today on our team it's a secret group you're not supposed to know about some of the world's biggest and brightest minds are descending upon the virginia for an annual meeting known as the build bird conference look in their book of secrets coming up next i wish i could tell you that the world is a safer place today. it's not now that mitt romney has clinched the republican nomination we're starting to see what type of president he wants to be we'll tell you why this presidential candidate is making war instead of peace. plus virginia's governor wants us police department to have authority be on land and sea with drones patrolling the skies that's right using u.s. military technology on our own citizens a lot of our guests about this domestic drone program and.

it's wednesday may thirtieth four pm in washington d.c. i'm abbie martin and you're watching our team. for the last half century and the lead organization called the builder group has met annually all around the world and total secrecy behind closed doors and with no official press started in one thousand nine hundred five when the world's most powerful people joined forces and the netherlands at hotel boatbuilder where prince bernhard a former nazi party member was integrity and its formation that meeting spawn the creation of the build a bear group and it's been meeting ever since in two thousand and nine the group met in greece two thousand and ten spain the meeting attracted hundreds of protesters and of course no group photo from the attendees last years in zurich switzerland and it is believed that the group discussed how to handle the arab spring at that conference and this year they're meeting and the wealthy city of chantilly for. right next to washington d.c.

the group is comprised one hundred thirty or so of the world's top meets in politics banking food oil media and national defense some of the world's most notable attendees have been queen beatrix of the netherlands prince charles tony blair gordon brown john edwards timothy geitner george soros alan greenspan colin powell bill clinton ben bernanke bill gates madeleine albright paul wolfowitz richard holbrooke james wolfensohn of the world bank peter mansbridge of c.d.c. had their recent editor of huffington post canada mortimer zuckerman publisher of and why daily news and admin clarke c.e.o. and president of t.d. bank henry kissinger and david rockefeller are involved as the honorary members of the building steering committee which is responsible for selectively carefully selecting the attendees every year some of called the builder group a harmless think tank or just a discussion group but those have been following it for years so there is something

much more sinister at the root of the claim the group gets together to plan policy for a new world order global domination of the subjugation of the rest of humanity according to a recent poll that drudge over fifty percent of the pollsters agreed that the builder hosts the real power master elites of the world unfortunately you won't hear much of a peep about the group's dealings or even the existence of the group on the corporate media this is because the media moguls that have attended are sworn to secrecy just check out what david rockefeller has said in his coverage or in his memoir multi-billionaire david rockefeller said quote some even believe we're part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the united states characterizing my family and me as internationalists and conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global politike political and economic structure one world if you will if that's the charge i stand guilty and i'm proud of it. he also allegedly said that he's grateful to media outlets like the washington post the new york

times whose magazine has attended the meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years saying it would have been possible without them to plan for the new world if it had been subjugated to the lights of publicity during all those years while the public might not know exactly what's going on there many agree that the people that attend this conference are the world's movers and shakers. the this is the poll conducted by drudge that asked people what they really think of the build a bird conference over half of the people so that the conference are attended by the real power masters of the world fourteen percent say they think it's a false conspiracy and thirty five percent say it's just a little both nonetheless the secret meeting is definitely coming more and more into the public eye whether the participants want to or not meanwhile while both the berg attendees were question by independent journalists about what's goes on there many completely skirt the issue or even deny having attended so what is

really going on at the builder conference will be all weekend covering it and chantilly virginia to see if we can get the scoop about what people are really thinking thousands are expected to attend so stay tuned for that. even though america's military budget is bigger than the next ten countries combined it's apparently not enough for a presidential hopeful mitt romney the presidential republican nominee recently said that america needs to grow its military and maintain it as an incomparable force of military domination in the world so the world really is unsafe as newly minted mitt would have you think well talk about this i'm joined by david swanson campaigner for roots action. david in a recent campaign speech mitt was saying you know the world isn't safe we really need to bolster our military what do you think about that statement. well i'd be hard pressed to find anyone who was claiming that the world was perfectly safe so

it's not clear who mitt is going up against there i think he's won that one pretty easily but as far as building the biggest military the world's ever seen you know what can i say except mission accomplished it's done we've got it the military has grown every year that george w. bush or barack obama has been president and it is the biggest military we've ever seen so it's not clear there aren't any specifics from that romney speech about how or whether it would be any bigger than it is now the dangerous elements in that speech of course are that he falsely claims iran is developing nuclear weapons to give to terrorists there is no evidence or are you know secretary of so-called defense says otherwise and he lumps a bunch of nations into a new package of enemy soon cluing russia china venice weyler. pakistan and of course iran yeah there's definitely a lot of strong rhetoric and that speech david and you're right the military has been bolstered continuously exponentially since nine eleven doubled since nine

