today on our team it looks like president obama has some stiff competition in his quest to be reelected but i'm not talking about mitt romney see how a felon behind bars almost beat obama in the west virginia primary what's the clear message here. the student debt has to pass the one trillion dollar mark but the occupy movement doesn't want recent grads drowning in debt to shut up and pay off their bold move directed at the one percent later in the show. she's the woman who blew the whistle on washington the f.b.i. translator turned truth teller is now dishing it all out in her memoir will speak to author sabella admin's about the rough journey she faced to get her book published.

on wednesday may ninth seven pm in washington d.c. i'm adding martin you're watching r.t. . topping the news this hour something that's catching the attention of numerous news outlets today dead people of one elections in the past so could felons be next and west virginia democrats have a name and say about it the answer may be yes take a look at these headlines they pretty much tell it all texas inmate wins forty one percent of the vote versus obama in west virginia's primary obama loses to felon in several west virginia counties four in ten choose convict over obama in west virginia primary against obama even a jailbird get some votes wife ellen keith judd did so well against obama in west virginia that's right folks the man you're looking at right now is a man named keith judd he's actually giving the president a run for his money judges currently serving a seventeen and a half year prison sentence at a federal correctional institution that isn't even in west virginia for making

threats at the university of new mexico in one thousand nine hundred nine for many of the people who voted against obama in this primary it wasn't about electing a convicted felon to office it was more about sending a clear message of the president that they're willing to take almost anyone over him and they better shape up or ship out to take a look at the breakdown from the votes from the democratic primary from last night president obama won fifty nine percent of the vote while judd took a whopping forty one percent of the vote that's nearly enough to earn him multiple delegates to the democratic national convention but no one has offered up to register as a judge delegate yet west virginia is a democratic state but it's voters voted against obama in protest of his call policy which they feel impede the industry's growth in the state west virginians aren't the only ones unhappy with the obama administration's policies students leaving akademi in this country are being left in the lurch with the ball and a ball and chain of debt that will follow them for life a couple of weeks ago marked one t. day for student debt hit the one trillion dollar mark let's take

a look at some of the stuffs. currently sixty seven billion dollars of student loans are in default and the education department has twenty three private debt collectors chasing the borrowers so with this much debt hanging over the heads of the students how can those entering the workplace be expected to ever get back on their feet for a look at the occupy movements efforts on student debt i'm joined now by occupy student debt activist and larson and what is the occupy movement doing to combat the student debt crisis. campaign the occupy student debt campaign is a campaign of direct action we believe that the student debt crisis has reached a level that petitioning the government and asking for help from the same people who got us into this mess really just isn't working anymore we have one trillion dollars in student debt as you mentioned and many students will carry this debt for their entire lives and that is student debt is not dischargeable in bankruptcy

either federal debt is not dischargeable in bankruptcy and private student debt is not dischargeable in bankruptcy this so these debts will follow students throughout their lives and even beyond the grave in some cases lenders can garnish your parents' or security check if you cannot pay your student debt so our campaign is one of the centerpiece of our campaign is debt refusal and we believe that there are enough of us who are in in debt in student debt that if we just say we are not going to pay any more if we can get one million of us to sign a pledge of student debt refusal then that will go a lot towards transforming how higher education is funded in this country and we're looking at the clock right now of student it's taken away you know it seems like a really controversial thing to put forward to just deny paying for the debt that's accumulated i mean how how exactly is this going to transpire i mean is it just getting the groundswell of support behind the idea. well i would yes

that's part of it the other part is that refusal is not the only part of our platform for the occupy student debt campaign we also believe that the federal government should pay for higher education in all public two and four year colleges you know in the twentieth century we decided as a nation that we were going to pay for k. through twelve education and now it's the twenty first century a college education is required for many middle class jobs and we believe that it's time for the federal government to step up and to pay for public higher education so this is really a campaign at multiple levels it's about debt refusal but it's also about rethinking how we fund higher education in america with with one of two college graduates unemployed i mean is it time to rethink education altogether. well perhaps i mean you know a lot of educational institutions are now run like corporations you know they they

