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NY Republican and Trump ally to change his plea in corruption case – MSNBC

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

When Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) was brought up on federal felony charges last year, he initially tried to back out of his re-election campaign. When state laws got in the way, the New York Republican reversed course and local voters re-elected him anyway in the single reddest congressional district in the northeast.

After pleading not guilty three weeks ago, Collins said he hadnt yet decided whether to run again in 2020. It now appears his future plans have taken an unexpected turn. NBC News reported this morning:

The first member of Congress to announce his support for Donald Trumps presidential bid is likely to plead guilty Tuesday to charges relating to insider trading, according to documents filed in federal court Monday.

Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., is scheduled to appear for a change of plea hearing in a Manhattan courtroom at 3 p.m. Tuesday. Collins pleaded not guilty to insider trading and several other charges when he was first indicted in 2018. Experts say the hearing means he is likely changing his plea to guilty.

Assuming there isnt another dramatic shift, when Collins changes his plea, the legal process will likely advance to the sentencing phase. If the GOP lawmaker ends up in prison, its a safe bet hell have to give up his House seat, though its too soon to say how quickly this might happen. [Update: see below.]

Broadly speaking, there are a couple of angles to the controversy to keep in mind. The first is that the evidence against Collins was pretty brutal.

As regular readers may recall, Collins was a major investor in an Australian biomedical firm called Innate Immunotherapeutics he also sat on the companys board while allegedly pushing legislation intended to benefit the company.

The Daily Beast reported last year that Collins has sponsored several bills that would have benefited Innate Immunotherapeutics, while also trying to make changes to a government program that would save the company millions of dollars if its drug is approved by the FDA.

That came on the heels of a New York Times report, based on findings from the Office of Congressional Ethics, which said that Collins may have violated federal law by sharing nonpublic information about a company on whose board he served, and may have broken House ethics rules by meeting with the National Institutes of Health and asking for help with the design of a clinical trial being set up by the company.

According to prosecutors, Innate Immunotherapeutics CEO emailed the congressman a couple of summers ago, letting Collins know about an unsuccessful clinical trial, which would inevitably push the companys stock lower. Within six minutes, the lawmaker allegedly reached out to his son, who in turn contacted his fiances father, all of whom engaged in timely trades of the companys stock.

As NBC News reported a while back, On June 26, news of the failed drug trial was made public and the stock took a nosedive. The defendants managed to avoid more than $768,000 in losses, prosecutors allege.

According to the Buffalo News, Collins co-defendants also plan to change their plea.

Meanwhile, the other thing to remember about this case is that Donald Trump, whose 2016 candidacy Collins championed, complained publicly about the New York congressmans indictment, suggesting the Justice Department should have considered the Republican Partys electoral interests ahead of the 2018 midterms.

I continue to believe it was among the most indefensible moments of his presidency to date.

Update: Collins today submitted his letter of resignation. It takes effect tomorrow.

NY Republican and Trump ally to change his plea in corruption case - MSNBC

Trump and Zelensky talked about his hotel – Vox.com

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

The Trump-Ukraine scandal has pushed most House Democrats to favor impeachment and properly focuses on President Donald Trumps systematic assault on American democracy. But the quasi-transcription of the phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also sheds light on another aspect of Trump-era governance that has never achieved the level of attention it deserves: Trumps petty and not-so-petty corruption.

Trump, after telling Zelensky that he should expect future phone calls from Attorney General William Barr and personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, observes in his hazy Trumpian way that I have many Ukrainian friends, theyre incredible people.

Zelensky then takes the opportunity to pivot: I would like to tell you that I actually have a lot of Ukrainian friends that live in the United States. Actually, the last time I traveled to the United States I stayed in New York near Central Park and I stayed at the Trump Tower.

This is probably a reference to the Trump International Hotel and Tower near Columbus Circle in Manhattan rather than to Trump Tower itself, which is a few blocks away from the park and not a hotel. And its important not exactly because its surprising but because its a clear illustration of a dynamic thats become all too commonplace in Trumps Washington: People who want things from the American government make direct financial payments to companies the president runs.

Its an absurd and infuriating situation, and its toleration is at the core of Americas current political unraveling.

Back at the beginning of the month, when much of the news cycle was dominated by Trump lying about hurricane forecasts, Vice President Mike Pence was dispatched to Poland for a state visit so that Trump could spend more time golfing while pretending to be focused on the hurricane.

On his way back from Poland, Pence decided it would make sense for him to stop over in Ireland on his way back, stay two nights, and do a day of meetings. The meetings were, of course, in Dublin, which is both the capital of Ireland and by far its largest city.

But Pence, curiously, didnt stay in Dublin. Instead, his two nights were spent at a Trump-owned luxury resort thats about a three-hour drive away from the capital city commuting cross-country to make the meetings work.

This wasted a ton of time and cost almost $600,000 in limo rentals alone, but it helped line Trumps pockets. That scandal was soon overtaken by the revelation that the Air Force had been increasingly booking rooms at Trumps hotel in Scotland when service members needed to make overnight stopovers near Glasgow Prestwick Airport.

The airport, like basically every other airport in the world, is near a whole bunch of hotels. The Trump Turnberry Resort is 40 minutes away and much more expensive than the more conveniently located accommodations.

Trump also has subordinates in his organization kicking money up to him through his hotels. Barr hosting a $30,000 family holiday party at Trumps hotel in DC is the best-known example of this corruption. But, as David Fahrenthold, Jonathan OConnell, and Anu Narayanswamy reported last fall, its become commonplace for people in Republican politics to make sure the boss gets a cut on all kinds of political activities.

They identified a staggering $4.2 million in spending at Trump-owned properties by GOP congressional campaigns during the 2018 midterm cycle. Thats just money we happen to know about because federal political campaigns are required to itemize their expenses. Tons of other politics-related spending has no such requirements, and since Trump wont do any financial disclosures of his own we have no idea how much money is flowing into his pockets. But what we can tell from lobbying disclosures is that the total amount is not small, and much of it comes from people trying to influence the government.

Funneling public money into Trumps pocket by having the Secret Service rent Trump golf carts is bad. Wasting the vice presidents time, along with tons of public money, in order to have him stay at inconveniently located Trump properties is also bad. Detouring military personnel to out-of-the-way golf resorts is, similarly, a waste of time and money.

The IRS list of public corruption scandals is full of various, often obscure state and local government officials who get prosecuted and sent to jail for this kind of pocket-lining. Preventing theft of public funds is good and important, and its a bad sign though a telling one that public corruption prosecutions are down generally in the Trump era.

But this kind of graft doesnt necessarily distort the policymaking process in the way the other kind of graft where people who want favors from Trump pay him money does.

Yet thats exactly what the Ukrainians have been up to. As OConnell and Fahrenthold reported earlier this week, beyond Zelenskys stay we know that Giuliani and a top Zelensky aide met at Trumps D.C. hotel in July while a lobbyist who registered as an agent of Zelenskys with the U.S. government hosted a $1,900 event at the D.C. hotel in April according to properly filed lobbying paperwork. But whats more, internal hotel listings of VIP guests at the hotel, obtained by The Washington Post, show that Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, associates of Giulianis in his efforts to build connections with Ukraine, stayed at the hotel in April 2018 and were listed as Trump loyalty-card members and repeat customers.

In this particular case, the fact that the Ukrainians were trying to curry favor with Trump seems perhaps not so bad since their underlying cause is sympathetic. As weve seen from the Trump-Zelensky phone call, the basic dynamic here seems to be extortion: Trump refusing to give Ukraine aid money that Congress had appropriated unless Zelensky did him favors. Funneling a few thousand dollars of hotel fees and minibar charges into the coffers of the Trump Organization is frankly less destructive than concocting corruption charges against Joe Biden.

But Ukraine isnt the only country out there. Trump appears to be awash in Persian Gulf money, with existing reporting revealing multiple instances of six-figure checks from Saudi lobbyists or the Kingdom itself landing in Trumps hotels. We have no idea at all whats happening with his golf resort in Dubai. An Iraqi sheik whos been pushing for US military strikes on Iran spent 26 nights at Trumps hotel in DC.

Much of the reporting on this subject focuses on the question of people with links to foreign governments staying at Trump properties. Thats because this triggers legalistic issues related to the emoluments clause of the Constitution. But make no mistake, American influence peddlers from the oil lobby to the vaping lobby and beyond are paying Trump, too.

The problem with viewing this in an excessively legalistic way is that making a formal bribery case is extremely difficult.

As Sen. Robert Menendezs (D-NJ) acquittal shows, under current Supreme Court jurisprudence you need to demonstrate an incredibly clear and literal quid pro quo in order to win a bribery case. Thats difficult in almost any circumstance, but its completely impossible without things like extensive surveillance or a cooperating witness.

