today on our t.v. in a world where a plastic cards are good as gold and a blockade by master card and visa card destroy a business with a single click now with the leaks is getting a look at who put the credit card companies up to the banking blockade will tell you who's behind that. and we have all seen and heard about the man drones and what they can do but a new report says these killing machines are only the beginning and had a look at the future of robotic technology again how it could change the face of war. was 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 eight pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching artsy. well new details today on the fight against wiki leaks the n.t. secret web site has released documents from the european commission which show quote hardware u.s. politicians orchestrated the banking blockade against the sites 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 public publicly condemned wiki leaks this type of hacking this type of cyber theft 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'd call you have we can we stick with

a terrorist organization so we can see is that right that julian assigns it seems to me by taking that material and disseminating through wiki leaks as well into 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 tried to designate wiki leaks a terrorist organization and have a put on a u.s. treasury back blacklist the treasury refused saying there wasn't enough evidence to put wiki leaks on such a list but lawmakers were successful in financially suffocating the website of visa and master card which make up a majority of credit card payments were blocked from doing business with the site meanwhile wiki leaks founder julian assange remains holed up in the ecuadorian embassy in london hell likely be arrested and extradited to sweden where he faces

questioning over sex charges if he steps foot outside of that building. well if you think drones are controversial wait until you hear about killer robots these machines or take warfare to a whole new level the robots. it has a mind of their own meaning they could pick and choose which targets a fire on that means humans would almost be completely detached from the decision making process and decide who lives and who should die now these killer machines don't exist yet but major powers around the world including the u.s. are working to make them our reality human rights groups are now trying to ban killer robots from ever being used to one group 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 doa charity 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 her 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 and deployed or in development around the world. now we've reported on a lot here at our table the use of drones and how they have become a key part of military operations these days now be the. day they fly without a pilot on board what sets these killer machines apart from drones drones continue to have a human in the loop in that there is a person 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 and 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 gap 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 as we had mentioned they would decide that 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 singlish 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 now well bunny the argument in favor of such a mission machines and we saw we see similar arguments today. people that defend drones is that it's a it's military live because you're not putting soldiers directly in harm's way as so 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 use 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 the technology forward while 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 ok 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 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 body that you know we're seeing that the military is is always looking for a new advances the newest saying right now isn't 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 have a 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 is headed 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 more nations invest in technology the harder it will be to persuade them to give it up therefore

we believe actually needs to be taken now ok bonnie i guess lastly how confident are you that you could stop the development of this 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 . also had here on our table the black friday deals are done stores a wal-mart employees have hung 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.

state run english speaking russian channel it's kind of like. russia today has an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to us. oh black friday is over and keeping up with the tradition chaos erupted in some walmart's one man died after getting into a conflict with his employees the georgian man forty year old vital callaway was allegedly shoplifting when he was confronted here's part of the local 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 called d.q. shoplifter but realized he wasn't resisting at all but he was a good person but he just had a problem with drugs that's just what it was he had a problem with drugs he wanted her you want to her he would tell he believes her husband's drug problem was what led to the alleged shoplifting. meanwhile the battle between workers in the country's largest retailer continues this after workers and wal-mart across the country took part in a black friday strike they were protesting low wages and poor working conditions but wal-mart stands behind their policy isn't reports one of the best black out friday turnouts ever so is there a cost to the rock bottom prices wal-mart boasts to discuss this and more was joined by chris hex campaign organizer at jobs for justice yosh idelson salon dot

com contributor and labor labor journalist j.d. to chile managing editor for reason twenty four seven news first here is josh on whether or not the protests have accomplish anything. so we've seen two very different messages from wal-mart in public from the beginning we've been dismissing strike systems dismissing 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 warmer publicly saying we 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 has never happened up until last month coordinated strikes at walmart 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 effective i mean i definitely think they're effective just because it's really changing the dialogue around workers' rights and how wal-mart impacts not just their bottom line and those workers but the entire industry of these logistics company asleep wal-mart sets 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 while wal-mart's downplaying the importance of this i think everything joss josh had scarcely 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 on the heels of what happened in madison so workers are really willing to stand up and use their voice about wal-mart wal-mart tallying records. profits they're saying it they had a great black friday so do you think that the management there is being phased out 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 were 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 when i 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 generation chris their lines this week well more was essentially it affected the

black furred it wasn't so much that these protests not going to minimize the complaints of these workers than they were valid reasons for being dissatisfied those who did well but a very small percentage was it will employees that just that are going to protests and overrule the of the takeaway from this is that the first test for failure. you know what they are the ones that did come out in protest they are protesting poor working conditions they're protesting low wages they don't want to ask you wal-mart . i guess they definitely don't offer competitive wages but in the retail industry is it really that much lower. well for the ritual industry there are about average americans talking about great wages and it's going to be going up on that on a pretty terrible rate wages for their industry either they're pretty competitive over old compared to mom and pop stores full of people might tend to prefer at least some circumstances they have better they offer better benefits because they

