bought a bag of big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour gun control and mental health are two of the major issues being discussed in the wake of last week's tragic school shootings but we are all ignoring one of the biggest characteristics of mass murders in this country and we need to start paying attention to it also all across this country land is being destroyed to make way for the dangerous process of hydraulic fracturing or fracking was a group of artists doing to help stop gas companies from fracking once and for all and the attacks against our privacy rights keep coming and coming it's and it's daily take i'll tell you about the latest way congress is trying to give out your information to the world.

tomorrow the n.r.a. is planning to hold a major news conference here in washington d.c. in response to the shooting massacre in connecticut last friday is they've been released on tuesday the n.r.a. said it is quote prepared to offer meaningful contributions to make sure this never happens again course last friday's tragedy was america's first school shooting since columbine in one thousand nine hundred nine there have been thirty one school shootings in the united states and after each of those shootings families grieved the nation mourned and the n.r.a. did nothing since one thousand nine hundred nine the n.r.a. has had thirty opportunities to take a stand against senseless gun violence that plagues this nation but in each case they have chosen not to instead the n.r.a. has spent millions and millions of dollars lobbying washington politicians to keep gun loopholes open and aquash any type of gun control legislation so what can we really expect from tomorrow's major news conference well

a growing number of politicians on both sides of the aisle are finally calling for tougher gun controls the n.r.a. can't really afford to do nothing and sit idly by however don't expect any major policy shifts on their part maybe they'll support tougher background checks for potential gun owners or support requiring mental health checkups before purchase a gun and even support an incredibly watered down assault rifle ban but at the end of the day tomorrow assuming the world lives to see another day in the mayans are wrong the n.r.a. will still put being able to hunt humans with military grade weapons first on their list. since the shooting massacre in connecticut debates have heated up across the country on gun control mental health services in the level of violence in our culture in general but as those debates are going on one very important characteristic of mass murders in this country has been overlooked in thirty one of the school shootings have taken place since one nine hundred ninety nine the shooters were all men in fact of the sixty two mass murders that happened over the past thirty years only one of the shooters was

a woman and of all of these male shooters the majority were white and middle class so why are white middle class males usually the ones committing mass murders and why is this fact being overlooked or not discussed joining me now is meghan murphy founder and editor of feminist currents freelance journalist whose latest article on alter net is titled what is it about men that they're committing these horrible massacre meghan welcome hi thanks for having me on the show thanks for joining us you would think that the gender of a perpetrator would be an important factor in understanding why crimes occur why is that being overlooked. i think gender is overlooked in general not just in these kinds of mass shootings but you know because we're living in a time and place particularly within an american context we're told over and over and over again that individuals are completely responsible for their own circumstances so things like race gender we're told that those things don't factor and i mean the american dream is based on this idea that any individual who works

hard and i can succeed and oddly of course it's most often white men who have succeeded throughout history we know full well that race class and gender factor into our circumstance and like and so within the context of mass shootings in particular i think that what i am we don't see white men as a particular group in society because they have always been positioned as the norm which means that everyone who is in a white man is other and to be honest i think we are in denial about the extent to which patriarchy has shaped our existences and the extent to which male power impacts all of our lives and i think that can be overwhelming to people there are it seems to be pieces to what you were just plain how one is the fact that the shooters are white middle class males by and large and the other is that the media

is not pointing out that they are white middle class males by and large are these how are each of these the consequence of patriarchy. well i think that you know part of that is that white men still for the most part shape discourse so you know whoever runs the media has a large hand in shaping the discourse and that of course is due to patriarchy i think that you know for example when we want to blame. gun set of looking at behind the gun especially if behind the gun is a white man i think that has a lot to do with not want to. call out men and to look closely at what's wrong with masculinity so you know we don't seem to have such a big problem doing this when it people of color. as an excuse for racism but we

are willing to see white men as the problem and i think that. white men don't want to see themselves as the problem so why would a good analogy be to to to point out that if and i think everybody probably would agree with this that if the shooter a week from friday a week ago friday had been a. person with brown skin wearing a turban who was a muslim. fox news would have been all over it everybody would be talking about the person and the religion and the race and instead because it's a white guy people aren't talking about those things they're talking about the totally. yes exactly. if this is a woman there's no way that we wouldn't be talking about that there's no way that we wouldn't be saying you know what's wrong with them and same goes for people of color. we would be looking at that primarily as the reason and we would be talking about that first and foremost do you think it's going to change as white

