it's ten pm here in moscow the top stories from our c. moscow denounces a big to boot sentencing in the u.s. is politically motivated as the russian businessman gets twenty five years behind bars for both was convicted of conspiring to sell weapons to terrorists and to kill american. forces ongoing violence in syria despite a u.n. ultimatum to both sides must reach a complete ceasefire next week president assad says he's already withdrawing troops from certain areas. and french muslims living scapegoats in the wake of the deadly shootings in toulouse they say they're bearing the brunt of a heavy crack that an extremism ahead of the presidential election. but not in

washington with the fallout from sentencings just one of the many topics tackled in tonight's alona show. welcome to the lower show where the real headlines with none of them are seat going to live in washington d.c. now time we're going to take a look at who is the biggest baddest arms dealer of them all alike big their boots or our own government then michelle alexander joins us to talk about her massive incarceration system and the role that race plays just one shocking statistic out there there are more african-american men under correctional control today than were enslaved in fifty and despite a weak economy a number of patents expiring big pharma is still making the big bucks we're going to talk about how consumers are manipulated and always coming back for more medication or have all that morphia tonight including

a dose of happy hour but first take a look at a story that deserves your attention so you know i would like to start the show with a special segment and this story involves congressional overreach and what you can do to help shed light on a story began in december of two thousand and eight the bush administration's bureau of land management rushed to do one last favor for their friends in the oil and gas industry and they held an auction to sell oil and gas drilling rights thousands of acres of federal land and all sites are located in fragile ecosystems near breathtaking scenery like a parcel of land near arches and canyonlands national parks in utah i need listener say environmentalist or police so an activist named tim de christopher and the behind bars for trying to stop sketchy auction he walked into the auction with the intent of disrupting it in protest but because oversight was so lax he managed to sign in as a possible bitter bitter number seventy eight so what happened next why don't we have freelance journalist and filmmaker dennis trainer jr explain. christopher bid

on twenty one twenty two fouls in acres using one point eight million dollars he didn't have one point eight million dollars you have one point eight dollars he had zero dollars he was trying to draw attention to what the department of interior has later described as an illegal sale you really correctly the partitive interior has reviewed these cases and found that of the one hundred sixteen parcels up for auction that day only about twenty percent were actually illegal the orchestrators and the deal makers who put these illegal sales together are they facing criminal charges. so you can see where he was going to christopher was charged with two felony counts one for violating a federal on shore oil in ghastly thing reform act and a second for making false statements so it didn't matter that he had his supporters actually planned to raise the money to finance that protest big and it didn't matter the oil executives who rig b.l.m. auctions often don't get prison sentences at all and the last july to christopher

was given a two year sentence in her long prison in california and he was slapped with a ten thousand dollars fine now he might get out after his case is heard by a federal appeals court in may but one month ago the vitter seventy story took a disturbing turn he went to christopher found out that a major corporate donor to his defense fund was planning on moving jobs overseas he had a crisis of conscience so he sent an e-mail on march fifth to the person who manages his finances and it contains the following message so if they are saving money by screwing their workers i can't in good conscious accept some of that money the first thing i'm going to do was send a letter to their owners about why this step bothers me this letter will include a threat to wage a campaign against them if they don't reverse course and keep the plants open so this sounds so like an issue for to chris over and his activist networks to be concerned with right the rolling stone reported last week that because of that letter possibly because he used the word threat to christopher was put in isolation

and her long special housing you. and here's the kicker the bureau of prisons did this reportedly at the request of an anonymous congressman and isolation is no joke human rights groups have said that the experience can be considered tantamount to torture and here is what a staff attorney from the center for constitutional rights had to say about isolation. being cut off physically from their families in ways that just sort of purpose whatsoever this is deeply upsetting the only two. clients who are incarcerated but also deeply destructive to their children to their spouses to their loved ones. now to christopher's case he was given little exercise little fresh air and minimal contact with the outside world and his lawyer said that his clients mental state started visibly worse and after just three weeks now thankfully pretty crisper the new sparked a public outcry fishel integrated him back into the general prison population and told us tim would still be in isolation but for

