today on earth you know world war plastic cards are as good as gold a blockade by master card and visa kunda stroy a business with a single player now with the leaks is getting a look at who put the credit card companies up to the banking blockade we'll tell you who is behind it. and we have all heard and seen about the unmanned drones and what they can do but a new report says that killing machines are only the beginning i had a look at the future of robotics technology and how it could change the face of warfare. plus the black friday deals are over along with the wal-mart protests that accompanied them but what really came of all this consumer chaos a look at the big picture coming up.

it's tuesday november twenty seventh five pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching our t.v. well new details today on the fight against a wiki leaks the anti seeker website has released documents from the european commission which shows quote hard right u.s. politicians orchestrated the banking blockade against the site the documents show mastercard europe admitting senator joseph lieberman and representative peter king were behind the push to cut off finances to the site both members of congress have publicly condemned wiki leaks. this type of hacking is side to side with a really good terrorist weapon to the twenty first century and that's why we have to adapt that's why we have to use traditional registration such as the espionage act but also i've called wiki leaks to create a terrorist organization so we can seize their assets julian assigns it seems to me

by taking that material and disseminating to wiki leaks says while he did the espionage act of the united states of america i hope the justice department will soon indict him and that we will be able to extradite him from britain and bring a back to stand trial in the united states also allegedly revealed senator lieberman boasting that he persuaded amazon to cut ties with wiki leaks if you can recall representative king triton doesn't new wiki leaks a terrorist organization have a put on a u.s. treasury blacklist the treasury refused saying there wasn't enough evidence to put with you leaks on such a list but lawmakers the worst successful and financially suffocating the web site visa master card which make up a majority of credit card payments are blocked from doing business with the site while wiki leaks founder julian assange and remains holed up in the ecuadorian embassy in london he'll likely be arrested in extradited to sweden where he faces

questioning over sex charges if he steps foot outside of the building. well given drones are controversial wait until you hear about killer robots these machines take warfare to a whole new level the robots would have a mind of their own meaning they could pick and choose which targets to fire on that means humans would almost be completely detached from the decision making process and decide who should live and die now these killing machines don't exist yet but major powers around the world including the u.s. are making working on making them a reality human rights groups are now trying to ban killer robots from ever being used human rights watch is calling for an international treaty to stop the development and use of. autonomous weapons for more i was joined earlier by bonnie dotard a of the international human rights clinic at harvard law and a senior researcher in the arms of vision of human rights watch while this all might sound like science fiction i began by asking how far this is from becoming

a reality most experts predict that within twenty to thirty years these weapons could actually exist and as you mentioned precursors are already in existence in deployed or in development around the world. now we've reported on a lot here at our cave the use of drones and how they have become a key part of military operations these days now would be the. day they fly without a pilot on board what set these killer machines apart from drones drones continue to have a human in the loop that there is a person that decides when the machine should fire with fully autonomous weapons or killer robots they would determine to not only identify targets but choose to fire at will as a result it is not a problem so much with the targeting but with the weapon itself ok so what would this mean in terms of accountability i mean if an autonomous machine makes

a decision who would be held accountable. that's one of our major concerns there were there really could be accountability countability gaps for example the commanders are really held responsible for the actions their subordinates except for in a narrow circumstance that would not be applicable here producers of manufacturers would only be held liable if they intentionally design a robot that would kill civilians and punishing the robot this stage is absurd so that accountability would undermine deterrence and leave victims unsatisfied that anyone had been held responsible for their suffering could you talk more about what exactly these machines what they would be capable of. you know that they what it as we had mentioned they would decide they would fire on their own could they be able to distinguish whether or not somebody surrenders or whether or not. somebody is. not a threat or i mean is there

a big possibility of their making of these machines making errors that's our concern we believe they could not stink was between a soldier and civilian or maybe even a combatant or to surrender to one that has not and that is because they lack certain human qualities such as human judgment and human emotion that would prevent them from complying with the law in addition they would undermine non-legal safeguards and would not show for example compassion to other humans and therefore they are killing civilians places that increases the burden of war on civilians and now obama the argument in favor of such a mission machines and we saw we see similar arguments today. people that defend drones if that is say as military lives because you're not putting soldiers there recklessly and harms away a cell if you look at it like that could that benefit could that be a benefit of this kind of technology. there could be a benefit and it's