raise tuition at public colleges because they can use students to wish in as collateral to improve their institutions bond rating and capital markets and then they use those bonds those those loans to build stadiums and to to finance construction projects so student debt is being used to fund the one percent and to enrich the one percent so absolutely we need to rethink how higher education is fund in this country and the ninety nine percent need to need to take back some power in the situation it is interesting that you mention that because i just read an article about the salary benefits being given to the presidents of these schools and just to it shouldn't cost keep rising yet a lot of these public and private schools are tax exempt it seems like they're not sharing their burden to alleviate the situation whatsoever but and let's go back to the argument you know what about the people who say well why should i be burdened or why should i care about these ivy league people who are people who are an ivy

league schools who can't afford to pay schools that they get into why is that my problem. you know tuition has gone up depending on whose numbers you look at about four hundred percent in the last thirty years so this affects everybody it's ivy league schools but it's also community colleges and regular flagship for your colleges and certainly the for profit sector is a big problem so this isn't just about ivy league colleges that's a myth and you know student debt is not just even about young people a lot of people with gray hair have student debt we recently learned from the washington post that tens of billions of dollars in student debt are owed by people in their sixty's and it's not uncommon for lenders to harass the elderly for student debts that they took out decades before so the idea that this is somehow a problem of young people that go to ivy league schools who just got in over their heads is completely false and we absolutely reject that notion what about the student i mean i guess the average american how can they relate to the other than

people who are going to community colleges who have children in schools what about the debt bubble i mean let's talk about the bubble really quickly you know if it bursts would affect the economy in different ways and is that why the average american should care about this because it would have a ripple effect on a lot of other things. i mean i think the average american should care about that about a possible debt problem and we saw what happened in the mortgage market you know student debts are repackaged by wall street and sold as what are called slab student loan asset backed securities which are very similar to the mortgage backed securities that we all remember crash the the economy a few years ago so this is a very similar problem we should absolutely be concerned about it but i think the issue of student debt as it is even more than just economics this is you know education is something that all humans should have an should have a right to it's about human aspiration and development and it's really about investing in the next generation so yes we do need to be concerned about that about

a possible bubble and about the economic repercussions but this is also a very human issue what about the federal loans that people i mean there are programs set up that can absolve student loans under the federal government why do you why do students choose to take the private route and take out these private loans that never though that i mean that they can stay with them to the grave. well actually federal no student loan is observable and bankruptcy all student loans are no student loan is dischargeable in bankruptcy in the ninety's federal loans were made non dischargeable and in the two thousand private loans are made known as chargeable so you can't get away from student debt it will follow you to the grave and you know that the lenders have extraordinary and unprecedented powers to collect from you as i mentioned they can garnish your wages when you when you reach the security age they can garnish just a security check i mean i mean there's just almost nothing they can do to to be to

get their money and these are predatory new zero s. loans and it's high time that we focus on the fundamental issue rather than just in washington they want to talk about the interest rate for a small subset of undergraduate loans and we have a trillion dollar problem and it's really time to focus on the fundamentals so and let's talk a little bit about the what you're saying is a microcosm of the issue as a whole is these interest rates being frozen i mean you know the republicans are saying let's take away from the health care initiative and the democrats are saying let's take it away from businesses i mean what do you what do you think should happen or do you think this is kind of a distraction from the real issue at hand. i mean we in the occupy movement the occupy student debt campaign we absolutely support any initiative that would give people some relief there are a lot of people suffering right now and so we don't want to discount that and we absolutely support any initiative that would give people relief but what we insist on is that we talk about the fundamental issues which is how we fund higher education in this country higher education is funded. in many countries around the

world and many countries in europe and latin america and even asia many civilised countries have realized that if you want to invest in the next generation you have to fund higher education and it's really not a radical notion really the crazy thing is that we expect generate a generation of young people to take on this debt for the opportunity for the chance to enter the labor market and now in the recession many of them have no chance to pay this back i mean that's really the crazy thing was the clock keeps ticking will definitely keep tuned in to the occupy movement. that was an larson activist for the occupy student debt campaign while so many of americans youth are struggling with high unemployment rates and out of control student debt it's a very different story for x. president. we all know about the perks that presidents get while in office and those vacations personal chefs well the list goes on and on but you know these perks continue after they leave office until the day that they die and then it's