a free press now prisoners in the federal system are thrown in isolation without due process all the time this time it's disturbing about it is that it happened to christopher because of one angry congressman ideally we think of the public should know which congressperson was the grains behind this idea so this is where you the viewers come into the story get in touch with your member of congress staff and ask on the record whether or not they contacted the bureau of prisons about christopher's letter if they did ask if they implored the bureau to implement retaliatory measures such as isolation now we're going to document the responses we're going to try to narrow this down for you and of course talking to all four hundred thirty five members of congress is a monumental task so it would really be helpful as a voters would be representatives on the house judiciary subcommittee on crime terrorism and homeland security if you guys would get involved if that's the congressional panel responsible for prisoner oversight so maybe after i have calls the panel itself i'll start asking some questions after all being thrown into

isolation. at the whim of an elected official that is not how our justice system is supposed to work so if you want to get involved check out our facebook page for tips on how to ask the right questions who the members on the subcommittee are and once you receive a response from the us we'll keep track of the answers and keep you posted so check our facebook page for additional details get in touch and stay tuned. now victor boot was sentenced to twenty five years in prison today by a federal district court in manhattan federal prosecutors were asking for a life sentence all the defense has been trying to get the judge to throw out his conviction calling him a political prisoner who stepped into a vindictive u.s. government sting operation of who was convicted of conspiring to sell millions of dollars of weapons including surface to air missiles conspiring to kill u.s. nationals conspiring to kill u.s. officers and employees and conspiring to provide material support to fart revolutionary armed forces of colombia which are on the u.s. list of terrorist organizations who was arrested in thailand in

a sting operation where informants posed as representatives of far but even though he was found not guilty twice by thai courts the u.s. was able to get him extradited to new york and it's a case that there is not only political and legal questions of jurisdiction but also begs the question as to how selective the government is when it comes to arms trafficking especially considering if the u.s. government itself is the biggest arms dealer in the world joining me to discuss it is scott horton out of there on legal and national security matters for harper's magazine scott thanks so much for joining us and what are your overall thoughts on this case here so we found out that he did not get the life in prison sentence got the twenty five years but overall is this a case he would call fair. well i think it raised a lot of issues obviously i just go back to your your last segment you were talking about prisoners being held in isolation and that happened to be converts and we know that he was held in solitary confinement and we know that the judge judge

simon learned about this and was very angry about it actually ordered to be released into the general prison population the justice department played this case from beginning to end with a very heavy hand they treated him as if he were a terrorist as if he were writing a principle role with a terrorist organization and it's clear that the judge thought that that was overreaching impact that that bordered on being ludicrous in fact he was never dealing with terrorists here he was dealing with u.s. government representatives and i think this case raises has been a great many others in the whole series of articles of cards looking at the counterterrorism prosecutions the bombing sting operations. i think what we see consistently and then is that this part of the justice is very very good staging highly the actor paul stings where they have people come in and impersonating.

islamic terrorists or and then in this case far and other groups and frankly a number of people who would certainly have raised the same question which is right isn't the department of justice dedicating the same level of resources to actually disrupting terrorist activity in the united states or abroad back to what we see is a lot of sting operations and not real efforts the bust up terrorism well i mean let me interrupt you for a moment there because so many of the sting operations that you talk about to be seen recently afaik in place at least within the u.s. so then what kind of legal questions to bring up with. thinking of how this went down of the arm twisting that went on when it came to convincing to tie government despite the fact he was found not guilty very two times to actually get him extradited to the us of course russia was fighting against this when it comes to international law does the choco know absolutely race or series of international