Youre obviously not going to get the FBI to bug the Oval Office as part of an ongoing corruption probe targeting the president of the United States, and even when you do have cooperators, its simply extremely rare for the nexus of money and political favors to involve the level of explicitness that current law requires.

The saving grace is that in general there are ethics rules binding public officials. If a police officer is accepting large cash gifts from a drug dealer or if a guy is paying city officials kids tuition at private school while winning lucrative city contracts, thats illegal right there whether or not you can establish the quid pro quo.

Federal conflict of interest law, however, specifically exempts the president and vice president from the normal legal rules. The theory is that politics ought to constrain their behavior. But in practice, the political system focuses very heavily on the legal details. There is a constitutional prohibition on the president receiving emoluments from foreign governments, so the lure of illegality has focused a lot of attention there. The OConnell/Fahrenthold reporting on Ukrainian payments to Trump goes out of its way to say it remains unclear whether the stays were illegal because of various questions about the exact details of the timing.

This says more about the backward state of American law and politics than anything else. Its not appropriate for the president to be receiving direct cash payments from people with business before the federal government. Hes given wide legal attitude to do so on the apparent theory that the political system will constrain presidential misconduct.

But that doesnt work if Congress and the public are trained to assess presidential conduct in narrow legalistic terms. You need common sense: The president of the United States should not be taking money from people who are asking him for favors.

The House Intelligence Committee released the whistleblower complaint minutes before Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire began his testimony before Congress.

Looking for a quick way to keep up with the never-ending news cycle? Host Sean Rameswaram will guide you through the most important stories at the end of each day.

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Trump and Zelensky talked about his hotel - Vox.com

Rouhani reportedly refused to take call with Trump and Macron during UN stay – The Guardian

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

Emmanuel Macrons efforts to persuade Hassan Rouhani to talk to his US counterpart went as far as installing a secure telephone line on the same hotel floor where the Iranian president was staying, it was reported on Monday.

Rouhani, however did not take the call offered by Macron last week, and stayed in his New York hotel room when the French president arrived to try to coax him into a conversation with Donald Trump, according to several accounts.

The story was first published in the New Yorker on Monday, and then the New York Times. It was confirmed to the Guardian by sources familiar with Tuesdays events, who stressed that at no point did Rouhani show interest in such a conversation with Macron and Trump.

In a desperate bid to engineer a three-way conversation, Macron had French technicians set up a line last Tuesday evening in a meeting room at the Millenium Hotel, across the road from the UN general assembly.

Rouhani was informed that as soon as he entered the room the conversation could start.

For months, Macron has been promoting a plan aimed at defusing tensions in the Persian Gulf, exchanging US sanctions relief for full Iranian compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal and Tehrans agreement to pursue broader talks.

Trump, however, has been ratcheting up sanctions in recent weeks and announced more punitive measures in his speech to the UN earlier the same day Macron wanted Rouhani to talk to him.

Irans economy has been hard hit by a US oil and banking embargo, and diplomatic sources in New York said it was never remotely likely Rouhani would speak to Trump without sanctions relief.

The Iranian president spoke by phone to Barack Obama at the UN in 2013 without the prior consent of Irans supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and was heavily criticised after returning home.

Rouhani said on Monday that a return was possible to multilateral talks established at the time of the 2015 nuclear deal, that would include the US as part of a group of six major powers known as the P5+1.

According to the Entekhab news site, Rouhani said there was some readiness created for the P5+1 and that all 7 countries [Iran and the US] reached agreement over the P5+1 framework.

Rouhani said he would reveal more details at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

Iranian officials said that any direct contacts with the US would only be possible after sanctions imposed by the US over the past year are removed.

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Rouhani reportedly refused to take call with Trump and Macron during UN stay - The Guardian

Gary K. Wolfe Reviews Trapped in the R.A.W., A Journal of My Experiences during the Great Invasion by Kaylee Bearovna by Kate Boyes – Locus Online

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

Trapped in the R.A.W., A Journal of My Experiences during the Great Invasion by Kaylee Bearovna, Kate Boyes (Aqueduct 978-1-61976-159-9, $20.00, 312pp, tp) July 2019.

Every once in a while, a novel seems to drop in from out of nowhere, with little to go on but a promo letter and in the case at hand the reputation of the publisher. Aqueduct Press has earned a reputation not only for promoting feminist speculative work, but for discovering distinctive new voices. Sarah Tolmie (The Little Animals) and Isaac R. Fellman (The Breath of the Sun) are are two fairly recent examples. So its not too surprising that Id never heard of Kate Boyes, whose biographical note in her first novel Trapped in the R.A.W. tells us that shes a playwright and writer of travel and nature essays, but mentions no prior published fiction at all. This is surprising, because, despite an unpromising title (the full iteration of which is Trapped in the R.A.W., A Journal of My Experiences during the Great Invasion by Kaylee Bearovna, With an Afterword by Pearl Larken and Appendices Compiled by the We Survived Series Group), the novel demonstrates a impressively assured voice, an ingenious, casebook-like structure in which the journal of the title is supplemented by several appendices written years later, and an equally creative use of illustrative material, drawn mostly from 19th-century books and the illustrations of Walter Crane. All of this creates the initial impression that this might be a sort of alternate-history period piece, like the variations on Wellss The War of the Worlds that have appeared more often than necessary, but in fact its a near-future alien invasion tale set mostly in a university special collections library and told mostly in the form of the journal of Kaylee Bearovna, who barricades herself inside during the first couple of months of an inexplicable invasion that nearly wipes out the global population. The R.A.W. of the title comes from the librarians nickname for the collection rare and wonderful.

Alien invasion apocalyptic dystopias, of which there are many, tend to align along a spectrum, with brutalist survivalism at one end (think of Cormac McCarthys The Road) and elegiac humanism at the other (one of the best examples remains George R. Stewarts Earth Abides). Boyes lands firmly in the latter camp, not only celebrating the value of libraries and the preservation of culture, but also focusing far more on character than spectacle. Kaylee hasnt had a particularly easy life she was horribly betrayed and abused by a professor some years earlier, and has lost touch with her beloved daughter but her quick-thinking response to the sudden invasion marks her as a classically competent SF hero. When she hears the screams of the dying and sees hundreds of odd figures in faceless brown outfits slaughtering people with a single touch, she barricades herself in the library and immediately begins sorting the details of her survival, from securing food and water, to such mundane details as toilet paper (which creates an almost comical dilemma in a rare-books library). Her journal makes for compelling reading, detailing her failure to save another survivor who makes it to the library door and eventually describing her tentative relationship with one of the invaders, whom she comes to call the Tall Man. When she decides to leave the library, she leaves the journal behind.

This leads to Boyess neatest touch: the journal is discovered decades later by an expeditionary team, resulting in a series of documents, mostly trying to discover what happened to Kaylee. Our new narrators include the editor of the published version of the journal, the leader of the expeditionary team, a contemporary friend of Kaylees who also survived, an academic cultural historian, and an anthropologist who presents interviews with other survivors who might have known Kaylee or her family. Boyes doesnt always fully differentiate these voices (several sound a lot like Kaylees original journal), but the effect is unarguably moving, as we watch Kaylee transformed from a desperate and lonely figure into a kind of librarian legend, whose story only becomes richer as we piece it together from these later documents. There are plenty of unanswered or inadequately answered questions about the invasion itself, the aliens, and their own motives and social structures (though Boyes does think up an ingenious explanation as to how they could mate with humans), but thats not really the point of a novel such as this. In a few pages you can wipe out most of a civilization with disease, war, alien invasion, or natural catastrophe, but it takes a deeply humane novel to convince us that continuity and community can be built from the ashes.

Gary K. Wolfe is Emeritus Professor of Humanities at Roosevelt University and a reviewer for Locus magazine since 1991. His reviews have been collected in Soundings (BSFA Award 2006; Hugo nominee), Bearings (Hugo nominee 2011), and Sightings (2011), and his Evaporating Genres: Essays on Fantastic Literature (Wesleyan) received the Locus Award in 2012. Earlier books include The Known and the Unknown: The Iconography of Science Fiction (Eaton Award, 1981), Harlan Ellison: The Edge of Forever (with Ellen Weil, 2002), and David Lindsay (1982). For the Library of America, he edited American Science Fiction: Nine Classic Novels of the 1950s in 2012, with a similar set for the 1960s forthcoming. He has received the Pilgrim Award from the Science Fiction Research Association, the Distinguished Scholarship Award from the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, and a Special World Fantasy Award for criticism. His 24-lecture series How Great Science Fiction Works appeared from The Great Courses in 2016. He has received six Hugo nominations, two for his reviews collections and four for The Coode Street Podcast, which he has co-hosted with Jonathan Strahan for more than 300 episodes. He lives in Chicago.