a lot of the goal is to reduce the casualties among the military however we believe that the cost to civilians would be too high international law and practice is designed to protect civilians to the extent possible from armed conflict and these weapons these killer robots would place the burden on civilians in fact maybe make war even more likely. wow and i know your organization is really at the forefront of making sure that this doesn't happen can you tell us what human rights watch a villain to try to prevent this technology from being used well we've currently pleased to report this week and we are calling for an international ban on the use production and development of killer robots and we're also calling for national steps to be taken until an international treaty is possible in addition n.g.o.s are starting to work together to. work to ban these weapons and so be interesting to

see how things proceed in the coming months and years. what nations are at this point are involved in trying to move this technology forward will u.s. is one of the leaders in this development developing process others countries that have deployed precursors include south korea russia china united kingdom israel germany just to name a few. and i mean this is unprecedented obviously we don't have anything like this on the battlefield. today how would this change of warfare as we know it. well it would be a revolution in warfare it's taking weapons a step too far. dramatically increasing the burden of war on civilians and increasing the chances of civilian casualties civilians will always die in armed conflict but this case it's a whole new level and allows machines to make decisions about life and death do you

think bonnie that you know we're seeing that the military as it is always looking for a new advances the newest saying right now is in drones and even they're becoming more advance and their capability yes i do think that it's just kind of inevitable that machinery and weapons and the tools that the military uses around the world and out of inevitably that this is the direction it's going to go in that they're just going to become more advanced was the one the direction it's headed in now but that does not mean the direction can't change for example in the one nine hundred ninety s. nations gathered together to band called winding lasers before they even existed we would hope that states would continue to do this with killer robots the more nations invest in technology the harder it will be to persuade them to give it up therefore we believe action needs to be taken now ok bonnie i guess lastly how

confident are you that you could stop the development of the technology and the use of it for moving forward well it will be a lengthy process and but we hope that non-governmental organizations will work closely with with states and government militaries to put an end to this development of this technology wow really interesting bonnie appreciate you coming on the show and telling us about this that was bonnie a dotard a senior clinical instructor at harvard law school's international human rights clinic and senior researcher in the arms division of human rights watch. thank you . all so out here on r t the black friday deals are done scores of wal-mart employees how long up their protest signs and life is getting back to normal but what actually came from all this consumer chaos and is there a bigger lesson to be learned here that story next.

here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call i don't know. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot of money from you sir are a fool you know what kind of mind their terrorist cells in your neighborhood all want you to listen to feature stories and see on liberal democrats. constructively

sort of the. you know the corporate media distracts us from what you and i should care about because they're a profit driven industry that sells a sensationalistic garbage he calls it breaking news i'm out of the market and we're going to break the set.

is the state run english speaking russian channel it's kind of like. russia today has an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to us. well black friday is over and keeping up with tradition chaos erupted in some wal marts one man died after getting into a conflict with employees. the georgia man you see there forty year old vital callaway was allegedly shoplifting when he was confronted here's part of the local news coverage according to a police report obtained by channel two action news an employee put the name in

a choke hold detaining him for allegedly stealing two d.v.d. players the responding officer arrived in town the walmart employees on top of the report states that the officer contiki shoplifter but realized he wasn't resisting at all even the good person but he just had a problem with drug that's just what it was he had a problem with drugs he wanted her again you want her. jelly believes her husband's drug problem was what led to the alleged shoplifting. meanwhile the battle between workers and the country's largest retailer continues this up there workers and wal-mart's across the country took part in a black friday strike they were protesting low wages import working conditions but wal-mart stands behind their policies in reports one of the best black friday turnouts ever so is there a cost to the rock bottom prices wal-mart pose to discuss this and more i was joined by chris hex campaign organizer for jobs for justice sam little said salon dot com contributor and labor journalist and also j.d.

to chile a managing editor for reason twenty four seven news first here's josh and whether or not the protests have accomplish anything. very different messages from wal-mart in the public from the beginning they've been dismissing strikes is missing the workers as a fringe meanwhile behind closed doors they've been paying workers to sit in mandatory meetings and be lectured to about why they shouldn't participate why they shouldn't get involved in the labor group or wal-mart why they shouldn't go out on strike what happened is that we saw five hundred some workers according to organizers go on strike anyway despite wal-mart publicly saying they could face consequences anywhere in the world that you see people take a very risky action that could result in a risk to their job to their selves either you have to say all of those people are crazy or it demonstrates a discontent that shared by many more people than what these workers did which is never happens up until last month coordinated strikes at wal-mart stores in the