legal precedent to the basic premise of law internationally has been from ancient times that the laws subject to a principle of strict territoriality that is a you define crimes and you prosecute prosecute them within your own territory and of course this is something about a russian merchant operating out of thailand and other countries making a sales and because. it really is hardly a basis for a claim of any connections of united states or its united states acting as a sort of global elisa as it were and in fact the united states. fictionalizing the crime but this is not actually in the u. ng with the terrorist group it was in dealing with actors provided by the department of justice so it's a very doubtful in fact that what the problems us was facing the way out was getting cooperation from foreign nations spec we don't promote wiki we able so that

cooperation from thailand was essentially exported thailand was told that assistance programs the united states would be shut down unless they turned over big. now how do you think of this in the grand scheme of things i'm sure the thing that most people out there would agree that we don't really want weapons you don't want arms getting into the wrong hands of the hands of bad guys but then you know who is it that decides right because you can say that the u.s. government is probably the biggest i'm stealer in the world we just had the biggest sale of u.s. weapons in history to saudi arabia for sixty billion dollars last year and you know and so how does who gets to decide and when before is ok to sell weapons to them which again because he was fighting the soviets but then you have a couple here isn't that flips around you know is it just what's in the government's interest. you can say the u.s. is the biggest arms merchant in the world are in fact the us basically

competed neck and neck with the eastern bloc throughout the cold war and the end of the cold war the us deficit issues and basically became the dominant robel arms market markets here and there very little competition and one cynical way of viewing this and say this is the united states edging out a competitor but on the other hand there is a strong global interest and controlling and limiting these arms sales and particularly to terrorist organizations i mean you know i mean i have a questions about labeling them a terrorist organization they're more like direct traffic there is bringing those people whether studying them but they're very nasty group of people they engage in kidnappings in the fascinations right and left they made a living hell out of colombia so of course is a strong international interest and limiting the sale and dealing with there's also a lot of suspicion about the way the united states goes about it about the basic fairness and equity and fact look at the justice department right now well it's

pursuing this case and one thing outrage at the same time senior justice department officials were approving operation fast and furious which resulted in the sale of very powerful sending automatic weapons to drug traffickers just like the park across the border and mexico and actually resulted in deaths of american personnel unlike the fiction with which victim was charged and what the american reaction to that outrage no not even an apology for what happened it seems to have been viewed as a legitimate tactic for the justice department has been i guess you could say outrageous coming from the right wing on that when the things more of a domestic political part of being a fan then you know then talking about this issue of how many. weapons there are out there scott i want to thank you so much for joining us tonight great to be with you. are coming up after the break more black men are disenfranchised today than in

the year the fifth amendment was ratified or to speak with michelle alexander author of the new jim crow about the system that keeps millions of americans outside the democratic process. or is that similar to the believe you should be sitting on the market leader in the wake of the recent military coup there are growing fears if you are of the state plunging deeper trapped in civil strife. yesterday senior pentagon officials signed off on

a new trial for alleged nine eleven mastermind khalid shaikh mohammed and the trial's going to be in front of a military commission after over a decade he and four others who were accused of planning the september eleventh attacks are once again charged with murder in violation of the law of war attacking civilians hijacking aircraft and terrorism all of which are punishable by the death penalty now an arraignment for the five men will be held a good moan x. months but it's been a long and winding road to get there so they were originally charged in a military commission back in two thousand and eight when the obama administration came to washington they put it on hold because they wanted the suspects to face trial at the scene of the crime in a federal civilian court. looking at prosecutors from both the department of justice and the department defense and after thoroughly studying the case became clear to me the best venue for prosecution was in federal court. alabama holder fully believed one hundred percent that the men should be tried in

civilian court and even there michael bloomberg expressed his support for that move not only to bloomberg say that a city's police force could handle the security but also said the following so it is fitting that nine eleven suspects face justice near the world trade center site where so many new yorkers were murdered but then the media stepped in. the obama administration says it's only fitting that the man who claims to be the mastermind of the september eleventh attacks just visited new york city fleet shaikh muhammad it is called conspirators that attack will enjoy the protections of the american criminal justice system controversy and decision to bring five nine eleven suspects to american soil to face trial for. drug running this of service. in trials this is the most reckless the interest and the responsible decision that he has made walk right through track the distance between them a platform where they can preach to lease of terrorism to the united states i'll be

