sex trafficking is a huge international industry and involves mostly vulnerable young people who are removed from their communities kept against their will and exploited as sex workers and even though this is going on around the world on the daily sometimes it takes a big bust to reveal the dark underbelly of this lucrative enterprise in the days leading up to the super bowl local and federal law enforcement cracked down on suspected traffickers and rescued a total of sixteen teenagers most of whom are young girls but unfortunately the issues far more complicated than law enforcement is able to solve and not to be conflated with men and women employing themselves as prostitutes and both sex trafficking and prostitution have numerous taboo issues that are rarely discussed

for example providing health services and protection for those involved and also empowering those who make the conscious choice to engage in prostitution that's where the hips program comes in an organization that provides services and advocates on behalf of sex workers and individuals impacted by the sex trade german hours hips executive director cindy clay thank you so much for coming on cindy thank you for having me so a lot of people do conflate the two issues everyone who you know a lot of people think that every single prostitute is also a victim of sex trafficking can you speak to this misconception sure and i think the sad fact is is that the way that we've crafted our laws only add to this confusion. people currently in d.c. for example every arrest that happens for a civil or prostitution related offense is considered sex trafficking regardless of the reasons and so what instances like this doesn't this is happening across the country is that it doesn't give us a good picture of who's. actually being hurt and exploited and who for whatever

reason are choosing by either choice or circumstance to engage in these type of activities and law enforcement as you just said treats it as individuals breaking the law what is being missed largely because if i feel like cops really don't know how else to approach it with the law have to change them right the problem is that we're using the wrong tool to address exploitation and to address the circumstances that might bring someone into something like prostitution of the sex trade and it's not it's not law enforcement's fault that they're confused and in many cases law enforcement has very good intentions and they're trying to do the right thing and they're trying to stop abuse but the problem is that we're for only using law enforcement as a tool to help people get out of the sex trade it's just the wrong approach because when we talk to everyone we work with regardless of whether they are in gauging in survival sex because they were homeless and struggle with drug addiction and have no no way else to feed themselves or if you're talking about somebody who makes

three hundred dollars an hour as an escort and works downtown. everyone all every all sex workers and all people involved in the sex trade how to have a fear of law enforcement a deep seated fear of law enforcement and fear arrest and so that's not our best tool you know you could even argue that it exacerbates the problem you know putting a band-aid on something much deeper you just mentioned a lot of different reasons that people do decide to get into the sex trade. at the u.n. and preparing multiple reports on this topic what else have you found that you contribute to the u.n. reports well what we find is we try to share best practices internationally and that's by listening to people who have been involved in the exploitative side of sex work but also listening to people who aren't exploited in sex work and if we can what we recommended many sex workers internationally recommend is that you need to unpack and you need to separate sex trafficking and sexual exploitation and sex trade that's happening by choice or circumstance. and if you address the root

causes and help people who choose and you can find ways to get help you actually do a much better job than sweeping in with law enforcement and trying to rescue people which often puts them in more or just as vulnerable positions as they were before let's talk about decriminalizing or legalizing prostitution is that something that helps advocates for hips actually this year came out and took a strong stance against criminalization for many years the people that we worked with had varying opinions on it and so we felt like it wasn't necessarily an issue that we needed to take a stance on but after twenty years of working with this population in twenty years of working with people what we do find is arresting people doesn't help it's really not the best way to help them and so continues criminalization actually creates this cycle of incarceration that keeps people tied to the sex industry having a record for a prostitution arrest even if that record was expunged is something that people can

search for and it leads to people not getting jobs people get kicked out of their homes and people get kicked out or lose relationships because of it and so we're wholeheartedly against criminalization you know remember the war on drugs prostitution and drug use has been around since the beginning of time a beginning of civilization rather and it just seems like criminalizing it has never worked and won't ever work very few places have decriminalize or legal prostitution what communities have to gain from going that route right well there are definitely some instances around the world and we're beginning to talk about places around the country where we're making less of a issue with arresting sex workers specifically and making in the less of an issue of policing this and what we find in those circumstances is that violence is actually reduced because sex workers feel that they can go to the police or go to law enforcement to report dangerous people to report people who are abusing other people's text. others are actually really interested in stopping sex trafficking

