but an r.v. after months and months of campaign speeches tough debates and endless attack ads americans american voters have spoken to president obama isn't the only winner last night we'll tell you about some of the historical ballot measures that passed and failed across the country last night. and new information is coming out from alleged wiki leaks or bradley manning's camp today it looks like his team is doing some strategic maneuvering to try to ensure the best possible outcome for the for private first class details are hazy about it will tell you what we do know in just a bit. and they are the men and women tasked with protecting and serving the public

but these days police forces across the nation are looking more like a military brigade so the question is who are they arming themselves against we'll search for some answers next. it's wednesday november seventh four pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wahl and you're watching r t well today the world knows obama will be serving a second term as president of the united states and as the media blitz switches from constant campaign coverage to post election analysis we want to discuss some of the other news that came out of last night specifically ballot measures many of which are historic last night was a triumph for those that believe marijuana should be legal medical marijuana is passed in massachusetts but perhaps more significantly recreational marijuana use passed in colorado and washington state that means people can smoke it. just for

the fun of it oregon however wasn't ready to legalize smoking for the sake of getting high the ballot measure did not pass their now on to california where proposition thirty seven which would have required the labeling of genetically modified food failed at the voting voting booth california also voted on a number of crime and punishment ballot proposition thirty four to repeal the death penalty failed proposition thirty five to increase criminal penalties for human trafficking passed proposition thirty six to ease the three strikes law that passed for more on these groundbreaking ballot measures and their potential impact r.t. white house correspondent christine for that and abby martin the host of breaking the sat here to welcome ladies and i see you here good to be with you little we have a lot to talk about. i guess first of all talk about marijuana it's legal in two states now. that is the thing that it's legal but

a lot of people are saying don't run out and get your rocky mountain high right away because the federal government has said the federal laws are still in place and so as much as you know especially those who say states should decide these things for themselves the federal government the da is still saying what will your slogan be breaking federal law even if you go out and light up in the streets to be interesting to see how this plays out in terms of the legal ramifications i mean during obama's lead up on the campaign trail for the ends of days with he admitted to smoking weed recreationally when he was younger so i was surprised to read through oakland to see how much the da government crackdown to read the cannabis clubs there for medicinal purposes so i can only imagine what's going to happen to these states who have taken it upon themselves to take that extra step i think it's still an amazing shift of cultural progression and it is not just about getting high and it's not just about using drugs i mean the bottom line here i know you've

talked about this a lot of. your show is how much money it costs to incarcerate people who are you know arrested for you know smoking weed selling smaller amounts a marijuana you know it just cost of state so much money and so voters a lot of people you know have never tried any drugs and they voted to legalize it because they say hey get these people out of our prisons we don't want to pay their rent we don't want to pay their bills so it's a bigger issue you know we talk a lot about the war on drugs the president complex and this is all playing into that so i mean do you think that this could be a turning point and reforming the system why i think it's interesting the three strikes law did pass in california i was really happy to see that passed because i was thinking initially oh great now these people who have low low quantities of marijuana who are in jail we can stop maybe try to reform the system which is a great first step but it really doesn't count the third strike doesn't account for drug or sex crimes so that's kind of like

a gray area there where it only applies where it still applies to these people so in terms of reforming the system as a whole i still think you know as christine mentioned the federal government's going to have a big problem with this we know that lobbying from the prison industrial complex isn't going to stop anytime soon so it'll be interesting to see what plays out i definitely think it's a great start absolutely want to move on now because we have a lot there were a lot of interesting ballots that were passed last night to g.m.o. labeling and california said no thanks no thanks to labeling our food we don't need to know i guess the food contains g.m.o. . your reaction i guess really you know as a california girl i was really really sad to hear that but on the other hand the issue was made about money it wasn't a right to know issue we had a forty seven million dollar disinformation campaign coming from one sam to another biotech giants saying hey this is going to cost families four hundred dollars

a year. more and food and people are just like hey i don't want to pay four hundred dollars more you're in the food that i'm eating when really i mean the cost was really and consequential it would really just cross the one time amount to these companies to change their labeling and so when you make the argument about money and costing more to consumers it's really hard to to sort through all of the people or maybe some of their bottom line they don't want to pay for their groceries i think to a lot of people who saw these as i mean i will agree that the messaging war from these big companies like monsanto is it was extremely successful because they said not only will these places have to change their labels but they're also going to have to be worried about lawsuits what if they actually do have an ingredient and use a genetically modified it is very surprising though i will say i mean we have the attorney for this on our show earlier in the night she was optimistic that it was going to pass that people would say yes i do want to know what i'm eating she said that they did numerous surveys and people thought they had never eaten anything genetically modify anything g.m.o. whereas all of us have you know it's so prevalent out there and show you how strong