men become the minority in the united states. you know do i think that it will change and that we'll talk about it over the next generation or so. while both actually do think that it's possible this. let me rephrase the question if we're looking at shooters who are mostly white middle class men. that doesn't identify it as a testosterone problem because there are men of other races and cultures and classes that are not participating in this so what is a that isn't just about the fact that they're men that is driving this process. yeah i mean i i absolutely don't believe that men are naturally inclined towards violence or towards sociopathy i don't think that this is about men and biology i biological sense i think this is learned as is male privilege of course so matter

taught that they're entitled to certain things in this world money power success respect access to women etc there are also taught things like we all know villainy and the are that men and qualities so men don't learn that it's ok to feel or to express emotions but what they do learn is that aggression dominance and violence is a natural part of manhood and that's a really big problem so we need to be asking you know we need to be looking at masculinity and how masculinity and manhood is taught and learned in our society and to some extent that you know that is defined by the ability to provide for a family and that sort of thing do you think. again looking at white middle class men as the perpetrators and so many of these cases that because of this male privilege and white privilege for that matter because they come into the world expecting that they will be able to make it or succeed that i mean so many of these

are actually suicides we should be calling them that their suicide murders suicide going on a blaze of glory kind of thing that these are the consequences of unfulfilled expectations and as a society we should stop pushing the expectations. yeah yeah i mean i think that we need to be teaching boys and men that it's ok to be weak and it's ok to be vulnerable and it's ok to be emotional and to express emotions. and how to fail i mean i how do we how do we teach that well of course i mean i think that if we're teaching men that they deserve certain things in society that they deserve this privilege that they're entitled to it then certainly men are going to feel angry when suddenly they don't have what they thought was owed to them when they're not getting the success that they wanted when they're not getting women when they're not getting money when they're not getting the jobs that they want certainly and that's part of where that revenge factor comes into play do you think do you think

that as more and more women get power and as more and more minorities get our that their expectations are going to rise to those of white men and we're going to start seeing shooters who are not just white now. you know because i don't think that women and minorities having more power in our society is going to instill in them a sense of entitlement. i think that it's about equality yeah that makes perfect sense meghan we're out of time thank you it was a very very thought provoking interview thank you very much for being with us tonight thanks so much for having me on the show thanks and i'm going to great article and a great website from this current. i think it's. just. it's the good the bad of the very very can suspect glee islay ugly good tesla motors electric car makers tesla model s.

was just named the scene at tech car of the year beating out the likes of b.m.w. audi toyota and for this is the second major award for the model s. it was previously named the two thousand and twelve motor trend car of the year all the workers of tesla are probably thrilled about the award there romney probably isn't he of course bashed the auto maker during the presidential election saying that it was one of president obama's failed green investments to tesla for promoting a cleaner and greener environment and for sticking at the mitt romney in the process the bad george will will a conservative columnist for the washington post published an article arguing that registering more americans to vote would give the wrong people access to vote will writes the by introducing small voting requirements which often turn out to be anything but small we can quote filter potential voters with the weakest motivations and quote he goes on to say that these voters are apt to invest minimal effort and civic competence as indifferent to reluctant voters or nag to the polls

or someday prodded there by a monetary for non-voting the caliber of the electorate most ikhwan basically will just want to go back in time to when only white wealthy landowners have the right to vote and the very very ugly wal-mart not even a week after a gunman used an assault style rifle to brutally massacre twenty six children and adults at an elementary school in connecticut walmart has sold out of its entire stock of assault rifles in five states to bloomberg news pennsylvania kansas and alabama in the five states other retailers. big box store dick's sporting goods have told us all rifles from their shelves but as usual wal-mart is putting profits ahead everything else continuing to arm americans and promote gun violence in the process and that is very very. coming up you might want to think twice before watching anything too controversial or violent or embarrassing during your next

visit the next plex i'll tell you why and that's deleted. a little worse if you go through. the white house to give a. radio guy minestrone. what we're about to give you've never seen anything like this i'm told.