all the expense of you and i taxpayers are currently shelling out four million dollars a year to fund the lives of the rich and the ex presidents just take a look at this the perks include five hundred eighty thousand dollars for bill clinton swank in new york office eighty three thousand dollars for george w. bush's phone bill and fifteen thousand dollars for jimmy carter's postage i know you're thinking who writes the letters anymore but seriously this all started in one nine hundred fifty eight when harry truman had to take out loans to afford the cost of speaking engagements after he left office but now the former leaders of the free world seem to be a part of the one percent and they make millions every year through lucrative spoke deals and speaking engagements in two thousand and eleven clinton made ten million dollars alone giving talks and bush made fifteen body guard feeds alone to protect them are costing americans twenty million dollars every year so in times of austerity should taxpayers really be footing the bills of these millionaires who are currently there's a bill in the house that proposes to cap the expenses at two hundred thousand

dollars a year but whether or not these perks will peak only time will tell. and for all of the talk on obama's campaign trail about the importance of protecting whistleblowers his administration has the worst track record in silencing him prosecuting those he once called to protect one of the most startling cases of government whistle blowing is sabella edmonds who's been called the most gagged woman in history so bill is an iranian born former f.b.i. translator who's been fighting for years to tell her story until now after waiting three hundred forty days for f.b.i. clearance of her memoir she decided to release the book on her own and full without any redactions or approval the book is explosive allegations that indict multiple levels of the government and traitors deception and cover up inside the f. well and this is the founder and director of the national security whistleblower coalition and the author of the book classified woman she joined me earlier to discuss the details take a listen well it took several years to be exact five years to fight this case or

try to fight this case in courts and through congress and through executive agencies such as the inspector general's office and basically every turn i was photo classified in fact the government and this is during the bush administration attorney general at the time john ashcroft ended up invoking another gag order on congress they that were actively classified everything congress had investigated in my case so i asked their dos six years i was just i was exhausted so i went away for two years came back in two thousand and nine thinking that the are going to have a new administration and that they were going to see at least hopefully some some kind of a change and that didn't take place but i started writing this book and i abided by the justice department's own regulation of the law i submitted it to them they had

thirty days to exact it and gave it back to me they didn't and they kept sending letters for a year to my chinese saying that i cannot publish a single word in this book but they would not give us a dac that's version we fulfilled our obligation i have i have constitutional my side so i went ahead and i finally felt this just looks so he's out in your book you talk about high government officials actually working against the interests of national security and you talk about very clear warnings about nine eleven that were either north or or censored from different elements of the agency could you talk about why all of the government work against our national security and not prevent attacks such as well in nine eleven came. he says there were cases were information was intentionally blocked and in some cases it was a matter of incompetence but in many cases it was intentional and after nine eleven

this information they were classified birder they were not given provided to the nine eleven commission they were not nice the formation they didn't make their ways into the senate and the house joint inquiry into nine eleven so if you look at these all these reports from these various bodies you don't see any of this evidence that f.b.i. had in its possession for years and so that had to do with nine eleven but with corruption cases it mainly involved foreign lobby and foreign organizations working with high level u.s. officials some of them elected in congress we still have some of those just to my section division we had twelve thirteen congress you know people we also had people with at the state department and you're looking at people who were as high as second and third highest people in the state department who were working with certain foreign entities that organizations and they were providing information to

these organizations. what about the alternative media who i mean many alternative media have persecuted you for providing an alternative theory that doesn't quite gel with the government's nerd of about these events and about what you're saying why do you think the media is complicit in this cover up well you have to look at two kinds of medias today one is the mainstream media and i believe as far as they are concerned everybody knows i don't think they have any credibility left with neither with the american public so nobody even take them seriously and you're looking at new york times that that that sold all these lies with iraq war i mean they had judith miller so for example the favorite to review my book and they would say something positive i would really panic because considering where they said that would be a very very big insult for me and that's why if the alternative medium small be have places like r.k. here that has been very consistent in being independent but many alternatives they are receiving their funding their money from these foundations that are owned by

