or ship to target the truth tellers who expose government corruption and there's a growing trend of government crackdowns on journalists in the country in fact it's so bad reporters without borders ranks morocco one hundred thirty eight out of one hundred and thirty nine countries in the world for press freedom due to their imprisonment of journalists and just one of the most outrageous examples in march of last year eighteen year old student named while lead a home and was sentenced to a year and a half in prison simply for making fun of the king on facebook and most recently independent investigative journalist you said. the editor of the magazine alone is being charged with criminal defamation for exposing government corruption which was extremely harsh penalties so you talk about you case in the full out assault on the press in morocco i'm joined now by amber lyon award winning investigative journalist. so in her talk about the corruption that you expose and why it was

particularly embarrassing for this public official. well abbe yousef to tell you a little bit about him he is a passionate muckraking investigative journalist and in true youssef style he published an article in his magazine exposing that a government minister abdul qadir amar a was on a taxpayer funded trip overseas now you said published ever see from his hotel bill that shows m r i had engaged in a private meal that cost more than twelve hundred dollars also during this meal two bottles of champagne were ordered now that was a very embarrassing for this politician because m r i had campaigned to ban alcohol in morocco also consuming alcohol is against his religion so you set exposed a lot of hypocrisy with this story and obviously angered this government minister. is an incredibly hypocritical why am i not surprised talk about the initial threats that were administered to intimidation tacked. the were doing against him. right

away went on his facebook page and really started trying to smear you subscribe ability also he vowed to prosecute yusef and anyone else involved this fall police visited us. on two different occasions to really intimidate him and he was also interrogated and then unfortunately on january fourteenth of this year yusuf was officially charged with criminal defamation and now abbie he faces a year in prison and ten thousand dollars in fines which could potentially force the closure of his investigative magazine of course i mean a year in a very harsh prison as well the could break you down emotionally physically it's very serious charges for just muckraking it's absurd i mean his trial was supposed to be today it got delayed what is the status right now of what's going on. well he went into court today and the judge postponed it to february twenty fifth. but he

is still facing criminal defamation charges and those as you said abie are very serious for him because if he's away from his investigative magazine for a year in a harsh prison you know it could threaten the survival of this muckraking magazine which is so vital to exposing corruption within the moroccan governments and vital to journalism in the country in general and also just destroying someone's life really good for doing their job and as i mentioned during the intro you know this is not a unique. case it's just part of a larger trend it seems of assault on the freedom of press and morocco i mean how would you describe the state of journalism in the country. well right now reporters without borders ranks maroko within the lower third of countries in the world for press freedom and the big issue all of these journalist rights groups are asking for abby is just to drop the criminalization of journalism the criminal defamation charges can you imagine. the chilling effect that this has on investigative

journalism in morocco when reporters are terrified to criticize public officials to do their job because they're scared they're going to end up in prison and that's what makes you safe so courageous because he's willing to put his neck out on the line and continue to expose corruption even though you know it could end up costing him dearly right i mean he could he could seek asylum somewhere else with his choosing to stay in the country and make his case known to highlight really the serious threat against journalists in morocco is very courageous of him and let's talk about some other things i mean there have been people arrested for simply posting things on facebook i mean it just seems like in light of the arab spring this is going on it's the stomach across the entire middle east i mean do you think that these governments are getting afraid of revolts like the arab spring again. they are getting afraid and they are scared of investigative journalism and

journalists you know they don't want to turn a list to be covering these revolts they don't want journalists to shed light on what's going on and that's why the press is coming under attack in morocco isn't the only country that uses criminal defamation to to go after journalists it's very common in this region and it's very unfortunate because it does work in creating a chilling effect i've spoken to investigative journalists in morocco who have clearly told me there are a lot of stories that they can't cover because if they just cover this one story they're going to end up in jail for a year i mean i mean there are go on. and politicians there and government officials they love criminal defamation because they can go after anyone who criticizes them and ruin their career just just like that regardless of facts it's a great catch all charges and it if you embarrass someone especially. if they are trying to ban alcohol and then using taxpayer dollars to really these a lavish extravagant meals i mean it's a. charges will you defame me publicly we're going to throw you in this prison

