and realized everything you. are welcome is a big issue. coming up it's the company people pay to gather intelligence on government agencies and corporations but someone was watching that while they watched everyone else and now wiki leaks is taking strappers intelligence global well tell you all about the latest really. well first the supreme court decided that they are people now the scales of justice may be tipping and favor of corporations once again this time it's over torture and whether big businesses can be sued for the role they play and it will show you the dark side of corporate personhood.

taking aim at the amendments the right to bear arms might just be the only freedom americans are willing to fight for these days we'll show you how buying a gun is easier than voting in some states. it's tuesday february twenty eighth five pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wahl and you're watching r.t. . all the whistle blowing web site wiki leaks has started releasing over five million e-mails from strat four strive for is a private intelligence gathering firm based in texas their clients range from big corporations to government agencies wiki leaks reportedly obtained the e-mails from the hacktivist group anonymous now while there hasn't been anything particularly groundbreaking released yet the documents do reveal several huge corporations working with the intelligence firm regardless of what details come out of the

e-mails they do reveal yet another layer of something we bring much attention to here at r.t. the massive and profitable military industrial complex how to talk more about this i'm joined now by jason burma's he is the director of invisible empire a new world order defined. so big companies turning to stratfor for intelligence information so obviously there is quite a demand for their services is intelligence yet another piece of the military industrial complex. well absolutely it's part of this ensure goal check not believe that we now have not only in this country but across the world it shows you that corporations can now buy intelligence networks that are heavily heavily involved with our own u.s. intelligence networks in fact even the mainstream media is dubbing them the the shadow cia this is a firm that was created in one thousand nine hundred six by george friedman this man was a political analyst political scientist he'd spoken to darpa the u.s.

army war college on many occasions and essentially started this firm that is not only for hire but has facility to cilla tainted money laundering paying informants overseas already we're seeing some of these e-mails leak where stratfor is trying to cover their behind because they know that they're involved in illegal activity overseas with many of these informants and they say they don't want to do the perp walk and so obviously and how legends as a big business as we are seeing from these leaked e-mails it's a comedy it seems that now you know can be bought and sold who is benefiting from this business well just one of the names out there right now again it's very early there are over five million emails to comb through but people like dow chemicals that can not only spy on their competition but also protesters and again it's business for hire without prosecution it's having a middleman it's having what the intelligence networks out there like the n.s.a.

and the cia call plausible deniability because again they're doing it through these third party services so you can have a large corporation like tao be able to gather intelligence on a regular medic american citizens with really zero repercussions and who do you think should be most wary about these intelligence gathering agencies and and other words who is most likely to be tracked and watched by these agencies. well unfortunately in many cases it's people like you and me when we oppose the system when we oppose the establishment when we do speak up at our city hall me meetings when we are involved in getting into the political process where for example in upstate new york right now they're trying to do a lot of fracking and intelligence gathering on individuals who oppose them would be beneficial to these companies and we're seeing this more and more today and i think this is a great thing that these things have been exposed because now the common man is going to be aware that big companies can purchase intelligence on you and your family and other corporations on their competition in unfair business practices and

how about they are given that you know if there is nothing particularly incriminating r r r i guess criminal behavior that would catch the attention of law enforcement why should the average citizen be concerned if they're like hey i've i have nothing to hide well look at the case of julian a songe for instance these e-mails are already revealing that there's an indictment here a secret indictment by the u.s. district attorney's office and the department of justice that nobody seems to be aware of why is it that this private corporation stratfor is aware of it yet the american people are and how is this man been indicted when he hasn't even been extradited to this country and charged and jason what does it mean for average citizens rights and privacy when we see these intelligence firms becoming growing businesses well again it really puts the blame on somebody else that allows again this technology to take