those corporations large mega corporations the same one percent in the screaming about so how could they be independent and when you have soros foundations several photos giving millions of dollars to a particular alternative media what is alternative about that so i refer to them as chua's i alternative and unfortunately today the have very few media channels and whether it is print or radio that is truly alternative and truly independent of talk about what would you say is the most explosive allegation that your book puts forward a victory for this book i as i said i submitted it to the f.b.i. and i did not disclose anything that i perceived i knew to be classified now for people who read this book they know that there have been for example cooperate in as a country with whom we call terrorists whether it's bin laden or bin laden's related

group. the been working with them since mid one nine hundred ninety s. ok and we've been working with them in central asia and this continued even after september eleventh two thousand and one we have been directly as a country as a nation and the congress by just it is not a secret budget in funding terrorist groups like chechens any kind of activities that have been carried out the major ones because in one thousand ninety six and two thousand and one less safe by major chechen terrorists were directly under our order our funding our army and our direction and the war it's very closely with individuals and the groups from afghanistan pakistan saudi arabia and most importantly nato ally turkey to put in place various cells in central asia and caucuses to create terror so what about this domestic cases that we're seeing all

these continued four year old terror plots that somehow it all comes out that there's because of entrapment i mean do you think that these are legitimate or do you think that this is just to justify a police state measures at home and most war broad it is so hard to tell as i have said several times because the media and the government has no credibility is hard to judge which one is real which one is not what one thing is real and that is that government needs to keep this fear factor alive and in order to do that they have to have these incidents otherwise nine eleven is going to get all that people are going to say wait a second the biggest attack star nation to our constitution did not come from some terrorists it has been coming continually from our own government because al qaeda can't attack our freedom they can't attack if they exist now today they can't attack our constitution the only attack on american people and our constitution our liberties are even that national dignity whether in terms of. in the eyes of the

international community or here when you go to the airport and if you'll find old this is the nation this is the government that considers every single citizen a suspect and they don't have a warrant yet they search you while these attacks are coming and they are being inflicted upon americans by the united states government no outsider whether it's in the south of the border or it is some kind of imaginary al qaeda in yemen moment to talk about al qaeda a little bit and also this recent bin ladin killing you know a kid is a tactic and until nine eleven no one really referred to it as an organization i mean do you do you look at the entire war on terror and just say you know this is completely fabricated and what do you think about the bin ladin killing i mean there's all these reports of him dying ten years ago and really we've been presented no evidence put forward i think confusion is one of the main objectives that that that this psyop on people people we see here and that is they create so

many of these layers and confusions nobody knows what is real what is and even the logic doesn't work and as you said you brought up a very important point within the f.b.i. the work with files dating back to mid one nine hundred ninety s. there was no unit in the f.b.i. that dealt with outside to anybody who claims that they those people are liars because they had units called him a job he did well mujahideen while f.b.i. were conducting some investigations to other branches of our executive branch and that is the state department and the cia starting from the one nine hundred ninety five a closely working with this people in fact they were using nato planes to bring these entities from afghanistan from saudi arabia from various places in central asia into turkey and turkey is a nato country they wouldn't even try to get passports and they were being sent to bosnia so how could they have units chasing al qaeda when outcry. it was our

biggest partner and it was not called al qaeda they referred to them as our allies it is very interesting and like you said working with bin laden and very closely with these organizations before and after nine eleven that was the bell adman's founder and director of the national security whistleblower coalition and the author of the book classified woman freedom of the press the bedrock of america's democracy the founding fathers knew that keeping a check on the powers that be would be essential to this country so that surveyance cameras filming us on every corner should not be the right of the citizenry to film and keep a law enforcement in check well in illinois it's already illegal to videotape the police of the auspices of eavesdropping it was previously illegal to record them to audio but just yesterday a federal appeals court struck down the illinois eavesdropping act citing a violation of the first amendment yea there are countless cases of police abuse and brutality that never would have been brought to light or justice without video footage some of those infamous of them being rodney king and oscar grant which