This review and more like it in theJuly 2019 issue of Locus.

While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations to keep the magazine and site going, and would like to keep the site paywall free, but WE NEED YOUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT to continue quality coverage of the science fiction and fantasy field.

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Gary K. Wolfe Reviews Trapped in the R.A.W., A Journal of My Experiences during the Great Invasion by Kaylee Bearovna by Kate Boyes - Locus Online

Heres How We Could Feed a Million People on Mars – Futurism

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

Century Club

If we want to colonize Mars, were going to need to figure out a way to feed ourselves there, and continuously sending food to the Red Planet isnt a sustainable plan.

But now, a team of researchers thinks its figured out a way to produce enough food on Mars to feed a million people and they say their plan to make Martian colonists self-sufficient would take just a hundred years to implement.

In an article published in New Space: The Journal of Space Entrepreneurship and Innovation, researchers from the University of Central Florida detail a modelthey created that takes into account the potential population growth on Mars, factoring in both people relocating to the planet and those born on it, as well as the colonists anticipated caloric needs.

The model also looked at how colonists might use the land on Mars and what sorts of foods humans could produce there.

Based on their research, the team determined that we could establish a system capable of feeding a million colonists within a century so long as theyre OK with a diet heavy on plants, insects, and food created from cells grown in petri dishes.

If that sounds like just the keto diet alternative youve been looking for, good news: the researchers have put together a website that tells you how to eat like a Martian right here on Earth.

READ MORE: How to Feed a Mars Colony of 1 Million People [Space.com]

More on Mars colonization: This Martian Greenhouse Concept Just Won a NASA Award

Heres How We Could Feed a Million People on Mars - Futurism

SETI Scientist: Aliens May Have Left a Spy Probe Orbiting the Sun – Futurism

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

Alien Spies

A physicist whos on the hunt for extraterrestrial life says theres a chance that an ancient alien civilization has been spying on Earth for millions of years.

Thats not to say that hes suggesting they walk among us, but physicist and independent SETI researcher James Benford suggests that aliens could have visited a rock orbiting the Sun in a path similar to that or Earth, according to Live Science. While such an extraterrestrial visit is extremely unlikely, its technically within the realm of possibility that alien tech is sitting on one of those so-called co-orbitals, waiting to be uncovered.

Every so often roughly twice every billion years another star will venture within a light-year of Earth, per Live Science. Since Earth is a couple billion years old, Benford argues in research published this month in The Astronomical Journal that its technically possible that an advanced civilization could have come close enough to launch an expedition to our solar system.

This is essentially extraterrestrial archaeology Im talking about, Benford told Live Science.

Of course, that relies on a whole bunch of assumptions that extraterrestrial life exists, developed advanced technology, lived near one of those nearby stars, and took interest in Earth.

How likely is it that alien probe would be on one of these co-orbitals, obviously extremely unlikely, Arizona State University physicist and astrobiologist Paul Davies, who didnt contribute to Benfords research, told Live Science.

READ MORE: Could E.T. Have Bugged a Space Rock to Listen In on Earthlings? [Live Science]

More on SETI: Scientists Are Terrified of SETI Research

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SETI Scientist: Aliens May Have Left a Spy Probe Orbiting the Sun - Futurism

Amazon Is Writing Its Own Facial Recognition Bills – Futurism

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

Self-Regulating

Amazon, the online-retailer-turned-tech-giant, is currently drafting a set of potential federal laws to regulate facial recognition.

Its strikingly ironic that Amazon which develops oft-criticized facial recognition software currently in use by police is now attempting to write the federal laws that would dictate how its own tech can be deployed. But CEO Jeff Bezos says thats essentially the plan, according to Recode. Its a troubling sign of just how much influence one megacorporation could have over the safeguards meant to keep it in check.

Amazon has previously called for the government to impose regulations over facial recognition, possibly as a means to stave off criticism of its own Rekognition software and its numerous eyebrow-raising problem areas. But now Bezos is upping the ante.

Our public policy team is actually working on facial recognition regulations, Bezos said at Wednesdays Alexa gadget event, per Recode. It makes a lot of sense to regulate that.

In August, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders vowed to ban law enforcement agencies from using facial recognition software. That may be why Amazon is drafting some potential regulations: self-imposed rules would be preferable to losing all its police contracts.

Its a perfect example of something that has really positive uses, so you dont want to put the brakes on it, Bezos said at the event. But, at the same time, theres also potential for abuses of that kind of technology, so you do want regulations. Its a classic dual-use kind of technology.

READ MORE: Jeff Bezos says Amazon is writing its own facial recognition laws to pitch to lawmakers [Recode]

More on Amazon: Cops Are Using Amazons Facial Recognition Software Wrong

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Amazon Is Writing Its Own Facial Recognition Bills - Futurism

Harvard Prof: The Moon Could Have Caught Alien Organisms, Tech – Futurism

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

Cosmic Mailbag

If scientists wantto find aliens, they may need to scour the Moon for evidence.

If any signs of extraterrestrial life, biological or mechanical, ever smacked into the Moon, theres a good chance that theyre still sitting there, waiting to be discovered. Thats according to Abraham Loeb, chair of astronomy at Harvard, who penned an op-ed in Scientific American to argue that lunar missions could be crucial for the field of astrobiology.

With a lunar research station, or at least regular missions, Loeb argues that we would have a real shot at detecting evidence of faraway alien civilizations if they ever actually existed in the first place.

With no atmosphere or geological activity to destroy ancient artifacts, anything that crashed into the Moon would still be there, waiting to be found.

Loeb, by the way, is the Harvard professor who made waves last year claiming that the interstellar object Oumuamua could be an alien probe.

It would be tantalizing to find microfossils of extraterrestrial forms of life on the moon, Loeb writes in SciAm. Even more exciting would be to find traces of technological equipment that crashed on the lunar surface a billion years ago, amounting to a letter from an alien civilization saying, We exist.'

READ MORE: The Moon as a Fishing Net for Extraterrestrial Life [Scientific American]

More on space: Crashed Moon Lander Splattered Live Organisms Onto Lunar Surface

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Harvard Prof: The Moon Could Have Caught Alien Organisms, Tech - Futurism

Airline Tells You Where Crying Babies Are so You Can Avoid Them – Futurism

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

Baby on Board

Theres nothing worse than getting stuck next to a crying baby on board an airplane.

Fortunately, Japan Airlines has a new tool thatll allow you to get as far away as possible from crying infants on your next flight. Children between the ages of 8 days and two years who are booked on your flight will show up as adorable baby icons on the seat selection map while booking on the airlines website according to Japan Airlineswhich, venture capitalist Rahat Ahmed pointed out on Twitter, will give other passengers a much-needed heads up.

There are some limitations to the new feature. It only works when booking through Japan Airlines website. Infants booked through other sites wont show up as infants. And once youve booked your flight, theres no guarantee that the parent of a crying infant wont snag a seat near you anyway.

As for the parents, theyll be treated to hot water bottles, rental strollers, as well as diaper changing facilities on board.

Galaxy-brain approach: suck it upor get a pair of noise-cancelling headphones. Babies dont know theyre being annoying.

READ MORE: Airline introduces baby seat map to allow passengers to avoid infants [CNN]

More on airlines: These Futuristic Airplane Seats Could Make Flying Economy Better

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Airline Tells You Where Crying Babies Are so You Can Avoid Them - Futurism

Yes, There’s a "Pee Tape" and It’s Unclear If It’s a Deepfake – Futurism

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

PeeFake

There have long been rumors of a tape that shows Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States, directing sex workers to urinate on each other, or possibly a mattress where predecessor Barack Obama once slept, in the presidential suite of Moscows Ritz-Carlton hotel.

Its slowly emerging that a video claiming to be the legendary pee tape surfaced in January. In it, a shadowy Trump-like figure sits in a chair as nude women cavort on the bed. After a torturous nine months of investigation, Slates Ashley Feinberg concluded that the tape is almost certainly a fake leaving fascinating questions, both political and technological, about how the video was created and why.

The (extremely not-safe-for-work) video has been posted and scrubbed from the internet several times since January, but as of this articles publication you can see it here. There are numerous problems with the video the dcor in the video doesnt match that of the hotel, for instance.

But one of the biggest remaining questions is whether the grainy videos elusive creator hired a Trump lookalike or used deepfake technology to edit his face onto someone elses body.