a larger hold of our lives that it allows us to be surveilled tracked traced database and then that information sold to the highest bidder where basically you can be profiled and if you're doing something that isn't towards a certain corporation or entities liking that type of behavior is going to be squashed in a way that you may not even be aware of. and do you expect the demand for this to increase i think this is just the beginning again this is a firm that said in one nine hundred ninety six ever since the security state has grown we've seen the launch of fusion centers across the nation and really this is par for the course this is the norm in today's society and really how intelligence is sold off to the highest bidder we no longer no longer have a constitutional republic run and run by the people and for the people but we have this technology run by corporations and the military industrial complex where the same jason thank you for coming on the show that was jason burma's director of invisible empire a new world order to find well as the presidential campaign heats up we expect no

issues to be off the table and as always the argument over gun rights and gun ownership is sure to fire off some heated debates it's an issue discussed time and time again the sanctity of the constitution and the second amendment is sure to be invoked in that conversation when it comes to another right surrounding the very making of a democracy that is the right to vote that discussion is had far less often as our to correspondent christine for southbound out it's an issue worth looking at as major changes are in the works. it is a right transcribed into the very fabric of our culture and our constitution. the right there was. only a certain number of things that were put in the constitution by the founders and they put a right to bear arms of the constitution for a couple reasons first of all they were just finished a violent revolution you know they overthrew oppressive government and understand

just how many people enjoy that freedom today here's a look at background checks for firearm purchases on what is typically one of the busiest days of the year for potential gun buyers black friday the previous record was in two thousand and eight with just under ninety eight thousand background checks this year the record was broken for checks in a single day with one hundred twenty nine thousand one hundred sixty six a thirty two percent increase from two thousand and eight i think right now the reason so many people applied for foreigns licenses is they were afraid the obama administration was going to take active steps to bear and whether or not that's true the gun loving portion of america remains a group whose affection many would be politicians often try to win the republicans we should be better. dead game that the cap and trade bill and the second amendment is increasingly celebrated and the number of gun owners expand the

right to vote listed in the fifteenth one thousand and twenty sixth amendment is narrowing a new policy that initiatives mean as many as five million eligible voters will lose that right to choose the next person to occupy the white house. fourteen states states which represent two thirds of the electoral college votes needed to win the presidency have already passed several measures these include restrictions on where people can register to vote less time for early voting and stricter laws requiring people to provide government issued photo i.d.'s african-americans alteration of the minorities are very heavily targeted the poor those who don't drive cars or have cars are also very heavily targeted hilary shelton washington d.c.'s and c.p. director says the policies hearken back to the days of jim crow bringing back old obstacles sought to be eliminated by the voting rights act of one nine hundred sixty five the most basic right of all. was the right to

choose your own leader. the history of this country and a large measure. is the history of expansion of that right. to all of our people a history now reversing itself with new laws also targeting convicted felons who have completed their sentences have jobs and pay taxes in florida iowa virginia and kentucky anyone convicted of a felony has their right to vote denied permanently if the idea of prison is to rehabilitate one of the practices would want those in prisons prisons to be able to to master the process of participate in it i look toward process troubling for many in texas as well where you can't use a student i.d. to vote but you can use a handgun license in the words of governor rick perry who signed the bill it's the integrity of every vote that every vote can the question for many others though how

many votes won't be counted because they were barred from being cast in washington christine for r.t. . let's talk more about the seeming rise and fall of these different amendments as josh gerstein he's the white house reporter for politico and he joins us now hi there just good to be with you so gun sales are surging and this seems pretty easy to get one of these days but at the same time it's getting harder to vote how does this happen well there's basically two totally different sets of rules in fact in this country most places if you're not buying from an actual gun dealer you don't need any identification whatsoever in a private sale or to buy a gun at a gun show there's no obligation of the person selling to even check who you are at all with any type of identification and as you just mentioned in that report you've got laws going up all over the country requiring that you have