that's not good for their business it's not good for anyone and so when we find that law enforcement isn't use this tool to arrest people specifically for engaging in sex work we are much more able to come and use law enforcement for the tool that is which is to stop violence and to stop people who are hurting other people yeah absolutely in december california voters overturn a discriminatory rule that prevented sex workers who were raped from accessing a special victims compensation fund are there other campaigns like this that people can support to help give more rights to sex workers we have about a minute left there are there are organizations like hips in d.c. we do local advocacy and also train on this issue nationally there's organizations called swap sex workers outreach project which are actually chapters all across the nation in many of the major cities that are beginning to try to have a different conversation a more comprehensive a more compassionate conversation about this and we really feel like the public's ready and so in addition to supporting those kinds of organizations make sure that

where you're putting your time your energy potential your donations are with organizations that in that involve active sex workers in their programming or in their advocacy and finally i think that we can demand with the media and with our politicians that we have a real conversation about what's going on with this issue in the u.s. because we're ready and it's time it is we need to take it out of the taboo into the mainstream they do so much cindy clay executive director head saying that it. last week startling reports surfaced of a pipeline break that dumped upwards of eighty thousand tons of coal ash into north carolina's dan river now you might not have heard about the story given that the state's environmental agencies said that the situation was contained and that water tests showed no reason for alarm over the weekend the north carolina department of environment and natural resources backtracked. he said that they mistakenly

reported the early toxicity tests record of the agency the levels of deadly arsenic are in fact well above the exceeded limit for human exposure but not to worry everyone a spokesperson for duke energy the company responsible for the spill has pledged to clean the river and by clean they probably mean abdicate responsibility to the state environmental groups have cited at least three instances over the last year where duke energy has avoided its duty. and to similar coal ash leaks that have dumped thousands of talks into the dan river this latest spill underscores the dangers of toxic fossil fuel by products and the difficulties that exist in containing them you may remember the ten thousand gallon chemical spill that in fact of the water supply of three hundred thousand people in west virginia just over a month ago since then the city of charleston is closed at least three schools after detecting the black licorice scent of the chemical and c h m and get this although

there has been no credible churns by authorities that the water is safe to drink residents are still getting water bills you heard that right charleston residents are actually being billed for potentially poisonous water needless to say residents are furious and currently there's a clock a class action lawsuit underway there's no silver lining to this story as freedom industries the company responsible for the catastrophic spill recently filed for bankruptcy the bankruptcy by the way is also being investigated as a company called mountaineer fundings stepped up to provide bankruptcy capital for freedom industries the conflict of interest here stems from the fact that the man who owns mouneer funding also owns you guessed it freedom industries it seems the company is poised to transfer assets under another name leaving the baggage of the nasty chemical spill for someone else to clean up and this same story is becoming all too common in this country whether it be

a coal asheville north carolina or chemical spill in west virginia people and the environment are being victimized with no one held accountable believe it or not just in the first month and a half a dozen fourteen there are already been thousands of gallons of oil spilled in minnesota new york pennsylvania and several other states involved debate continues over how safe the keystone x.l. pipeline would be phase one of that project has already leaped over ten times in its first year in canada but unfortunately regular. aren't very stringent for reporting the leaks according to the state department's assessment keystone x.l. would quote have to spill more than twelve thousand barrels a day before its internal spill detection system would trigger an alarm what why such a rush hold it because then they're going to spill a hell of a lot of oil according to the e.p.a. they're almost fourteen thousand oil spills reported each year in the u.s. not to mention the ones not reported so how much more persisting landscape will