Deepfakes are getting pretty good, but theyre still not totally convincing. But its still unclear how this video was created, because the video itself appears to be a phone recording of a screen playing the actual video a sneaky trick that one forensics expert told Slate would be a clever way to make it harder to spot flaws in the clip.

With that much blur and the already inscrutable, uh, mood lighting, its all-but-impossible to tell whether were actually peering at Trumps face or that of an unfortunate actor.

READ MORE: The Pee Tape Is Real, but Its Fake [Slate]

More on Trump: Trump Tweet Accidentally Reveals Secrets About US Spy Satellites

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Yes, There's a "Pee Tape" and It's Unclear If It's a Deepfake - Futurism

Mathematician: Everything We Know About Math Could Be Wrong – Futurism

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

Trust Machine

Theoretical math tends to be so complicated that even the researchers pushing the fieldforward cant quite grasp it all.

It turns out that a great deal of mathematicians simply trust that the foundations of a new discovery are sound, Motherboard reports. If a prominent researcher cites a mathematical proof in their work, others may assume its true without actually checking for themselves. And that has Imperial College London mathematician Kevin Buzzard concerned that the whole field is about to go up in flames.

Buzzard is worried that many mathematical proofs are incorrect butthat errors fly under the radar because so many prominent figures simply assume that they hold water.

Im suddenly concerned that all of published math is wrong because mathematicians are not checking the details, he told Motherboard, and Ive seen them wrong before.

To help mathematicians reach sound conclusions without making them dive into thousands of pages of inscrutable operations, Buzzard suggested in his opening talk at a math conference that the field turn to artificial intelligence tools that can do the grunt work for them.

I think there is a non-zero chance that some of our great castles are built on sand, read his presentation, per Motherboard. But I think its small.

READ MORE: Number Theorist Fears All Published Math Is Wrong [Motherboard]

More on math: Googles Best AI Just Flunked a High School Math Test

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Mathematician: Everything We Know About Math Could Be Wrong - Futurism

The Freedom Fund is finding ways to end slavery in the global supply chain – Logistics Management

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

By Patrick Burnson, Executive Editor September 30, 2019

While slavery in global supply chains remains an ever-growing concern, a new coalition has been successful recently in addressing itperhaps even finding a solution.

A new report found that a five-year intervention campaign to protect workers in India backed by the Freedom Fund which works to mobilize the knowledge, capital and will to end slavery was effective at reducing debt bondage and other forms of exploitation, cutting the percentage of families in bondage from 56 percent to 11 percent in the funds focus areas.

The report, Unlocking What Works: How Community-Based Interventions Are Ending Bonded Labor in India, presents the findings of four leading institutions including Harvard University and the U.K. Home Office that the Freedom Funds interventions were effective at stopping labor abuses, protecting workers and changing the structural conditions that enable unfair labor practices.

Taken together, these evaluations affirm that the power to end modern slavery lies in frontline communities themselves, said Nick Grono, CEO of the Freedom Fund. Our programs are having a direct impact in the communities our partners are working in, and they are successfully building on this community-level work to positively change wider policies and systems.

For its interventions, the Freedom Fund identified areas where unfair labor practices were most likely in northern and southern India, and invested $15 million in more than 40 frontline nongovernmental organizations to conduct direct interventions to protect workers in these hot spots. In northern India, where workers in brick kilns and quarries are at risk, it provided $10.7 million in funding for 25 NGOs serving more than 180,000 workers and their families; in southern India, where garment workers are at risk, it provided $5.2 million in funding for 20 NGOs serving more than 93,000 workers and their families.

The NGOs that the Freedom Fund partnered with conducted direct, on-the-ground interventions to free workers from debt bondage and other forced labor conditions. Tactics included creating membership in community groups as alternative sources for loans; creation of adolescent girls and womens financial self-help groups; creation of community vigilance committees to bargain collectively with employers; creation of internal complaint committees to serve as venues for workers to address grievances; and creation of courses to inform workers of their rights and recourse under the law.

Five external evaluations of the Freedom Funds interventions were conducted by Harvard University's FXB Center for Health and Human Rights; the U.K. Home Office; the Institute of Development Studies; and the Praxis Institute for Participatory Practices.

The intervention led to reduced household debt, increased household savings, higher wage growth, increased access to medical care, increased use of government schemes and improved household food security, wrote the Harvard evaluators who reviewed the work of a core Freedom Fund partner in northern India. The evaluators from the Institute of Development Studies concluded that the Freedom Funds approach, using a variety of community-based interventions, mobilization and organization, is particularly effective in reducing the prevalence of bondage.

The Freedom Fund is finding ways to end slavery in the global supply chain - Logistics Management

World News Day: A woman’s journey from slavery to activism in India – The Straits Times

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

For Ms Pachayammal, 25, freedom tastes like briyani. That was the dish she first ate after getting rescued from six years of bonded labour in Tamil Nadu.

"We were finally able to eat a meal in peace," she said.

Now a feisty activist, Ms Pachayammal, along with her husband Arul, has rescued more than 100 people from slavery, advocated for homes and helped in rehabilitating them.

Ms Pachayammal's story is one of 10 women's stories featured as part of The Quint's "Me, the Change" campaign. The campaign, presented by Facebook, sought to put focus on a demographic usually ignored by mainstream media - female voters who are heading to the polls for the first time.

Launched in October last year, the campaign highlighted the issues and aspirations of these first-time woman voters in the run-up to this year's Lok Sabha elections.

Ms Pachayammal married Mr Arul when she was barely 16. Although she married willingly, little did she know that she was being wedded into slavery.

She said: "My husband's parents had a debt which he had to repay. The 'owner' decided to get me married to my husband so that we formed a 'pair' (easy to manage, lower pay and we wouldn't run away). We didn't know this. I, too, really liked my husband so I married him."

The couple faced physical, verbal and sexual abuse daily.

Ms Pachayammal was paid 200 rupees (S$4) a week, and, along with more than 25 other bonded labourers, slaved for the quarry owner for six years. She was given one meal a day of watery rice gruel and worked nearly 12 hours daily.

"At 4am every day, the owner would call us to break rock. Some days, the men would have to work till midnight," Ms Pachayammal said. This went on until she was rescued at the age of 23.

According to The Quint, more than one million people were bonded labourers in Tamil Nadu last year. After her rescue, Ms Pachayammal turned to activism, drawing from an unending well of self-confidence and seeking out basic rights (homes, electricity, work) for rescued bonded labourers.

She stakes out quarries, brick kilns and carpentry workshops suspected of hiring bonded labourers for months, trying to get close to the workers. Afterwards, she ropes in government officials and organises raids.

Ms Pachayammal is now part of the State Rural Livelihoods Mission and gets a steady monthly income.

Occasionally, she does daily wage work. Her husband earns a living driving an auto-rickshaw he received from a corporation as part of their social work. Both of them are doing very well today.

This story was originally published on Nov 30 last year.

In gathering Ms Pachayammal's story, three reporters at The Quint reached out to global non-governmental organisation International Justice Mission, from where many case studies were sourced, before zeroing in on her.

Before The Quint's video, Ms Pachayammal was already a true inspiration, but her story was not covered in mainstream media. The sight of a camera or journalist would push her into what could be described as the "camera effect".

All her responses were rehearsed and interactions were formal. Ms Pachayammal was expecting to be fed words to say, which she would then rattle off. This had been her common experience with the media and what had always happened.

To tackle this, The Quint reporter Vikram Venkateswaran made several trips to Ms Pachayammal's village with a cameraman, but without any equipment. The team got to know the villagers and spent time with Ms Pachayammal and her husband. It was only on the fourth visit that the reporter brought a camera along.

On the sixth visit to Ullavur village, which is a three-hour drive from Chennai, the camera was finally unveiled. Over a kerosene stove, as Ms Pachayammal prepared "sambar" (a local dish), the reporter started a conversation about food - what she liked to eat and what she got to eat while she was a slave. And so began the genuine retelling of Ms Pachayammal's inspirational story, which the team managed to capture on camera, minus the hesitation.

Find out more about World News Day.

Continued here:

World News Day: A woman's journey from slavery to activism in India - The Straits Times

Freedom Fund Finding Ways to End Slavery in the Global Supply Chain – Supply Chain Management Review

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

By Patrick Burnson, Executive Editor September 30, 2019

While slavery in global supply chains remains an ever-growing concern, a new coalition has been successful recently in addressing itperhaps even finding a solution.

Five external evaluations of the Freedom Funds interventions were conducted by Harvard Universitys FXB Center for Health and Human Rights; the U.K. Home Office; the Institute of Development Studies; and the Praxis Institute for Participatory Practices.