in the best of the rest of the news all across america gas companies are tearing up land to make room for the piping needed for hydraulic fracturing controversial process used to harvest natural gas from shale rock and along with this destruction of land comes the risks of contaminated drinking water toxic fumes even poisoned livestock one of the many groups trying to shut down this dangerous fracking practice is artists against fracking a group of nearly two hundred members working to expose and stop fracking through

mass awareness and peaceful democratic action musicians sean lennon one of the founding members of artists against fracking joins us now from our new york studios sean welcome to the program thank you thanks for having me thanks for joining us what made you get involved in the fight to stop fracking. well it started because my family's had a farm in upstate new york that they had before i was born and we always had our own well water there and cabot oil came to propose the constitution pipeline which runs straight through that. all the way down down to the mill of the state and it sort of made me want to prevent that because i really attached to the farm and that got me it's kind of was falling down a rabbit hole of. fighting fracking and being a fact of this in the last six months i've just sort of learned a lot about you know how it relates to climate change how it's going to affect the air and water and how sort of how the companies have evaded the you know the clean air and clean drinking water act and it's been

a scary scary few months but we're trying to stop it we've organized over two hundred members artists against fracking including people like richard gere and robert de niro and we have artists like sir paul mccartney and it's a great bunch of people and it's come together really quickly so. it's good this is great and good on you for doing that natural gas is being pitched to americans as the queen energy. you know arguably is cleaner than coal being burned but is a really clean. well that's a huge ruse and what's interesting is that the company hill and knowlton who told us in the fifty's that camels are recommended by doctors and don't cause cancer which cause all the litigation with philip morris that's the same p.r. firm who's been paid eighty million dollars by the american national gas association to tell us that gas is the clean alternative to coal obviously the coal people have been telling us that there's clean coal as well both of those things

are completely oxymorons they're there in a minute in possibility natural gas is just as dirty as coal it's just dirty in a different way it's true that it burns cleaner in your house but extract ing it is equally dirty process and in fact meeting itself which is what's being extracted is one hundred five times more a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide so even. releasing a small fraction of the means to me thing that's trapped within the shell rock would tip our climate beyond a revokable climate change can people get involved with the organization show well we're actually doing a video contest now to do a thirty second promo piece. to get cuomo to. basically stop fracking in new york state they're proposing a hundred thousand wells in the state it was only about twelve hundred to fifteen hundred pennsylvania that cause people's water to become flammable so we want to stop it in new york state we have the power to germany is thirty percent renewable already and that's mostly solar and vermont said no france is outlawed fracking so

people need to know that you can stop this and you will need to know that there's no argument for it economically speaking there's a renewable economy waiting to happen that would cause a much more jobs than that in the fall the fuel industry bill clinton already said that by the way it was a deutsche bank research that proved that there are thousands of more jobs just in retrofitting and insulating old houses and doing solar and wind agreed and people can go to artist against fracking dot com for more information against dot com i want to enter the contest please do great real quickly we just have a minute left but moving on to gun violence in america earlier this month was the anniversary your father's tragic death just weeks later america saw one of its worst mass murders what are your thoughts on gun violence in this country. well i have a lot of friends on both sides of that argument and i know that americans are really attached to hunting culture and i do empathize with people who like to commune with nature but frankly i don't think you need a semiautomatic rifle if you're a real hunter i think a real hunter wants to manually load their gun if they're really doing it for that

reason and i think we just have to look at other countries like the u.k. and japan and see how gun regulation has affected the amount the number of gun homicides in those countries it's about three times as many homicide for capita in america than in the u.k. and obviously that's because. ation there's another example that you know was given recently in china there was a man who tried to stab a bunch of kids in a school and unfortunately he did manage to stab you know. many children but none of them died there was zero fate and obviously if that man it had a gun that was semi automatic he would have killed a lot of people so i think people who say that you know it's about mental illness it's not about gun laws we need to take care of those who are mentally ill we need to regulate well but it's it is also about the availability of guns especially gun shows people being able to buy automatic weapons at gun shows this is not only devastating mexico but it's devastating america as well i'm totally with you and

artist fracking dot com once again sean lennon thanks so much for being with us and thanks for having me tom. you know i want to think twice about streaming that subversive documentary about the weather underground or whatever else that may be on flicks of republicans have their way you might just end up on a watch list somewhere this week the house of representatives passed an amendment to the one nine hundred eighty eight video protection privacy act which forbids movie rental companies from sharing or selling their customers viewing history senate is expected to take up the amendments soon if this passes what you watch on netflix may soon become public information that your friends employers and even the government will have access to you regretting streaming the latest harold and kumar you are all those soft porn chick flicks that flicks favors the law change because it will help them branch into social media and connect facebook customers to each