have the advantage of the scale but they also. know 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 you're not happy there why don't you go and work somewhere else for a country right or you could have said the same thing to people working in government sweatshops in the u.s. 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 wal-mart 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 that 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 them employed instead of these workers being out of out of

work. 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 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 one point four 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 response of having their hours cut or being faced and losing their jobs ok. katie i'm going to direct this next question to you because 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 raise the prices in that case as we know many people with low income people shop at wal-mart because of the prices there are are much lower so. what the consumer ultimately suffers. well for that low point likely you know if it's done this early to rule out giving that workers higher wages there's nothing wrong with the workers unionizing seeking better conditions although we should note that they haven't. you think it's been trying at all or for years and yes well not always it doesn't want them in there but the workers and showed that over

a course of years not unions they have the right to and if they if they have grievances and i'm sure that some of them do they should see a future and settle this for us if if labor costs go up that's a major course for them they're going to come out in the wash someplace wal-mart's big competitive advantage of the market is low prices that's the average is that everyone knows them or those low prices probably won't be so low if at least you're close the border for 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 attracts their customers can that all happen at once it definitely can wal-mart'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 well but the bottom part of the country the 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 sending these trends like everything that's been discussed while might could easily

change its practices and make with the everyone in the economy up and it would only cost forty two cents for every customers trip in order for these workers to make twelve dollars an hour all right what's it about j.d. what do you think the wal-mart family of the wall and there are they're retch their recommended hours and they should they share a piece of that pie went there with their employees. little rich yes they are but they go so well you could count us if the walton family still think you'd be able to raise every employee's only wage by a dollar course if you did that the company would cease to exist it was a little bit of no reason to keep it killing. wealthy people do insist that make their money but this is not so as if they have a huge audience of the divine to make everybody in the country wealthy or these companies exist like wal-mart to sell to customers to provide something while margo offers is a retail experience that low prices low prices don't come with

a post i made it so you know you have to keep the cost down low to. discuss their labor costs aren't that highly. interesting debate and appreciate you the three of you for taking part of taking part in it that was chris hexa campaign organizer and jobs for justice josh eidelson salon dot com contributor and labor journalist and also. managing editor for reason twenty four seven news. a pretrial hearings resume today for army private bradley manning he is accused of the largest security breach in u.s. history the focus today at the military court in fort meade maryland was on his treatment while in custody among other things that offense alleges manning was held in custody 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 in say because of this the charges against him should be dropped 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 room will keep you updated on all of the all the developments throughout this week. well the world valving door between wall street and washington just keeps on turning here at r t we've paid attention as lobbyists become regulators and legislators become lobbyists blurring the line between government and business let's take a look at some of the examples we've covered dick cheney worked for the nixon ford bush sr and bush jr administrations and were when republicans weren't in the white house he went on to the private sector to work for companies like halliburton and jake siewert bounced back and forth between the private and public sector working

for the u.s. treasury before heading over to goldman sachs' meredith out well baker did likewise spending time working for the f.c.c. and then swiftly making her way over to comcast after proving a big merger there and tim paul and do you know him the former presidential candidate made his mark in minnesota and now works for the financial services roundtable and leonard cannon is another interesting case he worked for morrison and foerster and went on to the federal reserve board and the consumer financial protection bureau before heading back to morrison and foerster and finally steve buyer a former congressman before joining the private sector most recently and most recently as a lobbyist for tobacco giant r.j. reynolds who gave him tons of money while in office so who's the latest to make the cut a man by the name of heath shuler he's a north carolina congressman who used to play for the washington redskins last february he announced he would be retiring from the hill. that you're

already going to. be. retiring this year. you cannot be discussing with the majority group or any of these firms occasionally. playing become a lobbyist not what do you influence the industry you know last year this year as you're going to get you want to understand. what do you plan to do after you retire you. have a better job than you guys. well despite last year's denials he announced yesterday he'll be working as 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 so whatever the deal becomes it is probably will effect duke energy some of duke energy his business before the

government includes tax policies on corporate dividends e.p.a. air pollution rules and resolving nuclear waste issues duke energy assured news outlets that schuler's are all heading the federal affairs department will not violate house ethics rules which dictate that former representatives must wait at least a year before lobbying schiller's office did not answer multiple requests for comment from r t so let's see what schuler with his six years of building connections on capitol hill will do for duke when he shuffles through that revolving door that's can do for now but make sure you check out our youtube channel where we post everything there youtube dot com slash r t america you can also check out our website that address is r t dot com slash usa you can also follow me on twitter at liz wall for now have a great night.