eleven in fact and obama is pretty much a war president so what do you think that meant is this really all he has to go on that he just has to make a distinction i'm a stronger war president than the current war president. well i think in doing that he guarantees himself a large majority of veterans votes if not active duty of probably white male vote and warmonger vote soon general because he just has to be a little bit worse than obama for the same reason there are well meaning liberals who will vote for obama because romney will promise something worse no matter how bad obama gets so if they just have to distinguish themselves in some way the dangerous thing about it though is that obama is enlarging the military and giving it greater secretive libet ties to abusive hours and romney wants to outdo him and

so romney has to push it further and we don't know how big or how outrageous his military would be he claims that making the military bigger makes us safer and makes for fewer wars whereas all the evidence of the past fifty one years since eisenhower warned us about the power of a military industrial complex is exactly the opposite the bigger the military the more momentum for wars the more planning for wars the more creation of wars or david i mean where do this and it just seems like these candidates are going to keep expanding the military pressing on on these threats from all around the world you just said yourself they present us with this false dichotomy that we have to choose between two war presidents because one is going to be a bigger war president we're kind of scared to say where he might take the country i mean where do you what do you think that this is a set up so we can continue the war as endlessly i mean there's really no other option then you're right a lot of people do choose for the lesser of two easily evils let's say. yeah i have

personally i'm inclined not to choose evil but both of these parties are sold out to the weapons makers and the other war profiteers and answer to them before they answer to the american people three quarters of us want out of afghanistan large majorities of us want military spending cut back and the more people are informed the more they believe that we don't have that candidate in those two parties and so my recommendation as always is to put ninety five or more percent of our effort and resources into building an activist movement to fix this problem regardless of who's in the white house and then go vote your conscience david i want to play a clip really quickly from that speech in san diego of met god and role that. we have two courses we can follow want to follow in the pathway of europe to shrink our military smaller and smaller to pay for our our social needs.

and they have course rely upon the strength of america. and they hope for the best way to follow that kind of course there are you know when they could stand to protect. the other is to commit to preserve america as the strongest military in the world second to none with no comparable power anywhere in the world high it seems like in that speech i mean people are booing when he's saying cut cut the military to pay for social services i mean that's not happening and then stead the pentagon is. in the military and cutting social services time and time again i mean do you think that this is also a false dilemma that we're presented with that if we cut the military somehow our country will be weak and what do you think about what he said right there well i think it's refreshing to have military spending and the costs of human need spending paired together even though he's on the opposite side from what i am that is the choice before a senate is a choice where europe and other parts of the world have gone

a different direction it's not clear that the united states military is protecting europe on the contrary we seem to be making a target for terrorists out of europe offending the people of europe keeping nuclear weapons illegally in non-nuclear european states and so forth i think that there is a lesson to be found in the fact that the united states is number thirty eight in life expectancy and so on through all the categories of wellbeing in our society that's what that crowd is cheering for running down our society for the sake of building up weapons that we do not need there is not evidence that we would not be better off following that european group i think at this point david i mean you said that he you know he speaks a lot about iran even russia china i mean he's mentioning all these countries that i mean do you think that this is harmful rhetoric to stand behind to say that we need to be constantly on the oftens. i think it's incredibly dangerous i think this

is how the military industrial conflicts worse it puts money and momentum behind war plans and next neglects alternatives to war and we end up looking at a choice between war or nothing but it's not just romney i mean within the past couple of weeks we've heard the prime minister of russia talking about the possibility of war offended by the bases being set up all along the border of russia in eastern europe we haven't heard this kind of talk in a long time and it's not just the result of mitt romney campaigning it's also the results of missile so well defense bases he built so we have a problem but it pervades both of these parties thanks so much for joining us david that was david swanson campaigner for roots action remember how close the two thousand presidential elections were well if you don't let me remind you the tally came down to a mere five hundred thirty seven votes in florida because of massive voter disenfranchisement many eligible voters were simply not able to vote as mostly

affected were minorities which statistically are more likely to vote democratic and here we are twelve years later and it might all come down to florida once again and just like in two thousand there are moves being made to disenfranchise thousands of voters from the voting polls. g.o.p. florida rick scott gov has ordered the state to purge all non-citizens of the voting rolls problem is that the list is riddled with errors and hundreds of u.s. citizens are being told that they are ineligible to vote miami dade country alone county alone sixteen thirty eight hundred people were allowed were flagged as non-citizens out of those three hundred fifty nine have provided proof of citizenship trump hundred haven't responded and they have only thirty days to do so otherwise they're removed from the voting polls so how will governor scott's voter purge affect the presidential election and impact reporter for think prost progress is here to join me to talk about that. thanks for joining me thanks for having me