in shaikh mohammad the mastermind of the nine eleven attacks in terrorists on the u.s. military commission responsible for up to new york for trial just blocks from the world trade center to close for comfort. hate america registration act of war. between them a plan for propaganda vehicles within our borders. now by the end of two thousand and ten congress decided to join has cerium blocked the transfer of get mody trainees to us for any reason quitting the purpose of standing trial and they passed actual legislation to keep them from coming to the states amber and it didn't take long after that for mayor bloomberg to cave. is that the attorney general. and the president decided to change their mind. so as one politician after another succumbed to the media drumbeat eric holder reluctantly changed his stance on where cast them in the. right. fortunate since

i mean that decision members of congress have intervened and in polls restrictions blocking the administration from bringing any guantanamo detainees to trial the united states regardless of the venue i have to deal with the situation as i thought. it reluctantly me the determination that these cases should be brought to the military commission. and here we are today with word that will be charged again and all litigation will have to start from the beginning to in a military commission thanks to a mainstream media all too willing to play into a faith controversy and give it to you the twenty four hour news cycle to deliver peter king's fear mongering for days and days on end now all of that is despite the fact that other guantanamo detainees like document the lonny have since been sent to new york for a civilian trial and guess what nobody even cared about it it was a typical trial and a typical day in new york and in fact two hundred forty individuals have gone through our civilian courts who were sent to prison after being convicted of

terrorist related crimes and those were all after nine eleven on the contrary six people have been convicted on terror related charges in military commissions so the point is that we have a civilian court system that's been around for more than two hundred years and yet political and media pressure has some made it seem like it's not good enough for trying terrorists like you can't handle it the truth is that there are those that want is to go on far away from public view the truth is that many of these people have been tortured our government's own treatment of them would mean that evidence or statements obtained under those circumstances wouldn't count so they want to try and skirt the system and the truth is if care isn't trials can go by it successfully unnoticed in our civilian courts and how the hell are they going to keep the people scare and so that is why k.f. them will be facing a military commission next month and that's why the fight to try him in our civilian court system is officially that. now we often talk about the mass incarceration system here and in fact the u.s. now is the largest known prison population in the world but as if that wasn't

serving enough we also have to be honest about who it is that's targeted and affected most by a tough on crime mentality our guest tonight with the shocking statistic into the spotlight and there are more african-americans under correctional control today in prison or jail on probation or parole them are enslaved in eight hundred fifty a decade before the civil war began and those are the results of entering into the correctional system are long lasting creating a second class of citizens who are stripped of their voting rights excluded from juries legally discriminated against in employment housing access to education and public benefits and in fact as our guest also points out as of two thousand and four more african-american men were disenfranchised due to fellow disenfranchised disenfranchisement laws than in eight hundred seventy the year that the fifteenth amendment was ratified prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race so to time the u.s. has its first black president i would properly addressed the criminal justice system in which racism in many respects is still prevalent joining me to discuss it

is michelle alexander civil rights advocate and author of the book the new jim crow mass incarceration and the age of colorblindness which i want to thank you so much for joining us tonight and you know you've gotten a lot of attention for this book and rightly so right how can it not get a lot of attention especially when you put statistics out there like that but what do you think took so long for people to really start talking about this issue for it to become something that's more acceptable in the media. well i think many of us have been more or less lulled to sleep about the true nature of mass incarceration in america after all prisons are out of sight out of mind most prisons are located in predominantly white areas that's where most new prison construction has occurred and those who cycle in and out of our prisons and jails are typically folks who are living in a racially segregated get or wise communities. and so this cycle and system of

