 7, the Dallas Voice reported.  Compton has lived for three years with Page Price, who was ordered by Roach to move out within 30 days because Compton's children live with the couple. The clause states that a person who has a "dating or intimate relationship" or is not related "by blood or marriage" must leave after 9 p.m. when the children are present. 

Shortly after the ruling, Price posted on her Facebook profile that Roach was a "bigot hiding behind a robe." 

"By his enforcement, being that we cannot marry in this state, I have been ordered to move out of my home," Price said. "Said judge offered further information to our attorneys that if he could throw her in jail for being gay he would. The only reason he didn't incarcerate her was because of a technicality our attorneys found in the original wording."  Price accused Compton's ex-husband of hiring a private investigator to bring the matter before the court. 

"This is the same man who lives just a few miles away yet has taken his children a total of 12 times in three years and not attended ONE school or athletic event," Price said in another Facebook posting. "This request for enforcement was filed 'in the interest and welfare of the children.' If he is so worried about their welfare where is he every 1st, 3rd and 5th weekend?" 

Price said children that live with the couple are "happy and well adjusted." 

"We didn't want to be the face for this movement, but it looks like God has bigger plans for us," she added. "We will stand up and fight this for our family and hope that it helps pave the way for marriage equality in Texas." 

Texas voters approved a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in 2005.

George Zimmerman's Defense Team Releases Texts and Photos to Fit Their Racist Narrative

Steven Hsieh, AlterNet — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:50:00 -0700

"Is the defense trying to prove Trayvon deserved to be killed by George Zimmerman because of the way he looked?"

The defense team for George Zimmerman, the man accused of killing unarmed teenager Travyon Martin, released dozens of photos and text messages of the 17-year-old murder victim in a seeming effort to portray him as a “gangsta” troublemaker.

It is unclear whether the texts and photos will be permissible in court, though attorneys for Martin’s family claim they represent “irrelevant red herrings.” Zimmerman’s attorneys are expected to use the “evidence” to make insinuations about Martin’s character, as the Zimmerman can be heard in a 911 call accusing the teen of being “up to no good” and “on drugs or something.”

The “evidence,” posted on a website run by Zimmerman’s attorneys, includes text messages from Martin discussing cannabis, a school suspension and a troubled home life, as well as several texts expressing interest in guns. The defense also posted 25 photos of Martin, some previously released on the internet, which include photo of the teen wearing gold teeth and flicking the camera off, as well as a photograph in which he appears to be smoking cannabis.

Benjamin Crump, an attorney representing Martin’s family, noted the irony of Zimmerman’s defense pushing a stereotypical image of Martin in a case already fraught with racial implications.

"Is the defense trying to prove Trayvon deserved to be killed by George Zimmerman because of the way he looked?" Crump said in a statement obtained by NBC. "If so, this stereotypical and closed-minded thinking is the same mindset that caused George Zimmerman to get out of his car and pursue Trayvon, an unarmed kid who he didn't know. The pretrial release of these irrelevant red herrings is a desperate and pathetic attempt by the defense to pollute and sway the jury pool."

One of many striking example of an apparent “red herring” released by Zimmerman’s defense is text messages referring to Martin’s homelife. In one text, from Nov. 22, 2011, he writes, "My mom just told me i gotta mov wit my dad … She just kickd me out."

Some legal experts say Zimmerman’s defense will have a hard time using the texts and photographs in court, as it resides in the legally murky area of character evidence.

“What does his mom saying he needs to live with his dad for a while say about why he was shot? Nothing,” Jeff Deen, a former state attorney in Florida, told NBC. “Generally, reputation evidence is not admissible in court.”

Everything You Heard About the Deficit Falling Is Wrong

Nomi Prins, AlterNet — Thu, 23 May 2013 11:38:00 -0700

Most of the media bought the notion that somehow the deficit had magically halved. Let's look at the math.

If it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t. Especially if it involves math, the Treasury Department, and two disparate political camps championing two different economic doctrines that came of age decades ago.

So went the telling of the deficit story last week. Most of the media bought the notion that somehow the deficit had magically halved to $682 billion from around $1.1 trillion last year, based on not even examining the Treasury Department's own reports before promoting that gleeful and surreal conclusion.

When the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) announced that the deficit underwent some kind of Fastest Loser diet, Keynesian types were thrilled that their philosophy was validated. The magic number proved that government fiscal stimulus will ultimately boost the economy. (Leave aside that John Maynard Keynes was actually an asset manager and successful speculator.) Thus, budgetary cuts are not necessary.

Where there is truth to this (austerity never helped anyone but those not affected by it), ignoring the fact that certain federal fiscal stimulus plans were used as reasons to increase overall debt in the form of treasury securities that banks use as reserve to buoy the banking system—and thus the stock market—and not the general economy, does economics and more importantly, the country, a disservice.

On the other hand, the free-market types also considered this a triumph of their philosophy. By not overly regulating the market (score another one for watering down the already tepid Frank-Dodd Act), the economy is marching back to normal.

Again, this does their notion a disservice because a true free-marketer would be against the Federal Reserve propping up the treasury (and thus debt) market by buying lots of treasuries, and allowing banks to park more treasuries on their books to the tune of $1.5 trillion worth) and toxic assets (in the form of buying $85 billion of them from banks who had them rotting on their books allowing banks to free up space to speculate in other ways).

Those debates, in all their generalities, will continue on. Meanwhile, there’s the matter of what sparked the latest phase of debates over big vs. small (rather than Wall Street-coddling vs. population-stimulating). -the deficit figure, that number that measures what the government takes in vs. what it spends, and what it shows, is that neither bank stimulus nor populace stimulus has changed very much in the past three years.

First, a hat tip to Karl Denninger at Market Ticker for boldly going where much of the media seemed too complacent or clueless to go. According to Denninger, since September 28, 2012, “there has been a net $762.6 billion of new debt added to the federal balance sheet, not the $488 billion the Treasury Department claims.” In addition, Social Security and Medicare are almost $90 billion in the hole this year already.

He writes that Treasury’s own cash statement indicates that, “At the current run rate over the four calendar months … the deficit on a cash basis this year is $1.188 trillion” compared to $1.210 trillion last year, which is about the same. If you include figures through the end of April, that same run rate produced a deficit of about $1.307 trillion.

I was truly puzzled by the new figure and more so by how much of the media and various Krugmanites tend to lump all fiscal stimulus into a population helping category, without noting that certain forms help the banking system more than the population. To be sure, stimuli like extended unemployment programs help families make ends meet while seeking better opportunities, but programs like HAMP barely make a dent in peoples’ foreclosure-related problems, while enabling banks to benefit from more aggregate support.

What seemed odder is that the deficit has always been reported as the total of those debts/expenditures relative to revenues, and simple logic says that those debts/expenditures haven't dropped, and revenues haven't increased by what is reported near a $500 billion shift....

One is tempted (if one cared to probe for a nanosecond) to ask what the Treasury Department didn’t include, but its math doesn't work even if it didn't exclude anything. Take its own report, the Monthly Treasury Statement which compiles activity from the start of the current fiscal year (October 2012) through April 2013.

A very cursory look at this report clearly reveals some items that don’t actively support the report’s optimistic subtitle.

Take Table 1. The numbers show that there have been $1.603 trillion in budget receipts so far for fiscal year 2013 vs. $2.090 trillion in outlays. This indeed produces a value for a current deficit (outlays minus receipts) of -$487 billion.

The same table also shows there were $1.383 trillion in receipts for the same period in 2012 and $2.1 trillion (about the same as this year) in outlays. Combining those figures, we do get a comparative deficit this time last year of -$719 billion. Okay, so far, it's on point with the headline's cheer.

However, just below Table 1 comes some small print. The Treasury Department appears to have changed some accounting methods. The small print reads: "The deficit figure differs by $2.23 billion due mainly to revisions in the data following the release of the Final Monthly Treasury Statement." There’s no clarity about how those revisions changed numbers, and the changes are small in the scheme of things, so let’s raise an eyebrow and move on for now—to the good part.

Even if we pretend those changes don’t matter and even if the rest of this year's receipts come in 16 percent greater than they did last year (which on average is what this table is indicating so far), we'd still get a total of $1.603 trillion receipts plus an expected $1.234 trillion. That equals $2.614 trillion in total receipts for 2013. Remember that number for a moment.

Now, consider that even if the rest of this year's expenditures remain flat to last year's (like the first part of the year indicated), there would be $3.5 trillion in outlays for 2013. If we subtract that $3.5 trillion in outlays from $2.614 trillion in receipts, we get a total deficit of approximately $886 billion; certainly not the $642 billion the CBO recently announced.

But there’s more. There’s Table 2.

According to Table 2, those expenditures actually won't be flat, instead they will be higher, by about $184 billion, to reach $3.684 trillion.

Subtracting $3.684 trillion from $2.614 trillion, we get a total expected deficit of approximately $1.069 trillion—or about the same as it has been over the last couple of years—and again not the $642 billion that the media spread, and that Krugmanites consider reflective of fiscal stimulus working for the overall economy.

There’s a danger in working with numbers. They can be massaged and bent and faked and shrouded with suppositions. But, that’s not the case here. This is a case of simple addition and subtraction using Treasury’s own report. Doing so reveals a discrepancy between the recent headline deficit number and the one in the report. The issue here isn’t whether government stimulus works or not (nor how it was designed and who it really helps most beneath associated political rhetoric), but about why people can be so eager to be right about the nature of the forest, they ignore the fact that they are running smack into a tree right in front of them. Let’s at least agree about the tree, and move on from there.

Time to Take Newspapers from Billionaires and Return Them to the People

Steven Hsieh, AlterNet — Fri, 17 May 2013 11:57:00 -0700

'Free the Press' activist group tries to raise $660 million to buy Tribune newspapers and turn them over to local communities.

A group of activists started a crowd-sourcing campaign to purchase the Tribune Company in response to bids by right-wing moguls Rupert Murdoch and the Koch Brothers to snag the massive newspaper corporation.

According to the Indiegogo campaign site, the Other 98% launched Free the Press to reclaim the media from its corporate owners. The Tribune Company owns a host of influential newspapers, including the Baltimore Sun, Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune. As the Huffington Post notes, Rupert Murdoch is interested in purchasing the latter two, while the Koch Brothers are eyeing all eight of the Tribune’s papers. To stop them, Free the Press aims to purchase the company and return these outlets to their local communities.

It’s not going to be cheap. The activists gave themselves 30 days to raise $660 million to purchase the company. It may be easy to mock the effort, but Free the Press raised more than $66,000 in a day, and donations continue to stream in. I spoke with one of the campaign’s leaders, Nicole Carty, who also stars in the launch video at the bottom of the page:

So, you’re aiming to raise $660 million to buy the Tribune Company. Is this a serious effort?

That’s the first question I get. I have to ask, “Why is it so crazy for people to own a newspaper company?” We’re obviously not naive. We know we’re asking for a lot of money. I think the real question is “Why is that a lot of money?” We’re more serious about the people being in control of the media.

Your campaign says you aim to give these newspapers “back to the communities.” What does a community newspaper look like?

It would be a newspaper without an agenda, free to report on any news. Journalists could come unshackled to report on news that actually affects communities. We obviously haven’t thought about how it would look like written down, but it would be powered by the people. It would be owned by the people. The press would be free to report on the information we need without corporate ownership or even the government coming down on us.

From your campaign’s standpoint, what do we lose when the Koch Brothers or Rupert Murdoch buys a newspaper company?

You don’t get the critique on government activity or corporate activity. I live in New York City. There are basic things happening here that aren’t making it into newspapers. Gentrification is happening in so many neighborhoods. New York City is turning into a destination for the wealthy. Everyone is else is literally getting squeezed out to the furthest points of the city. There’s no mainstream media that’s widely accessible to the side of ordinary people.

If you have a billionaire in New York City making the decisions about what’s going to be the news in LA or Chicago or Baltimore—these are cities with a lot of people of color. What do Murdoch or the Koch brothers have to say to them beside manipulate them? There’s a huge disconnection between these billionaires and their lives and what’s important to some kid who lives in Chicago. To bring it closer to home, that’s one huge step towards benefiting the coverage of a community.

The thing is, yes Murdoch and the Koch Brothers are the absolute worse option, but the whole idea of one billionaire controlling the media is fundamentally wrong. Even if they person has an agenda I agree with, it shouldn’t be someone who is really wealthy. It should be everyone. That’s what the media was made for.

Let’s talk about the media control and thought.

You have something going in the background, telling you a message, appealing to the worst side of you, your prejudices. Look back at the bombings in Boston. Immediately, almost everyone in the mainstream media super irresponsibly jumped to conclusions about who the bombers were and what their motivations were. People, because they’ve been exposed to media and this kind of scapegoating that’s happened for decades will be more prone to buy into the message. It’s because of the media, it’s because of the message that’s been circulated and ingrained in us. Even if we’re not aware of it, it’s a trap that’s running constantly. I don’t think it’s impossible to pay attention to something that’s so present. It’s everywhere.

Let’s say you’re successful and purchase the Tribune Company. What’s next? How would you keep these papers afloat? How would they remain competitive?

Just to be clear. We’re trying to buy the Tribune for the people. We don’t have much interest in actually owning it. We’d unleash the papers to report on whatever. Ideally, the papers would be crowd-sourced in some way on a local media. There are plenty of examples of public media. Look at the Pacifica network. That’s a publically funded radio station that works just find and covers important news. The Green Bay Packers uses a different model. They have a board and shareholders. There are definitely examples out there for how it can be done. It’s possible and there are options.

People have to buy into this no matter what. They know that CNN, MSNBC, Fox—they’re all owned by billionaires with agendas. Just knowing something is agendaless, reporting real news—that would speak for itself.

You guys have already raised more than $53,000 in a day (At time of publication, that number grew to more than $66,000).

It’s incredible. But seeing that amount of money and seeing so much of that bar left, it’s out of control. We’ve surpassed the average yearly salary of most Americans. We’ve made more money than that in one day and we’re still nowhere close. That, to me speaks that speaks volumes about how absurd this is.

What happens if you don’t meet the $660 million goal in 30 days?

We made the campaign fixed-funding, so if we don’t meet the goal, all the money goes back to the people it came from. We were really intentional about that, because we’re not trying to scam anyone or take people’s money for our own needs. We want to talk about the Tribune Company and we want to create a press.

Watch The Other 98%'s appeal:

When Cops Rape ... and Nothing Happens

Steve Yoder, The American Prospect — Thu, 23 May 2013 11:48:00 -0700

Police officers who sexually assault women rarely face the consequences of their actions. How can that be changed?

When 20-year-old Sarah Smith got into an accident with a motorcyclist in 2008, it was nothing but bad news—she was driving with a suspended license. It got worse. When police showed up, officer Adam Skweres took Smith aside and implied that he could either make it look like the accident was her fault or give the other party a ticket. It depended on whether she’d agree to perform unspecified sexual favors. Skweres also threatened that if she told anyone, he’d “make sure you never walk, talk, or speak again,” and looked at his gun. That scared her enough that she immediately reported what he’d done to the police, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Another four years passed before the department arrested Skweres and suspended him without pay, and then only because he tried to rape a woman while on duty. By that time, Smith had moved out of the city for fear of running into him again. Three other women told stories similar to Smith’s, and on March 11 Skewers pleaded guilty to bribery, indecent assault, and other charges.

Stories of cops propositioning, harassing, and sexually assaulting women turn up every week around the country. February 18 saw the arrest of Houston officer Victor Chris for allegedly telling two women he would tear up their traffic tickets in exchange for sexual favors, according to the Houston Chronicle. Police chargedSergio Alvarez, an officer from West Sacramento, California, on February 25 with allegedly kidnapping and raping six women while on duty. On March 1, Denver cop Hector Paez got eight years in prison for driving a woman he’d arrested to a secluded spot and forcing her to perform oral sex.