so why is florida so important seems like these issues continue to happen in florida and these elections yeah well obviously florida is still considered one of the major tossup states in two thousand and twelve and you know i think it's very telling that twelve years ago like you mentioned we were dealing with these very same problems i think there are any number of reasons part of it i think might have to do with the fact that florida has a relatively large and we're going to population and so this it's false i would say but the scare is that there are immigrants out there who are registered to vote who should not be eligible and that's the premise under which governor scott is ordering this voter purge it's under the guise of eliminating people who should not be eligible to vote from the voter rolls isn't that a good thing i mean we're making sure that people who are not registered to vote not citizens are not voting i mean what's bad about that well on paper you know it makes sense but the problem as. i lead and you mention is that hundreds of people

who are absolutely eligible to vote who are citizens or naturalized citizens are also getting purged and so the process i think that florida is employing is deeply flawed to the point where i mean it's very easy to now see where you'll get hundreds of voters across florida showing. up on election day convince that they're registered to vote because they voted before and finding out that their name has been purged from the voter rolls and they won't be eligible to vote so you know i think on paper it's certainly a perfectly reasonable move by governor scott but the way that he and his administration are going about it is just incredibly deeply deeply flawed why do they even take this on i mean is it a huge problem that we have just massive amount of people who are not registered citizens really trying to vote i mean it's a felony to do so i didn't realize that that was really an issue even if it's not you know people make it out to be

a bigger issue than it than it really is you know every few weeks it seems like you hear of another story about you know dead voters voting in north carolina or you know people taking the identification of somebody else in an attempt to vote and it gets extrapolated by some members of the media to make it seem like it's a much bigger problem than it is when in fact there's a very very few instances of people actually committing voter fraud in the united states and this includes florida you know every now and again you'll find you know a few immigrants who should not be eligible to vote who are registered that's that's certainly a problem the bigger problem is if they actually try to vote and if they vote successfully and that just we're not seeing that occur in florida or anywhere else in the country so you're saying or think progress is really pushing for that this is almost a false dilemma that doesn't really exist there really isn't a problem of an influx of you know registered voters non-citizens trying to vote and this is just a way to kind of create these scrub lists to cause problems in the election tell us

about you know they're given thirty days to respond and a lot of people haven't responded yet what are the dangers of giving someone just a really short amount of time to try to get proof that they are a citizen right well for some people you know they don't have immediate access to you know the. paperwork that would require that the state of florida is requiring them to show to prove that they're citizens so that's that's one problem another problem is you know simply things getting lost in the mail think it happens relatively frequently you know for after everybody and if they didn't find it let's say within the first fifteen days and all of a sudden they only have fifteen days in which to respond to the state of florida you know it can be really problematic for a lot of people and so yeah i think that that thirty day deadline is certainly a big issue as well talk about the fines also that are imposed by just groups trying to do voter registration campaigns and how is this affecting the vote. well i mean i personally don't know a whole lot about that but you know i think that that you know certainly is going

to complicate the voter rolls initially and really end any state and i would include florida and that as well so i mean of course i really can't speak too much to that but. what do you think in your personal opinion i mean do you think that we have free and fair elections in this country yeah i do and like i said i don't think that this is as big a problem as some people make it out to be i know it's a popular tactic used by some people you know to justify these voter suppression tactics is really what they are around the country but you know i don't think that we have seen enough evidence to suggest that you know voter fraud is a huge problem in the country and has actually been widely documented mark crispin miller and ritter and greg palast also said that you know in two thousand two thousand and four even when kerry said you have lawyers on the ground in ohio counting it counting every vote and a lot of people just blame it on the you know republican dirty tricks but you could

look at the democrats and say that their complicity with not demanding that these votes be counted are demanding that things are fair and free you know that could be an issue to yeah i mean i think that there's a certain amount of blame to be doled out on either side but you know the fact of the matter are that republicans have really become experts in this whole policy of suppressing the vote whether it's through these these. tactics that in florida or simply giving misinformation to potential voters and say i think we see this almost every four years where a whole group of voters give are given the wrong voting day for instance. and almost all of these are coming from the republican side democrats i think could potentially be doing a better job of really kind of pushing back on this and in fact we are seeing them very slowly kind of take steps to counteract some of these voter suppression techniques democrats in the senate right now actually introducing trying to

introduce bills that would push back against the republican republicans proposals for voter suppression voter id laws those those are very popular around the country as well so we're are soon starting to see more do. i'm across part of my back a little bit but it's just slightly disconcerting to know that there are machines the vote and you know things like that going on but they do so much for coming on and talking about this issue i was out in peck reporter for think progress virginia maybe for lovers but apparently it's also for drones about the chording of virginia governor bob mcdonnell he says the drones are so successful at their missions overseas that he wants them for domestic police operations in his state obama has made drone warfare his main foreign policy strategy and many say that drones do a great job at targeting in the limited those they consider terrorists but are they really as successful in eliminating eliminating terrorism as they say and what is going to happen when they're implemented by police forces here at home to answer that and more i'm joined by john glaser assistant editor for antiwar dot com john