the message can be when your influence is so many millions of dollars because ninety percent of americans when paul just about the issue itself would you want to be labeled they say yes so you have ninety percent of the entire country a green yes we want labeling and then a proposition like this family it really does show you how convoluted things can become i think if you have a ballot measure and you look at how much outside money from outside of the state is coming in that should be an automatic red flag to say wait a minute what what all these people outside that i that i don't know they don't have anything in common with that live across the country or in other countries what do they have to gain from this and why are they pouring so much money into it i think that's an important question when you look at these ballot initiatives and as he had mentioned a forty six million dollars pumped into proponents or opponents of labeling. on the other side it was only around nine million dollars so a very stark contrast there also interesting that it was defeated in california but sixty countries around the world do recall. wire the labeling but for some reason

it's not such a known issue here because of the cohesion going on with the government said michael taylor the former v.p. of monsanto in one of the top is a food fifty's are you see if all the f.d.a. they've they've deemed g.m.o. foods a substantially coupon gmo foods and listening to ninety's bush sr put this in office and it really has been a non-issue ever since other countries around the world are so much more far ahead than of and but they were sold vermont and other states who have passed labeling a month they're just starting to sue them and they have not been able to actually put it into effect so the shows are the norm of power that these companies old over wield over over government bodies all right i want to move on now to another ballot that was passed basically a huge a huge victory for proponents of gay marriage marriage equality when in the state

we can if we can bring them up there the states made maryland and washington they all said i do it for marriage equality. the ban on same sex marriage it failed in minnesota which is also a victory not a straight forward i guess but as we can see a huge night for proponents of gay marriage what do you think chris i think this is huge i was in california four years ago and proposition eight was up a lot of people were confused by it they didn't understand it voters in california overwhelmingly voted in the first black president they also voted in favor of banning gay marriage a big a marriage at that point had already been legalized by the courts i think it's huge that voters are now approving this i think it's huge that voters have turned down because let's remember gay marriage is banned or marriage rather defined as only between a man and woman i think in thirty plus states now but i am optimistic i think that this is we're seeing a huge shift i think in two thousand and sixteen sardaar to be talking about that the day i really think in the years my. even conservative people even especially

moderately conservative people are going to say you know what this is a non issue everyone knows someone is related to someone who's gay let's leave gay marriage alone it really doesn't affect us it really doesn't affect my children if their friends have two mommies or two daddies i think this is a huge turning point but i think that we're going to be how surprised how quickly it becomes a non issue with polls that young i think it's like between the ages of eighteen and thirty it's so and consequential the people who have been pulled there like we don't care about this issue conservatives and liberals alike i mean they see it as completely something we should not even be discussing they just all kind of agree that you know gay marriage should be a human right it should be a thing that happened i think with that being on the ballot is that the end of all a c.p. took a position on this so you have you know the foremost organization on civil rights in this country come out and not only take a position to take it in favor of gay marriage and say this is

a civil rights issue to really turning the tide of you know what a lot of african-americans have traditionally been taught in their churches and so i think that was really significant i don't understand why it is why a civil libertarians can't see gay rights as the new civil rights of our generation you know women's suffrage civil rights movement and now gay rights so it's really just this giant roadblock in our history that we can't seem to overturn it i think we are slowly and in california when prop eight was upheld i think a lot of people were confused by the language a language i remember yeah it was very purposeful how confusing the measure was in a lot of people that i know thought that they were actually trying to protect the rights of gay people to get married and actually they were voting for a lot of really historical and ground groundbreaking ballots that were voted on last night and appreciate you both for coming in to talk about that that was our key white house correspondent christine for that. and abby martin host of breaking

the set and close. well still ahead on our team new developments coming out from bradley manning's legal team could this case be moving toward a sweet deal also included details in a minute. well

accused military whistleblower bradley manning was back in court today details remain unclear about reports from the site firedoglake asserts that manning's legal team has entered a plea notice in which the private what except general responsibility for transferring information to wiki leaks information suggests that he may plead guilty to lesser offenses he is charged he faced a slew of charges including aiding the enemy a capital offense to talk more about this i'm joined now by r t web producer andrew blake andrew nice to see you through this how are you doing well thank you so it looks like we have some big developments in the manning case today what is the latest actually as far as i know. charles motion hearing is happening in fort meade