“Police sexual misconduct is common, and anyone who maintains it isn’t doesn’t get it,” says retired Seattle police chief Norm Stamper, author of the book Breaking Rank.

Since no one is investing resources in learning how many victims are out there, we’re left with estimates and news accounts. As part of a 2008 study, former police officer Tim Maher, a criminologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, asked 20 police chiefs whether police sexual misconduct was a problem; 18 responded in the affirmative. The 13 chiefs willing to offer estimates thought an average of 19 percent of cops were involved—if correct, that translates to more than 150,000 police officers nationwide. An informal effort by the Cato Institute in 2010 to track the number of police sexual-misconduct cases just in news stories counted 618 complaints nationwide that year, 354 of which involved forcible nonconsensual sexual activity like sexual assault or sexual battery.

The news steadily filtering in from around the country has forced police leaders nationally to take notice. The U.S. Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women funded the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) to develop a guide for police chiefs, issued in 2011, that encourages them to adopt specific policies in their departments to prevent police sexual misconduct. The DOJ funded the report after noting “recurring accusations of sexual offenses implicating law enforcement officers.”

Two years later, the IACP can’t tell whether its recommendations are making any difference.

No one keeps data on the number of victims of police sexual abuse, and the IACP says it can’t track the number of police departments that have adopted its recommendations. “We think there’s a good-faith effort by police departments out there to be more accountable,” says the IACP’s John Firman. But how would the IACP know, given that there’s no data on the number of victims or departments with such policies? Replies Firman, “Well, we could say the opposite—we don’t see a groundswell from people who are protesting their police departments for this kind of activity.”

If there’s no pushback, one reason may be that the victims fear retaliation. “Women are terrified and won’t come forward,” says Diane Wetendorf, an author and advocate who has worked with victims for many years. Even in cases that don’t involve cops, only about a third of rapes and less than half of sexual assaults are ever reported, according to a 2004 DOJ study. The number of women reporting sex crimes involving cops likely is far lower. “Can you imagine how much harder it is to report abuse by a police officer?” asks New York City civil-rights attorney Andrea Ritchie, co-coordinator of Streetwise and Safe, a program trying to change the city’s policing practices toward LGBTQ youth of color. One tactic of abusive cops makes that especially true—extorting sexual favors from women who fear they could be charged with a crime, in exchange for leniency. Victims think that if they report what happened, their favorable treatment will disappear.

Advocates say only a radical shift—stronger federal laws that force better oversight of local police departments—will prevent more cases like Sarah Smith’s. Ritchie, for example, wants to see the federal 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act—which established “zero tolerance” for sexual abuse and sexual misconduct by prison and jail staff—expanded to apply to anyone in police custody, not just those in lockups.

States also need to communicate with each other about cops who have been fired or allowed to resign for sexual misconduct. That’s not happening now—only 34 states contribute to the National Decertification Index, first implemented in 2000. That database holds the names of officers who have lost their certification for any type of misbehavior, including sexual misconduct, which allows police departments that are hiring to screen out bad-apple candidates. But without a national database to which all states contribute, the decertification system nationally will never work as it should. “It’s just nuts that we haven’t come together as a society on this,” says Roger Goldman, a law professor at the Saint Louis School University School of Law who’s an expert on police-licensing laws and has worked for 30 years to convince states to contribute to the database.

Maher thinks it’s time to create a mandatory federal database. In 1996, in fact, Senator Ben Nelson and Representative Harry Johnston, both Democrats, introduced bills to create a national registry of officers whose certification had been revoked. Both bills died in committee, in part because opponents said there was a lack of evidence that unfit officers were moving between states, notes Goldman in a 2001 paper in the St. Louis University Law Journal. That was the last attempt of its kind.

Advocates like Wetendorf think the only way to change the boys-will-be-boys police culture is to hire more women cops. Today women represent about 13 percent of the force, and that figure is growing at less than half a percent per year, according to the IACP. A report last year from the Rand Corporation said police departments appear to be doing too little to recruit women into the force. It also found that police hiring tests may be biased against women and that police culture may be marginalizing and discriminating against woman officers. Meanwhile, female officers continue to file discrimination and sexual-harassment lawsuits and are winning the majority of them, according to the IACP.

Activists have tried to draw attention to the issue in international forums, says Ritchie. In December 2007, 38 organizations submitted a report to the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination documenting ongoing incidents of police sexual assault and harassment. They made the case that the federal government’s failure to address the issue violates its obligations under the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The groups submitted similar reports to two other U.N. committees.

Local grassroots groups also continue to organize. After a woman accused two Chicago officers of sexually assaulting her in March 2011, the group Campaign Against Police Sexual Assault held demonstrations in support of her during the subsequent court hearings. In Oregon, the group Portland Copwatch monitors and documents incidents of local cops involved in sexual harassment and assault. And Ritchie says that after years of talking to New York City’s police department about the issue, the department has finally told her it’s open to a conversation about developing a specific sexual misconduct policy—which is particularly important in a city where young women are summarily stopped and frisked by male cops.

Without those efforts and more, what Stamper says is needed—“a profound, radical change in policing”—isn’t likely. And thousands of abusive cops will continue to intimidate and take advantage of women they’re supposed to protect.

Has Obama Presented a New Plan to Fight Terror or More of the Same?

Marcy Wheeler, Salon — Thu, 23 May 2013 14:21:00 -0700

Obama admits "No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare” -- but fails to offer way out.

Four years ago, President Obama gave a seminal counterterrorism speech in front of the Constitution arguing we “uphold our most cherished values not only because doing so is right, but because it strengthens our country and it keeps us safe.” Today, amid controversies over his Administration’s killing of American citizens in drone strikes, efforts to break hunger strikes by Guantanamo Bay detainees who have long been cleared for transfer, and seizures of the call records of national security journalists, Obama tried to reclaim those cherished values in his fight against terror.

In a speech at the National Defense University, Obama tried to redefine that fight and at least rhetorically end the war. “We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us, mindful of James Madison’s warning that ‘No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.’”

In the speech, Obama proposed a number of policies that would return us closer to the values. He directed his aides to consider proposals—like a drone court or an additional Executive Branch review—to add oversight to targeted killing. He instructed Eric Holder to review Department of Justice guidelines “governing investigations that involve reporters” by July 12 (the only deadline in the speech). He even argued for the use of more foreign assistance rather than just military force in combating terrorism, though suggested people in both parties opposed such assistance.

Obama also promised to “engage Congress about the existing Authorization to Use Military Force, or AUMF, to determine how we can continue to fight terrorists without keeping America on a perpetual war-time footing“ and threatened to veto any proposal that expanded this war. Obama has failed to make good on such veto threats in the past, and he made no mention of the Iraq AUMF, which remains in force two and a half years after the last troops were withdrawn from Iraq. So it remains to be seen whether his stated commitment to rework the AUMF will survive the political difficulties it has not in the past.

Obama’s most substantive proposals recommitted to closing Guantanamo Bay, a commitment that seemed to arise out of a focus on his own legacy. “[H]istory will cast a harsh judgment on this aspect of our fight against terrorism, and those of us who fail to end it,” he reflected. The President laid out the following plan:

I have asked the Department of Defense to designate a site in the United States where we can hold military commissions. I am appointing a new, senior envoy at the State Department and Defense Department whose sole responsibility will be to achieve the transfer of detainees to third countries. I am lifting the moratorium on detainee transfers to Yemen, so we can review them on a case by case basis. To the greatest extent possible, we will transfer detainees who have been cleared to go to other countries. Where appropriate, we will bring terrorists to justice in our courts and military justice system.

All of these proposals have been possible for the last four years (indeed, the State Department only got rid of its existing envoy to close Gitmo in January). Yet the constant concerns of the 102 Gitmo detainees hunger striking and a concern about legacy appears to have given Obama renewed urgency.

With this plan, Obama received applause from the audience.

The speech was weakest in its promise to reform the use of drones and other targeted killing. Obama announced he was sending new guidelines to Congress to govern “our use of force against terrorists” (while he was speaking about drones, he didn’t limit these guidelines to drones). His speech and the White House guidelines on it insists on a standard of “near-certainty” that the terrorist is present and that that no civilians will be killed” in the strike. That is an improvement off past practice, and those more rigorous standards may explain why there have been vastly fewer drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen this year (even while some of the strikes seem to violate Obama’s recommitment to capture targets whenever possible, rather than kill them).

But the guidelines include a good deal of wiggle room, such as on whether they apply only to Al Qaeda and associated forces or to terrorists more generally. It includes a significant reservation, asserting “these new standards and procedures do not limit the President’s authority to take action in extraordinary circumstances when doing so is both lawful and necessary to protect the United States or its allies.” And it commits to notifying Congress only when “a counterterrorism operation covered by these standards and procedures has been conducted.” Given that Senator Ron Wyden (D-WA) has asked for over a year for a list of all the countries we’ve used lethal force, it seems there may be lethal operations outside these guidelines.

The rollout of new guidelines suggests the Administration has answers (though a report today from the Daily Beast suggests the Administration doesn’t even know whether it will end strikes targeted at patterns, rather than individuals).

But in spite of all the lip service to new transparency, neither the President or his aides had answers for CodePink’s Medea Benjamin, who interrupted the President’s speech calling to remember Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, the 16 year old American citizen son of Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed two weeks after his father in October 2011.

In Eric Holder’s letter yesterday declassifying the names of the four Americans we’ve killed with drones, he explained only that Abdulrahman and two others were “not specifically targeted.” In a briefing prior to the speech, a senior Administration official hemmed and hawed when asked about Abdulrahman, refusing to explain why he was killed. “I don’t want to get into the details of each of those instances. What I will say generally is that there are times when there are individuals who are present at al Qaeda and associated forces facilities, and in that regard they are subject to the lethal action that we take. There are other instances when there are tragic cases of civilian casualties and people that the United States does not in any way intend to target — because, again, as in any war, there are tragic consequences that come with the decision to use force, including civilian casualties.”

Obama, though, just paused while Benjamin cried out about the younger Awlaki.

Ultimately, he turned her ability to raise concerns about the teenager killed by a drone strike as another form of strength.

I’m going off script as you might expect here. The voice of that woman is worth paying attention to. [Applause] Obviously I do not agree with much of what she said. And obviously she wasn’t listening to me in much of what I said. But these are tough issues and the suggestion that we can gloss over them is wrong.

Later, he even hailed Benjamin as he recited a list of Americans who represent resilience. “A citizen shouting her questions at the President.”

She may be resilient, but we still don’t have answers.

For all the answers Obama did offer today—some convincing, others not so much—ultimately some of the big questions remain.

"If Money Were No Object" - Behind Our Obsession With Powerball

Alyssa Figueroa, AlterNet — Fri, 24 May 2013 05:31:00 -0700

As Florida continues to search for their Powerball winner, some people are still fantasizing about what they would do if they won.

Though the jackpot weighs in at $590.5 million dollars, the real prize isn’t exactly this precise amount, but instead the concept that for the winner, money will no longer be an issue.

In capitalist societies, people must work in order to survive. We are tied to our labor, and thus, to money, as we need it to feed ourselves and maintain shelter. We can’t really escape this system, and so it isn’t surprising that when presented with a possibility to break out of it, we rush for the chance, despite our odds. In fact, 1 in 5 Americans believe that the best way to achieve financial security is to play the lottery.

Winning the jackpot means that no longer does someone have to be tied down to the 40-hour workweek our society cruelly created. It means no longer does someone have to go into debt to pursue their interests. It means no longer does someone have to worry about taking a sick day, vacation, spending more time with family, affording children or retiring.

Capitalists, however, argue that winning the Powerball would mean taking the purpose out of your life. They believe that people will just become lazy blobs if they don’t have the financial incentive to do something productive. But here lies the big capitalist myth. In fact, while people struggle to maintain their existence, many are unable to utilize their yearning passions — which are better (not to mention more ethical) incentives of production than the fear of poverty, homelessness and even death.

I recently asked my friends what they would do if they won the Powerball, or essentially, if money were no object. Their answers were remarkably innovative, creative and resourceful. (After paying off their student debt), my friends told me they would pursue their dreams. From opening art centers to building community farms, their ideas were beyond exciting.

Now, of course, there are always some people that can’t even imagine life without financial struggle or concern. After being alienated all their lives, it’s no surprise that some people say that if they won, their only desire would be to relax on an island somewhere or whatever. But their responses indicate just how socialized we are to be controlled. Hopefully, they would eventually be encouraged to embrace the unfamiliar territory of a real sort of freedom that would allow us to produce things because we want to, not because we need to, and produce these things creatively, not mechanically.

When I talk about the concept of winning the Powerball, I’m not promoting greed or any type of pursuit of wealth. Nor am I saying that you can’t be creative or follow your passions with little money or within the confines of this economic system. Instead, I’m pushing for quite the opposite. I’m hoping we fight for a different economic system, where our lives don’t rely on finances. I hope we work toward giving everyone opportunities to follow their passions. I hope we fight for a society that provides us with safety nets and, essentially, allows us to feel like “money is no object.” I hope we change society enough that something like the Powerball wouldn’t be so popular because people wouldn’t desire such financial freedom — they would already have it.

But right now, too many people have all their dreams hanging on a winning Powerball ticket. And the odds of winning are 1 in 175 million.

I think it’s about time to rethink our economic system and make sure it works for us — instead of us working for it.

Then we’ll all hit the jackpot.

America's Corrupt Justice System: Federal Private Prison Populations Grew by 784% in 10 Year Span

Tikkun Daily — Thu, 23 May 2013 12:18:00 -0700

Crossposted on Tikkun Daily

By David Harris-Gershon (@David_EHG)

From 1999-2010, the total U.S. prison population rose 18 percent, an increase largely reflected by the "drug war" and stringent sentencing guidelines, such as three strikes laws and mandatory minimum sentences.

However, total private prison populations exploded fivefold during this same time period, with federal private prison populations rising by 784 percent (as seen in the chart below complied by The Sentencing Project):

This stark rise in private prison populations is partially due to increased contracts granted at the state and federal levels to behemoth prison companies such as Correction Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group. These companies claim - against available data - that they can run corrections facilities at lower costs.

However, whether such companies can save governments money is not the central issue. What's at issue here is the corrupt, immoral dynamic that fuels such contracts: the concept of treating inmates as commodities that must be grown for profit.

Take, for example, the offer CCA made in 2012 to 48 states:

We'll purchase and manage your jails, and in return you [the state] must promise to keep the jails at least 90 percent full.

Such contracts provide incentives for local law enforcement to increase incarceration rates, rather than decrease them. In some instances, private prisons are grown not because crime increases, but because police harvest criminals as though they are a crop that must be stocked on the local shelves.

Additionally, for-profit prison companies engage in intense lobbying efforts that have been tied to many of our nation's most stringent sentencing guidelines, and lobby hard against the decriminalization of things such as marijuana.

The financial motive to engage in such lobbying was clearly detailed in CCA's 2010 Annual Report (as prepared by The Sentencing Project):

Such financial incentives to stock corrections facilities naturally leads to widespread corruption. Evidence of such corruption surfaced when two Pennsylvania judges were found guilty of selling juveniles to private detention facilities for millions of dollars. The "kids for cash" scandal, in which innocent children who should not have been locked up were sold for set amounts to the detention facilities, is shocking and harrowing.

However, even more shocking and harrowing is the fact that we have allowed free market pursuits to infiltrate our system of justice, making such scandals possible. When prisoners become products, we no longer have a justice system. We have an illicit marketplace. We have a corral.

America has the highest rate of imprisonment in the world. And the private prison industry is a central driving force behind this. Add to this the staggering number of African-Americans locked up, and the private prison industry has essentially created a modern-day slave trade.

