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“America imprisons women in astonishing numbers. The population of women in state prisons has increased by more than eight hundred per cent in the past four decades. The number of women in local jails is fourteen times higher than it was in the nineteen-seventies; most of these women haven’t been convicted of a crime but are too poor to post bail while awaiting trial. The majority have been charged with low-level, nonviolent offenses, such as drug possession, shoplifting, and parole violations. The result is that more than a quarter of a million children in the U.S. have a mother in jail. One in nine black children has a parent who is, or has been, incarcerated.”
“For the children of incarcerated parents, the toll can be profound. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has shown that these children have an increased risk of mental-health conditions, including anxiety and depression. In adulthood, they have higher rates of asthma, migraines, high cholesterol, and HIV/AIDS, and are more likely to use illicit or prescription drugs. The economic effects are equally devastating. Adolescent boys with an incarcerated mother are twenty-five per cent more likely to drop out of school, and have a higher chance of ending up incarcerated themselves. The former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, in remarks at the White House in 2016, summed up the situation: “Put simply, we know that when we incarcerate a woman we often are truly incarcerating a family, in terms of the far-reaching effect on her children, her community, and her entire family network.””
– Sarah Stillman, America’s Other Family-Separation Crisis: Sending a mother to prison can have a devastating effect on her children. Why, then, do we lock so many women up? (New Yorker)
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Cyber Wars: Revenge Of The Hackers: President Trump declared an emergency last Friday and he’s absolutely correct—there’s an emergency, all right, just not at the southern border. It’s a cyber emergency. Digital espionage is rampant, dozens of corporations and multiple agencies have been hit, and the administration seems oblivious. Security experts believe the president’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and his ongoing trade wars with China have encouraged Iranian and Chinese hackers to step up their attacks against US businesses, banks and government agencies. Last month Iranian hackers hit a half-dozen federal agencies, exploiting underlying weaknesses in the internet’s backbone and so unnerving American officials that analysts at the National Security Agency and the private security firm FireEye convinced the Department of Homeland Security to issue an emergency order during the government shutdown. Since then, however, DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has minimized the attacks.
Chinese cyber espionage had cooled after former President Barack Obama and China’s President Xi Jinping reached a landmark deal in 2015 to stop the hacks meant to steal trade secrets. Unfortunately the Trump administration unofficially cancelled that agreement, and Chinese hackers have resumed their commercially motivated attacks in support of Beijing’s five-year plan to become a leader in artificial intelligence and other cutting-edge technologies. One hacking target to publicly confront the ministry was Visma, a Norwegian internet service provider with 850,000 customers. Hackers gained broad access to Visma’s customers’ intellectual property, strategic plans and emails, including those of an American law firm that handles intellectual property matters for clients in the automotive, biomedical, pharmaceutical and tech sectors. Sadly, federal agencies and private companies are back to where they were five years ago, only today they’re battling increasingly sophisticated government-affiliated hackers, who, in the interim, appear to have substantially improved their skills.
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Bloodshed Continues In India: More Indian soldiers have died since the suicide car bombing in Kashmir on Thursday, including in an improvised explosive device blast on Saturday near the ceasefire line between the Indian- and Pakistani-controlled territory. Clashes continued as security personnel searched for members of the insurgent group responsible for ramming the military convoy and killing at least 40 paramilitaries last week. Indian media claimed the rebels are part of Jaish-e-Mohammed, Islamist terrorists based in Pakistan. (Guardian)
I’m Gonna Send Him A Poke He Can’t Refuse: An 18-month investigation into disinformation and fake news by a select committee in the UK parliament has concluded that Facebook deliberately broke privacy and competition laws and should immediately be subject to statutory regulation. The committee’s damning report labeled the company and its executives “digital gangsters” and accused them of purposefully obstructing its inquiry and failing to thwart attempts by Russia to manipulate elections. The report specifically accused Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg of contempt for parliament in refusing three separate demands to appear and give evidence in person, sending instead junior employees who were unable to answer the committee’s questions. (Guardian) Perhaps the way Don Mark Zuckerberg would say how Facebook monetizes is by “Keeping your Facebook friends close, and your Facebook data even closer to advertisers.”
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Peace Prize Pretty Please: President Trump told reporters last week he had received a beautiful five-page letter from Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize for engaging with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. Neither the White House nor the Japanese Embassy in Washington immediately responded to a request for more information about Trump’s comments. On Monday CNN said that one of Japan’s biggest newspapers was reporting that the White House had requested the nomination. (WaPo, CNN)
Labor Party Can’t Work Out A Compromise: Seven members of the British parliament’s main opposition have quit the Labor Party over what they say is party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s failure to address anti-Semitism within its ranks, and for failing to support a plan to hold another referendum on Brexit. One of the seven legislators who resigned said: “We’ve taken the first step in leaving the old tribal politics behind and we invite others who share our political values… to leave your parties and help us forge a new consensus on a way forward for Britain.” The seven, who will remain in Parliament, support giving voters a second chance to decide whether the country should stay in the EU. Opinion polls suggest a majority of voters may lament passing Brexit in 2016. (NPR)
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Trump Trusts Putin Over America’s Intelligence Agencies: Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe was interviewed on CBS 60 Minutes Sunday night about his new book The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump. McCabe discussed among other things President Trump’s instruction to deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein to write a memo justifying the firing of FBI Director James Comey in 2017, Russia links, whether Trump could be removed from office under the 25th amendment, and how Trump ignored US intelligence advice on North Korea’s nuclear capability, saying: “I don’t care. I believe Putin.” (Guardian)
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The Cash Is Always Greener On The Other Side Of The Wall: Much has been made of Mexican political and legal system corruption that has allowed drug traffickers like El Chapo to operate for years. But corruption happens on the US side as well. Three border sheriffs were convicted and sent to jail in 1994, 2005 and 2014, and next month the former police chief of La Joya, Texas will go on trial. He’s accused of helping a drug-trafficking organization transport narcotics while working as a police sergeant in Progreso, Texas. Since the 1990s more than 100 US local, state and federal law enforcement officials have been indicted on drug-related corruption charges. In one agency alone, the Border Patrol, 77 employees were arrested or indicted on corruption charges in the fiscal years from 2005 to 2017. (NYT)
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Women and Wealth: In 2016, the top one percent of households were earning $845,000 or more. But while most college graduates, half of professional-school graduates and a third of business owners are women, few of them break into the highest income tiers. According to an analysis just released in American Sociological Review, because women face more obstacles and discrimination in the labor market, “marrying a man with good income prospects is a woman’s main route to the one percent.” The analysts studied Federal Reserve data collected between 1995 and 2016 and discovered married women are 991 percent more likely than single women to be in a one percent household. Only 4.5 percent of women earned enough alone to be a 1-percent-er. (WaPo)
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