u.s. has never happened as big as that happened on black friday is significant because it's part of a larger strike wave that's going to continue now chris i know that you played a role in organizing some of these protests and even participated in four of them you said yourself on black friday can you talk about your observations and whether you know whether or not you think the protests were affected i mean i don't think they're affected just because it's really changing the dialogue around workers' rights and how wal-mart and parts not just their bottom line and those workers but the entire industry of these with just six companies like wal-mart such trends that everyone follows whether it be a grocery store or target so when workers are speaking up it's being heard across the country which is why there are over a thousand actions on black friday and one wal-mart's downplaying the importance of this i think everything just josh said completely right we're actually seeing a new america coming awake in this time period where it's coming off the heels of occupy wall street off the heels of what happened in madison so workers are really

willing to stand up and use their voice but wal-mart wal-mart is tallying record profits there say. they had a great black friday so do you think that the management there is being phased that all are being encouraged to change their way as well i mean it's definitely getting to them and in terms of quarter profits we're not going to see how that really shakes out for a few more weeks so that's just a talking point that they've really been pushing and they've also said only fifty workers went on strike when we can actually track and show the numbers were much higher so the fact we're getting responses from them and that they're having to come out and defend their practices shows that they are listening all right j.d. i want to bring you there into the conversation want to ask you what you think about the protests across the country and how effective you think that they have been with all due respect to a joshing chris their lines as we all know it was essentially it affected the black for it it wasn't so much for these protests not going to minimize the complaints of

these workers that may well valid reasons for being dissatisfied those who did well but a very small percentage it was overall employees that just that are going to protest and overall the takeaway from this is that the focus for the sailor. you know what they are the ones that did come out and protest they're protesting poor working conditions they're protesting low wages trade i want to ask you wal-mart. i guess and they definitely don't offer competitive wages but in the retail industry is there really that much lower. well for the ritual industry there are about average i may be talking about great wages and i'm going to be on that on a terrible rate wages for their industry even though they're pretty competitive over old compared to mom and pop stores full of people might tend to prefer at least some circumstances there for a better avail better benefits because they have the advantage of the scale but

they also. know now god you just heard there from j.d. that. and then they pay average average wages and you know what some people are saying is you know if you don't like working there and you're not happy bear why don't you go and work somewhere else for a country right so you could have said the same thing to people working in government sweatshops in the us a hundred years ago you could have said to people working in the auto industry in the 1930's wal-mart's wages according to i miss world they're less than nine dollars an hour on average they may not be starkly different from the average in the industry but it's an industry that woolmer has created wal-mart has driven the entire industry in this direction there are other holdouts like costco but they've dragged even unionized companies down in terms of the wages and so we're talking about a strike not just about a particular company but against the dominant player in our economy it doesn't have to be that way the most has a great report arguing that in fact you can have low prices without having such low

wages but what we're seeing here is that wal-mart exerts an influence not just on the one percent of u.s. workers that work directly for wal-mart but on its suppliers on its contractors and on its competitors and those wages are wages that leave workers i've talked in the position of saying well this week i got my paycheck so i'll lend money to you and next week you get your paycheck yolen money back to me and each of us will have to decide each day whether we can afford to pay for lunch that is not something that's necessary in order to have low prices or in order to have an effective economy. now . despite all this chris josh excuse me. these people all wal-mart does employ a lot of people so wouldn't it be better off for all those involved at least for the time being to have been employed instead of these workers being out of out of work all the workers that went on strike i talked to several of them said i made

a choice not to leave i've made a choice not to go somewhere else because we are living in a wal-mart economy whether or not you work for wal-mart they've made a choice to stay and fight to change the job so the question is not whether nine million people should exit the question is people's willingness to use their voice and what's up for debate here is just how much wal-mart should pay whether in fact you should have to be in poverty to work there the question is also who gets to be part of determine. who gets to decide whether wal-mart should take a portion of its profits as it could be entirely. in raise everybody's wages for example as in most are used to twelve dollars an hour because historically when workers have tried to participate in the process when they've tried to organize whether it's to form a union or to organize in a different way as they are now with union support workers have faced retaliation and so this is a question not just about poverty but about democracy also should workers get to

