coming up the wiki leaks have done it again and again poster and web site releases hundreds of e-mails from an intelligence gathering agency called draft for and media outlets are getting to finally see the true face of the military industrial complex will bring you the latest. plus the supreme court ruled that corporations were humans turns out that role might only apply when it comes to campaign contributions and not human rights violations will show you the double standards for personhood. ready aim fire at anything that is bought american second right amendments in some states

easier and easier to get your hands on a gun than it is to vote we'll show you how the constitution is malleable but some parts are bulletproof. it's tuesday february twenty eighth pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wahl and you're watching our t.v. . well the whistleblower web site wiki leaks has started releasing over five million emails from strat four strat four as a private intelligence gathering firm based in texas their clients are very interim corporations to government agency as wiki leaks reportedly obtained the e-mails from the hacktivist group anonymous and while there hasn't been anything particularly groundbreaking released yet the documents to reveal several huge corporations working with the 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 profitable military industrial complex alas spoke with jason burma's director of invisible empire a new world order defiant about the release of the mass e-mails here are his thoughts on the leak 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 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 silicate of 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 intelligence is a big business as we're 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 met american citizens with really zero repercussions and who do you think

should be most aware ia 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 read 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 assignments 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 dates and what does it mean for average citizens rights and privacy when we see these intelligence farm 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 and 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's out in one thousand nine hundred six ever since this 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 disengaged and thank you for coming on the show that was jason burma's the rector of and visible empire a new world order to find. oh buckling down on your first amendment rights the house today passed a bill that would make it illegal to protest from government officials are nearby and by government government officials they mean past present foreign anyone who is

protected by the secret service and this of course raises a lot of questions about fundamental first amendment rights to freedom of speech and freedom to assemble especially in the wake of the occupy wall street demonstrations that have swept across the country so rick santorum who just got secret service privileges no protesting near him former presidents foreign heads of states protesting would be off limits near them and under the act the government has the power to bring charges against any american who engages in political protest around the country so anyone who enters a building without permission with the intent to disrupt a government function if secret service is on the scene you can be arrested and we're not just talking high profile buildings like the white house either the bill includes quote any grounds restricted in conjunction with an event designated as a special event of national significance so how far would this go on infringing on

your first amendment rights we'll keep you updated on the story. and speaking of your rights as the presidential campaign heats up we expect no issue to be off the table and as always the argument over guns gun rights and gun ownership is sure to fire off some heated debates it's an issue discussed time and time again the same city of the constitution and the second amendment is sure to be invoked but when it comes to another right surrounding the very making of a democracy that is the right to vote that discussion has had far less often as our to correspondent christine found out it's an issue worth looking at as major changes are in the works. it is a right transcribed into a 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 firearms licenses is they were afraid the obama administration was going to take active steps to ban 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. 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 other racial. that's a bind or he's a 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 n w c p director says the policies hearken back to the days of jim crow bringing back old obstacles to be eliminated by the voting rights act of one to sixty five the most basic rights of

all. was the right to choose your own leaders. the history of this country in large measure. is the history of the expansion of that right to all of our people a history now reversing itself was 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 we want those in prisons prisons to be able to to master the process of it is a paid in and 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 south r.t. . well earlier today josh gerstein white house reporter for politico weighed in on the seeming rise and fall of these different amendments take a listen. 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 with a 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 it 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 right to own guns and 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 socio economic 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 id 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 see 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 whether they actually can tip the balance in an individual election 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 what do you think it's 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 it 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 voter id they are willing to speak out about that right josh thank you for coming on the show that was josh gerstein white house reporter for politico. 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's a shell oil oil company parent company help the nigerian government and violently

cracking down on ansi oil protesters but the multinational company argues they are not liable because they're quote they are not quote natural persons and other words since corporations are not people they can't be sued for human rights violations well earlier i spoke with caroline hellman professor of politics and head off a demo college about the issue i first asked about the supreme court's citizens united ruling that stated corporations are people when it comes to donating money to campaigns take a listen. well the case this particular case is coming because the second circuit court. is looking at this 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 they are everything corporations are going to goes to people. do you think. so corporations are people shouldn't 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 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 not 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 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 into 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 and 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 carolina 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 isn't create 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 caroline thank you for coming on the show that was caroline help men politics professor at occidental 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

president bashar al assad some media executives say the lack of press access is unprecedented but as r.t. lisa caffein 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 of the lucia back in two thousand and four. where 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 the 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. down the criminals we will kill them we will capture them it we will pass before i salute you and here is syrian president bashar al assad. what kind of 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 because it would seem to those who are using weapons to q.o.l. civilians now in both countries that iron hand targeted a sunni muslim opposition in wars that took on increasingly sectarian tones in fallujah u.s. forces and the shia iraqi troops were seen as infidels in syria their religious wrath is aimed at assad's alawite forces cording says some disparaging 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 is well self-evident. americans hate the military and murders. more of them. entering the main obstacle and locked in a key group they need help from the outside world medicine the most basic supplies witnessed acts of uncommon valor from the u.s. soldiers are always with protesters fearless protesters really. now those who dared

show images of the civilian casualties in full loser were often dismissed as propagandists their viewers even got the following advice from the pentagon. change the channel to a legitimate authority to give all honest 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 all shame and professionalism. 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 out of the besieged and in both cases it would seem it's the truth that suffered most. of our to washington. and be sure to tune into the big picture it's coming up at the top of the hour well here in the u.s.

and tax time again that means commercials for age in our block and turbo tax are flooding the airwaves than americans are doing the math to figure out just how much the government is taking out of their already the windowing paychecks and we've heard the numbers about how low the corporate tax rate is in this country but get ready to be shocked tonight host tom hartman will show you just how little general electric paid in taxes this year and then later he will have ben cohen you know ben and jerry's ice cream on the show to talk about his plans to fund the occupy wall street movement. but that is going to do it for the news for more on the stories we covered you can head over to our ti dot com slash usa and if you miss anything from this show or any show today don't worry we post our interview interviews in full on line just go to our youtube page it is youtube dot com slash artsy america and don't forget to leave a comment we had one.