A trade that should never have been allowed to enter our criminal justice system in the first place.

Follow David Harris-Gershon on Twitter @David_EHG

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The New Crime of Eating While Homeless (Hard Times, USA)

Jim Hightower, Other Words — Thu, 23 May 2013 14:11:00 -0700

By outlawing dumpster diving, Houston is making life impossible for the most vulnerable.

Whenever one of our cities gets a star turn as host of some super-sparkly event, such as a national political gathering or the Super Bowl, its first move is to tidy up — by having the police sweep homeless people into jail, out of town, or under some rug.

But Houston’s tidy-uppers aren’t waiting for a world-class event to rationalize going after homeless down-and-outers. They’ve preemptively outlawed the “crime” of dumpster diving in the Texan city.

“I was just basically looking for something to eat,” he told the Houston Chronicle. But, unbeknownst to both this indigent tourist and the great majority of Houston’s generally generous citizens, an ordinance dating way back to 1942 says that “molesting garbage containers” is illegal. In March, James Kelly, a 44-year-old Navy veteran, was passing through Houston on his way to connect with family in California. Homeless, destitute, and hungry, he chose to check out the dining delicacies in a trash bin near City Hall. Spotted by police, Kelly was promptly charged with “disturbing the contents of a garbage can in the [central] business district.” Seriously.

Also, in 2012, city officials made it a crime for any group to hand out food to the needy in the downtown area without first getting a permit. It’s a cold use of legal authority to chase the homeless away to…well, anywhere else.

Such laws are part of an effort throughout the country to criminalize what some call “homeless behavior.” And, sure enough, when hungry, the behavioral tendency of a homeless human is to seek a bite of nourishment, often in such dining spots as dumpsters. The homeless behavior that Houston has outlawed, then, is eating.

The good news is that when Houstonians learned of Kelly’s situation, many reached out to help him get through his hard times. Now they need to reach out to local politicos and get the city to stop cracking down on this abuse of homeless people.

How the Syrian Civil War Exposes the Decline of American Empire

Ramzy Baroud, Asia Times — Wed, 22 May 2013 11:49:00 -0700

The U.S. is no longer able to translate its military dominance into political progress and 'stability' in the Middle East.

In an article published on May 15, American historical social scientist Immanuel Wallerstein wrote, "Nothing illustrates more the limitations of Western power than the internal controversy its elites are having in public about what the United States in particular and Western European states should be doing about the civil war in Syria."

Those limitations are palpable in both language and action. A political and military vacuum created by past US failures and forced retreats after the Iraq war made it possible for countries like Russia to reemerge on the scene as an effective player.

It is most telling that over two years after the Syrian uprising-turned bloody civil war, the US continues to curb its involvementby indirectly assisting anti-Bashar al-Assad regime opposition forces, through its Arab allies and Turkey. Even its political discourse is indecisive and often times inconsistent.

Concurrently, Russia's position remains unswerving and constantly advancing while the US is pushed into a corner, demonstrating an incapacity to react except for condemnations and mere statements. Much to the displeasure of its Arab allies.

Russia's recent delivery of sophisticated anti-ship missiles and its own buildup of warships in the eastern Mediterranean is a case in point. The move was condemned by the Obama administration as one that is "ill-timed and very unfortunate".

But this American attitude in the region is fairly new. Behind it stands a history bloody and filled with imprudent foreign policy. Regardless of how the US decides to move on Syria, the chances are that a return to its old dominant approach is no longer an option.

The current American political impotence in the Middle East is unprecedented, at least since the rapid disintegration of the Soviet bloc in the early 1990s.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union had ushered in the rise of a unipolar world, wholly managed by the United States. The rise of the uncontested American hegemony represented a shift in historical dialectics, where great powers found their match and the rest of the world, more or less, accommodated the ensuing competition.

Then, the US acted quickly to assert its dominance starting with hasty military adventures such as the invasion of Panama in 1989. A much more calculated move followed with a devastating war against Iraq in 1990-91. In Panama the objective was to remind the US's southern neighbors that the region's cop was still on duty and was capable of intervening at a moment's notice to rearrange the entire political paradigm in any way that Washington deemed necessary - as this has been the case since the CIA-orchestrated coup and war in Guatemala in 1954 and even earlier.

The US's massive military involvement in Iraq, however, was that of a conqueror who arrived with an entourage of many countries - regional and Western allies - to claim the spoils resulting from the end of the protracted Cold War. It was an arrogant show of force since the target was a single Arab country with humble military and economic means vs. major military powers from near and far.

The war devastated Iraq - its initial aerial bombing campaign alone involving the dropping of 88,500 tons of bombs. Many new weapons were used and tested, while the US media and public celebrated the prowess of their military. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died or were wounded as a result of one of the most asymmetrical wars in history.

Trying to capitalize on its military triumph, Washington quickly pushed for a political settlement between its closest ally, Israel, and Arab countries. The logic behind the Madrid Conference in 1991 was achieving pseudo peace that catered to Israel's interests, while opening up the gate of normalization between Israel and its neighbors. Moreover, the US hoped to achieve some sort of "stability" that would allow it to manage the Middle East region and its ample resources in a less hostile environment.

Eventually, Israel managed to negotiate its own political deal with the Palestinians, thus dividing Arab ranks and ensuring that the "peace talks'" outcome was entirely consistent with Israel's colonial ambitions.

As years passed, the US and Israeli political visions moved even closer, but with Washington eventually becoming a mere conduit to Israeli colonial objectives. This fact was underscored repeatedly under the George W Bush administration, which compounded US failure in the region with even more disastrous and dangerous wars.

A major fault in US foreign policy is that it is almost entirely reliant on military power - as in the ability to blow things up. The US war on Iraq which, in various forms, extended from 1990 to 2011, included a devastating blockade and ended with a brutal invasion.

This long war was as unscrupulous as it was violent. Aside from its overwhelming human toll, it was placed within a horrid political strategy aimed at exploiting the country's existing sectarian and other fault lines, therefore triggering a civil war and sectarian hatred from which Iraq is unlikely to cover for many years.

But the limitations of US military power became quite obvious in later years. The empire was no longer able to bridge the divide between translating its dominance on the ground - itself increasingly challenged by local resistance groups - into a level of political progress required to achieve the minimum amount of "stability".

Moreover, an economic recession, coupled with the Iraqi retreat and an equally costly debacle in Afghanistan - forced the new administration in Washington, under the leadership of President Barack Obama to rethink Bush's earlier quest for global hegemony. Massive military cuts were soon to follow. Concurrently, the imbalance of global power was slowly, quietly but surely being equalized with the rise of China as a new possible contender.

In the midst of the US transition and policy rethink, an upheaval struck the Middle East. Its manifestations - revolutions, civil wars, regional mayhem and conflicts of all sorts - reverberated beyond the Middle East.

Shrinking and rising empires alike took notice. Fault lines were quickly determined and exploited. Players changed positions or jockeyed for advanced ones, as a new Great Game was about to begin. The so-called "Arab Spring" was rapidly becoming a game-changer in a region that seemed resistant to transformations of any kind.

The transformation of the Middle East - promising at times, very gory and bloody at others - arrived at a time when the US was making forced adjustments in its military priorities. Putting greater focus on the Pacific region and the South China Sea are such examples. Without much notice, it was forced to reengage with the Middle East, as a whole - not a country at a time. Only then, its weaknesses were seriously exposed and its lack of influence became palpable.

Bankrupt is maybe an appropriate term to use in describing the current US policy in the Middle East. Imprudent military adventures devastated the region but achieved no long-term objectives. Reckless policies that are predicated on trying to exploit, as opposed to understand the Middle East and its complex political and historical formation and the insistence on keeping Israel a main priority in its approach to the vastly shifting political lines, will unlikely to bode well for US interests.

However, unlike the early 1990s, when the US moved to reshape the entire region and established permanent military presence, new dynamics are forcing it to change tactics. In this new reality, the US is incapable of reshaping reality but merely trying to offset or control its unfavorable outcomes.

"What the United States (and western Europe) want to do is 'control' the situation," Immanuel Wallerstein argued. "They will not be able to do it. Hence the screams of the 'interventionists' and the foot-dragging of the 'prudent.' It is a lose-lose for the west, while not being at the same time a 'win' for people in the Middle East."

This "lose-lose" scenario might not necessarily translate to a complete American foreign policy meltdown in the near future, but will certainly open the possibility for new/old players to main serious gains, Russia being a lead example. This will likely compel the US to change tactics, despite the incessant objections of neoconservative forces and the Israeli lobby.

Why Has Humanity Always Fantasized About the Capture and Rape of Women?

Lynn Stuart Parramore, AlterNet — Wed, 22 May 2013 07:13:00 -0700

Misogyny’s deepest roots are exposed in the endless repetition of stories about capture and rape.

If you think about it, a woman carried off against her will is one of the most popular stories in human history. Whether she’s forced to marry, sexually violated, or otherwise tormented, the female captive pops up in Persian tales, Arthurian legends, and the great epics of India. She’s a staple of every art form and cultural product, from the paintings of great masters to true crime stories, from sonnets to soap operas. She’s woven into explanations of imperial origins: the Romans became the Romans because they snatched women from a neighboring tribe in a celebrated event known as the Rape of the Sabines. Biblical stories of captured women are so commonplace that the Lord issues helpful instructions on how to do the thing correctly, which include shaving the captive’s head, and if she fails to please you, properly disposing of her after she has been “dishonored.” (Deuteronomy 21:10-14).

Myths overflow with women abducted and raped (the two terms have an ancient linkage): Persephone is carried off by Hades, Europa by Zeus, and Helen by Paris, which sets off the Trojan War. The romance would not be the romance, nor the novel the novel, without the long tradition of captive women in everything from the legendary medieval romance Apollonius of Tyre, to the grotesqueries of the Marquis de Sade, right on down to Stieg Larsson’s pop culture sensation, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (original title: Men Who Hate Women).

How do we explain this persistence? First, there’s the ancient notion of a maiden taken for the purpose of bringing “new blood” to the tribe – what anthropologists call “exogamy.” This idea, usually expressed in a rape or a violent raid, gets sanitized and elevated in originary cultural narratives like the story of the Virgin Mary, whose divine impregnation (which she didn’t appear to choose), transforms her into the mother of the Christian religion.

Sometimes the captive woman expresses dramatic tensions, and even attractions, between men, as in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, where the capture and violation of a female creates a fraught male triangle. Other times captive women express economic and political conflicts between large groups. In Europe, popular stories of women abducted into Oriental harems (often featured in erotica) were brought over by settlers to America, where they gave way to tales of white people – often young women – taken captive by Indians (Western movies like The Searchers carried on this tradition). The visual titillation provided by captive women, a favorite theme of great European painters like Rubens and Titian, became a cinematic staple of schlocky slasher films, where young girls are abducted and terrorized until a “rescue” releases the audience from any collective feelings of guilt about watching women chopped into confetti.

The horror doesn’t end with the story. Captivity tales have a disturbing way of floating between fantasy and enactment. The key modern captivity novel, John Fowles’ The Collector, centers on a lonely clerk who collects butterflies until he kidnaps the object of his romantic obsession and locks her in the cellar. The novel inspired countless imitations in literature and film. It was also cited as the real-life inspiration for not one but three different American serial killers, one of whom, Leonard Lake, actually named his kidnapping and killing spree “Operation Miranda” after the victim in Fowles’ book.

In the porn industry, the capture, degradation and torture of females constitutes an entire subgenre. Women are hogtied, gang-banged, and locked away in dungeons. The captured and raped schoolgirl is a favorite theme of Japanese erotic hentai cartoons and video games. Monster porn adds the spectacle of tentacled aliens and horned devils delivering the torture.

There is no telling how many souls sit in darkened rooms consuming these flickering fantasies, which reflect the whole pantheon of sexual taboos and repressions. It’s not only men; women, too, have fantasies associated with capture-and-rape, for a variety of reasons, among them the need to erase culturally prescribed guilt about initiating sex. For a reasonably well-adjusted adult, consumption of violent porn may be a way to process common human fears and desires in a way that doesn’t actually hurt anyone. For others -- it’s impossible to know how many -- the images may become haunting demons that taunt the watcher into action.

In any case, the fantasy of capturing a woman and getting away with it is nothing if not pervasive. But how exactly does the fantasy come to be acted out? Would it happen, or happen as often, without the images and the narratives pointing the way?

We don’t yet know what combination of elements drove Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro to enact his particular fantasies, what biological components and individual life experiences set the stage for his horrific actions. But we do know that the capture-and-rape narrative is deeply embedded in our cultural DNA. We think of acts like Castro’s as the aberrations of a monster or the sickness of a pervert, but they reflect something that permeates our shared culture – our literature, myths, religious rituals, everything that forms what Freud called our archaic inheritance, or, if you prefer Jung, our collective unconscious.

It is the myth of Persephone, I think, which exposes the deepest roots of the capture-and-rape fantasy. In that ancient tale, Persephone is out gathering flowers when a cleft in the earth opens and out leaps Hades, Lord of the Underworld, who snatches her and carries her off to his dark kingdom. Eventually, Persephone is allowed to return to the upper world for half the year. The part where she is down below is winter, and her return signals spring.

In this case, the abduction of a woman is meant to explain the cycles of nature. That makes sense when you consider that a woman’s body is always more connected to the cycles of nature than a man’s. It’s she who bleeds every month, and she who gives birth. Because of her association with the cycles of life, she’s always connected to death. After all, that which is born must also die. (The death and the maiden motif, a cousin of capture-and-rape, is its own artistic subgenre.) The womb is always connected to the tomb. And woman must be punished for it.

In many ways, human civilization can be seen as a frantic effort to transcend nature – to break away from the cycles that condemn us to die. Patriarchal cultures work desperately to erase our dependence on nature, personified in women’s bodies. We give children the names of their fathers, erasing matrilineal history, and in our religious fantasies we turn mothers into virgins impregnated by gods. We intuitively understand that manly gods, whether Zeus or Yahweh, must impose themselves over nature and humans – that is how we know they are gods. We are conditioned to expect that they will exert their authority through and over the bodies of women.

In the kingdom of his dilapidated home, Ariel Castro could fancy himself a godling; transcendent over the processes of nature. He could control the sexuality of the women he imprisoned. He could control the process of birth, which he evidently did with deadly enthusiasm, forcing Michelle Knight to deliver Amanda Berry’s baby, threatening to murder her if the infant did not survive. He was in charge of the process of life and death. Destiny itself belonged to him.

Castro is a deeply disturbed criminal, but he is not an alien. The sensationalistic coverage of the Cleveland kidnappings, with its rapt attention to every lurid detail, every particle of torture, expresses both our horror at the criminal’s actions and our voyeuristic participation in his fantasy. The comforting notion that we are only trying to understand brutality erases the shared guilt we feel in suspecting that a whole host of psychological, cultural and political structures in our society reinforce the idea that a woman is an object to be taken and owned, a bit of prey to be hunted, a temptation whose behavior can suddenly spark a man’s animal nature. The focus on the criminal’s punishment – will he or won’t he get the death penalty? -- promises the counterpart of the “happy ending” in the slasher film. And yet once the criminal has been brought to justice, the vicious dynamics of power, the negligence of the legal system, the visual culture dependent on tormented female bodies, and the lingering curse of patriarchy itself, remain largely undisturbed.

But no matter, soon we’ll get to see the made-for-TV movie.

Cops Go Undercover at High School to Bust Special-Needs Kid for Pot: Why Are Police So Desperate to Throw Kids in Jail?

Kristen Gwynne, AlterNet — Wed, 22 May 2013 14:23:00 -0700

The school-to-prison pipeline strikes again.