suffer and degradation of human life or curb before we and our addiction to talk sick and she once and for all. stick around you guys with a break in on the latest on how the n.s.a. is contributing to drone strikes. i marinate join me. for in-depth impartial and financial commentary interviews and much much. only on the bus and. there's a game we like to play you see

a game with no added sovereignty you chase me to a book that puts me on my knees you call it master and servant leave call outs in the summit with a sort of independence you need servitude alex why be another nation on the chain gang when you can be the first on the block. i'll be likely to see any sort of call to revolution aimed at preserving traditional. even a char called. the islamic religion this is one very powerful force so wards maintaining traditional marriages and values just as they become more powerful western liberalism becomes powerful and we have to have sort of made civilizations only on a collision course. last

of may obama made a wide ranging speech on u.s. drone strike policy in which established new rules meant to lessen casualty rates in countries like yemen and pakistan yet despite this declaration an analysis by

the bureau for investigative journalism found that drone strikes killed more people in these countries in the six months after his speech than in the six months prior and although two thousand and thirteen we did see a noticeable drop in the practice that has killed as many as four thousand five hundred ninety eight people since two thousand and two according to your of investigative journalism a couple of bombshell news reports demonstrate how the people of somalia yemen pakistan and afghanistan will continue to live with the constant threat of death from above for the foreseeable future just today the associated press released an extremely concerning report describing how pentagon officials are trying to figure out how to kill an anonymous american citizen by drone again so in the guise of transparency obama's decision to transfer drone strike authority from the cia to the defense department prevents drone operators from assassinating americans until the justice department builds a case against them but let's be honest finding a legal loophole to carry out state sponsored murder shouldn't be too difficult for

the d.o.j. considering how the authorization for use of military force allows the assassination of any american deemed an enemy combatant by the u.s. government yes because apparently the white house just didn't receive enough backlash for killing four american citizens since two thousand and nine alone. of course as i pointed out time and time again on the show the continuance of this draco nian policy is not only responsible for the deaths and injuries of thousands of innocent civilians it's completely counterintuitive to stopping the spread of anti-american sentiment look no further than a recently released video clip to come out of afghanistan a stunning photo. shows afghans cheering and throwing stones at a crash predator drone and really can you blame them for celebrating a broken heart because of this mechanical killer after all it's not every day that the innocent people suffering from drone wars get to turn the tables on these deadly machines furthermore report just released by the enter septa brand new web

site started by journalist glenn greenwald and jeremy scahill shows that the entire military industrial complex is called looting to contribute to innocent drone deaths thanks to n.s.a. documents leaked by edward snowden as well as an interview with a former drone operator we now know that the cia and pentagon rely primarily on cell phone tracking to determine acceptable drone strike targets sort of compiling intelligence from human sources threats or determine through the n.s.a.'s cell phone location and sim card tracking programs the problem is that the intended target an original owner of the phone does not always correspond to the people that ends up with it the cell phone owner can unwittingly give the phone to a friend or family member or target's aware of the tracking will purposely mix up their sim cards so that the n.s.a. doesn't know which phone belongs to whom the drone operator who declined to be identified but once the bomb lands or a night raid happens you know that phone is there we don't know who's behind it who

was holding it it's of course assume that the phone belongs to a human being who's nefarious and considered an unlawful enemy combatant this is where it gets very shady he or she goes on to say they might have been terrorists or they could have been family members who have nothing to do with the targets activities. well i guess we know now why drones only have a two percent success rate at killing actual high profile targets of the new america foundation so according to director of national intelligence james clapper a collection of metadata is knock us some plus of course you live below a drone. i i so this week is the first official week of the olympics in sochi russia but something has been off in the coverage leading up to the games here in america unlike previous years when the games were held in britain canada and even china the mainstream media largely