Here is the original post:

Freedom Fund Finding Ways to End Slavery in the Global Supply Chain - Supply Chain Management Review

Judge rules against Hendren Plastics in suit over unpaid laborers – Arkansas Times

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

Federal Judge Timothy Brooks Friday evening granted a summary judgment in favor of plaintiffs in a lawsuit alleging state minimum wage law violations in Hendren Plastics use of unpaid labor at its plastics factory in Gravette.

Brooks harshly criticized Hendren Plastics, headed by Sen. President Pro Tempore Jim Hendren and the drug rehab agency, DARP, for acting in bad faith by avoiding law compliance in their own self-interest. He said they had manipulated the labor market.

The award could potentially be as high as $1.2 million $636,317 for unpaid wages and liquidated damages in that amount. John Holleman, one of the winning attorneys, said the judge has asked for more legal briefs on whether Hendren and DARP are entitled to a 30-cent-an-hour credit against wages, or about $22,000, for in-kind benefits room, board and transportation. They also will be asked to offer evidence that stipends were paid to participants in the program for successful completion of work stints. DARP has claimed on tax returns that it paid almost $179,000 in stipends from 2014 to 2018. But it wont total that amount in this case, Holleman said, because that DARP figure covers payments for other workers in Oklahoma who didnt work at Hendren. Holleman commented that the couple that operated DARP paid themselves $517,000 during that time period.

The prevailing attorneys will be seeking fees once the case is concluded.

Sen. Jim Hendren responded:

We are very disappointed with the judges ruling. It is especially shocking that he would not even allow us an opportunity to present our case to a jury. We will be appealing this decision not only because our attorneys have told us it is clear that it conflicts with the law and with numerous precedents across the country, but also because I continue to believe that rehabilitation and recovery efforts are preferable to filling our prisons with nonviolent drug and alcohol offenders. Rather than obtaining help recovering from addictions as well as work force training and employment opportunities, this ruling will ensure offenders will fill our already full prisons and jails where they will be far more likely to become career criminals. I do not regret trying to help when asked by Arkansas Courts to provide people a second chance for people who want to turn their lives around. It is undisputed that Hendren Plastics paid more than minimum wage for every hour worked. I do regret that our justice system has been so abused. However we are confident justice will prevail in the end.

Timothy Steadman, another of the plaintiffs lawyers, said:

We are incredibly gratified with Judge Brooks decision in this important case. Although Arkansas drug courts are an important tool to help vulnerable Arkansans who are battling addiction, it is important to note that DARP admits it did not provide drug and alcohol treatment, and it was not licensed to provide any such treatment. The Arkansas Minimum Wage Act exists to protect Arkansass citizens and prevent unfair competition among business. Participants in drug court should not be turned into an unpaid labor source for unashamedly for-profit manufacturers like Hendren Plastics. We look forward to continuing to fight to make sure that justice is done for our clients and the class members.

Workers were assigned to a rehabilitation program in Decatur by the local drug court as an alternative to prison.

The practice of using free labor from rehab agencies has become the focus of court battles in both Oklahoma and Arkansas after investigative reporting that suggested the workers were kept in poor conditions and got little in the way of rehabilitation other than work. Last week, a federal judge in Oklahoma allowed a suit to go forward against Simmons Industries, a major poultry producer in Northwest Arkansas. That claim was originally part of the action including Hendren Plastics, but it was severed and moved to Oklahoma.

Hendren has said he paid the equivalent of the state minimum wage to DARP, but didnt know what arrangement it had with workers. He defended the arrangement, but he terminated it in October 2017 after lawsuits were filed.

Brooks had certified the case against Hendren as a class action for work back to 2014. Hendren had fought that and the motion for summary judgment with one of his own.

Brooks order concluded the workers met the definition of employees and they should have received the minimum wage, even though Hendren said he paid the equivalent amount to DARP based on time clock records. The workers had signed an agreement acknowledging they would not be paid.

Hendren argued that neither the plastics company nor DARP should be viewed as employers under federal law. And, Hendren said, even if so, the DARP had a valid order from drug court to withhold payment to workers in return for participation.

Brooks reached back for precedent to a case decided against the Tony Alamo Foundation for workers whod toiled for the felonious late evangelist without pay.

From this, the Court identified a test for determining whether a self-avowed volunteerlike an Alamo Foundation associateshould nonetheless be considered an employee under the FLSA. If the worker expected to receive compensation in the form of in-kind benefits in exchange for their work, then the worker was an employee under the law, regardless of the workers subjective expectation of cash wages.

Hendren tried to differentiate its situation from the Alamo case, but Brooks wasnt persuaded. He said it was a joint employer with DARP and thus responsible.

Hendren claims in its brief in support of summary judgment that [u]nlike the Alamo case, Hendren Plastics was not involved in a scheme to obtain low-cost labor for an indefinite period in an effort to obtain a competitive advantagea key consideration in the passage of the FLSA. The evidence proves otherwise. Hendrens contractual dealings with DARP generated a captive workforce that Hendren paid less than its entry-level employees and significantly less than workers Hendren periodically sought from temporary employment agencies. Hendren also benefited by avoiding the expense and administrative costs involved in paying DARPs workers Social Security taxes, Medicare taxes, federal and state unemployment insurance, and workers compensation insurance. In other words, Hendren saved money by hiring DARP residents, who, in turn, displaced private-sector workers Hendren would have ordinarily paid a higher rate of pay (along with mandatory state and federal taxes and insurance withholdings).

As for DARP, its residents directly competed with private citizens in the Arkansas labor market for employment at Hendren, and DARP directly competed with temporary employment agencies supplying such a workforce. The undisputed facts show that DARP provided local businesses like Hendren with a workforce paid at a much cheaper rate than the employment agencies provided. This was because DARP negotiated rates of pay for their residents labor that profited DARP and the local businesses, and by entering into such contracts with DARP, the businesses could avoid paying employment taxes and making state and federal employment insurance withholdings.

DARP also argued it was good public policy to have such arrangements because its program diverted people from prison.

The Court does not share DARPs views. DARPs claim that its business model is the only viable one for residential substance abuse programs is unsupported by any evidence, financial or otherwise. More importantly, DARPs position ignores the strong public policy reasons behind the implementation of the AMWA [minimum wage act], which are: to establish minimum wages for workers in order to safeguard their health, efficiency, and general well-being and to protect them as well as their employers from the effects of serious and unfair competition resulting from wage levels detrimental to their health, efficiency, and well-being.

Brooks observed, too, that workers had little choice but to agree to the unpaid labor, lest they go to prison.

Finally, the undisputed facts reveal that DARPs power was jointly held with Hendren, as Hendren also held the keys to the prison cell, so to speak, through its ability to notify DARP whenever a worker performed unsatisfactorily and would not be permitted to return to work.

The above analysis brings the Court to the common-sense conclusion that businesses that profit from the labor of non-incarcerated drug addicts must still comply with the AMWAs strict requirements.

The Court also observes that the Defendants were not operating as charities. They were businesses that manipulated the labor market and skirted compliance with the labor laws for their own private ends. Consequently, they are jointly and severally liable under the AMWA for their failure to pay minimum-wage and overtime compensation to the class.

The court rejected Hendrens argument that the firm shouldnt be liable because the drug courts tacitly agreed to the arrangement.

Of course, Hendren can point to no evidence to show the state ever audited DARP or was provided with a copy of the Contract Labor Agreement that DARP and Hendren entered into to avoid paying wages and associated payroll taxes. There is no evidence to show that state drug court judges were personally aware of the details of DARPs and Hendrens business arrangement.

The most that can be assumed from the facts in the record is that drug court judges referred participants to DARPs program because they trusted DARP to comply with state and federal law, i.e., by calculating the workers minimum hourly and overtime wages earned, and then subtracting from those totals the reasonable value of in-kind services that were deductible by law. However, the record indicates that DARP has yet to calculate the value of its in-kind services and has not considered how much of a deduction from wages it may reasonably take under the law. Instead, DARP has simply assumed that its residents are not employees and are not entitled to cash wage.

Hendrens argument that state law allows defendants to be charged for cost of their care is not the same as saying their wages may be reassigned to DARP, saying, the Court has not been presented with any objective data to demonstrate the programs costs in relation to the cash wages the class members would have earned during the relevant class period.

Hendren tried to invoke a 2019 law that removed a cap of 30 cents an hour on the amount a rehab agency may deduct from worker pay to offset in-kind services. The judge said that law couldnt apply retroactively. We wrote of that law change at the time and opponents argument that it was meant to help Hendren and passed under false pretenses. Rep. Robin Lundstrum described the bill as a cleanup. Hendren said at the time he had no role in its passage.