Californians Doug and Catherine Snodgrass are suing their son’s high school for allowing undercover police officers to set up the 17-year-old special-needs student for a drug arrest.

In a video segment on ABC News, they say they were "thrilled" when their son -- who has Asperger's and other disabilities and struggled to make friends -- appeared to have instantly made a friend named Daniel.

“He suddenly had this friend who was texting him around the clock,” Doug Snodgrass told ABC News. His son had just recently enrolled at Chaparral High School.

"Daniel," however, was an undercover cop with the Riverside County Sheriff's Department who "hounded" the teenager to sell him his prescription medication. When he refused, the undercover cop gave him $20 to buy him weed, and he complied -- not realizing the guy he wanted to befriend wanted him behind bars.

In December, the unnamed senior was arrested along with 21 other students from three schools, all charged with crimes related to the two officers' undercover drug operation at two public schools in Temecula, California (Chaparral and Temecula Valley High School). This March, Judge Marian H. Tully ruled that Temecula Valley Unified School District could not expel the student, and had in fact failed to provide him with proper services.

“Within three days of the officer’s requests, [the] student burned himself due to his anxiety,” Tully said. “Ultimately, the student was persuaded to buy marijuana for someone he thought was a friend who desperately needed this drug and brought it to school for him.”

In January, a juvenile court judge decided that extenuating circumstances applied to the student's case, and ruled that he serve informal probation and 20 hours of community service, which would translate into “no finding of guilt.”

Since being allowed back to school, Snodgrass says his son has been "bullied" via suspensions and threat of expulsion. “Our son was cleared of the criminal charge, but the school continued to try and expel him,” Snodgrass said.

The Snodgrasses are now suing the school for unspecified damages. District administrators, they told ABC, should have protected their son, but instead “participated with local authorities in an undercover drug sting that intentionally targeted and discriminated against [him]."

“Sending police and informants to entrap high-school students is sick,” says Tony Newman, director of media relations at the Drug Policy Alliance. “We see cops seducing 18-year-olds to fall in love with them or befriending lonely kids and then tricking them into getting them small amounts of marijuana so they can stick them with felonies. We often hear that we need to fight the drug war to protect the kids. As these despicable examples show, more often the drug war is ruining young people's lives and doing way more harm than good.”

Stephen Downing, a retired Deputy Chief of Police in the LAPD, said the behavior of the police in this case points to troubling trends in policy. "It is evidence of just how far we have gone, and how callous we have become, in treating our children with the care and dignity they should be entitled.”

“The fact that the police officer chose to prey upon the most vulnerable" is “egregious” but not surprising, he said. He pointed toward policing tactics and policies -- like quotas, the increasing criminalization of America's schools, and the war on drugs -- that put pressure on police to treat normal teen behavior as criminal.

Downing, who is a member of the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, also pointed out, “The less fortunate are always targeted."

“Do we ever hear of an undercover operation like this conducted in an exclusive private school, or on a university campus, or on the stages of a movie studio in Hollywood? No, we don't. Why? Because those people would complain, get lawyers and make life miserable for the status quo."

"The parents of this child are right to bring a lawsuit, to take that needed step that will, hopefully, bring about the kind of change that will stop this kind of tyrannical corruption and harm to our children," he said.

Drug crimes are not the only charges unfairly leveled against students. Marginalized youths are regularly the targets of the school-to-prison pipeline, as in the case of Kiera Wilmot, a 16-year-old girl who was arrested less than a month ago for accidentally causing a small explosion during a science experiment.

10 Common Ideas About Sex -- That May Be Totally Wrong

Liz Langley, AlterNet — Wed, 22 May 2013 08:26:00 -0700

Do women lose interest in sex as they age? How safe is it to have sex post-heart attack?

We all think we know things we don’t, but when it comes to sex being fuzzy can be sticky. It’s harmless enough to think, say, that green M&Ms make you horny, but if you didn’t realize you had to take the birth control pill every day, misconceptions could lead to conceptions. So, are you ready for a sexual pop quiz? Here are 10 ideas about sex and the reasons they are true or false. Because you don’t always know what you think you know. Ya know?

1. True or false: Women lose interest in sex as they age.

There are myths we project onto others and myths we project onto ourselves. I assumed that my interest in sex would wane over the years whether I wanted it to or not, but during an evening of girl talk about the weird effects of perimenopause, this phrase came up: "Nobody ever told me about the horniness.”

I remember, because I was the one who said it.

I thought for a while that my hormones were ready to go off to an assisted living facility in Fort Lauderdale, but no: they go in and out of retirement like Michael Jordan (and they, too, want to take up new sports). Which just goes to show you that while it’s true that sex drives change periodically throughout our lives, it’s not true that interest in sex has some absolute cut-off point.

Sexuality and U, the website for the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada, says that after menopause arousal does take longer, lubrication is not as easy and hormonal fluctuations may alter desire, but that doesn’t mean it will vamoose altogether. Some women have an increased interest because they’re unburdened by fear of pregnancy or having young kids to take care of. Our Bodies, Ourselves says the quality of relationships also plays a part in our later-life interest in sex as do some medications. So the bottom line is, it depends on the woman and her situation.

I know…you were looking forward to letting yourself go. Me too. Now I think I’ll still be flirting and asking “How’s my hair?” when I have more wrinkles than an Agatha Christie plot.

2. True or false: If you have heart trouble you should stop having sex.

Well, as luck would have it giving up sex isn’t necessary if you’ve had heart trouble. From ThirdAge.com: “Dr. Dawn Harper explains, "People with heart disease should be able to lead a completely normal sex life. Even people who've had a heart attack can normally resume their sex lives within two or three weeks unless there are complications. However, if you suffer from chest pain during sex, you should stop immediately and see your doctor."

The American Heart Association has a list of tips, most of which involve checking with your doctor and some of which include specifics on erectile dysfunction, estrogen and recovery from heart failure. Of course, you want the green light from your own doctor, but you also don’t necessarily have to give up something that helps make life worth living.

Also that fabulous plot device of guys having heart attacks in the arms of their mistresses turns out not to be not-so-likely in real life. From the AHA: “Cardiovascular events — such as heart attacks or chest pain caused by heart disease — rarely occur during sexual activity, because sexual activity is usually for a short time.”

Dang it. That’s how I was planning to go.

3. True or false: You can orgasm, no direct stimulation required.

You might not be able to do it while sitting at your desk at work, but who knows, you might. “A few folks can literally ‘think’ off,” sex educator and author Betty Dodson told the Huffington Post’s Madeline Vann. Cosmo gives some tips for how to get there including what are probably the two most important ones a) practice; and b) don’t expect it to happen overnight.

Finally, one of my favorite sex educators, Sheri Winston, author of A Woman’s Anatomy of Arousal, gave some tips to The Doctors, including using your breath to fire up your energy and making sounds to alert your brain to the importance of the experience. All the advice seems to include getting yourself in the right head space and using less-than-obvious body parts, like your brain, to get you where you want to go.

4. True or false: You can tell a man’s penis size by the size of his hands.

One of the most oft-trumped pieces of sexual folklore is that you can tell the size of a man’s penis by his hands/feet/fingers/wallet -- just pick something and someone will have found a way to relate it to penis size. Snopes says nope: that meme is untrue, but Catherine Salmon of Redlands University calls to our attention a study in the Asian Journal of Andrology saying that digit ratio -- the ratio between the length of a man’s index finger to his ring finger -- can be very telling.

“Their take on it was that the 2D:4D finger digit ratio is predictive of penis size, the lower the ratio, the higher the prenatal testosterone exposure and the longer the adult penis. However, it doesn’t mean that you can tell the size of a guy’s equipment from a casual glance at his hands: 2D:4D differences are quite small. And it’s the difference in finger ratio not overall hand size. And the evidence doesn’t speak to the girth of his equipment which many women report matters more.”

Most women probably won’t get out calipers to get a serious bead on his 2nd-digit/4th-digit ratio, Salmon says. I don't know. That third glass of pinot grigio can wash away a lot of inhibitions.

5. True or false: Women don’t watch porn.

Some women not only watch porn, they watch enough of it for there to be news stories about some of them being addicted to it. A story in Ebony by Feminista Jones delves into the preferences of women, why they like what they like (via Twitter survey) and cites a study led by Gomathi Sitharthan of the University of Sydney claiming that one in three women are porn watchers. (Super-fun cocktail tidbit: Forbes’ Jenna Goudreau found that while the economy was crashing in 2010, 17 Securities and Exchange Commission employees were found to having been surfing porn sites on government computers; one was a woman who tried to access a porn sites 1,800 times from her work laptop in two weeks and had downloaded 600 sexually explicit images.)

Anyway, yes, some women are "inspired" by images of people doin’ it just like men are and for a fun list of reasons check out Susannah Breslin’s Top 10 Reasons Why Women Watch Porn on The Frisky. “Learn new moves,” is one I like, though that’s usually a happy byproduct of “Ogle guys.” That’s why gay porn is so good. The more naked men you can cram on a screen or in an otherwise small space the better.

6. True or false: Having sex before an athletic event will mess up your performance.

When I was 12 and saw Burgess Meredith tell Sylvester Stallone in Rocky that “women weaken legs” I believed thereafter that sex before sports was a bad idea. You might not be about to step into the ring with Apollo Creed, but if you’ve participated in competitive sports, marathon running or have hobbies like rock climbing you may have wondered whether sex interferes with your energy levels.

CNN reported during last summer’s Olympics that sex being bad for athletic performance is a myth and it actually might help, because it’s relaxing, distracting and decreases stress and mental fatigue. Juan Carlos Medina, general coordinator of the sports department at Tecnologico de Monterrey in Mexico, told CNN that sex can reduce athletes’ anxiety before a game and that, "Even Pele confessed that he never suspended sexual encounters with his wife before a game, I mean, that thing about sex helping to relax is a verified truth." Studies by Barry Komisaruk, a psychology professor at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey also found that sexual stimulation in women produces a powerful pain-blocking effect which could help with sports-related injuries or muscle pain.

7. True or false: The birth control pill will make you gain weight.

WebMD says this notion got started because when the pill first came out in the 1960s it contained 1,000 times more hormones than most women actually needed for pregnancy prevention -- higher estrogen causes fluid retention and increased appetite, ergo weight gain. The pill has been refined since then. In most women it does not cause weight gain and if it does it is insignificant and temporary. “Indeed, a review of 44 studies showed no evidence that birth control pills caused weight gain in most users,” Web MD says.

Besides, if you’re worried the pill might make you gain weight, try pregnancy.

8. True or false: Losing their virginity is always painful for girls.

Even if you’re not a virgin, intimacy coach Tinamarie Bernard’s take on this subject doesn’t just answer the question, it challenges the ways young women in our culture learn about sex and what they can expect from it.

Bernard says the first time not only doesn’t have to be painful, it can be ecstatic, even orgasmic. “I had a strong sense as a teenager that sex was something special and I don’t mean 'Oh, I’m a virgin! It’s special!' More like the bonding that connects two bodies, two souls and two hearts,” she says.

Having already had orgasms, she was prepared for what her body would feel. She and her boyfriend talked a lot about the first time and “we had played a lot before that so we were comfortable in our bodies and comfortable giving and receiving pleasure. It wasn’t what happens today in the hookup culture,” where sex happens too quickly for the deeper pleasure of intimacy.

“Imagine if this was the 'narrative' we taught our youths regarding sex education,” Bernard says. “Imagine if young women expected the best. Imagine if they felt that their pleasure was as important as anything else. ”

But Bernard says a “collective insanity” around sex in our culture essentially treats this adult subject in a rather childish way: either dirty shameful or superficial and “hot,” a tool to sell everything from shampoo to burgers. “Those two voices have dominated the conversation,” she says, “and the middle ground of pleasure, joy, connection, intimacy orgasm,” that sex is amazing and you can experience it that way. “That gentle voice of reason,” she says, “really needs to get louder.”

9. True or false: If someone is transgender it means they’re gay.

Even if you’re pretty savvy about the sex you’re having, the areas of the sexual theme park you’ve never traveled in might be pretty murky to you. It’s easy to find heteronormative sex advice everywhere -- you could pick up plenty just watching reruns of "Sex and the City." But the basic facts of being transgender aren’t something you’re likely to casually pick up a lot of information on. Even the meaning of "transgender" is sometimes confused.

Your sex is the physical sex you’re born with; your gender is which sex you identify with internally that you express externally through behavior, clothing, etc., says the American Psychological Association: think Chaz Bono. And, the APA says, “Transgender people may be straight, lesbian, gay, bisexual or asexual, just as nontransgender people can be.”

10. True or false: Sex makes you happy.

Trick question! It can, but it depends on one very specific variable. Tim Wadsworth, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, found that people who report being happier also report higher sexual frequency. But he also found that happiness was contingent on how much sex they perceive their peers are having and whether they are having more or less.

The 2013 study analyzed data from the General Social Survey. Wadsworth’s survey group of 15,386 people was queried from 1993 to 2006 and asked if they were “very happy, pretty happy or not too happy.” After controlling for numerous factors, the researchers found that people who had sex at least three times a month were 33% happier than those who hadn’t had sex in 12 months and the happiness level rises with frequency: “Those reporting having sex two to three times a week are 55 percent more likely to report a higher level of happiness.”

Not that surprising. But if you want to turn someone from Tigger to Eeyore let them know they’re not getting as much action as the next person. People infer knowledge of the private matter of sex from social interaction, peer groups, media, surveys and other ways. “As a result of this knowledge, if members of a peer group are having sex two to three times a month but believe their peers are on a once-weekly schedule, their probability of reporting a higher level of happiness falls by about 14 percent, Wadsworth found.”

This is the easiest thing I’ve been asked to believe in a long time. We can pretend to be sophisticated, but we’re all children when it comes to thinking someone else got a bigger slice of cake than we did.

Or in this case, just a better piece.

Obama Speech Interrupted: "Medea Benjamin Gets in News Conferences Using 'CodePink Magic'" (WATCH)

Alyssa Figueroa, AlterNet — Thu, 23 May 2013 12:58:00 -0700

During Obama's speech on Thursday, CODEPINK's co-founder Medea Benjamin demanded the closure of GITMO and the end of his killer drone program.

During Obama's speech on Thursday, CODEPINK's co-founder Medea Benjamin stood up to the president, demanding the closure of the prison at Guantanamo and the end of his killer drone program.

Benjamin shouted, as she was escorted out of the news conference:

"Can you tell the Muslim people that their lives are as precious as our lives?Can you take the drones out of the hands of the CIA? Can you stop the signature strikes that are killing people on the basis of suspicious activities? Will you apologize to the thousands of Muslims that you have killed? Will you compensate the innocent family victims? That will make us safer."

After Benjamin was removed from the room, Obama said that he would go "off script," and address Benjamin, saying, "I'm willing to cut that young lady interrupting me some slack, because it's worth being passionate about ... The voice of that woman is worth paying attention to."

National CODEPINK coordinator Alli McCracken said, "We're glad he acknowledged [CODEPINK], but we want him to walk the walk. He's been talking the talk ... saying he appreciates nuances of these issues and that they're complex." But in the end, she said, CODEPINK wants the president to take action.

McCracken said the organization had about 50 people protesting outside of the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C., where Obama was speaking. Asked about the secret of getting Benjamin into these events, she said, "It's CODEPINK magic."

Below is a video clip from Huffngton Post's political reporter Ryan J. Reilly of Benjamin being escorted out of the room.

The Secret Donors Behind the Center for American Progress and Other Think Tanks

Ken Silverstein, The Nation — Wed, 22 May 2013 13:11:00 -0700

Washington institutions esteemed for their independent scholarship don't disclose donations from corporations and foreign governments.

This article first appeared in the Nation. For more great content, subscribe to the Nation here.