absolutely insane amber i'm so happy that you're working with this organization to really bring more of this website rather to bring this story to light. and yet these dictators are very scared they don't they want to suppress truths that could topple the regime what's the power structure like in relation to the government and why would the king even help in this case. well we are we're just hoping that he'll do the right thing because the king has been promising reforms in the country especially when it comes to freedom of expression and human rights and this is an obvious violation of freedom of the press and morocco so we're really hoping to appeal to the king and hope that he will he does have the ultimate power to pardon you. and hopefully get these charges dropped and so we're hoping that will happen and you know all it takes is thirty seconds anyone can head to our web site save

dot com y o u s. and they can go on and sign this petition to the king also sign a letter that we're sending out to the king and hoping that something will be resolved before you said heads back to court on february twenty fifth because you know as martin luther king always said injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere and this is definitely the case especially when it comes to journalism absolutely i mean you know this is happening not only across the middle east but i mean it's happening everywhere amber i mean america look at look at the war on whistleblowers targeting the press i mean trying to actually doing the song is not an american citizen because of the embarrassment that it's causing public officials to have this muckraking journalism bring the horrible truth to light i mean what can we do why it just seems that this problem is becoming worldwide do you think that people are becoming complacent while they.

coming for the journalists already of course coming after is that i'm a muckraker you're a muckraker we do i'm sure you share the common fear of getting a knock on the door one day. and having the government come after you for something and and it is it is pretty terrifying and it's because we are watchdogs on the government and we expose corruption and that's very that's very terrifying but that's also why it's so important to stick up you know it's a band together as journalists and stick up for journalists like yousef and other journalists who are being prosecuted worldwide so that we raise awareness and we let these government leaders know that this is unacceptable you cannot go after journalists and journalism like this and unfortunately we are in a dire state worldwide and you said unfortunately it's not the only journalist suffering for revealing truth. and like i said before i mean this is this is just the most recent case in a long trend of morocco suppressing press freedom i mean you know they see their

neighboring countries kind of having these uprisings and they are looking to really stifle investigative journalism that exposes corruption in the highest levels of government what else could people do i know that you said you can go to the website you can sign the petition you can lobby they can i mean is there anything else people can do to spread awareness of the case and really help you. yeah of course we have a hash tag save once again it's y u s s and you can spread that hash tag also spread our website using your social media accounts and really just braise awareness about how this one journalist is being targeted because this this is a problem that's going on worldwide and we need to let leaders and especially corrupt leaders know that this is unacceptable and we need to be able it's journalists to do our job without the fear of being charged with criminal defamation and sent to jail right absolutely and without the muckrakers i mean no one will bring the truth to light we can't go to. the corporate media to do it

so it's up to us and we really need to band together and expose this thank you so much emmy award winning and investigative journalist amber lyon always a pleasure to have you on thank you so much abby it's a pleasure for me. to feel like we see so far go to our you tube channel you tube out bring the sense it's got to us like a film crew as well. plus breaking the set and you can go out in the like us on facebook at facebook dot com breaking the set going to what i'm doing when i'm not on earth only on the one of the first at abby martin i took a break from my preaching for now the picture here about israel's little known nuclear program and how it affects a little town in pennsylvania next. wealthy british style sun. sometimes that's right on. target.

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we hear ad nauseum from politicians and world leaders who say if you're wrong going to build a nuclear weapon it would trigger a nuclear arms race in the middle east in fact just last year at the u.n. g.a. obama had this to say. the mistake a nuclear armed iran is not a challenge that can be contained it would threaten the elimination of israel the

security of gulf nations and the stability of the global economy. it risks triggering a nuclear arms race in the region and the odd raveling of the nonproliferation treaty. but while obama is working so hard to vilify you wrong israel has been running free for decades with a massive stockpile of nuclear weapons hard to this day israel has maintained a stance of nuclear ambiguity where they have neither confirmed nor denied actually having them fact the u.n. g.a. just voted overwhelmingly for israel to make its nuclear weapons program transparent and to force the country to join the nuclear nonproliferation treaty so to talk about israel's little known nuclear program how it started and why it's affecting a small town in pennsylvania i'm joined by grant smith director of the institute for research middle eastern policy and author of the book divert numac zalman ship iran the diversion of u.s.