just up the road are just wrapping up right now that happening all morning pushback that were supposed to be last week but sandy kind of moved everything along and it's actually really bizarre timing because this week will mark one hundred days that bradley manning has been in what appears to be indefinite detention at this point his court martial will formally begin supposedly in february and by the time it wraps up he'll probably be behind bars for a thousand days at that point without actually finishing the trial but what we find out today is that actual trial when it does start up that court martial might be a lot simpler than what we thought if you go back and look at last february manning went into court and was asked to present a plea to see want to admit guilt to this is not in the guilt of that and he deferred it hasn't entered anything until today his attorney civilian attorney david coombs was in the courtroom today and submitted a plea notice on behalf of mr manning and what that notice said this is going by

what we have from firedoglake and also alexa o'brien a journalist who's working close on the matter was that coombs put in a plea notice on behalf of manning that said essentially we're willing to perhaps plea to this if you want to forget about that and now the reason this kind of a big deal is that manning is charged with roughly two dozen different counts right now and if convicted on that one of them is aiding the enemy which is a capital offense yet he could be executed for but will likely just the prosecutors said that they wouldn't do that yeah so he will just be put behind bars if convicted and they go for the maximum term but what we're looking at now is that manning may be willing to accept responsibility for taking these hundreds of thousands of classified or not so classified but sensitive military documents that he accessed wall in the army and supplying them to join us on his wiki leaks site and you know the government attests that manning took the. these diplomatic cables

the infamous collateral murder video and sent them to us on issue in turn said he believes they ended the iraq war that was the driving force behind a lot like the pentagon papers of the vietnam war a couple generations back. but so right now manning apparently given today's hearing will say at least it's looking like this that he will not necessarily admit guilt but he will take responsibility or admit to that to the court has enough evidence to prove him guilty so he would just be pleading down to a lesser charge but really got to my nothing here is final right now this is just what happened today and because this is a military court and it's a lot different then you know what happens to me when i do something stupid out on the street there is a lot of different hoops and lots of crazy stuff going on so what it comes down to right now is the judge who is a military appointed judge she has to decide if she will accept this plea notice

and then from there the government will decide if they want to continue with it so what does this mean in terms of a sentence for manning it really could mean anything right now because they don't have to necessarily accept this plea notice they could go ahead and say no we don't think so you're going to be court martialed and we're going to prosecute you and you can be put in bars for the rest of your life but if you go back just two three weeks ago we had another accused whistleblower john kiriakou it was a cia agent for years and years jack correct who was the one of the first six people charged under the espionage act by president obama his crime allegedly was going public with the use of waterboarding named he named a couple of names involved in the post nine eleven practices overseas he was expected to do forty five years in prison for going forward with that he pleaded down just a few weeks ago he's getting two and a half years right now so are we going to see the same thing like manning. i mean that would be wonderful i would take two and a half years over life in prison but it's really. we're not going to have any

answers until at least february at this point. looks like things are kind of moving along but again as you said nothing is final so it's a really good victory for bradley and it's not a silly a victory but it's good for anyone watching to appreciate you staying on top of it that was our team web producer andrew blake well from tasering eleven year olds to sending in the swat team for even minor crimes the police seems to be losing sight of their main responsibility and that is to protect and serve violent confrontations caught on tape call into question the increasingly militarized militaristic tactics used by police forces in the u.s. our kids are among the endo takes a look at the latest troubling police trends which are increasing fears in all types of american neighborhoods. really the sights and sounds on the streets of them but. this is the sound of the

arizona swat team shooting seventy high powered rounds twenty six year old marine and iraq war veteran get into a routine marijuana raid but no drugs were found. get and his wife says he grabbed a pistol thinking the deputies were home invaders feared for his children's lives that you don't always on your own you see this man it's dark you know they're in wearing black you know the way they're coming in they don't even know time to really think things through social justice advocate alex sanchez has seen increasingly militaristic tactics used during raids in his neighborhood because they feel threatened they kill you you know and we see it often enough and they go some punished i.r.b. us or grand jury march one of the few times that a police officer has been tried for shooting and killing an innocent person but

many were shocked at what they considered a very lenient sentence if oscar grant had gone down mr mesler. i don't think a reasonable person would suggest that oscar grant would get a one year sentence with serving in a county jail and then would walk away scot free and nothing happened he'd get the death sentence for years community activists have blasted be increasingly brutal tactics an officer using a taser to chase down a fourteen year old girl seems to defy what we expect from police and this ninety one year old southern california and selling suicide kids around a dozen f.b.i. agents ordered her out of her house at gunpoint and took her sewing machine. activists are also concerned that many in law enforcement come from a military background they see. the public not as something maybe protected