The Center for American Progress, Washington’s leading liberal think tank, has been a big backer of the Energy Department’s $25 billion loan guarantee program for renewable energy projects. CAP has specifically praised First Solar, a firm that received $3.73 billion under the program, and its Antelope Valley project in California.

Last year, when First Solar was taking a beating from congressional Republicans and in the press over job layoffs and alleged political cronyism, CAP’s Richard Caperton praised Antelope Valley in his testimony to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, saying it headed up his list of “innovative projects” receiving loan guarantees. Earlier, Caperton and Steve Spinner— a top Obama fundraiser who left his job at the Energy Department monitoring the issuance of loan guarantees and became a CAP senior fellow—had written an article cross-posted on CAP’s website and its Think Progress blog, stating that Antelope Valley represented “the cutting edge of the clean energy economy.”

Though the think tank didn’t disclose it, First Solar belonged to CAP’s Business Alliance, a secret group of corporate donors, according to internal lists obtained by The Nation. Meanwhile, José Villarreal—a consultant at the power- house law and lobbying firm Akin Gump, who “provides strategic counseling on a range of legal and policy issues” for  corporations—was on First Solar’s board until April 2012 while also sitting on the board of CAP, where he remains a member, according to the group’s latest tax filing.

CAP is a strong proponent of alternative energy, so there’s no reason to doubt the sincerity of its advocacy. But the fact that CAP has received financial support from First Solar while touting its virtues to Washington policy-makers points to a conflict of interest that, critics argue, ought to be disclosed to the public. CAP’s promotion of the company’s interests has supplemented First Solar’s aggressive Washington lobbying efforts, on which it spent more than $800,000 during 2011 and 2012.

“The only thing more damaging than disclosing your donors and having questions raised about the independence of your work is not disclosing them and have the information come to light and undermine your work,” says Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics. “The best practice, whether required by the IRS or not, is to disclose contributions.”

Nowadays, many Washington think tanks effectively serve as unregistered lobbyists for corporate donors, and companies strategically contribute to them just as they hire a PR or lobby shop or make campaign donations. And unlike lobbyists and elected officials, think tanks are not subject to financial disclosure requirements, so they reveal their donors only if they choose to. That makes it impossible for the public and lawmakers to know if a think tank is putting out an impartial study or one that’s been shaped by a donor’s political agenda. “If you’re a lobbyist, whatever you say is heavily discounted,” says Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University and an expert on political ethics. “If a think tank is saying it, it obviously sounds a lot better. Maybe think tanks aren’t aware of how useful that makes them to private interests. On the other hand, maybe it’s part of their revenue model.”

* * *

When Newt Gingrich was running for president, The Washington Post ran a story about the Center for Health Transformation, which it described as his “hybrid” single-issue think tank. The center, which subsequently went bankrupt and was bought by WellStar, published reports and advocated on behalf of donors—including lobbyists and industry groups that donated millions to support its work—in addition to offering perks like “direct Newt interaction.” While the center did disclose some of its donors, it didn’t reveal how much money they had contributed.

It was an interesting story, but it obscured a key point: Newt’s “hybrid” was a particularly straightforward form of pay-to-play, but its basic features are common at Washington think tanks. Like Newt’s Center for Health Transformation, many lure big donors with a package of benefits, including personalized policy briefings, the right to directly underwrite and shape research projects, and general support for the donor’s political needs.

Most think tanks are nonprofit organizations, so a donor can even get a nice tax break for contributing. But it’s their reputation for impartiality and their web of contacts that makes them especially useful as policy advocates. “Think tanks can always draw a big audience to your event, including government folks,” a Washington lobbyist who has worked with several told me. “And people generally don’t think they would twist anything, or wonder about where they get their money.”

While think tanks portray themselves as altruistic scholarly institutions, they emphasize their political influence when courting donors. “If you have a particular area of policy interest, you can support a specific research effort under way,” the Brookings Institution says in one pitch for cash. Those interested in  ”a deeper engagement”—read: ready to fork over especially large sums of money—get personal briefings from resident experts and can work directly with senior Brookings officials to draw up a research agenda that will “maximize impact on policymaking.”

The Center for Strategic and International Studies advertises itself as being “in the unique position to bring together leaders of both the public and private sectors in small, often off-the-record meetings to build consensus around important policy issues.” It allows top-tier donors to directly sponsor reports, events and speaker series.

Because most think tanks don’t fully disclose their donors, it’s not always easy to see what sort of benefits money can buy. But during Chuck Hagel’s confirmation hearings, the Atlantic Council, where he’d been chairman before moving to the Pentagon, released a list of its foreign donors. One of them turned out to be the oil-rich government of Kazakhstan, headed by dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev. Last year, the council hosted a conference on Kazakhstan that was paid for by the Nazarbayev regime and Chevron, which has vast oil interests in the country and is also a major donor to the  council. Keynote speakers included Kazakhstan’s former ambassador to the United States and Kenneth Derr, a former Chevron CEO and now Kazakhstan’s honorary consul in San Francisco.

* * *

John Podesta, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and the head of Obama’s first transition team, founded the Center for American Progress in 2003. Last year, Podesta stepped down as CAP’s president—he remains its chair and counselor—and was replaced by Neera Tanden, who served in both the Obama and Clinton administrations. Former Virginia Congressman Tom Perriello heads the CAP Action Fund, an advocacy unit, which operates out of the same offices and shares personnel.

CAP has emerged as perhaps the most influential of all think tanks during the Obama era, and there’s been a rapidly revolving door between it and the administration. CAP is also among the most secretive of all think tanks concerning its donors. Most major think tanks prepare an annual report containing at least some financial and donor information and make it available on their websites. According to CAP spokeswoman Andrea Purse, the center doesn’t even publish one.

Purse told me that CAP “follows all financial disclosure requirements with regard to donors…. We don’t use corporate funds to pay for research or reports.” But she flatly refused to discuss specific donors or to provide an on-the-record explanation for why CAP won’t disclose them.

After growing rapidly in its first few years, tax records show, CAP’s total assets fell in 2006 for the first time, from $23.6 million to $20.4 million. Assets started growing again in 2007 when CAP founded the Business Alliance, a membership rewards program for corporate contributors, and then exploded when Obama was elected in 2008. According to its most recent nonprofit tax filing, CAP’s total assets now top $44 million, and its Action Fund treasury holds $6 million more.

A confidential CAP donor pitch I obtained describes the Business Alliance as “a channel for engagement with the corporate community” that provides “the opportunity to…collaborate on common interests.” It offers three membership levels, with the perks to top donors ($100,000 and up) including private meetings with CAP experts and executives, round-table discussions with “Hill and national leaders,” and briefings on CAP reports “relevant to your unique interests.”

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CAP doesn’t publicly disclose the members of its Business Alliance, but I obtained multiple internal lists from 2011 showing that dozens of major corporations had joined. The lists were prepared by Chris Belisle, who at the time served as the alliance’s senior manager after having been recruited from his prior position as manager of corporate relations at the US Chamber of Commerce. According to these lists, CAP’s donors included Comcast, Walmart, General Motors, Pacific Gas and Electric, General Electric, Boeing and Lockheed. Though it doesn’t appear on the lists, the University of Phoenix was also a donor.

Incidentally, Scott Lilly, a Hill veteran who joined CAP in 2004 as a senior fellow covering national security, simultaneously served as a registered lobbyist for Lockheed between 2005 and 2011. Rudy deLeon, CAP’s senior vice president for national security and international policy, was a Boeing executive and directed the company’s lobbying operations between 2001 and 2006, before joining the think tank the following year.

Of the CAP donors mentioned in this story, I contacted Lockheed, which refused to confirm or deny its membership in the Business Alliance, and First Solar and Boeing, both of which confirmed that they had been members but wouldn’t say how much they gave or when. “Our work with think tanks is not political, but is more educational in nature,” Tim Neale of Boeing told me. “We want to learn from and share ideas with scholars across the political spectrum, and we like to get a wide range of viewpoints and ideas rather than focus solely on a particular political bent.”

Several CAP insiders, who asked to speak off the record, told me that when Podesta left, there was a fear that contributions would dry up. Raising money had always been important, they said, but Tanden ratcheted up the efforts to openly court donors, which has impacted CAP’s work. Staffers were very clearly instructed to check with the think tank’s development team before writing anything that might upset contributors, I was told.

I obtained a March 2012 e-mail from Belisle to Podesta and CAP’s communications and legal teams, which was also copied to Tanden. The e-mail noted a Think Progress item featuring a New York Times op-ed by former Goldman Sachs executive Greg Smith, who called the company’s environment “toxic and destructive.” At the time, the firm was under heavy fire for deceiving investors and for its larger role in driving the speculation in toxic securities that unwound the economy. Belisle said he was “flagging” the item for Tanden since she had recently met with Michael Paese, director of Goldman’s Washington lobbying office. Two sources told me that Goldman Sachs subsequently became a donor. Purse and Paese declined comment.

* * *

Foreign governments and business entities can also join the Business Alliance, whose membership list includes the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office—which functions as Taiwan’s embassy in Washington and retains many lobbyists, including former Oklahoma Republican Senator Don Nickles and former Missouri Democratic Representative Richard Gephardt—and the Confederation of Businessmen and Industrialists of Turkey (TUSKON).

In 2010, CAP issued a report, “Ties That Bind: U.S.-Taiwan Relations and Peace and Prosperity in East Asia,” which warned that the partnership between the two countries had stagnated and suggested that the United States maintain arms sales to Taiwan, increase economic and diplomatic cooperation, and otherwise “seek ways to deepen their relationship.” That same year, CAP’s Scott Lilly gave an address at the American Institute in Taiwan, in which he hailed the ties between the two nations as “one of the more important bilateral relationships in the world” before calling for additional arms sales to Taiwan. Lockheed, whom Lilly lobbied for at the time, is a leading arms merchant to Taiwan.

With help from TUSKON, CAP also makes an annual fact-finding trip to Turkey, the most recent being in February of this year. The CAP delegation met with US Ambassador Francis Ricciardone and senior Turkish government officials. A former CAP staffer told me that TUSKON had “amazing access” and “could call anyone in the government and get us a meeting or interview.” As a result of the Turkish group’s support, CAP was “totally in the tank for them,” this source said.

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CAP also presses for closer ties between the US and Turkish governments, just as Ankara’s lobbyists do. Last year, CAP hosted an event featuring Commerce Secretary John Bryson, who spoke on his “vision for deepening even further the US-Turkish commercial relationship.” Two years earlier, Podesta gave the keynote address at a TUSKON conference in Istanbul. In his speech—titled “The Unique Importance of the Turkish-American Relationship”—he praised CAP senior fellow Michael Werz for his work on “strengthening the US-Turkey relationship.” He also pointedly noted that Werz’s predecessor as CAP’s Turkey expert, Spencer Boyer, had left the think tank to become the Obama administration’s deputy assistant secretary for European affairs.

“Our policy work is independent and driven by solutions that we believe will create a more equitable and just country,” Purse told me. It would be easier to believe that statement, let alone evaluate it, if CAP was more transparent about its funding. The same holds true for think tanks in general—which, unlike other powerful Washington institutions, have the luxury of telling the public and policy-makers only what they choose about their funders.

Atheists Rejoice! Pope Francis Says You're O.K.

Mary Elizabeth Williams, Salon — Thu, 23 May 2013 10:26:00 -0700

It's not about being right, it's about being loving, the unusually tolerant Pontiff tells his flock.

It likely doesn’t matter much to the atheists of the world that — of all people — Pope Francis is on their side. But he is. And that’s a cool thing for all of us.

In a message delivered Wednesday via Vatican Radio, the new pontiff distinguished himself with a call for tolerance and a message of support – and even admiration – toward nonbelievers.

Naturally, a guy whose job it is to lead the world’s largest Christian faith is still going to come at his flock with a Jesus-centric message. But he’s taking it in an encouraging new direction. In his message, Francis dissed the apostles for being “a little intolerant” and said, “All of us have this commandment at heart: Do good and do not do evil. All of us. ‘But, Father, this is not (a) Catholic! He cannot do good.’ Yes, he can. He must. Not can: must.”

And the pope spoke of the need to meet each other somewhere on our on common ground. “This commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: We need that so much. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.” It was a deeper affirmation of his comments back in March, when he declared that the faithful and atheists can be “precious allies… to defend the dignity of man, in the building of a peaceful coexistence between peoples and in the careful protection of creation.”

That’s a message that’s vastly different from Catholicism’s traditional “We’re number one!” dogma. Six years ago, the Vatican reasserted the church’s stance that while there may be“elements of sanctification and truth” in other faiths, “that fullness of grace and of truth… has been entrusted to the Catholic Church.” In other words, close but no cigar, everybody else.

The pope was not, of course, addressing the non-believers of the world in his Wednesday sermon, or trying to win them over. Instead, he was telling his Catholics about the importance of cutting outsiders slack. And it’s a hugely important message for Christians to hear. It’s not about being right. It’s about being loving. And it’s a necessary concept, one that needs to be expressed again and again, in a world in which the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor in Virginia is justifying his repulsive hate speech against gays and lesbians because “I’m a Christian, not because I hate anybody, but because I have religious values that matter to me.” Coming within a week when atheists have been stepping into the spotlighthere in America with their own messages of live-and-let-live tolerance, it’s downright refreshing to get a similar message from the biggest Christian in the world.

There are plenty of atheists out there who will no doubt take the pope’s message with a grain of salt or even flat-out disdain. The last thing somebody who doesn’t believe in heaven could possibly need is some guy in a funny hat telling them that they’re okay in God’s eyes anyway. But maybe, whatever we believe or don’t believe, we can consider that the man is on to something when he speaks about “the culture of encounter.”

Francis notes that the apostles were “closed off by the idea of possessing the truth,” an arrogant certainty that no one group currently has a monopoly on. Where we find each other is in practicing tolerance for our differences, and in finding the commonality of our values. “Doing good,” Francis says, “is not a matter of faith.”

It’s not that faith, for the faithful, doesn’t matter. It’s that belonging to a church isn’t what saves us. It’s belonging to each other.

Watch: Jon Stewart Asks Bill O'Reilly if Obama Scandals Bring Him 'Sexual Arousal'

Steven Hsieh, AlterNet — Thu, 23 May 2013 08:54:00 -0700

Meanwhile, O'Reilly acts his usual bigoted self.

Fox News host Bill O’Reilly paid a visit to Jon Stewart’s studio yesterday, where the two discussed the recent spate of scandals plaguing the Obama administration.

As we’ve learned in the past, these two sharply contrasting ideologues put on quite a show when they’re in a room together. O’Reilly acted his usual, bigoted self, justifying Muslim profiling, while Stewart jokingly suggested profiling Fox News viewers to curb gun violence. At one point, Jon prods Bill, asking him how much pleasure the Fox News takes from covering Obama’s scandals. “Is it joy? Is it sexual arousal?”

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In the Age of Social Media, People Say They Want More Real Friends

Jodie Gummow, AlterNet — Wed, 22 May 2013 18:05:00 -0700

An innovative study reveals that more than 75% of Americans are unhappy with their friendships.

Have you ever felt like your friendship is suffering from a prolonged period of stagnation? You’re not alone. According to Lifeboat co-founder Tim Walker, most Americans say they would prefer to have deeper friendships than more friends.

“People are feeling more insecure and unconfident about the quality of their friendships than ever before. That’s the experience of most adults across the country,” Walker told AlterNet.

Walker and co-founder Alia McKee, launched the very first "State of Friendship in America Report 2013," in response to their own independent, mid-life friendship slumps, with a view to discovering what friendship in adulthood really meant.

“We wanted to see if the friendship crisis in our own lives and in academic studies was taking a toll on the real lives of American people,” McKee told AlterNet.