other based on their similar tastes and films unmentioned by netflix is the enormous profit potential in selling your viewing history to advertisers who can target specific demographics based on your preferences in movies also unmentioned by netflix is just who else might get this information once it's taken out of that price. the lockbox current version of the amount does include a provision requiring netflix to get their customer's consent before sharing their viewing history as helpful to those of us who are aware of the online threats to our privacy but the vast majority of americans especially younger generations of americans are completely unaware that their privacy is in danger when they plug into the internet and it'll probably end up being part of those mentor is terms and conditions that you check the yes i agree box for just to get to the site the recent fiasco with instagram and the ongoing privacy concerns with facebook highlight how americans willingly flock to social media without considering the consequences for their privacy or the value of their anonymity today we're

sacrificing privacy for convenience and interconnection we enthusiastically post our locations our pictures and our personal information on social media networks all of which are monitored by advertisers future employers and law enforcement your web experience is now carefully compiled and examined so advertisers can target use specifically they've been collecting data on what websites you go to and what you search for on hundreds of websites and search engines a blatant although legal violation of your individual privacy online data collection is now a multi-billion dollar industry. this level of surveillance would have been horrifying to previous generations especially and including our founding fathers who helped privacy in the highest regard and even enshrined that right in the fourth amendment of the bill of rights yet here in the twenty first century we accept we have become conditioned to accept these invasions of our privacy as the

new normal in fact it's increasingly looking like the united states is one generation away from completely forgetting what privacy means and the consequences of this will be tragic for democracy in our republic that's because without privacy without the ability to be anonymous our ability to plan peaceful revolution or nonviolent social change is radically scaled back big corporations or big brother are watching and they can block or sabotage efforts before they become public so secret that a massive surveillance system has been constructed in america post nine eleven the n.s.a. is building an enormous spy center in utah it's going to house all the data collected by the n.s.a. since nine eleven including e-mails phone calls text messages perhaps now not viewing history all of it in one source so that it's easily analyzed the n.s.a. can now hold the digital version of five hundred quintillion ages of text that's a lot of data but here's what's most important to remember as our privacy goes by

the wayside social change hinges on privacy and in some cases even total privacy anonymity this goes all the way back to the boston tea party when an anonymous activist known even to this day merely as rustic us posted flyers around boston that led directly to the boston tea party in today's america russia says plans rustic business plans to vandalize the tea ships might have been exposed by the east india company or the british government and the tea party would have been shut down before it even started in today's america people couldn't have conspired to overthrow unjust laws like slavery susan b. anthony couldn't have conspired with elizabeth cady stanton to illegally vote martin luther king and rosa parks may have been stopped before they could move civil rights of the spotlight. we might even still be fighting wars in vietnam and iraq sure social media was a tremendous boost for both the occupy movement in the arab spring to get people into the streets but it was also a tremendous tool for law enforcement in both parts of the world to squash those

same movements and tragically the day may be near indeed it may already be here when if you plan to protest the corporate takeover of our government or drone warfare or indefinite detention you find yourself in jail before you even get into the streets remember what happened in minnesota in two thousand and eight before the republican national convention forty eight hours before the convention was to begin police kicked in the doors of and arrested six activists along with detaining hundreds of others who were simply planning to protest at the aren't so if the bush administration took them out before they could even publicly exercise their first amendment right to speak out as our privacy rights are whittled away like this it's getting more and more difficult and more and more dangerous to launch successful socially transformational movements because the powers that be including the corporations or industries that you may be protesting against will know ahead of

time what all your moves are going to be. as people from egypt to burma to china will gladly tell you the fundamental ability of we the people to create social change and lead nonviolent revolutionary movements against unjust oppressive forces he's deeply in nature when a nation loses its privacy protections the fight for privacy will be one of the signature battles moving forward here in these uncertain times in america and without privacy and the ability to remain anonymous genuine democracy will never again flourish in the land of the free. and that's the way it is tonight thursday december twentieth twenty twelve for more information check out our website to thom hartmann dot com free speech dot org r t dot com and hulu dot com slash big picture and don't forget democracy begins when you get out there and get active tag your sort of.

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