focused on the players themselves however this year the corporate press seems obsessed with fear mongering and how dangerous so she is for the people who dare to go i'm not even talking about the nefarious islamic terrorist wives or black widows i'm talking about toothpaste. there is new concern over flights headed to the olympic games the u.s. government is warning airlines that flights to russia and on them to be on the lookout for efforts to smuggle explosives in toothpaste tubes the explosives hidden inside a toothpaste tube can be powerful and potentially deadly. this bomb in a toothpaste container blew off a car goure homeland security department warning airlines flying into russia that terrorists might try to smuggle explosives on board hidden in toothpaste tubes at the same time russian law allows us intelligence agents to do electronic snooping on anyone inside the country so that means americans phones fair game. actually fox

out a whole hacking story originally lauded by n.b.c. as robert angles turned out not to be true about a security expert robert graham says the story is completely fraudulent coin of the tech times graham accuses angles of faking the report and intentionally downloading applications that would ensure his smartphone was hacked almost immediately look i'm not saying that hacking isn't a problem or that there isn't massive surveillance going on in sochi that's to be expected but it's certainly no different than what's being done here in the u.s. so the level of hype around the story even if it were true is just a bit odd about that toothpaste bomb will interest in the enough to have any direct flights from the u.s. to sochi in fact most tourists and players travel through other countries to get into the city so even if that story helps merit which it doesn't it doesn't make any sense to terrify americans about it in fact former head of department of homeland security and the leader of the u.s. delegation at sochi jenna paul tano offered an upbeat assessment and contrasts of

a ridiculous fear mongering according to guardian the poll said that the level of security is very good and that she hopes the attention of the media and the world turns now more to what the athletes are going to do instead of the threats that are being made while for once i agree in a poll of tunnel here but unfortunately the senate isn't ready to give up on that fear baiting just yet so tomorrow they'll be holding a hearing on worldwide threats to u.s. national security so here to give us a preview of what we can expect at that hearing are two political commentators sam . how's it going so is sam why now why is there this hearing on worldwide threats facing the u.s. it seems like the time of year that we all have been reminded that there are a lot of threats to the u.s. and that our intelligence community that depends. defense agencies are very much needed this comes at a time in which the n.s.a. is under a lot of pressure as a result of the snowden leaks so let's bring out the director of national intelligence james clapper who's going to testify tomorrow let's bring out.

military intelligence belief land let's bring out all these people to let them remind us just how much they're needed moving forward. i mean they're so are is about this is the third time we've had this year and we had a hearing last week and the house intelligence committee on a worldwide threats and in the week before that we had the senate intelligence committee weigh in on worldwide threats now we're getting the senate armed services committee weighing in and got out in which they say i don't have them all you know so are any of these threats actually legitimate because you attended the theory there that they're in a hurry in the last week and you've got some clips of that i mean is there anything to justify this fairmont right well this hearing last week it was quite a show let's play this clip here of just some of the threats that were rattled off by the director of national intelligence james clapper. scrooge and diversification of terrorism the implications of the drawdown in afghanistan the deteriorating internal security posture in iraq the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction a competitive china a dangerous unpredictable north korea a challenging iran the specter of mass atrocity increasing sophistication of

transnational crime the insidious rot of inventing synthetic drugs the tension for pandemic diseases. diseases so look there are threats around the world no one's going to do it but a list that long there was also not mentioned the chinese shooting down satellites there was the on resit in ukraine these aren't eat threats to u.s. national security there's stuff that happens around the world but it really shows a lot about what our military officials and defense officials think if every single thing that's happening around the world is a threat to u.s. national security at good point and considering how clapper is going to testify again tomorrow they're going to expect a ton of just snowden bashing and rhetoric about that i think it's like any time you have represented the of the n.s.a. there you will see the snowden bashing last week there was a huge portion of the hearing devoted toward bashing snowden and hyping up some sort of link between snowden and the russians time. but how much damage snowden is