a photo id to vote which kind of surprising number of americans don't have so but why i put more regulations on voting instead of more regulations on owning guns. well i don't think it's generally considered an either or although there was a mention there of felons and criminals and in fact it's much easier for felons and criminals to get guns to get their gun rights restored in a lot of places than it is for them to be able to cast a ballot there is this concern among conservatives among republicans that there's a lot of voter fraud that there are people going to the polls and casting ballots that they don't deserve to have that they're either not citizens or they already voted somewhere else or using a false identity how often that goes on regarding guns i'm not entirely sure but again why would you go and present yourself if you're not qualified when you could just legally basically buy a gun without any background check in certain venues at all and what's more regulations on who and when someone can vote who is hurting from this senate who is

benefiting from these tighter voting rolls well it's looks like it's going to be largely minorities that are going to be hit because they tend to have a lower percentage of having either driver's licenses or state photo i.d.'s it also looks like students in a lot of states could be hurt as again was mentioned in the report in places like texas a student id from a university even though it's issued by a state university is not considered sufficient to vote and so therefore if those students don't have driver's licenses which many of them may not and don't have driver's licenses from texas they might not be able to vote either now when it comes to owning guns the right to bear arms. those that believe in that right of are very very passionate about protecting their rights own guns but as sam and i went to see pac and saw a lot of stands out there making sure that that is indeed protected why don't we see the same kind of passion when it comes to possibly losing the freedoms to vote

. it's a good question you do see a lot of groups protesting it but i agree with you there haven't been the same level of demonstrations and so forth i think you have to look at sort of the socioeconomic background of the people who would be affected folks that are likely to not have a driver's license or state id may not be working a lot of them could be homebound a lot of them could be elderly there not necessarily people that are going to turn out at a protest if you have the wherewithal to get to a protest you probably have the wherewithal to get a photo i.d. but it is interesting a lot of these laws kind of harken back to thirty or forty years ago when we had poll taxes you had to pay a certain amount of money to vote the court said you can't do that and now people in some states are being told you have to pay for a photo id in order to vote and when you say this crackdown on the right to vote presumably it prevents people from being able to vote how do you think that could

possibly tip the outcome of the election. you know it the general conventional wisdom is that republicans benefit from stricter voting rules because a lot of those who would be affected are minorities and minorities tend to vote more democratic than republican there does seem to be a lot of energy among conservative republicans for passing these kinds of laws but whether they actually can tip the balance in an individual action i think it's not entirely clear at this point clearly it's something that the republicans want to see happen and most democrats are trying to prevent from taking place right and that's something that would be hard to measure right do you think it says about priorities and politics when we see something like you know the right to bear arms a lot of passion behind that and then when it comes to voting not so much of there when we see the rise and fall of these different kinds of regulations when it comes to these amendments what does that have to say about the priorities and politics.

well there's no question that the moment the gun lobby is a more vocal and more active constituency then the civil rights movement the civil rights movement has been going for forty or fifty years and i think a lot of people at this point probably assume that those rights are secured when in some places they might not be but it's sort of across the political spectrum the success of the gun rights lobby even this white house has said basically not a word about any increased gun control since they came into office and so that gives you a sense of how reluctant democrats are to even engage on the gun rights issue whereas certainly on the other issue of the voter id they are willing to speak out about that. josh thank you for coming on the show that was josh gerstein white house reporter for politico thank you well today the supreme court takes on a case that could decide whether or not corporations can be sued over torture the

case involves about a dozen nigerian activists that say shell oil's parent company help the nigerian government and violently cracking down on ansi oil protesters but the multinational national company argues they are not liable because they are not quote natural person so in other words since corporations are not people they can't be sued for human rights violations are larry spoke with caroline how many professor politics at the dental college about the issue i first asked about the supreme court citizens united ruling that stated corporations are people when it comes to making campaign donations but there is this distinction when it comes to violating human rights take a listen. well the case this particular case is coming because the second circuit court. is looking at the shell case and saying well if a corporation is not a natural citizen then they can't be held liable for their actions across overseas