do you think that drones are as successful as they say they are. well they're successful in killing a lot of people they're not successful in terms of strategy i mean for years now throughout the barack obama drone war years particularly in pakistan but also in yemen there have been a few small voices doing real journalism exposing the drone war as killing hundreds and hundreds of civilians despite the it is administration's claims that drones in the able them to hit with chris cision very specific targets and we learned of course in the new york times or what that article reiterated yesterday was that there's a very specific reason the obama administration has been able to claim absurdly that little to no civilian casualties have resulted from the drone war and that's because of the way they've chosen to counts of illions and what they have said is that any and all military age people that happen to be present when we drop

a missile in pakistan or yemen is automatically defined as a combatant which is another way of saying we happen to kill you you are by definition a militant and deserve to die and told ya guilty until proven innocent is not a shadow of a doubt which is hard once they're already dead. i wanted to talk to you about what do you think the chilling effect will be when once a brain is drone warfare hair at home now corporations schools can have drones i mean it just seems like there's going to be an endless supply of people using these drones what do you think that's going to do to the american psyche well look i reckon it's typically don't start to put pressure on their government until their government starts to oppress them of course when the drones have been killing yemenis and pakistanis for so long and spying on iranians and doing all this stuff around the world hasn't had quite home yet to

a lot of americans but of course when it does start to come home it is i mean. police. police that were it's all over the country as you said are becoming. very intricately intertwined with the drone technology and what we have to understand of course is that we're at the beginning of this ten five ten twenty years down the line they're going to be much more technically technologically savvy going to be able to create a window on you in this kind of thing so unless the american does want. government to start taking control and start voicing some opposition to this flagrant lawless abuse of americans' privacy and of course with what they've been doing abroad but john do you think that i mean it's almost normalized it seemed like there was such an anti bush fervor against the wars against torture against all these policies and then with obama's continuation and in some cases

exacerbation of these policies it almost seems like there is just kind of an a sense of normal of asian and except and doesn't do you disagree no so far that's exactly right there's well there's two actually to be fair there's two things first of all there's normalization and acceptance that drones are reality of today and you know we give deference to the president to do what he wants with them and then there's the other category of people that just don't know because they don't care enough to pay attention they'd rather watch american idol and you know get fat on their couches opposed to actually learn about what their government is doing i mean the it's really an extreme form of executive overreach and one of the reasons nobody in the mainstream is talking about it is because the only political opposition obama is democratic party has are the republicans who wholeheartedly agree with these policies. it is interesting that it's kind of to two areas of the

spectrum one is you know i'm fighting war the smarter way there's really no alternative it's just you know you're fighting a war with drones so it's more precise and a better way to fight a war i guess you could say i wanted to get your opinion though on just the fact that a noble nobel peace prize winner has an assassination list that is overseen that includes multiple u.s. citizens and teenage girls it's absurd isn't it not only does yet it includes u.s. citizens and includes a. teenager sixteen year old son who was killed and who the obama administration won't even admit that they killed him the only time they have referenced i'm is to say use cloud collateral damage for another target it is absurd that this man is a nobel peace prize winner and he as he has hundreds and hundreds of innocent lives under his belt. that he won't even admit to without any trial without any due

process without having to go through the trouble of getting a u.n. resolution or a declaration of war or telling the american people or you know getting extradition and prosecution these are people that the obama administration alleges are legitimate targets although they refused to give any evidence so this is just it's really a very radical departure from the so-called rule of law that liberals are supposed to love and i did it here to. john what do you think about you know glenn greenwald was asked the other day just about will what is the president supposed to do when there are terrorists abroad and when we do need to deal with them and he just said i had i look at myself and say stop stabbing yourself when you're covered in blood and you realize that it's coming from you continuously stabbing yourself and comparing that to how when you continue to drop bombs in the middle east it just perpetuates more terrorism and more anx toward the u.s. so what should we do i mean do you even believe that there is

a threat at all and if so how would you suggest that we deal with that without engaging in this warfare there is a threat there are people parts of certain groups that want to kill americans the way that you first of all stop. the way that you reduce the amount of terrorism in the world first of all is to stop participating in it stop doing it yourself stop being a terrorist by bombing civilians in war zones which is usually typically called terrorism the other way you do it is stop creating more terrorism stop. giving terrorist recruitment efforts you know an a plus and a pat on the back the one number one thing that is creating all this anti american hatred and islamic terrorism is support for brutal john and like the government and john i'm so sorry to cut you short we're almost out of time thanks so much for

coming on that is john glaser assistant editor of antiwar dot com and that does it for now i'll be back in a half hour. there hasn't been a thing yet on t.v. . it is to get the maximum political impact. before the source material is what helps keep journalism honest we. don't. we want to present. something else. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realized

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