mass incarceration happens outside of the conscious awareness of you know most mainstream white americans in particular who rarely have any contact with the criminal justice system today you know today the whites only signs are gone black folks are no longer relegated to the back of the bus and are free to eat in any restaurant but the reality is that a new cast like system has emerged thanks to the war on drugs and the get tough movement millions of people overwhelmingly poor folks of color have been swept into our criminal justice system primarily for nonviolent drug related offenses the very sorts of crimes that occur with roughly equal frequency in middle class white neighborhoods in our college campuses largely ignored swept into our criminal justice system branded criminals and felons and then stripped of their very right supposedly won in the civil rights movement like the great vote the right to serve

on juries the right to be free of legal discrimination well then i'm going to bring out to you know yeah if you look back on it it's this is tough on crime this war on drugs that really is why what started it right where is what got us to where we are today in terms of the numbers and in terms of the figures if you look at it by you know you've also mentioned that if you look at historians political scientists all say that trying to get the working class white over to the republican party also may have had something to do with it. yes absolutely you know numerous historians and political scientists have now documented that the war on drugs was part of a grand republican party strategy known as the southern strategy of using racially coded get tough appeals on issues of crime and welfare to appeal to poor and working class whites particularly in the south who were anxious about resentful of fearful of many of the gains of african-americans in the civil rights movement and

pollsters and political strategists found it thinly veiled promises to get tough on a group of people not so subtly defined by race could be enormously successful in persuading poor working class whites to defect from the democratic new deal coalition and joined the republican party in droves as part of the effort the strategic effort to flip the south from blue from democratic to read to republican and so when president ronald reagan declared his drug war in one thousand nine hundred eighty two it was an attempt to make good on campaign promises to get tough on a group of people who had been defined not so subtly in the media and political discourse as black and brown and we'll see who they are you know these people still very much no politician wants to look like they don't want to be tough on crime and yet crime rates are at historic lows but do you think

a bear is you know something that can be drawn at to say that if crime rates are historic lows does it have something to do with historically high prison populations well no actually you know sociologists and criminologists today now and acknowledge that there is very little correlation between crime rates and incarceration rates our prison population has quintupled in. i think we may have lost michelle there we're going to think she's back. michelle are still there we lost you. for a minute there but you know we're running out of time and so i just want to before we have to hit our next break get to talking to you about the trayvon martin case and i just want to know what you think about it how you think that it fits into what it is that you write about because that's clearly been dominating the news cycle lately. yes well you know i think in many ways the mentality of george

zimmerman reflects the mentality of many in law enforcement today you know it's easy to demonize george zimmerman for what he did by merely stopping a young black men because of the way he looked and being in the wrong neighborhood well. you know that mentality of viewing young black men as a problem who need to be dealt with harshly who need to be interrogated and stopped and questioned that is the mentality that dominates you know most law enforcement agencies today if george zimmerman had had you know a badge with his gun we wouldn't even know trayvon martin's name today the new york police department reported that in one year alone in two thousand and ten the n.y.p.d. stop and frisk more than six hundred thousand people more than eighty percent of whom were black and latino and in only a tiny fraction of those stops and searches or any kind of suspect description or

investigation into a criminal case so we have hundreds of thousands of young black and brown men being stopped wrists searched viewed as a suspect without any evidence of criminal activity without any reasonable suspicion or probable cause greatly increasing the odds that a young black man will get caught with a little marijuana in his pocket or get caught doing something wrong and wind up in prison for the very kinds of mistakes that occur on college campuses excedrin get ignored any studies that consistently show now for decades that contrary to popular belief people of color are no more likely to use or sell illegal drugs than whites because their stock france search it grossly disproportionate rates they are incarcerated a grossly disproportionate rates in fact in some states eighty to ninety percent of all drug offenders sent. prison have been african-american and once locked up you

are locked out of many categories and appointment public housing in some states tonight even to survive so for the rest of your life you're relegated to a permanent second class status for making the same kinds of mistakes that young people in middle class white neighborhoods get to make as they're trying to of course you know that being part of the problem too is that if you have no voice how do you get more people to know that this problem exists and to pay attention to it and to try to change it michel thank you so much for joining us tonight thank you for having. heart we're going to take a quick breather but when we come back drug companies are doing their best to keep your money and your pocketbook is going to act.