The judge said plaintiffs were entitled to damages equal to the full amount of regular and overtime pay earned. He said the defendants had not acted in good faith in complying with the minimum wage law. DARP knew it was out of step with every other facility in the state in its pay scheme. It was clear, the judge said, it was operating in its own self-interest and had no honest intention to follow the law.

The judge was equally harsh on Hendren.

As for Hendren, it contends that it acted in good faith because it paid DARP for the class members labor. This might be a good argument if Hendren had reasonably believed its payments to DARP were being passed along to the class members as cash wages. But as the Court explained above in section III.C.1, Hendren knew full well that its labor payments were not being passed through to the class members in the form of wages. Hendren understood that its payments to DARP were being used to offset the programs operating expenses. And while the Court accepts at face value the notion that Hendren had altruistic reasons for partnering with DARP in support of its mission, the Court believes that Hendren was also motivated by its own economic interestsincluding less expensive hourly labor rates and avoidance of payroll taxes and workers compensation premiums. The Court therefore finds that Hendrens payments to DARP in exchange for a supply of laborers does not sufficiently demonstrate a good faith and reasonable basis for believing that it was complying with Arkansass wage and hour laws.

Hendrens next argument is that it acted in good faith because its owner, Jim Hendren, spoke to a sitting judge and was assured this program was appropriate and beneficial to society.. The Court does not credit this argument. The remark that Mr. Hendren attributes to Circuit Judge Tom Smith (Benton Countys presiding judge over juvenile cases and drug court programs) was made with regard to the merits and community need for programmingincluding DARPsthat offers drug offenders alternatives to incarceration. The context of the conversation does not support the notion that Mr. Hendren was trying to ascertain whether DARPs program complied with the AMWA. Moreover, judicial officers are not permitted to dispense private advisory opinions on regulatory compliance matters. It was unreasonable for Mr. Hendren to have thought back thenmuch less argue nowthat Judge Smiths passionately held beliefs about alternatives to incarceration in the context of a private conversation) were somehow intended as an assurance that Hendrens arrangement with DARP complied with Arkansass wage and hour laws.

Full opinion here.

In addition to the workers lawsuits, the ACLU has sued DARP for alleged human trafficking and Hendren had filed a defamation lawsuit against Timothy Steadman, one of the lawyers in this case,for equating the unpaid labor scheme to slavery. But that suit was dismissed by joint agreement, with each side agreeing to pay its own legal fees.

Judge rules against Hendren Plastics in suit over unpaid laborers - Arkansas Times

Stop using the Bible to justify poverty and hunger – The Dallas Morning News

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

If you were curious what white nationalism cloaked in Christianity looks like, I recently received a letter informing me of the root causes of hunger and poverty in our nation. The letter stated causes such as, "genetic racial inferiority, entitlement mentality, undisciplined spending, laziness and government subsidized medicine for illegitimate children," all while citing numerous Scripture verses culminating in Jesus words, "The poor will always be with you."

Unfortunately, too many of our views about the causes of hunger in our nation are made up of one anecdotal experience, Facebook posts, or our favorite news source. Rarely are our opinions informed by actual research, a comprehensive biblical view, or proximity to the problem.

If we ever hope to solve our nation's hunger and poverty crisis, we must know the truth about it. What are its causes? Why are people poor and hungry? Are we collectively responsible for the health and well-being of our impoverished brothers and sisters?

In a little more than two decades of living and working with impoverished communities as well as working with researchers on this issue, here is what I have learned. First, the primary reason for hunger and poverty in our nation is underemployment. That simply means people are working but not making enough money to cover all their living expenses. In Texas, the minimum wage is still $7.25 an hour. If you were able to put together full-time hours at that wage, you'd bring home a little over $13,000 a year, barely enough for rent in most communities.

Another reason is educational attainment. In our 21st century reality, you must graduate from high school and get an additional degree, whether it is a technical degree, two-year degree, or college degree, to give yourself the greatest chance of not living in poverty. However, if you are living with hunger and poverty you are much less likely to graduate. This perpetuates a generational cycle.

The author of the letter was right, race also plays a factor in hunger but for very different reasons than he espoused. Too often the deck is stacked against people of color. Whether we want to admit it, we have not healed our wounds of racism. We have had our moments of triage -- the abolition of slavery and the civil rights movement -- which were critical steps to stop the hemorrhaging caused by the racist hatred, bigotry and indifference that were pervasive in our history. But we have not taken steps to heal on a national level. We have not integrated our neighborhoods, churches and social groups. The result is people of color are twice as likely to experience hunger as white households.

These are not all the causes of hunger, but they are some of the most prevalent. Regardless of cause, what remains the same for families is they are forced to decide what they are going to pay for each month. Are they going to pay for food, medicine, rent, their car or child care? They can't afford them all.

In Matthew 25, Jesus lays out our responsibility: "For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me."

Here, what matters is whether a person has acted with love and cared for the needy. These acts are not just "extra credit," but constitute the decisive criterion for judgment.

The calling of the faithful is clear: Feed the hungry and you will live.

Unfortunately, we have scapegoated the poor to justify not living up to our calling. To scapegoat and push the poor out of our minds, we've had to dehumanize them. We have worked hard to classify the poor as lazy, to divide them as deserving and undeserving. We have developed theologies of prosperity to lift those who are rich in order to demonize those who are poor.

Thus, we've decided that it is morally defensible for some children to have an abundance of food while others have nothing in the fridge. We can just blame the parent for being lazy or entitled.

This is antithetical to the Scripture we read in Matthew. After all, the accused in Matthew are the ones that did not see the hungry and give them food. The ones that did not provide shelter for the stranger.

Instead, Matthew calls us to not only see the hungry as humans, but to see the hungry as Jesus.

Jeremy K. Everett is the executive director of the Texas Hunger Initiative at Baylor University and a senior fellow with World Hunger Relief Inc. His book "I Was Hungry" was published in August. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.

Got an opinion about this issue? Send a letter to the editor, and you just might get published.

Read the original here:

Stop using the Bible to justify poverty and hunger - The Dallas Morning News

STLS learns about the dangers of human trafficking – Winchester Herald Chronicle

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

Members of the Southern Tennessee Ladies Society listened to a very troubling and different type of topic during their September meeting.

Special Agent Rick Stout with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation went into explicit detail about human trafficking and its omnipresence within the world and, more specifically, within areas in the state of Tennessee.

Stout said that even though slavery ended after the Civil War, there are actually more slaves now than at any other time in history.

With an estimate of more than 40 million people worldwide, this form of modern-day slavery is also known as human trafficking.

Human sex trafficking is a $100 billion enterprise worldwide with an additional $52 billion attributed to labor trafficking.

While its illegal, human trafficking is a booming business that has become the second fastest growing criminal enterprise in the U.S. with estimates of victims in the hundreds of thousands, and Stout said it is happening all around the state of Tennessee, even in Coffee and Franklin counties.

Stout explained that the same people who traffic drugs and weapons realize that selling people is more profitable and less risky and people can be sold repeatedly.

In the case of a sex slave, that might be dozens of times per day.

Stout explained that sex trafficking is a commercial sex act that is induced by force, fraud or coercion.

These modern-day slaves are forced into labor, servitude, sex slavery or mail-order marriages to make money for their exploiters.

The term commercial sex act is defined as the giving or receiving of anything of value to any person in exchange for a sex act, that includes money, drugs, shelter, food, clothing, etc.

Commercial sex acts may include prostitution, pornography and sexual performance. Some forms of sex trafficking are controlled by pimps, gangs or even within a persons family.

The widespread abuse of methamphetamine has lead families to sell their children for money or drugs.

Stout said that while its true that big cities have a larger number of reported cases, practically any town that hosts large events or are located near the interstates are target areas for business related to human sex trafficking

He went on to explain that a buyer can search the internet and buy a human for a sex transaction and have the product delivered to his motel room within a few hours.

Events like Bonnaroo, local festivals, football games, county fairs, conventions in Nashville and races at Bristol Speedway are a few key examples he gave of events that may be targeted.

Stout warned, Dont leave your children alone, ever. Not at the bus stop, walking to a friends home or even in Walmart or a shopping mall without your supervision. Perpetrators are always watching and looking to prey on and recruit children, women and even men into the human-trafficking enterprise.

There are around 1,400 runways each year that are susceptible to being recruited by a trafficker who may force them to engage in survival sex.

Other victims may be tricked into the business by answering ads from traffickers posing as modeling agencies, pretending to be dance and talent scouts or offering jobs to immigrants.

Stout said, Its hard to imagine how anyone in their right mind could physically, mentally or emotionally abuse another person, let alone a child. The problem is these people are not in their right mind. There is growing demand from hundreds of thousands of demented men and individuals who think they could use, buy or sell a human being for whatever the going rate is for whatever pleases them. This is not okay. This is a real problem and it has got to stop. The TBI is trying to address the problem.