down there for the russians must be behind him the chairman of the house intelligence committee mike rogers has been pushing this mean a lot here he was trying to get the director of military intelligence to provide evidence for this link between starting a russian and it didn't quite work out i think we have to. do you believe that. there's any indication that the n.s.a. contractor who is now in moscow might be under the influence of russian intelligence services chairman i don't have any information to that effect excuse me. excuse me these are not exactly at all what exactly the answer you wanted you didn't get the answer you wanted so the next question this is the very next question he asked do you think it's possible so he changes it do you have facts to strickly going in your window and here's how we rephrase the question from there. do you believe that mr snowden who is in the custody of intelligence services in moscow today by your own information has the possibility of them to be under the

influence of russian intelligence or yes there is a possibility so we don't have evidence but there's a possibility it's important that there be there are no evidence to support these things yet just innuendo innuendo leading the witness is there a possibility that space aliens have you know taken over the u.s. government yeah sure there's a possibility i guess there's a possibility for anything but the chairman just using innuendo to smear snowden is bad then later on in the hearing he says that a lot of these leaks a lot of the damage done to u.s. national security is also a result of journalists like glenn greenwald like jeremy scale people who are dealing with these documents as you were talking about earlier and he was talking to james komi the director of the f.b.i. trying to criminalize journalism itself as quote i'm a newspaper reporter for fill in the blank and i sell stolen material is that legal because i'm a newspaper reporter. right if you're a newspaper reporter and you're hocking stolen jewelry it's still a crime and if i'm a hocking stolen classified material that i'm not legally in possession of for personal gain and profit is that not a crime. i think that's

a harder question because it involves a news gathering function could have first amendment implications that's something that probably better answered by the department of justice those pesky first amendment implications you know the chairman of the house intelligence committee just completely disregarding the constitution and press freedoms on believable and sam of course from the media's not talking about toothpaste bombs or trying to link snowden into this whole thing i just wanted to check out c.n.n.'s erin burnett breaking news snowden no show at sochi what the hell i'm not sure why anyone is expected to show up well i don't but in this she's already down there us and we're really i mean really though do you think that this insane coverdale index has anything to do with the intelligence hearings how we know right here on the hill what the real focus is russia snowden journalists or aid in the n.s.a. leaks i mean clearly he's done incredibly think that he's in an incredible and incredible amount of damage to the security of this country there does seem to be something else going on i mean with all the kind of fear mongering him and shade

that's being thrown at sochi from the u.s. media you have seven people tweet pictures of hotel room experience suddenly it's a giant catastrophe at sochi with these terror threats that we've seen for two weeks all along the state department has routinely said we don't have any direct threats to the olympic games and yet you keep seeing that pushed even congressman mccaul on sunday he was a republican on the house homeland security committee so there's going to be a detonation somewhere in russia during these these olympic games so there seems to be something else operating here beyond. the back for snowden who knows man i just seems really crazy and you know when the media is lockstep in coverage and the narrative you just have to question what's the smokescreen harris thanks so much sam sachs break it down. you guys that's our show me going to break all over again.

the interview. is obviously more for the latest because it's pink. women wanted to avoid rape they really needed to buy guns environ how to use them. this is the one that i want

to go with them once again it's the fear of. women definitely the target of the gun loving someone you don't want to kill them when the killing might even if so many would you would just prefer. i know to say more and more if that's really scary marketing tactics which implies that women have some sort of moral obligation to guns to protect their family and young girls shoot out here too so we do have a pink or. more kids young kids choke on food than are killed by firearms if being armed made us safer in america we should be the safest nation on earth were clearly not the safest.

location of the boys still remember. how to do it well there's of the high tension said you would stop this story we might want my people. to. write the scene. first for you and i would think that you're. on a reporter's. instrument.

in the. russia condemns efforts of the u.n. to blame the syrian government for violence in homes where aid convoys are being fired upon the conflict increasingly spills across the neighboring borders. and the reason people. here is because it's a radical islamist stronghold in lebanon where she harvests are being bred for battle. taking silver surprise podium success for a russian female speed skater on a very busy day for the soft cheek. and people in over a dozen cities around the globe come out to fight for online privacy as part of what's being called the day we fight back.