Drawing upon academia, expert advice, philosophy and the assistance of two research teams on the quest to unlock the social science of friendship, McKee and Walker surveyed over 10,000 Americans across the country in search of finding answers.

Among the key findings in the study was that gen-Xers and baby boomers are hit hardest by the friendship crisis, exhibiting lower levels of satisfaction then millennials and seniors.

“Today’s generation is extremely busy and heavily invested in juggling a career and family and as a result these friendships have been sacrificed,” McKee explained.

The report also found that while women said they had access to more intimate friendships than men, they were not any happier than men with the state of their friendships. What’s more, the use of social media did not factor in the quality of one’s friendships or one’s overall friendship satisfaction.

“We have broader connections than ever before. However, social media isn’t helping us connect in terms of creating better friendships. The real gauge on whether people will be satisfied depends on the depth of the relationship you have created,” Walker said.

The good news for those of us who are suffering from "friendship inertia" is that there are a number of easy techniques we can use to spice up our old friendships or recreate deeper bonds. According to McKee, those seeking greater fulfillment from their friendships should invest more time and energy into the relationships they consider “close” -- with one of the primary predictors of friendship being "proximity."

“We’re not purposeful about who we choose as friends. Friendships happen to us through work, our daily lives and where we live. One of the joys of life is being introduced to new ideas, new professions and new ways of thinking. By purposefully seeking out people who are different from us, we can become more satisfied in relationships,” McKee told Alternet.

In addition to providing insight into the art of making and having friends, the study also revealed some quirky facts about friendships across various demographic groups in the United States:

Those who attend religious ceremonies once a week or more are twice as satisfied with their friendships then those who do not.
Conservatives are more satisfied in friendships than liberals.
Urban residents are happier with their friendships than those living in rural areas.
Most Americans don’t believe their close friends would bail them out of jail, lend them $500 or donate a kidney.

If you’re interested in how to become a better friend, Lifeboat has developed a list of Ten Simple And Powerful Practices of Amazing Friends to give people practical solutions on how to become an excellent friend. As Walker explained, “deep friendships give people greater meaning in life, higher levels of longevity, clear direction and a higher degree of empathy toward others.”

How Our Massive Homeland Security Apparatus Does the Bidding of the Big Banks

Beau Hodai, PR Watch — Wed, 22 May 2013 11:13:00 -0700

Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a nationwide "counter terrorism" apparatus emerged. And it has turned on dissenters like the Occupy movement.

The following is the first in a series of articles extracted from a new report by CMD and DBA Press entitled "Dissent or Terror: How the Nation's Counter Terrorism Apparatus, In Partnership With  Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street."

Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a nationwide "counter terrorism" apparatus emerged. Components of this apparatus include the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (U.S. DHS), the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), ODNI's "National Counterterrorism Center" (NCTC), and state/regional "fusion centers."

"Fusion centers," by and large, are staffed with personnel working in "counter terrorism"/ "homeland security" units of municipal, county, state, tribal and federal law enforcement/"public safety"/"counter terrorism" agencies. To a large degree, the "counter terrorism" operations of municipal, county, state and tribal agencies engaged in "fusion centers" are financed through a number of U.S. DHS grant programs.

Initially, "fusion centers" were intended to be intelligence sharing partnerships between municipal, county, state, tribal and federal law enforcement/"counter terrorism" agencies, dedicated solely to the dissemination/sharing of "terrorism"-related intelligence. However, shortly following the creation of "fusion centers," their focus shifted from this exclusive interest in "terrorism," to one of "all hazards" -- an umbrella term used to describe virtually anything (including "terrorism") that may be deemed a "hazard" to the public, or to certain private sector interests. And, as has been mandated through a series of federal legislative actions and presidential executive orders, "fusion centers" (and the "counter terrorism" entities that they are comprised of) work -- in ever closer proximity -- with private corporations, with the stated aim of protecting items deemed to be "critical infrastructure/key resources" (CI/KR, typically thought of as items such as power plants, dams or weapons manufacturing plants).

As detailed in a report from DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy (DBA/CMD), "Dissent or Terror: How the Nation's Counter Terrorism Apparatus, in Partnership with Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street," through 2011 and 2012, "fusion centers" and other "counter terrorism" agencies engaged in widespread monitoring of Occupy Wall Street activists.

Records obtained by DBA/CMD indicate that, in some instances, these "counter terrorism" agencies worked in partnership with corporate interests to gather and disseminate intelligence relating to the activities of citizens engaged in the Occupy Wall Street movement. Ironically, records indicate that corporate entities engaged in such public-private intelligence sharing partnerships were often the very same corporate entities criticized, and protested against, by the Occupy Wall Street movement as having undue influence in the functions of public government.

This article examines the effects of such public-private intelligence sharing partnerships in Arizona, and how such partnerships benefited corporate interests that were subjects of Occupy Phoenix protest actions through 2011 and 2012.

Arizona Fusion Center Work on Behalf of Banks

In October of 2011, Jamie Dimon, president and CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase, had plans to travel to Phoenix for a "town hall" event with 2,000 of his employees at Chase Field (home of the Arizona Diamondbacks, located in downtown Phoenix). As Dimon is one of the most powerful men on Wall Street and the head of the largest bank in the country -- a bank that played a key role in the collapse of the U.S. economy in 2008 -- JP Morgan Chase Regional Security Manager Dan Grady contacted Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center personnel on October 17 (the day before Dimon's scheduled visit), to ensure a smooth landing for Dimon in Phoenix.

The Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center (ACTIC), commonly known as the "Arizona Fusion Center," is comprised of personnel from such entities as the Arizona Department of Public Safety Intelligence Bureau, the Phoenix Police Department Homeland Defense Bureau, the Tempe Police Department Homeland Defense Unit, the Mesa Police Department Intelligence and Counter Terrorism Unit, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, the FBI Phoenix Joint Terrorism Task Force, the Transportation Security Administration, and the U.S. DHS offices of Infrastructure Protection and Intelligence and Analysis.

Records indicate that Grady's chief point of law enforcement/"counter terrorism" personnel contact in Phoenix -- with whom he discussed the particulars of Dimon's visit and shared a detailed itinerary -- was Phoenix Police Department Homeland Defense Bureau (PPDHDB) Detective, and ACTIC Community Liaison Program Coordinator, Jennifer O'Neill. As records indicate, the chief area of discussion between Grady and O'Neill were concerns that citizens engaged in Occupy Phoenix, an Occupy Wall Street-inspired group that had launched only days prior, on October 14 and 15, might try to disrupt the event -- or otherwise inconvenience Dimon.

According to records obtained by DBA/CMD, in response to Grady's concerns, O'Neill stated that she and a PPDHDB "CI/KR security specialist" colleague had engaged in the monitoring of known online “social networking” outlets used by Occupy Phoenix for discussion relating to the Dimon visit. As such O'Neill stated: “we have not seen anything on social networking that leads us to believe protestors are aware of this event."

By no stretch of the imagination was this monitoring of social media (known in the world of "counter terrorism" agencies as the acquisition of "open source intelligence") for the benefit of JP Morgan Chase President and CEO Dimon the full extent of such activity conducted by ACTIC personnel. Records indicate that ACTIC personnel consistently gathered "open source," and other, intelligence relating to Occupy Phoenix protests of corporate entities throughout 2011 and 2012. According to these records, in many instances ACTIC personnel would share this intelligence with personnel employed by corporations who were subject to these protests.

Another example of Occupy Phoenix-related ACTIC CLP work for the benefit of banks would be intelligence gathering and other monitoring conducted in preparation for "Bank Transfer Day," November 5, 2011 -- a day on which Occupy Wall Street groups nationwide, along with other mainstream activist/consumer advocate groups, encouraged citizens to discontinue business with the nation's leading banks (such as J.P. Morgan Chase banks, Bank of America and Wells Fargo), in favor of credit unions and smaller community-based banks.

Records obtained by DBA/CMD show that, on November 3, Mesa Police Department (Mesa is a Phoenix suburb) Intelligence and Counter Terrorism Unit Detective/ACTIC Terrorism Liaison Officer (TLO) Christopher Adamczyk, issued an OWS-related bulletin to a number of ACTIC TLOs/analysts. While the actual Adamczyk bulletin is absent from records delivered to DBA/CMD by PPDHDB, records indicate that the subject of this Adamczyk bulletin was the impending November 5 "Bank Transfer Day." It is important to note, however, that available records indicate that the Mesa TLO did not address "Bank Transfer Day" events set to take place in the Phoenix area.

Records show that, after receiving this bulletin, O'Neill contacted PPDHDB/ACTIC "Terrorism Liaison All-Hazards Analyst" Brenda Dowhan and asked if there was any specific information she could pass on to downtown Phoenix banks.

In response to O'Neill's request, Dowhan indicated that she would try to find "FOUO" ("For Official Use Only") information that could be released to downtown Phoenix banks. In addition, she offered:

"Occupy Phoenix just updated their [Facebook] page saying that they will be marching to Wells Fargo, B of A [Bank of America], and Chase Tower. They are supposed to do a 'credit card shredding ceremony' , but eh haven't identified which bank they will be doing that at [sic]. We will have to monitor their FB [Facebook]."

As previously stated, O’Neill is the coordinator of the ACTIC Community Liaison Program (CLP). ACTIC CLP was created in 2006, in response to federal mandates calling for greater involvement of private sector corporations in the national "counter terrorism" "information sharing environment" (ISE, as created by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. This piece of federal legislation also created ODNI, NCTC and set the groundwork for the national spread of "fusion centers," per the implementation of ISE).

ACTIC CLP is intended to facilitate the flow of "counter terrorism" information/intelligence between private sector corporate partners and the Arizona "fusion center." While the stated purpose of ACTIC CLP is to prevent terrorist activity, to identify terrorist threats, protect CI/KR, and “create an awareness of localized security issues, challenges, and business interdependencies,” records indicate that, during the course of 2011 and 2012, ACTIC CLP was used as an advance warning system to alert member corporations and banks of impending Occupy Phoenix protests.

ACTIC CLP is one of two primary vehicles through which corporate interests partner with ACTIC, the other vehicle being Arizona Infragard. Arizona Infragard is the Arizona chapter of Infragard, a public-private intelligence sharing partnership administered by the FBI and supported (both financially and through the delivery of intelligence) by U.S. DHS.

The Creepy Guy Cometh: Undercover Cop Goes to the Vegan Coffee Shop

Records indicate that these advance warnings concerning the planned actions of Occupy Phoenix, and other instances of intelligence sharing with private sector partners (including meetings between law enforcement/"counter terrorism" personnel and area bankers), were derived from the constant monitoring of Occupy Phoenix -- and other activist groups -- by Phoenix area law enforcement personnel, most of whom were "terrorism liaison officers" active in the ACTIC TLO Program.

While much of this TLO-gathered information came in the form of "open source intelligence" derived from the monitoring of social media, one source of intelligence that records show greatly benefitted not only ACTIC "counter terrorism" personnel, but also ACTIC's private sector partners, was an undercover Phoenix Police Department Major Offenders Bureau (PPDMOB) detective who had infiltrated the Phoenix activist community and who had attended some of the earliest Occupy Phoenix planning meetings, as well as subsequent meetings throughout October and November, 2011.

This infiltrating undercover officer presented himself as a homeless Mexican national named "Saul DeLara" (Saul). One example of this undercover officer's work product is as follows: following a request by Phoenix Police Department Community Relations Bureau (PPDCRB, the departmental entity that served as the public face of PPD interaction with Occupy Phoenix -- known, affectionately, by members of the Phoenix activist community as the "Red Squad") Sgt. Mark Schweikert, PPDMOB Career Criminal Squad Sgt. Tom Van Dorn dispatched Saul to attend an early Occupy Phoenix planning meeting held on October 2, 2011 at a local coffee shop. Following the meeting, Saul delivered a detailed report, dutifully relaying all plans the activists had discussed, to his PPD superiors. And records indicate that Van Dorn recommended at this time that PPD units augment the intelligence stream provided by Saul with constant monitoring of the Occupy Phoenix Facebook page.

But, Saul's attendance at and reporting on the October 2, 2011 Occupy Phoenix planning meeting was far from the extent of the undercover detective's involvement in the world of Phoenix activism. For example, records indicate that Saul had embedded himself among Phoenix activists in Occupy Phoenix's encampment at Cesar Chavez Plaza, in an attempt at providing further intelligence relating to activist "Bank Transfer Day" plans.

As stated in a November 3, 2011 email, PPDMOB Career Criminal Squad Sgt. Van Dorn informed PPDHDB commanding officers that, "Saul will be spending today and tomorrow hanging out in the Plaza and [sic] with the Anarchists to try and gather additional intelligence as we head into the weekend."

Interestingly, Saul's first appearance among Phoenix activists is said to significantly predate the birth of Occupy Phoenix (which officially launched over the course of a two day event, held October 14 and 15, 2011) and even the emergence of the national Occupy Wall Street movement (which materialized on September 17, 2011).

According to then-Phoenix activist Ian Fecke-Stoudt (Fecke-Stoudt has since moved out of the Phoenix area), Saul first appeared at Conspire, a now-defunct coffee house and vegan cafe located in downtown Phoenix, in July of 2011.

Poetically enough, Conspire was awarded the title of "Best Hangout for Anarchists, Revolutionaries and Dreamers" by the Phoenix New Times in 2010. The coffee house also served, later in 2011 and early 2012, as a regular meeting place for members of Occupy Phoenix.

According to Fecke-Stoudt, Saul's appearance roughly coincided with the beginning of activist meetings, held at Conspire, dedicated to the planning of protest events associated with the American Legislative Exchange Council's (ALEC) States and Nation Policy Summit (SNPS), to be held at the Westin Kierland Resort and Spa in the upscale Phoenix suburb of Scottsdale, from November 28 through December 2, 2011.

ALEC is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization that bills itself as the nation's largest state "legislative membership organization." As such, ALEC claims roughly 2,000, or approximately one third, of the nation's state lawmakers as members. The organization couples these legislative members on a variety of "task forces" with representatives from the nation's leading corporations, lobby and law firms, as well as private 'think tanks' and 'public policy foundations.' These various "task forces" generate and adopt "model legislation," which member lawmakers dutifully introduce and work to pass into law in their home assemblies.

Representatives of corporations and private foundations involved in ALEC are known as the organization's "private sector members." As is reflected by the organization's tax filings, these private sector members fund most of ALEC's activities. As such, ALEC is in reality the nation's largest public-private legislative partnership, dedicated to advancing the legislative agenda of its corporate underwriters -- though ALEC has steadfastly denied that any lobbying activity takes place at their events.

ALEC holds three primary events each year: the Spring Task Force Summit, the Annual Meeting and the States and Nation Policy Summit. Invariably, these events are held at upscale resorts in cites throughout the nation. Travel and boarding expenses for ALEC member lawmakers who attend these meetings are more often than not paid through the ALEC "scholarship fund," a fund for which ALEC member lawmakers and ALEC member lobbyists raise (tax deductible) donations from other lobbyists/private sector donors.

The organization has come under fire in recent years for its involvement in disseminating various pieces of "model legislation" and policy initiatives -- from "voter ID" laws, to laws aimed at crushing unions, as well as firearms-related laws (such as the "Stand Your Ground" law, which gained national attention following the February, 2012 shooting death of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin).

But, before the rise of public furor surrounding such pieces of "model legislation," ALEC came under criticism for its involvement in disseminating the "No Sanctuary Cities for Illegal Immigrants Act," a piece of "model legislation" introduced to the ALEC Public Safety and Elections Task Force (ALEC claims it disbanded this task force in April of 2012) by then-Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce during the ALEC December, 2009 SNPS (a month and a half prior to Pearce's introduction of the same bill, SB 1070, in the Arizona legislature).