The use of computers and cell phones make this type of crime hard to detect and harder to enforce.

Agencies such as the Department of Child Services are oftentimes the first eyes that spot potential child endangerment, abuse and potential trafficking cases.

Stout listed the following signs that mean a minor could be a victim of human trafficking.

The victim may be inappropriately dressed or wearing indecent attire for the location or time of day, dirty clothing or the same clothes each day.

They may have few possessions, no formal identification or claim to be an adult while looking much younger.

They may exhibit fear of authority figures and move frequently from place to place. The victims have no control of their own money, no independence and may be inconsistent with stories.

They may have burner phones, hotel key cards and sometimes may have unexplained changes in their clothing, goods or money.

You may notice an older man with a younger child that keeps their head down and controls the child.

Traffickers will also often tattoo their products with a bar code or their name to show they are part of their stable.

Stout advised everyone to use your gut instinct.

If something doesnt look right, report it immediately, Stout said. You will not be bothering the police with your call. Do not try to approach the person directly or put yourself in danger. Oftentimes, the minor victim doesnt realize their own situation. Many minors are captured and put into sex slavery at a very young age and this is their normal life.

If you suspect someone is a victim, document what you see with photos and location using your cell phone and contact 911 or TBI at the Tennessee Human Trafficking Hotline, 1-855-558-6484. The TBI website is full of more information on how you can help at http://www.ItHasToStop.com.

New nonprofit resources have been established to rehabilitate, educate, counsel and establish employment for survivors of human sex trafficking.

In Middle Tennessee, EndSlaveryTn.org provides specialized case management and comprehensive aftercare for human trafficking survivors and tactically addresses the problem through advocacy, prevention and training of front-line professionals.

Thistle Farms is a two-year residential program located in Nashville that provides housing, food, healthcare, therapy and education to women who have survived trafficking, prostitution, and addiction.

They believe these women deserve a second chance at life. The women are employed in one of their social enterprises and can learn new job skills and make a living wage to support themselves.

The women have continued access to support after they graduate from the program.

In addition to state and national law enforcement agencies, other nonprofit organizations like Truckers Against Trafficking exist.

They are educating fellow truck drivers and the public and focusing efforts on curbing the demand that perpetuates human sex trafficking.

Tennessees law enforcement officers are changing the conversation around the crime of prostitution, realizing they may be coming into contact with victims, not criminals.

The state of Tennessee is leading the nation in their efforts to enact new legislative directives that will increase the penalties for traffickers who promote another person for prostitution and requires them to register as a sex offender.

They have also made many provisions that protect minors, expunge criminal records and authorize law enforcement to transfer a minor victim of human trafficking to a shelter care facility.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has original jurisdiction to investigate cases of human trafficking.

Sex trafficking and prostitution are not a victimless crime, especially when a minor is involved.

Children under the age of 18 have no legal right to consent to sexual acts. Laws have changed within the last decade where sex trafficking was only considered a misdemeanor with minimal penalty.

Those caught in acts of prostitution are still arrested but are counselled and identified as victims.

Law enforcement is trying to get information on their handlers and to redirect the survivors into programs for healing and to break the cycle.

TBI is also responsible for training the states law enforcement officers on recognizing potential victims and investigating cases in their communities.

The TBI runs its own ongoing operation in an effort to rescue victims, address demand, and arrest traffickers.

Rick Stout has been employed as a special agent with the TBI for 34 years.

He served in the Criminal Investigations Division, the Special Investigations Unit, the Criminal Intelligence Unit-Gang Unit and the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit.

Stout was one of the founders and president of the Tennessee Gang Investigators Association from 1998 through 2002.

He is retired from the Fusion Center in Nashville and is actively instructing new agents at the TBI in surveillance, gangs and death investigations.

Prior to working with the TBI, Stout was a police officer for five years.

He is available to present programs on human trafficking and other topics by contacting him at rick.stout@tn.gov or 615-744-4015.

The October lunch meeting will be held Wednesday at 10 a.m. at the Franklin County Country Club.

Dianne Sumner will provide the latest fall fashions from her boutique, The Tigress in Fayetteville.

New guests from the community are welcome to attend this lunch.

Link:

STLS learns about the dangers of human trafficking - Winchester Herald Chronicle

The $150B Business Of Human Trafficking – SafeHaven.com

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

If you thought slavery had ended, think again.

Estimates are that over 40 million people today are trapped in slavery. And its not an existential or theoretical classification: This is traditional slavery, with a slight modern-day twist.

And business is booming.

More than 165 suspected victims of modern slavery from Bulgaria have been discovered working for French winemakers following a crackdown on an organized crime network, last week.

So far, French officials have arrested four suspects, three from Bulgaria and one from France, after identifying the suspected slaves of four winegrowing companies near the eastern city of Lyon, according to Europol, Europes policing agency.

The Bulgarian members of the group were responsible for recruitment in Bulgaria while the French member arranged logistics, including organizing accommodation for the workers, said a spokesman for Europol, which supported the investigation.

The workers were recruited by a legitimate employment agency in Bulgaria, told they would receive 60 euros ($66) per day, and have their transport and housing expenses covered, Europol said.

Yet, they were made to live on a campsite, had money deducted from their wages for meals, and were denied the full amount they had promised when their contracts ended. As a result, many of them were unable to return to Bulgaria.

And the Bulgaria incident is but one of countless such operations, worldwide, in a business that earns traffickers upwards of $150 billion a year, according to international agencies.

More specifically, the annual breakdown in illegal profits looks something like this, according to Lucy International and the International Labor Organization (ILO):

- $99 billion from commercial sexual exploitation

- $34 billion in trafficked, forced workers for the construction, manufacturing, mining and utilities sectors

- $9 billion in agriculture, including forestry and fishing

- $8 billion dollars saved annually by private households that employ domestic workers under conditions of forced labor

In fact, on any given day, says the ILO, some 40 million people are victims of modern-day slavery, and women account for over 70 percent of those victims:

(Click to enlarge)

In a 2017 report, the ILO noted that modern-day slavery is most prevalent in Africa, where 7.6 out of every 1,000 people are forced into slavery. This is followed by Asia, the Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, though data is insufficient in the Arab states and the Americas.

But when it comes specifically for forced labor, Asia and the Pacific outdo Africa, following by Europe. Related: Anti-Aging Market To Hit $55 Billion

In Europe, 3.6 out of every 1,000 people are forced into slave labor.

Eastern Europe is major source of migrants who travel for work to other European countriesand also a major focal point of modern-day slavery.

And within Europe, Bulgaria is a primary source country for human traffickers.

The Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons (which Bulgaria has adopted) defines trafficking in persons to include the recruitment, transportation and transfer by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion for the purpose of exploitation.

Trafficking in human beings for the purpose of sexual exploitation remains the prevailing form of exploitation in Bulgaria; however, the number of trafficking victims for labor exploitation and forced begging continues to grow as well.

Earlier this month, a similar situation surfaced in Brazil, where the Brazilian Carrefour supermarket chain severed ties with Brazilian companies involved in slave labor. Theyd come under fire, according to Reuters, for buying meat sourced from farmers who had been blacklisted for their use of forced labor.

In addition to the victims themselves, the countries in which they are forced into slave labor incur financial losses.

The victims usually lose much of their earnings due to wage retention, debt repayments and underpayment of wages. They work under strenuous conditions but receive little or no pay. The countries where they work lose revenues from non-payment of taxes due to undeclared incomes or the illegal nature of the jobs concerned.

By Mirela Ajanovic for SafeHaven.com

Beto O’Rourke talks guns, healthcare, and ICE in Schenley Plaza – CMU The Tartan Online

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

Democratic presidential candidate and former U.S. Representative Beto ORourke visited Pittsburgh on Wednesday as part of his 2020 presidential campaign. In the tent at Schenley Plaza, he hosted an event with supporters that was a mixture of town hall and rally. He is the fifth candidate to visit Pittsburgh since the campaign season began, following, most recently, a visit by Sen. Amy Klobuchar on Sept. 18.

According to an Aug. Franklin and Marshall poll, about 1% of Pennsylvanians support O'Rourke's candidacy.

Standing on a black box in the middle of a crowd, he started off his speech with some personal stories, including the story of his last visit to Pittsburgh that was 25 years ago, and the fact that he had just celebrated his 14th wedding anniversary. Recalling how he first met his wife on a blind date, ORourke remarked that this was 15 years ago, before Tinder was invented, and we didnt have the chance to swipe left or right."