the problem is three other courts disagree with them and the supreme court upheld this notion that we could be trying corporations and individuals based upon violations of international human rights law in two thousand and four so this is not following precedent and the fact that the supreme court is looking at this now probably means that there's a pro corporatist agenda and it doesn't make sense given the citizens united case because you can't have it both ways right you can't say well you get to be a citizen you get to be considered a citizen if you're a corporation because it will give you power in politics but then we're not going to hold you accountable using that same logic it is illogical and there certainly seems to be a contradiction there mitt romney presidential candidate stands by the fact that corporations are people here's what he had to say about the issue in the past. corporations are people my friend we can raise taxes of course every their corporations and also but it goes to people. do you think it goes.

corporations are people sort of they be punished for torture. well they should indeed right we have that eight hundred eighty six case of the santa clara case finding that corporations are people and then the application in two thousand and ten was citizens united saying and they can contribute as much as they want to in politics using that logic we need to hold it treat them as citizens across the board although i would take a step back and say i have a problem with the fact that we can't hold corporations accountable and less we consider them to be persons i want to hold them accountable regardless of whether or not we consider them to be natural citizens imagine the implications if we were to implement this law in the united states what corporations can't be held accountable for murder and rape and in this particular trial state sanctioned murder for environmental and human rights protesters in nigeria we would never allow this on american soil so why are we willing to allow this on nigerian soil

that is certainly an interesting question and so it seems like corporations want to have the best of both worlds they want to be considered a person when it benefits that and ah consider a person when it doesn't benefit the. right liz you bring up a great point right that the supreme court that we're seeing right now is the legacy of the bush administration but also the lower courts i mean there was a concerted effort to stack the courts with conservative pro corporate individuals and i think what you're going to see is this a proper see where the five members of conservative members of the supreme court ended up supporting citizens united which is triple the amount of outside money in politics in the two thousand and ten election and will probably be much larger than that in the two thousand and twelve election you're going to see those same folks saying no corporations shouldn't be held accountable for torture for rape for murder it just boggles the mind how blatant the political agenda is here and when you look at the lower courts so far with all of this disagreement it is it is split

along the lines of party so democratically appointed judges have been in favor of holding corporations accountable for these atrocities and republican judges with the exception or republican appointed judges with the exception of one have gone with corporations and allowing then this double standard or you know this incredible immunity which is just popping up out of thin air with no precedent and it seems like a no brainer i mean if somebody is torturing another person that that person should be held accountable but how far could this go i mean exploiting slaves atrocious human rights violations that corporations will not be responsible for these heinous acts should the supreme court rule in their favor is that correct. correct in fact i think that if the supreme court rules in their favor it will encourage corporations to go in especially those that are extracting resources like oil or mining they will go and seek out regimes where they don't have to worry

about human rights violations because those regimes can then take care of environmental protesters or people who stand up to them i mean look at the shell case in nigeria we're talking about medical doctors and activists who stood up to shells environmental degradation in their human rights violations and they were murdered state sanctioned murder for this and what's interesting liz is that this reveals that this is not a particularly unusual pattern here we see a lot of corporations and gauging in this behavior anough so that we can we can talk about at least a dozen cases previously so caroline we had citizens united now this is this yet another example of corporations and their overwhelming power growing power of government and politics here in the u.s. absolutely i mean we have the best government that corporations can buy at this point we see the voice of citizens trumped by corporate money and the citizens

united ruling is done exactly what we thought it would do it is increase it it is increased outside spending and it does there's no transparency right we don't know where this money is coming from it's coming from probably a handful of large donors we need to revoke corporate personhood we need to go back to a time in the united states where corporations could only exist if they serve the public interest now doesn't mean they wouldn't exist and it doesn't mean that the market wouldn't be free in fact i would argue that it would restore much better market mechanisms were corporations couldn't put their bottom line in front of the health lives and safety of american citizens or in this case nigerian citizens. obviously very huge implications for this case it will be interesting to see how it plays out carolyne thank you for coming on the show that was caroline help men politics professor at offutt on college. well the government's refusal to grant foreign journalists unfettered access has deep in the fog of war those who get in often do so illegally and as a result are limited to reporting on the bloodshed from behind rebel held lines