as an enemy that needs to be suppressed police departments in cities big and small are investing in armored vehicles and other gear used by our armed forces overseas so what we've seen is the paramilitary is a shadow of all police departments that came out of the urban on the rest of the urban billions of the nineteen sixty's are many more later issued black suits some bullet proof the watts riots of one thousand nine hundred sixty five a violent reminder of the alienation being felt by porker being it also sparked a new era police oppression and intimidation. seen again during the mass it made a rally in los angeles in two thousand and seven and now spreading beyond urban centers. homeless and schizo phrenic kelly thomas

was beaten into a coma by police in a relatively quiet orange county city he died days later i think everybody needs to be concerned about copping off like that and murderous. body so those in you tube are helping expose police brutality but police are fighting back that. i was confused i'm like whoa what's going on here you know why am i being put in jail for something i didn't do man's only crime was videotaping a police officer the video camera may be the best weapon an american citizen has against the police force which is becoming increasingly militaristic in los angeles ramon gil indo r t. well for more on the military's ation of the police force r.t. chorused finer mongol endo joins us now hi there i'm own. ok so what i

mean we saw it in your story there with all the images and video that we're seeing it certainly seems like the police force is being military but is there any evidence hard evidence that it is in fact increasing and the u.s. . well the probably one of the most glaring displays of evidence that people have seen over the last year is just the very intense crackdown on occupy wall street i can tell you that here in los angeles thousands of police officers with helmets but tons in what they call non-lethal weapons were really really brought out and intimidated the crowds and we saw this throughout the country we saw it in d.c. and new york so definitely as far as visually people got a firsthand account of the increasingly militaristic tactics that police use during the occupy wall street protests but if we want to look at the numbers we can use that in california as a really good example here in los angeles the los as police department the number of of certain volved shootings increased by fifty percent a year and you know

a lot of police departments they say that gang members or whoever it is that they're shooting at are becoming increasingly violent but more and more of these washed groups are saying that that just really isn't the case and we also have to remember here in southern california recently we saw a huge number of protesters because of the high number of officer involved shootings in anaheim just down the street from disneyland so as far as numbers goes the shootings do appear the incidents of police violence do appear to be increasing and of course videotape has helped to bring some of these incidents to light yeah right you said katie percent and that is the increase that's a significant increase there ramon how are people fighting back against what seems to be an extremely violent trend in police enforcement. that's right there's a few ways that people are fighting back one of the ways i'm all in here this is one of the several civil rights lawsuit which have been filed here in southern

california some of these are aimed at the fullerton police department which is accused in the beach in the beating and killing of kelly thomas that homeless man and there have been federal lawsuits like this up and down california including and also in new york where police there are also accused of brutalizing unarmed youth which are of latin and of black descent and the other method that people are using is they're just taking to the streets now this issue of police brutality is becoming more mainstream we saw that in the case of oscar grant nothing may have been done had it not been for people taking to the streets same thing with the kelly thomas beating repeatedly people were taken to the streets pressure from kelly thomas' father and just this whole video i mean it really stirred people's emotions and really put a lot of pressure on prosecutors to really go after these officers who were caught on video around add to what extent do you think police are held accountable for

their actions. it's very rare that they go to trial like i said in instances like the oscar grant shooting or in the being of kelly thomas this really didn't go to the courts until after a ton of public outcry and people are just taking to the streets but it's really difficult to take a police officer you know to court because many times it's tough to police the police from within a lot of police officers they're not going to want to have go after one of their own and we see the same issue in prosecutors' offices the other issue is that a lot of the times that the mainstream media just buries these things under the rug they don't ask questions the police department says that there was a gang member and that he was armed and in many cases we're we're here we're funny now weeks later that in many cases that these young men who are either shot or be

in the by police are involved in gangs and are not carrying any weapons so there is a lot of. stronger necessity for the media to really question what law enforcement is reporting. really interesting thank you for weighing in on that and happy birthday to you let's ever think. that i was already correspondent rhonda rowland joining us from our los angeles studio and that is going to do it for now but for more on the stories we covered you can hand over to our you tube channel that's you tube dot com slash r t america we post all our interviews on line there in full you can also check out our web site that is r t dot com slash usa and you can also follow me on twitter at liz wahl the back here and half hour satan for the capital account with lauren lester that is coming up next.

well for the. syrians technology innovation all the least of melons from around russia we've got the future covered. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture. download the official up location cellphone choose your language stream quality and enjoy your favorites from alzheimer's t.v. is not required to watch on t.v.

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