The crux of criticism relating to ALEC's role in adopting and disseminating this piece of "model legislation" was the fact that Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation's premier operator of for-profit prisons and immigrant detention facilities, was a longstanding member -- and corporate underwriter -- of the ALEC Public Safety and Elections Task Force at the time of the "model legislation"'s adoption. Various records obtained by DBA/CMD show that the nation's second largest private prison/immigrant detention center operator, Geo Group, was also active in ALEC during this time (Arizona lobby records indicate that Geo Group lobbyists were wining and dining lawmakers at the 2009 ALEC SNPS), along with the nation's third largest private prison/immigration detention center operator, Management and Training Company (MTC, records obtained by DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy indicate that MTC was paying into the ALEC Arizona Scholarship Fund as late as August of 2010).

And so, when Phoenix-area activists learned of ALEC's plans (Fecke-Stoudt estimates that Phoenix activists first learned of these plans in June of 2011) a coalition of activist groups -- including prison reform activists, anarchists, immigrants' rights groups and indigenous rights groups -- began planning protest actions at Conspire.

According to Fecke-Stoudt, at some point in early to mid-July, 2011, his roommate -- also a Phoenix-area activist -- mentioned that "a creepy guy who looked like he was probably a cop" had been hanging around Conspire. According to Fecke-Stoudt, his roommate told him that the "creepy guy" had wandered into Conspire and struck up a conversation with her. The roommate said that, following this initial conversation, the man would appear at Conspire and seek her out -- as if they were friends. According to Feck-Stoudt's recollection of the roommate's impression, the "creepy guy" had come off as being "overly interested in anarchism."

It was not long after that Fecke-Stoudt was also approached by the "creepy guy" at Conspire. According to Fecke-Stoudt, the man wore a blue t-shirt and blue jeans, had slicked-back salt-and-pepper hair, appeared to be in his 50s, was very clean-cut and in good physical shape. The "creepy guy" introduced himself to Fecke-Stoudt and other Phoenix activists as "Saul DeLara." Despite the man's fit and clean appearance, Fecke-Stoudt said Saul claimed to be homeless -- and commented frequently on trouble he had with police through the course of his life on the street. Saul claimed to be a native of Juarez, Mexico, but seldom disclosed any other details of his background or personal life.

It is worth noting that Saul would later offer one other interesting detail of his life. As reported by activists present at a November 9, 2011, ALEC protest planning meeting, Saul claimed to have ties to recent "anarchist" actions in Mexico. This appears to have been an oblique reference to a group calling themselves "Mexican Fire Cells Conspiracy/Informal Anarchist Federation," which, through a number of anarchists online forums, had claimed responsibility for a fire at Las Torres Shopping Mall in Juarez on November 2.

According to Fecke Stoudt and other activists interviewed by DBA/CMD, Saul consistently expressed a voracious interest in all things related to anarchism. Perhaps the only area of conversation that stimulated Saul's interest as much as general discussion of anarchism, said Fecke-Stoudt and other activists interviewed by DBA/CMD, was discussion of the pending ALEC SNPS protest.

According to Fecke-Stoudt, Saul commenced to appear at Conspire on nights when the Phoenix Anarchist Coalition (PAC) would hold meetings. It was during one of these occasions that Fecke-Stoudt detected a particularly odd pattern of behavior on Saul's part.

"There's a certain thing that people do, when you can tell they're interested in something, but they're trying not to talk about it -- where, whenever they hear, like, even the slightest mention of that thing, they come running over and they start listening intently, or, like, they'll just kind of slowly put themselves into the conversation -- that's what he did," said Fecke-Stoudt.

This behavior on Saul's part, explained Fecke-Stoudt, would occur whenever mention was made of the planned ALEC protest.

"Once, after a PAC meeting [...] he was hanging about and somebody said something about ALEC and, you know, he just kind of suddenly appeared in the conversation," said Fecke-Stoudt. "I didn't see it happen at that time, because I was engaged in the conversation, but I'm like, all of a sudden, 'there's Saul. Why is Saul in this conversation all of a sudden?'"

It is important to note that, according to both activists' accounts and records obtained by DBA/CMD, Saul did not only attend anarchist protest planning meetings. Throughout his time as an activist infiltrator, Saul rubbed elbows with members of Occupy Phoenix, immigrants' rights groups, faith-based organizations, indigenous rights groups, and others.

Records obtained by DBA/CMD show that Saul would report on these ALEC protest planning meetings to Van Dorn, who would then forward the intelligence on to PPDHDB personnel.

For example, on October 26, 2011, Van Dorn sent the following email to PPDHDB Lt. Lawrence "Larry" Hein, PPDHDB Sgt. Pat "Patrick" Kotecki and PPDMOB Lt. John Geroulis:

"Hey Bosses," wrote Van Dorn. "Saul has stated that the Anarchists have officially posted the 'resist ALEC' on their website but they haven't discussed specifics on how to disrupt the conference [sic]. There are also two websites that might be worth the TLO's [ACTIC "Terrorism Liaison Officers"] monitoring."

Van Dorn then went on to provide a link to "azresistsalec.wordpress.com," and to detail the number of "likes" on the Facebook page associated with that site.

"According to Saul they are supposed to be having 'resist ALEC' training this weekend in downtown Phoenix as well," added Van Dorn. "Kepp you updated [sic]."

Records indicate that PPDHDB Sgt. Kotecki forwarded this intelligence on to PPDHDB Det./ACTIC TLO Rohme with instructions to "monitor and advise."

Records obtained by DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy show that PPDMOB Career Criminal Squad Sgt. Van Dorn and a PPDMOB undercover detective named Saul Ayala attended two meetings (November 18 and 23, 2011), held in the ACTIC "training room." The subject of both these meetings was planned protests of the ALEC conference.

Interestingly enough, records indicate that PPDHDB Det./ACTIC TLO Michael Rohme had invited Westin Kierland Director of Security Phil Black to attend the November 23 ACTIC meeting. According to records obtained by DBA/CMD, Rohme had been the chief ACTIC point of contact between ALEC personnel in the months leading up to the 2011 SNPS. Such ALEC-related personnel Rohme had shared ACTIC resources/information with included Bayer Healthcare Head of Security Mark Davis. Bayer Healthcare is a longtime ALEC private sector member and had served as co-chair of the ALEC Health and Human Services Task Force for several years, ending in 2011. At the time of the ALEC 2011 SNPS, Bayer Healthcare's parent corporation, Bayer Corporation, served as "first vice chairman" of the ALEC Private Enterprise Board Executive Committee.

And, speaking to the private sector clout carried by ALEC in the world of "counter terrorism" public-private intelligence sharing partnerships, consider this: Arizona Public Service/Pinnacle West Capital Corporation (APS) served as a "chairman" level sponsor of the 2011 ALEC SNPS. The chairman of the Downtown Phoenix Partnership (DPP, an economic development corporation whose members are clearly active in ACTIC CLP) Board of Directors is APS/Pinnacle West President and CEO Donald Brandt. APS Enterprise Security Operations Director Bob Parrish served as longtime board member of Arizona Infragard at this time as well.

Furthermore, records obtained by DBA/CMD show that, in February of 2012, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Protective Security Advisor Christine Figueroa forwarded open source intelligence (derived from activist Facebook postings and the Occupy Phoenix events calendar) pertaining to planned February 29, 2012 protests of ALEC-member corporations (a nationwide effort launched by Occupy Portland, Oregon) to ACTIC personnel (including O'Neill) and other U.S. DHS personnel.

According to records obtained by DBA/CMD, the information distributed by Figueroa had been gathered by Salt River Project (SRP) Security Manager Jay Spradling. This Spradling advisory reiterated activist plans (as posted on the Occupy Phoenix events calendar) to "march from [Freeport-McMoran Center, worldwide headquarters of Freeport-McMoran Copper and Gold, Inc.] to other ALEC corporations downtown. Send them a message that we won't stand for the corporate takeover of our democracy any longer," and to (as stated on the Occupy Phoenix Facebook page) hold a press conference for the purpose of "informing people about what ALEC is and why they are bad!” Records show that this information was then passed on, through PPDCRB Sgt. Schweikert, to Freeport-McMoran Copper and Gold Manager of Corporate Security Thomas Tyo.

At the time of the F-29 protests SRP lobbyist Russell Smoldon served as the ALEC Arizona "private sector chair" (largely responsible for ALEC Arizona "scholarship fund" fundraising) and Freeport-McMoran Copper and Gold served as a "director" level sponsor of the 2011 ALEC SNPS. Freeport-McMoran is also active in ACTIC CLP through its position on the Downtown Phoenix Partnership Board of Directors.

As indicated by records obtained by DBA/CMD, as well as accounts of activists interviewed, Saul's participation in ALEC protest planning meetings ended on November 9, 2011. The PPDMOB undercover detective attended an ALEC protest planning meeting that evening, after which an immigrants' rights activist approached Saul and confronted him about his life as a cop.

According to the activist (who spoke to DBA/CMD on condition of anonymity), she had worked as a barista at a Phoenix Starbucks some years prior. During her time as a barista, the woman and her co-workers had become accustomed to the habits of two police officers who would come into the cafe to order drinks every night, while the cafe was closing. Rather than leaving coffee machines on and uncleaned, the cafe workers would set drinks aside for these two officers. One of these officers, said the activist, was the man who currently represented himself as the homeless anarchist wannabe, "Saul DeLara."

According to this activist, when confronted, Saul denied having ever seen her before and angrily denied being a cop. Nevertheless, word of Saul's possible relationship with law enforcement spread quickly through the Phoenix activist community and, as indicated by records obtained by DBA/CMD, details of this November 9 meeting were the last to be gathered by Saul and relayed through Van Dorn to PPDHDB/ACTIC personnel.

PPD Public Information Officer Trent Crump declined to confirm whether PPDMOB undercover detective Saul Ayala was in fact the man who presented himself to Phoenix activists as "Saul DeLara," or to discuss any specifics of PPD undercover officer activity related to Occupy Phoenix or other Phoenix activist groups. However, Crump did state that it is a "regular practice" of PPD to employ "plainclothes or undercover" officers in the gathering of intelligence related to activist activity that may include "civil disobedience."

When asked what suspicion of criminal activity PPD used to predicate such intelligence gathering conducted by undercover officers, Crump stated:

"I don't even think that one has to say that we have to anticipate that there's going to be criminal activity for us to gather intelligence -- public safety is one of our job responsibilities. So, when we know they're going to have, very possibly, some civil unrest, or we know we may have large groups of people organizing to rally under a protest -- or whatever you want to call it -- we gather intelligence on this, absolutely."

Brenda the "Terrorism Liaison All-Hazards Analyst" Facebook Queen

According to records obtained by DBA/CMD from the Arizona Department of Homeland Security (AZDOHS, the state agency that essentially acts as a bursar for U.S. DHS Arizona grant awards), PPD was awarded $1,016,897 in U.S. DHS State Homeland Security Grant Program funding in September of 2010 for the PPD "ACTIC Intelligence Analyst Project." According to these AZDOHS records, these funds were intended to fill positions for both a PPD "ACTIC Intelligence Analyst" and "IT Planner." Records obtained by DBA/CMD indicate that these project funds have been used, in part, to hire and pay the more than $71,000 compensation (this figure includes salary and benefits) of PPDHDB/ACTIC "Terrorism Liaison All-Hazards Analyst" Brenda Dowhan.

According to records obtained by DBA/CMD, Dowhan's primary role at ACTIC over the course of 2011 (according to records, Dowhan appears to have been hired in July of 2011) and 2012 appears to have been the monitoring of social media activity associated with individuals involved in Occupy Phoenix -- as well as to create bulletins for distribution to both ACTIC "Terrorism Liaison Officers" and other "fusion center" personnel nationwide, detailing trends in the Occupy Wall Street movement.

According to records obtained by DBA/CMD, in order to facilitate Dowhan's work PPD personnel regularly fed the "Terrorism Liaison All-Hazards Analyst" logs containing the names, addresses, social security numbers, driver's license/state identification numbers, and physical descriptions of citizens arrested, issued citations -- or even given "warnings" by police -- in connection with Occupy Phoenix. The vast majority of these citizens who had been arrested, or had other interactions with PPD, were cited/warned for alleged violations of the city's "urban camping" ordinance.

Records indicate that Dowhan took her job very seriously. Records obtained by DBA/CMD show that when, in December of 2011, two members of Occupy Phoenix posted plans to travel to Flagstaff for Christmas, Dowhan alerted ACTIC Terrorism Liaison Officers in the Flagstaff area to their impending arrival.

And, records show that, in November, 2011, when Dowhan first became concerned that those she surveilled within the Phoenix activist community may eventually detect her presence online, she asked her PPDHDB superiors if they could discuss the possibility of her using a "clean computer," possibly one with an "anonymizer," in the future. This appears to have been a reference to a computer utility product, made by Anonymizer, Inc., that allows users to visit websites anonymously.

In fact, Dowhan was so dedicated to her job of monitoring the Facebook posts (and other social media/blogs) of members of Occupy Phoenix that, when, on December 16, 2011, FBI agent Alan McHugh contacted ACTIC/Arizona Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) personnel (including FBI Phoenix JTTF Special Agent Marcus Williams and U.S. DHS Intelligence Analyst Anthony Frangipane) to advise them of a planned December 17 Occupy Phoenix protest to be held outside the Phoenix office of U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) in opposition to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA 2012), ACTIC "Terrorism Liaison All-Hazards Analyst" Dowhan giddily responded:

"Good Morning Alan [sic] [paragraph break] Tracking the activities of Occupy Phoenix is one of my daily responsibilities. My primary role is to look at the social media, websites, and blogs. I just wanted to put it out there so that if you would like me to share with you or you have something to share, we can collaborate [sic]."

Dowhan went on to state that ACTIC/PPDHDB was also concerned about the NDAA 2012 protest (dubbed by Occupy Phoenix the "No Indefinite Detention Rally") as well as other Occupy Phoenix events planned for coming days. In closing, Dowhan stated that she would continue to "monitor online activities to get an idea of what kind of participation we can expect."

This glimpse into the day-to-day working life of those in the "counter terrorism" world is, of course, hilariously ironic, since citizens protesting NDAA 2012 were protesting provisions of the law that would allow for the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens who are even suspected of aiding, committing, or plotting acts of terrorism, "hostilities," or any other "belligerent acts" against the nation.

However, perhaps a much less humorous side of this reality is illustrated in an October, 2011 advisory sent out to "fusion center"/"counter terrorism" personnel nationwide by Transportation Security Administration (TSA, a component of U.S. DHS) Office of Intelligence Field Intelligence Officer Larry Tortorich. In this advisory, focused on a planned October 6 Occupy New Orleans march, Tortorich opined: "the potential always exists for extremists to exploit or redirect events such as this or use the event to escalate or trigger their own agendas. [...] Jihadists recently discussed how they can benefit from the Occupy Wall Street protests that have been ongoing in New York City, and suggested 'that their continuation will make the enemy lose focus on the wars abroad.'" [It is not known what "Jihadists" Tortorich referenced.]

It is also worth noting that, according to records obtained by DBA/CMD, when President Barack Obama visited the Phoenix area in January of 2012, ACTIC personnel monitored associated NDAA 2012 protests. Furthermore records indicate that the U.S. Capitol Police Office of Intelligence Analysis (working with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security) had monitored Arizona protest activity aimed at NDAA 2012 in February of 2012.

In any event, let's get back to Dowhan. While records obtained by DBA/CMD do show that Dowhan spent tremendous amounts of time trolling the Facebook pages of citizens engaged in Occupy Phoenix, as well as other Occupy Wall Street and activist groups, during 2011 and 2012, the mere culling of "open source intelligence" was not the extent of Dowhan's U.S. Department of Homeland Security-funded activities.