brings us now to the case of kelly thomas it's a tragic story of a schizo frantic homeless man who was brutally beaten to death by police officers the story is a year old but just yesterday a new surveillance tape from across the street was released to the public that shows very grisly details of the beating. box the graphic being that this videotape provides and one evidence of their degree just abuse of police authority without it the officers in this video might never been held accountable. and now take a look at this this is a photo photo of kelly thomas before and after quite graphic definitely puts a face on the consequences of these police officers actions now this is just another example of what minority communities have been saying for years what the occupy protesters across the country are claiming that police use excessive force

on a daily basis earlier i spoke to ten kavanah managing editor for reason dot com and asked him if this former priest police brutality is systematic or if it's just a case of a few rotten apples here's respond. in the choice be somewhere in between i don't think it's systematic i would for example differ with. some claims that are made about the level of tolerance and the institutional sort of acceptance of this kind of stuff we are well ahead of where we are you know twenty years ago the time of the rodney king beating and. right now you know the good part of that is because so many of us carry cameras so much we all have phones i'm talking to you through a very hook up right now but i have a phone i have a camera cetera so we can all catch everything that happens. well let's talk about cameras for a second what do you think about these laws that they're trying to pass and the states that are banning filming the cops i mean i thought that was part of the free

press of america i mean well. sure you can never. go wrong. expecting state legislatures and other such politicians to violate the constitution every chance they get fortunately that stuff is being argued in the courts and you know as you get to higher levels of courts there's still some recognition that people have a right to be secure in their own persons and among those is the ability to take to take footage it's you know it is a true fight it depends on how much we can continue to believe in the war on drugs it depends very much on how much we can be convinced that we need to live in a national security state and so forth but that you know again we're better off than we were when nobody had cameras right and there's nothing on the books right now that's going to take that away. well let's look on the bright side

a little bit sure well i mean you could say the oscar grant case of the perfect example there was a national outcry about the oscar grant killing and may surely some people say you got brought to justice but you're looking i mean he only served a couple months out of a tear prison sentence and now is trying to get back on the force i mean do you think that these cops will even be held accountable even if there is video footage . well it's up to society to hold them accountable and you know that includes you it includes me and includes everyone watching and. i think you know what i don't know trying to get back on the police force is a big one but i hope that will not be tolerated i mean you know this is a lot of this comes back to public employees just being hard to fire right i mean even when you get to any level of incompetence and in this case you know unfortunately these are cases of incompetence where people end up dead i suggest everybody please look at the reason dot com or reason to look at the kelly thomas

video and just decide for yourselves what you think i mean if this is stuff that was introduced in court that's why we can see it and it was a surveillance camera which fortunately seem to have remote operations or something and was able to follow a little bit of what happened you can't quite see how kelly thomas was actually murdered but you can see the way that he was you know ten anybody would know how many being read all the does dick lee i mean there in the cosmos getting to do pleasure out of being kelly it is a highly disturbing video one ounce the officer in that case pre-announced with you see these fish they're going to ask you up i don't know what t.v. rating you guys have but that's what he says to kelly thomas before he begins to do exactly the same with another officers help whose work in the pathak. and. it is

extremely disturbing and it really sheds a lot of questions on what the role really is of the police force and how they can be held accountable for these kind of actions i was ten cabinet managing editor reason dot com. does it for now if you miss part of this or any show today don't worry post all of our interviews online in full it's got to youtube dot com slash r t america and you can watch our videos as many times as you wish were check our website our two dot com slash usa there you'll find a bunch of stories we didn't have time to get to on air today to our intrepid web team wrote a story about president obama's latest flip flop yesterday he officially endorsed same sex marriage now this is the first time that a u.s. president has publicly offered a stance favoring sends that same sex marriage and want to wait and see what it means for his reelection bid and of course we always want to hear from you leave us your comments stories suggestions and feedback we want to know what you want us to cover you can also follow me on twitter at abby martin.