just last week two western journalists were killed in holmes the scene of some of the bloodiest battles between armed opposition groups and the forces of president bashar al assad some media executives say the lack of press access is unprecedented but as artie's lucy catherine of is about to show the world has been through this at least once before there is no doubt that the siege of homes is brutal and horrific but it's difficult to see how it differs from the siege in fallujah back in two thousand and four. well they now call homes the capital of the revolution just as they once called palooza the capital of terror different conflicts that share more in common than actually meets the eye now each is the third largest city in this country and each the site of a bloody urban war one of them now in history books the other still raging as we speak now in homes as in fallujah poorly armed insurgents faced off against a superior military well equipped soldiers armed with mortar snipers tanks and

airpower and in both cases of fishes claims that only heavy handed force could bring peace blaming the violence on criminals and terrorists here's a chief military spokesman for the u.s. forces in iraq we will hunt down the criminals we will kill them we will capture them it we will pass before if you lose you and here is syrian president bashar al assad. what the top priority now is to regain security which our country has enjoyed for decades this can only be achieved by using the terrorists with an iron hand it will be no leniency for those who are using weapons to q.o.l. civilians now in both countries that hire in hands targeted a sunni muslim opposition in wars that took on increasingly sectarian tones in fallujah the u.s. forces and the shia iraqi troops were seen as infidels in syria their religious wrath is aimed at assad's alawite forces. to some disparaging you tube comments

salah white monkeys satanic troops those are just some of the many slurs now amid the violent clashes gut wrenching images like these showing the human toll of war streets littered with bodies of the wounded not to mention those of the dead but this is where the similarities and civilians did suffer most in both wars and yet the stories of pollution innocents remain largely untold most reporters in two thousand and four were embedded with the u.s. troops today the few who do sneak into syria often stick with the rebels and the difference in the coverage as well self-evident americans hit the military with the american. bomb a mortar bomb by actually entering the main hospital and blocking a key route they need help from the outside world medicine the most basic supplies

so i witnessed acts of uncommon valor from the u.s. soldiers that i was with protesters fearless protesters really. now those who dared show images of the civilian casualties in fallujah were often dismissed as propaganda their viewers even got the following advice from the pentagon. change the channel to a legitimate authoritative cornish news station the accusations from the syrian government are eerily similar today lies in the media have gone beyond common sense some television channels have lost a profession. now it is often said that perception forms reality and nowhere does this ring more true than in syria and iraq in one battle the press told the story of the besiegers in the other that of the besieged and in both cases it would seem it's the truth that suffered most. of our washington.

well the ilana show is coming up in just a half an hour let's check in with a loaner to see what is on today's agenda hi there lona what can we look forward to hey liz well as i'm sure you knew i'm sure you know excuse me next week israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu is going to be meeting with president obama and so ahead of that ahead of a pack of tapping this weekend we're now hearing reports that israeli officials are saying that if they were to launch a preemptive attack against iranian nuclear facilities they wouldn't even bother telling the u.s. and they're all claiming of this is something that's going to help the u.s. a face and make it seem like they're not involved so we can discuss that as well as the case of another man who's on death row in the state of alabama again there's no physical evidence linking him directly to the crime and so might be another person that could get executed you know where his guilt is still in question and you're saying and i take it you'll have the latest on the going on of the republican primaries oh yeah we'll take

a look in fact we're going to have one of our correspondents brick stone not sure you're familiar with him or not but he always has a comedic take on things in the hall have some advice for mitt romney in florida too that that is going to do it now for the news but for more of the stories we covered you can head on over to our t dot com slash usa you can also check out our youtube page it's youtube dot com slash r t america and you can also follow me on twitter at those wall the a lot of shows coming up in just a half an hour we'll see you right back here at seven.