Records obtained by DBA/CMD show multiple instances in which Dowhan attempted to identify citizens believed to be active in the Occupy Phoenix/Occupy Wall Street movement (though not believed to have committed any crime -- other than an allegation of marijuana use, as discussed below) through the use of biometric data analysis applied to photos found on Facebook.

One example of the use of this facial recognition technology is as follows:

On November 18, 2011, ACTIC received information pertaining to an individual reported to be involved with Occupy Phoenix. This information came in the form of an anonymous tip submitted to ACTIC personnel through the Silent Witness "web tip" program (a service provided to ACTIC personnel by The Silent Witness, Inc., a private non profit corporation).

The anonymous tip stated:

"Met an Occupy nut online, she says she's from your area [...] She appears to be involved with some sort of violent organization. Has expressed intent to 'take down the local power structure,' desire to be killed in violent resistance as a martyr: 'GOOD KILL US. That will really make people mad!'"

The anonymous "tipster" (records identified the source of this information as being "Web Tipster," and Dowhan subsequently referred to the informant as "the tipster") then went on to state that the "Occupy nut" "[had] indicated knowledge of specific plans for violent revolt, knowledge of bomb-related activities. When pressed further was reticent, claimed she did not want to give more details on the plans due to 'outstanding warrants and paranoia'. [sic]"

In closing, the "tipster" wrote:

"Additionally, since I'm aware no crime has technically been committed there (apart for whatever the warrants are for), I've got an actual crime for you as well: illegal possession/use of marijuana, I've seen her smoking it on camera. I will attempt to get a picture in the future. [Paragraph break] I'm well aware that the threat of violence sounds like someone yanking my chain, and it quite possibly is, but she sounds serious about this and I feel it's better to falsely report than to not report an actual threat."

The anonymous "tipster" then went on to identify the "Occupy nut" as being a 20-year-old female known as "Amber." The tipster stated that the young woman was unemployed and living with her twin sister and father. The tipster also provided ACTIC personnel with a photograph of what appears to be a teen-aged girl wearing eye glasses seated in front of a computer (the photo appears to have been taken by a monitor-mounted camera).

ACTIC PPDHD "Terrorism Liason All-Hazards Analyst" Dowhan immediately followed up on this tip on November 18, 2011, by distributing information contained in the anonymous tip to PPDHDB personnel.

In a December 23 email from Dowhan to PPDHDB Det./ACTIC TLO Christopher "CJ" Wren, PPDHDB Det./ACTIC TLO Rohme and PPDHDB Det. Robert Bolvin, Dowhan stated that she had attempted to identify "Amber" through the use of facial recognition technology, but that the attempt had failed.

"We have a Facebook photo and tried to do facial recognition, but she was wearing glasses," wrote Dowhan in the December 23 email.

The facial recognition resources that Dowhan utilized in her efforts to identify individuals believed to be associated with Occupy Wall Street groups are provided through the ACTIC Facial Recognition Unit, a unit housed within ACTIC and operated by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office (MCSO).

According to records obtained from the Arizona Department of Homeland Security by DBA/CMD, the ACTIC Facial Recognition Unit has the ability to match biometric data contained in photographs -- such as those found on Facebook -- with biometric data contained in roughly 18 million Arizona Driver's License photos, 4.7 million Arizona county/municipal jail "booking" photos, 12,000 photos contained in the "Arizona Sex Offender Database," and 2 million photos available through the Federal Joint Automated Booking System.

The ACTIC Facial Recognition Unit, according to these AZDOHS records, also has the ability to utilize "portable units" during "special events." And, according to AZDOHS records, MCSO has requested additional U.S. DHS funding in order to purchase additional "facial recognition video capture" technologies.

The ACTIC Facial Recognition Unit currently utilizes technology and services purchased from Hummingbird Defense Systems, Inc. (HDSI, a Nevada corporation allegedly headquartered in Phoenix, but which has had its status as an active corporation revoked in both Nevada and Arizona since at least 2008). HDSI purports to have partnered with Detaq Solutions in 2002 in the development of a biometric surveillance system for the Beijing Public Security Bureau. Part of this system, according to HDSI, was a "centralized biometric database [...] that was deployed to help secure Tiananmen Square." As such, HDSI boasts that this system "was awarded 'National Technology Treasure' status by the Ministry of Public Security of China."

Tiananmen Square was, of course, the site of the massacre of hundreds of peaceful Chinese student protestors by People's Republic of China armed forces on June 4, 1989. The students, demanding government reform, had occupied the square for weeks prior to the massacre. The site, and the "June 4 Massacre," have remained significant rallying points to government reform activists in China.

All Actors in Play: the Facebook Queen, the Creepy Guy, Public-Private Partnerships, and Paid Cops

Occupy Phoenix was not a large operation. Despite a relatively large turnout during the group's inaugural march on October 15, 2011 (which peaked at about 1,000 participants), the Occupy Phoenix encampment in Cesar Chavez Plaza typically saw fewer than 50 "occupiers." So, given the galvanizing force offered in opposition to ALEC throughout the spectrum of the Phoenix activist community, protests of the 2011 ALEC SNPS were, by far, the most well-attended Occupy Phoenix protest events to take place during 2011 or 2012, aside from the initial October 15, 2011 march.

The largest of these protests was held on the morning of the first full day of the conference, November 30, outside the Westin Kierland's east gate. Protestors, numbering in the hundreds, marched to the gate as ALEC member lawmakers, lobbyists, corporate executives, and right-wing 'think tank' luminaries were ushered into the resort through security check points. Arizona Governor Brewer was to be the keynote speaker at the day's ALEC luncheon, held in one of the Kierland's many grand dining rooms.

At about 9:40 a.m., an incident took place between protestors and riot gear-clad PPD "mobile field force" officers who had established a "tactical response unit" (TRU) outside the Kierland's eastern gate. All told, five protestors were arrested on charges of trespassing and "crossing a police line" during this incident.

Following the arrests, PPD officials told local media that officers had been attacked by wild-eyed "anarchists" brandishing "nail filled sticks" and that these "anarchists" had attempted to overthrow police barricades with metal poles. These attacks, according to PPD officials parroted in media accounts, had "forced" officers to deploy amounts of oleoresin capsicum ("OC") spray into the crowd and make the five arrests.

Interestingly, this PPD version of events, wherein officers were provoked by violent "anarchists" with "nail filled sticks," seems to have little semblance to reality.

The following version of events that took place outside the east gate of the Westin Kierland, at approximately 9:40 a.m., November 30, 2011, is based on video evidence that resulted in the dismissal of charges against one of the activists arrested, as well as photographs and police records obtained from PPDHDB/PPD by DBA/CMD:

At approximately 9:40 a.m., several PPD officers (many of whom did not wear any identification, in violation of departmental policy), deployed as part of a TRU, were met by a group of protestors who had marched to the eastern entrance of the resort and stopped approximately 50 feet from a barrier line established by TRU officers. Protestors at the front of the group held a large banner. Behind these protestors were a number of other protestors. Some of these other protestors held signs, and some played marching band music on musical instruments. The crowd of protestors, contrary to PPD accounts, was not composed entirely, or mostly, of "anarchists." Present at this protest were members of Occupy Phoenix, members of several immigrants' rights groups, members of indigenous rights groups, members of faith-based groups, concerned citizens, as well as a small group of individuals who described themselves as being "anarchists."

The protest group having stopped well outside the established police barricade line, four protestors moved to the front of the large banner at the head of the procession and sat passively on the ground -- remaining several (approximately 30 to 40) feet from the police barricades.

Shortly after these four protestors had seated themselves, several TRU officers picked up a metal barricade, carried it over to where the protestors sat, and pushed the barricade down on top of them, as if to crush the protestors. At this point, another protestor, Ezra Kaplan, a member of the Occupy Phoenix media group, walked over to where the police were pushing the barricade down on protestors and started taking pictures with his camera. The TRU officers then lifted the metal barricade over the seated protestors and shoved it directly into the banner, pinning the cameraman between the police line and the banner. Protestors then began to shout: "we're non-violent," at which point the four seated protestors and Kaplan were grabbed by officers, rushed onto resort property and arrested on charges of "crossing a police line" and trespassing. At this point, TRU officer PPD Violent Crimes Bureau Gang Enforcement Unit Detective Gregory Liebertz, reached into the crowd, grabbed the banner and began spraying protestors with OC spray. This officer was joined by several other officers in pulling, tearing, and eventually stomping the banner. Simultaneously, several other officers also deployed OC spray on the protestors. With the onset of this police aggression, the protestors temporarily disbanded and retreated.

At no point does this video footage show any sign of crazed "anarchists" (or any other protestor) swinging "nail filled sticks" at officers, or of "anarchists" (or other protestors) attempting to overturn police barricades.

In reality, the TRU/"mobile field force" officers had been working under the command of PPD Sgt. Eric Harkins. According to records obtained by DBA/CMD, at the time of this incident Harkins was actually off-duty, earning $35 per hour as a private security guard employed by ALEC, under the direction of Westin Kierland Director of Security Phil Black. Records show that, by the time SNPS ended, Harkins had earned $630 for security services rendered to ALEC and Westin Kierland during November 30 and December 1.

Harkins wasn't alone in this paid service to ALEC/Westin Kierland. Records indicate that ALEC/Westin Kierland had hired 49 active duty and 9 retired PPD officers to act as private security during the conference. All told, ALEC/Westin Kierland paid out a total of $36,015 in "off-duty" pay to these officers.

[Note: records obtained by DBA/CMD relating to this off-duty job detail clearly state that the "client company" for this event was ALEC. As previously discussed, other records obtained by DBA/CMD show that Westin Kierland Director of Security Black, clearly working for the benefit of ALEC, had coordinated closely with both ALEC personnel and PPDHDB/ACTIC personnel in preparation for this event.]

It is not known how many of these off-duty PPD officers working as private security for the ALEC conference were involved in the TRU/"mobile field force" incident at the Westin Kierland east gate, but it is known that Harkins and another off-duty officer working as private ALEC/Kierland security, Eric Carpenter (paid a total of $630 by ALEC/Kierland for services rendered), personally arrested the Occupy Phoenix photographer, Ezra Kaplan. Furthermore, Officer Carpenter's report of the incident (actually filed as the joint report of both Harkins and Carpenter) explicitly states that Sgt. Harkins had "advised nearby officers to place [the four seated protestors] under arrest."

As further stated in the Harkins/Carpenter report, off-duty officers had attended a briefing prior to the protests at which they were told, by PPD Off-Duty Job Coordinator Officer Tim Moore (who was paid $2,065 by ALEC/Kierland for services rendered under the direction of Black during the conference. Moore had also attended several meetings of both ACTIC and ALEC personnel regarding the planned protests, some of which were also apparently attended by PPDMOB Career Criminal Squad Sgt. Van Dorn and PPDMOB undercover detective Saul Ayala) that "no protestors were wanted on resort property and that the resort would want prosecution." And, indeed, the five protestors arrested at the Kierland's east gate were prosecuted -- based, in part, on demonstrably false claims made by these off-duty police officers.

As for the presence of "mobile field force"/TRU officers at the gates of the Westin Kierland Resort and Spa during the ALEC SNPS, records obtained by DBA/CMD show that Black, citing an "article" he had been given by personnel employed by ALEC, had discussed the possibility of deploying a "mobile field force" to the grounds of the resort during the conference with PPDHDB Det./ACTIC TLO Rohme.

The article cited by Black as grounds for this "mobile field force" presence ("Occupy Wall Street Gets More Violent") was written by Heritage Foundation Assistant Director of Strategic Communications Mike Brownfield, and had been published in a Heritage Foundation newsletter. Conspicuously absent from records obtained by DBA/CMD relating to the acquisition of a "mobile field force" apropos the Heritage Foundation "article," is any disclosure on the part of ALEC personnel (or personnel working on behalf of ALEC, including Black) of the fact that Heritage is an ALEC member 'think tank,' co-founded by ALEC founder Paul Weyrich, and financed by many of the very same corporate interests that comprise ALEC "private sector" membership.

What's more, according to records obtained by DBA/CMD, off-duty officers employed as private security for ALEC/Kierland had been given "face sheets," generated by PPDHDB, containing the photographs (mostly driver's license photos) of 24 Phoenix and Tucson-area activists listed as "persons of interest to the ALEC conference." Such activists listed on the ALEC "face sheet" included members of Occupy Phoenix, anarchists, prison reform activists, members of Phoenix Cop Watch (a watchdog group that seeks to police unscrupulous or illegal actions of local law enforcement) and others.

While the exact purpose of the ALEC "face sheet" is unknown, since none of the activists listed on the sheet (with the exception of one activist who had been arrested prior to the ALEC event) were wanted in relation to any alleged crime at the time of the ALEC conference. For his part, PPD Public Information Officer Crump declined to answer any questions relating to the ALEC "face sheet." Nevertheless, a November 17 email sent from ACTIC/PPDHDB "Terrorism Liaison All-Hazards Analyst" Dowhan to ACTIC/DPS Intelligence Bureau Analyst Annette Roberts may provide some insight to PPDHDB/ACTIC motives [Note: DPS Northern Intelligence District Commander, Captain Steve Harrison, did not respond to requests seeking information pertaining to Roberts' position within DPS. Records do, however, suggest that Roberts is most likely a DPS Intelligence Bureau analyst]:

"The ACTIC has identified groups that intend 'Shut ALEC Down.' While some may merely protest the event, such as Anti-SB1070 and the Occupy Phoenix movement, anarchist groups have shown a determination to disrupt and shut down the event with the use of violent tactics experienced by other states hosting these meetings. The Phoenix Police Department is taking the lead to identify and intercept persons they believe to pose a threat to the event or attendees."

It should be noted that, regardless of Dowhan's assertions, previous ALEC conferences were not -- by any stretch of the imagination -- subject to any "violent tactics" perpetrated by "anarchists" (or any other individuals). Indeed, the sole arrest to have occurred at any ALEC conference protest prior to the Scottsdale ALEC SNPS took place in New Orleans in August of 2011, during the ALEC Annual Meeting held at the Marriott New Orleans French Quarter Hotel. According to New Orleans Police Department records, on August 5 an officer (who was off-duty, working as private security for the ALEC conference) arrested a male subject for allegedly spray painting an "unknown symbol resembling the letter 'A' with a circle around it (in red color)" on Marriott property.

Nevertheless, this much, regarding the application of the ALEC "face sheet," is known: during the ALEC protest on the morning of November 30, 2011, Jason Odhner, a Quaker street medic working with the Phoenix Urban Health Collective, was handcuffed by a police officer, who was likely off-duty and working as private security for ALEC/Kierland, while walking across a slim portion of the the Kierland golf course and detained in the back of a police vehicle for more than an hour (though he was not charged with any crime). At the time of Odhner's false arrest, he had been seeking treatment for a protestor who was suffering from heat-related symptoms. Not surprisingly, Ohdner's name and driver's license photo were present on the ALEC "persons of interest" "face sheet."

According to both a copy of the ALEC "face sheet" and other records obtained by DBA/CMD, officers equipped with this "face sheet" were instructed -- by none other than the sheet's creator, ACTIC "Terrorism Liaison All-Hazards Analyst" Brenda Dowhan -- to destroy all copies of the "face sheet" after the ALEC event. And, as most -- if not all -- of the activists pictured on the ALEC "face sheet" had either known, been Facebook friends with, or been at ALEC protest planning meetings attended by, the "creepy guy" calling himself "Saul DeLara," it is clear that intelligence provided to Dowhan in the creation of this "face sheet" likely had its origins, at least in part, with the PPDMOB undercover detective who had infiltrated the Phoenix activist community.

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