He transitioned to reflecting on his roots in El Paso, Texas. El Paso, as a city bordering another large city in Mexico, is home to a thriving international community. ORourke remarked proudly about how many El Paso schools now implement fully immersive bilingual education.

He reminded the crowd that El Paso is one of the safest cities in America to rebuke to the current presidents rhetoric about how immigrants allegedly increase crime rates in America.

ORourke then turned to his many criticisms of the Trump administrations treatment of immigrants at the southern border. No one sends their 8-year-old daughter [alone] on a 2,000 mile journey unless there is no other choice but to send their daughter on a 2,000 mile journey, ORourke said, to cheers.

ORourke then pivoted to discussing the shooting at a Walmart in his hometown, where the shooter allegedly targeted Mexicans because he was angry about what the shooter termed a Hispanic invasion of Texas, and the large-scale ICE raid in Mississippi that targeted low-income migrants that arrested hundreds.

From there, O'Rourke addressed his proposed gun control, domestic terrorism, and immigration policies. He reiterated his intention to implement a mandatory buyback of assault-style rifles because he believes there is no reason for civilians to own military-style weapons, to cheers, and to make combating domestic terrorism a top priority for federal law enforcement. One of O'Rourke's key issues on the campaign has been this gun control rhetoric, which has earned him progressive support and conservative criticism.

O'Rourke told the crowd that ICE raids were sending a message of fear, and said that he intended to remove this fear aspect from these immigrants lives by legalizing undocumented immigrants and providing a path to citizenship for the young people brought to the US illegally as children known as Dreamers.

He brought up the drought in Guatemala that was forcing many families to escape north, and the fact that extreme weather events like it will become more common as the planet warms from human activity. [The drought is] not caused by God or Mother Nature, but by you and me, our emissions, he asserted.

He highlighted that places located at lower latitudes such as El Paso may be too hot to support life in the future if anthropogenic global warming goes unchecked. To combat this, he proposed that if he is elected as president, he would have a plan to implement carbon sequestration processes that remove carbon from the atmosphere and thus reduce the percentage of greenhouse gases in the air over the next decade. ORourke told people that as Americans, we should be taking a leadership role to make sure we dont cook this planet beyond supporting life.

The rest of his speech touched on the key issues that Democrats have taken on: discrimination, healthcare, a $15 minimum wage.

He also proposed a healthcare plan with a mixture of public healthcare and private plans. He addressed the need to end discrimination in the workplace by amending the Equal Rights Amendment, and criticized the fact that it is legal in Texas and other states to fire someone for their sexual orientation and to prohibit same-sex couples from adopting children.

O'Rourke rallied his supporters by ending with a statement on the high incarceration rate in the US, saying that the war on drugs became [a] war on people, especially minorities. He called for reparations to be made to descendants of slaves and for the nation to acknowledge both the deeper legacy of slavery and how it still disadvantages minorities to this day.

The former Texas congressman spent much of the rest of the event taking questions from the audience. One man in a wheelchair asked about the proposal for paper ballots to prevent election hacking, noting that some people like him cannot pick up a pencil and asked if there would be accommodations for disabilities. In response, ORourke promised to enact a provision for disabled people to be able to get help in voting and even promised to name it after the man who asked the question.

A young woman from El Paso asked the candidate about gun control and reflected on her worries after the mass shootings in both El Paso and Pittsburgh, to which ORourke shared a story he had heard of a Mexican woman who refused to play traditional Mexican music in public after the shooting in El Paso. He also seemed to express that he understood how some gun owners liked the shooting power of assault-style weapons, but noted that there have been gun owners who told him that although they were supporters of Trump, they also wanted to keep our children safe and understood the premise behind ORourkes gun buyback proposal.

In response to a question about how to pay for this buyback, he proposed taxing capital at the same level as income, raising the corporate tax rate to at least 28%, and ending the foreign wars America is involved in to save the money otherwise spent on these wars.

He concluded the event by greeting some supporters in the front and snapping the usual crowd selfies.

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Beto O'Rourke talks guns, healthcare, and ICE in Schenley Plaza - CMU The Tartan Online

Poverty in America continues to affect people of colour most – The Economist

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Danzig

THE RAW sewage from Pamela Rushs toilet travels through a straight plastic pipe directly into the backyard of her dilapidated mobile home. It smells badly in hot weather. Mosquitoes swarm and the children are forbidden from playing there. But when it rains, the stuff pools and it is unavoidable. Because the soil in Lowndes County, Alabama, where Ms Rush lives, sits atop a relatively impermeable base of limestone, a proper public sanitation system for the sparsely populated place would be expensive. Sanitation is left to private systems, which poor residents like Ms Rush cannot afford. Foul-smelling flooded lawns are a common sight. They are also the reason that hookworma parasitic disease transmitted largely by walking barefoot on open sewagehas been detected among the residents there. It is a disease most often encountered in developing countries. Yet decades after it was thought to be eradicated, it can be found in America, again.

Lowndes County is part of the Black Beltthe swathe of land named for its fertile topsoil which produced vast amounts of cotton on the back of slave labour and, later, sharecropping, and where emancipated black workers farmed rented land. Despite all the wealth that was extracted from the fields, those who remain there today have little; the median household income is a mere $29,785 and the official poverty rate is 30%. Three-quarters of residents are black, and they are nearly eight times as likely to be poor as whites in the county. Across America, black people remain disproportionately poor. More than 20% live in poverty, twice the rate of whites. After a moderate amount of progress was erased by the Great Recession, median black household wealth nationwide is one-tenth that of white households, just as it was 50 years ago.

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The mobile house in which Ms Rush lives today has mouldy cupboards, an unusable bathtub and holes plugged with many ingenious patches. Her income is meagre$770 a month in disability benefit, $129 for each of her two children in child support. Her ten-year-old daughter has health problems that require a visit to a specialist in Birmingham 100 miles away every three monthsa difficult journey without a car.

In one county in South Dakota, life expectancy is lower than in Sudan

While on a tour of the region, Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, remarked that he had never seen such conditions in the rich world. But it is seldom a concern of candidates for political office. Since the days of Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy, poverty alleviation has hardly been at the centre of either partys political campaigns. Part of that is because of the brutal maths of vote-getting. As income declines, so does the propensity to turn out at the ballot box.

The problem is more than black and white, however. About 22% of Hispanics live in poverty. Yet, though many of them are poor when they immigrate to America, successive generations are likely to be less so. A study of tax-returns data showed that poor Hispanics, especially men, have much higher mobility than poor blacks. Asians, too, have a better record of moving up. Though pockets of poverty remainamong those born in Bangladesh and Cambodia, for examplerates are the lowest of any race, at 11.9%. Native Americans fare the worst. On some reservations, the estimated poverty rate is 52%, and 60% among children. In one county in South Dakota, life expectancy is lower than in Sudan.

Working out what issues are caused by history and what are a result of current policies also contributes to the analytical paralysis of policymakers. The yawning gap in poverty levels of blacks and whites partly results from the centuries of discrimination faced by black Americans before the civil-rights era. Macroeconomic shifts unrelated to race, like deindustrialisation, have also damaged black families and livelihoods.

Some modern conservatives are putting forward solutions to poverty that go beyond public-funding cuts and private charity. These still tend to be studiously race-neutral. Oren Cass of the Manhattan Institute has pitched more substantial wage subsidies as the heart of a new conservative anti-poverty agenda. After reforms in 1996, the safety net has already become more centred on workfare (such as the earned-income tax credit) than welfare. But many Republicans continue to see welfare as a poverty trap wrought from overreliance on the safety net, however patchy.

Looking at the same issues, progressives within the Democratic Party arrive at a very different set of answers. The failure is not personal, but of public policy, because of slavery, mass incarceration or redlining that denied mortgages to residents of minority neighbourhoods. This has led to the more left-wing members of the party to call for reparations to black people.

Yet reparations are also a political third rail. Even todays crop of Democratic presidential candidates, who have been drifting left in almost every other respect, have shied away from endorsing the idea, though some have pledged to appoint a committee to study the issue. The clearest explanation for this comes from Martin Gilens of Princeton University, author of Why Americans Hate Welfare. It found that overly racialised attitudesthe idea that white money was going to non-white peopleprevented widespread support of means-tested programmes. In large measure, Americans hate welfare because they view it as a programme that rewards the undeserving poor, Mr Gilens writes.

Implicit benefits for minorities are difficult enough to create and maintain. An explicitly race-based programme such as reparations would attract even more condemnationand one sure to fail without a Democratic president and supermajorities in Congress. In all likelihood, the reduction of racial disparities in poverty will have to be done through race-neutral means. As policymakers grapple with how to do that, enterprise and philanthropy are trying to fill the gap.

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Poverty in America continues to affect people of colour most - The Economist

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