get together and pressure the company to raise the wage floor without the responses having their hours cut or being facing losing their jobs ok. katie i'm going to direct this next question to you because josh there was talking about raising the wages what do you think that would do do you think that would cause wal-mart would that make it so that they have to arrange the prices in that case as we know many people with low income people shop at wal-mart because at the prices there are are much lower so. what the consumer ultimately suffers. before that will quite likely you know if it's under sara lee to rule out giving the workers higher wages there's nothing wrong with workers unionizing seeking better conditions although we should note that they haven't. been has been trying to get wal-mart for years and yes women obviously doesn't want the men there but the workers have chosen over a course of years not even going to say they have the right to and if they if they

have grievances i'm sure that some of them do it they should try to settle this so yes if labor costs go up that's a major cost what they're going to come out in the wash someplace wal-mart's big bit of advantage of the market is low prices that's the average is that everyone knows them or there's low prices probably won't be so low if a major close the border for the more test to go up all right chris i mean what do you think what do you think wal-mart needs to change and can they make those changes and keep those prices that attract their customers can that all happen at once. the frank and wal-mart it's. so big and there's so much profits in it and the walton family owns the same amount of forty prove forty two percent of wealth but the bottom part of the country they those six people only the money is there and we live in this wal-mart economy because they hold this money and they hold our economy hostage by setting these trends like everything that's been discussed one might could easily change its practices and make with everyone in the economy up

and it would only cost forty two cents for every customer's trip in order for these workers to make toll dollars an hour all right with about j.d. what do you think the wal-mart family the wall and there are there read to their ranking of the dollar should they should they share a piece of that pie with their with their employers. well the rich yes they are but go so slowly becomes as if the walton family is the key to be able to raise every employees and only wage by dollar course you can do that the company which used to exist over the world have no reason to keep it going. wealthy people do exist and they their money is not such as if they have a huge supply because of the divide to make everybody in the country wealthy or these companies exist like walmart to sell to customers to provide something more walmart offers is a retail experience with low prices the low prices. come with the cost of a did you know you have to keep the cost down low to. discuss their labor costs

aren't that high and write them interesting debate and appreciate you the three of you for taking part in taking part in it that was crap pick the campaign organizer at jobs for justice josh eidelson salon dot com contributor and labor a journalist and also gave him a tally of managing editor for reason twenty four seven in. well pretrial hearings resume today for army private bradley manning he is accused of the largest security breach in u.s. history the focus today in the military court in fort meade maryland is expected to be on his treatment while in custody among other things that offends alleges manning was held in solitary confinement for twenty three hours a day and stripped of his clothing his supporters call the treatment torture and the defense says he's already been punished the most serious charges aiding the enemy and if convicted he could spend life behind bars for now the u.s. government is not accepting a conditional plea deal one where manning would plead guilty to lesser charges but

will revisit the issue at a later date manning himself is expected to testify any time this week marking the first time the alleged leaker has spoken in court we're told manning appeared in good spirits today smiling and acknowledging supporters that packed the courtroom we'll keep you updated on all the developments throughout the day. overall revolving door between wall street and washington just keeps on turning here at r t we've paid attention as lobbyist become regulators and legislators become lobbyist blurring the line between government and business let's take a look at the some of the examples we've covered dick cheney jake siewert meredith at well baker tim paul landy leonard channon steve buyer now who is the latest to make the cut a man by the name of heath shuler has a north carolina congressman who used to play for the washington redskins last

february he announced he would be retiring from the hill. about a month or two ago that you're already going for a lobby job that you're retiring this year. but you're not going to go shopping with the majority group or any of these are lobbying firms ok sure you. are you playing become a lobbyist not what do you influence industry at all after this year as you're going to get you want to return to record. what do you plan to do after you retire i. have a better job than you guys have that's for sure. well despite last year's denials he announced yesterday how be a working as a v.p. of federal affairs for duke energy the largest electric utility company in the country shuler says he won't vote on anything related to his new employer while still in congress he is however trying to pass a bipartisan deficit reduction compromise whatever the deal becomes it will probably affect duke energy some duke energy is business before the government

includes tax policies and corporate dividends e.p.a. air pollution rules and resulting nuclear waste issues duke energy assured news outlets that hsu schuler's role heading the federal affairs department while not violate house ethics rules which dictate that former representatives must wait a year before lobbying let's hear so let's see what she will or with his six years of building connections on capitol hill will do for duke when he shuffles through that revolving door. that's made it over now but check out our youtube channel youtube dot com slash r t america you can also follow me on twitter outlives the wall will be right back here at eight pm. a lot of american power continue. things in our. might be time revolution. and it turns out the killers.