today on r t after months and months of campaign speeches top debates and endless attack ads american voters have spoken of president obama wasn'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 from allegedly your leader bradley manning's camp today it looks like his team is doing some strategic maneuvering to try to ensure the best outcome for the private first class he tells our hazy but we'll tell you what we do know in just a bit. and they are the men and women tasked with protecting and serving the public of these days police forces across the nation are looking more like

a military brigade so the question is who are they arming themselves against all search for some answers. it's wednesday november seventh eight 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 of believe marijuana should be legal marijuana medical marijuana that is used to pass passed in the state of massachusetts but perhaps more significantly recreational marijuana use passed in colorado and washington

state that means people can smoke 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 there now is the california where proposition thirty seven which would have required the labeling of genetically modified food failed at the voting booth california also voted on a number of crime and punishment ballots proposition thirty four to repeal the death penalty failed proposition thirty five to increase criminal penalties penalties for human trafficking passed proposition thirty six to ease the restrict the three strikes law that passed for more on these a groundbreaking ballot measures and the potential impact are two white house correspondent christine for that and abbi you are in the host of breaking the set we're here to weigh and we first discuss the ballot measure wins for marijuana usage. 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 the state should decide these things for themselves and the federal government the d.a. is still saying what will your slogan be breaking federal law even if you go out and light up in the streets that way it'll be interesting to see how this plays out in terms of the legal ramifications i mean during obama's lead up on the campaign jersey you know ends of days was decided he admitted to smoking weed recreationally when he was younger so i was surprised to hear from oakland to see how much the d.a. and federal government cracked down 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 on your show is how much money it costs to incarcerate people who are arrested for. smoking weed selling smaller amounts of marijuana just confiscate

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 meals so it's a bigger and you know we talk a lot about the war on drugs the president does trail complex and this is all playing into that so i mean do you think abby that this could be a turning point and reforming the system why you think it's interesting the three strikes law didn't pass in california i was really happy to see that pass because i was thinking initially oh great now these people 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 account third strike doesn't account for drug or sex crimes so that's kind of like an a gray area there where it only apply. word still applies 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 the 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 i want to move on now because we have a lot there there are 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 it now i guess that's what our food contains g.m.o. . your reaction i guess really 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 fan to another biotech giants saying hey this is going to cost families four hundred dollars a year more in food and people are just like hey i don't want to pay four hundred dollars more you're in in the food that i'm eating when really i mean the cost was

really in consequential it would really just cost a 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 that people are reading about their bottom line they don't want to buy their groceries i think you know 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 that i will say i mean we had 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 shows you how strong the most. can be when your influence is so many millions of dollars because ninety percent of americans when polled just about the issue itself would you want

to be labeled they say yes so when you have ninety percent of the entire country a green yes we want labeling and a proposition like this family that 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 again as adam had mentioned to forty six million dollars pumped into proponents or opponents of labor 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 require the labeling but for some reason it's not a known issue here because of the cohesion going on with the government said michael

taylor the former v.p. of one santa in one of the top is a food safety czar to see if all the f.d.a. they've they've deemed g.m.o. foods a substantial agreement on human food since the late 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 say and but then we've 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 that shows you the norm is power that these companies yield over wield over over government body 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 of them. made maryland and washington they all said i do it's a marriage equality. the ban on same sex marriage it failed and 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 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 and gay 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 or 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 moving ahead 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 you'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 as human right it should be 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 but take it in favor of gay marriage and say this is a civil rights. really turning the tide of you know what a lot of you know 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 in our history that we can't seem to overturn it i think we are slowly and in california when prop eight was held i think a lot of people were confused by the language of the 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 in 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 team white house correspondent christine franz allan abby martin host of breaking the set and close. so had on our team developments coming out from bradley

manning's legal team because this case be moving toward a please the else. tells just a minute. here's mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that saying that the americans call. i'm sorry but the guy who cares about. you sorry are you know what

that is my self. want to feature as a liberal the closest to. the circle of. close to the structures from what you and i should care about because there are profit driven industry that sells the sensationalistic garbage because it breaking news i'm having martin and we're going to break this up.

welcome to the capital account i'm lauren lyster. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through it's already been made who can you trust no one. is imbued with the global machinery see where we had a state controlled capitalism is called sessions when nobody dares to ask we do our tea question more. we just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old don't tell the truth. i'm a confession i'm a total get. i love grabbing hip hop is pretty. yesterday

. i'm very proud of the all the belgian she has played. just burned your eyes right i mean it's like a derivative of actual pepper it's

a product essentially. this is much stronger than anything you'd be by a lot of. thousands of times we're stronger than any one of the ever put on the. i q.'s military whistleblower bradley manning was back in court today details are still unclear but reports from the site fire dog lake assert that manning's legal team has entered a plea notice and which the private would accept her sponsibility for transferring information to wiki leaks information suggest that he may plead guilty to lesser offenses he faces a slew of charges including aiding the enemy a capital offense for the latest on the case i was joined earlier by r.t. web producer andrew blake as far as i know the pretrial motion hearings happening

in fort meade just up the road are just wrapping up right now they're happening all morning pushed back they 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 nine 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 i do worry manning went into court and was asked to present a plea does he want to admit guilt to this is want to 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 i know 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 the. as aiding the enemy which is a capital offense yes he could be executed for it but it will likely just be that they wouldn't do that 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 renate 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 all 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 with the vietnam war couple generations buff. 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 we're 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 it's 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 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 who was a cia agent for years. and here is john clarke who was the one of the first six people charged into the espionage act by president obama his crime allegedly was going public with the use of waterboarding and name he named a couple of names involved in posting a lot of taxes overseas he was expected to do forty five years in prison for going for 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 not going to have any answers

until at least february at this point it. 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 andrea blake. from tasering eleven year olds to sending in this swat teams 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 militaristic tactics used by police forces in the u.s. are teaser mungle and takes a look at the latest troubling police trends which are increasing fears and all types of american neighborhoods. really the sights and sounds of. the sound

of the arizona swat team shooting seventy high powered rooms a 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 give you no 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 grant she marks 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 messily. 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 is 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're seeing is the paramilitary is a shadow of all police departments that came out of the urban on the rest of the urban rebellions of the nineteen sixties firemen were later issued black suits some bulletproof the watts riots of one thousand nine hundred sixty five a by little reminder of the alienation being felt by porker being it also sparked a new era of 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. copping off like that in murder somebody cell phones in you tube are helping expose police brutality but police are fighting back that. i was confused and i'm like whoa what's going on here you know why am i being put in jail for something i didn't do memes 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 militarist in los angeles ramon the lindo party. for more on the military is ation of the police force i spoke earlier with r.t. correspond are among. well 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 angeles police department the number of certain volved shootings increased by fifty percent last 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 is that in 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 bring some of these incidents to light yeah right you said fifty 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 and 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 just taking to the streets but it's really difficult to take a police officer you know to court because many a 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 were we're here where funny now weeks later that in many cases that these young men who are either shot or been a by police are involved in gangs and are not carrying any weapons there is a lot of. stronger necessity for the media to really question what law enforcement is reporting right.