weapons grade uranium into the israeli nuclear weapons program thank you so much for coming on thanks for having me on so you can vet investigating this case for quite a long time five years for our audience who may not be familiar what is new make and who established it you make. your brain in processing plant that was created in one nine hundred fifty nine by people with sketchy backgrounds you have corrupt d.o.j. officials kicked out you had an israeli smuggler who ten years earlier had been doing all sorts of things in the smuggling arena you also had two zero ways i in the store going to zation of america officials putting in effort to get this process are up and running which would finally be able to get its hands on the most precious metal on earth which at that time was used to thirty five what you need for making bombs basically what was that what what did they say that they were i mean it was a front group it was a shell group for it was in fact. the company quickly set up

a joint venture called i saw red now this was with the israeli atomic energy commission which researchers such as. and every field is nothing but a front for weapons development they were visited by raphael eight times in the same spider master who ran jonathan pollard against the united states and f.b.i. files reveal eyewitness accounts of official say stuffing canisters of u two thirty five into equipment and shipping it to israel and so there's really not a lot of question about the fact of diversion john hadden who is the cia tel aviv station chief called this an israeli operation from the beginning. and so at the end of the day i mean no charges were filed i mean this was this was a smuggling operation right. is that when it was first revealed in one thousand nine hundred sixty five when it when new that was first investigated for doing this is that when this was kind of exposed this was exposed put the l.b.j.

administration into a tizzy they wondered what are we going to do to actually get accountability and so what they managed to do is engineer the buyouts of this company and then ultimately gets zalman shapiro the president out of there but he was under consideration for charges all the way through the carter administration for violations of the atomic energy act for acting as an unregistered foreign agent for obstruction of justice because he lied about beatings that he was holding with this really intelligence operatives and so this is an organization the very well could have in our opinion should have been prosecuted for atomic energy act violations and even the two thousand and one department of energy study shows that they lost three hundred thirty seven kilograms of weapons grade uranium by far the biggest lost in the united states and while it's amazing i mean and these documents that are coming out i mean it's and a lot of them are still classified bradman's fighting you guys to think they're

fighting because they are because this is an attack on the secret to your clip on obama that that cow has run out of the by. and already there is no secret the israelis have and it's very clear arsenal what secret right now to american news shows in particular is that it exists and it's impacting the standoff with iran and all sorts of things but there's been no accountability and when you mention apollo apollo is undergoing a five hundred million dollar cleanup of this toxic front company american taxpayers are going to be on the hook for the fallout from the yes i really love i want to talk about what's happened i mean how did it affect the community there both economically and health wise well they thought it would be a good thing to get heavy industry in because this was severely depressed after the collapse of heavy steel back after world war two but they've been left holding the bag for literally millions and cleanup costs and while residents have filed wrongful death suits overly kenya and all sorts of toxic poisoning that people have

been dying from they're up against a gigantic firm located here in d.c. called arnold and porter l.l.c. that's been defending music really government since one thousand nine hundred sixty seven and so they're getting slaughtered in court right now trying to get some compensation for the damage done to their community and this is parks township and apollo two point towns in pennsylvania why did it take so long for i mean that town has been suffering for so long the way it seems like this should already happened by now well radiation poisoning relates and so what's been happening apollo is that they've been trying to get compensation but they haven't been tackling the core issue of why this organization was ever put into their midst in the first place and so until we finally cast away strategic ambiguity in the u.s. government stops holding on to documents that could allow them to rig prevail in court they're probably not going to be able to go up against israel's best lawyers

and actually get damage claims for wrongful death well that's what i think the most . infuriating aspect of this whole case is the fact that israel is able to maintain nuclear ambiguity i same time we have this hard line against iran where we have we've vilify any country they want to develop nuclear weapons i mean it's just absurd that there's zero transparency about how many nuclear weapons israel has i mean well why don't they jimmy carter spilled the beans after his office he said they've got one hundred fifty nuclear weapons so it's this secret that's not a secret but this is the u.s. plays attention to ambiguity maintains ambiguity because if they don't all sorts of good things would happen people have been damaged by smuggling could get relief in court news reporters could report the whole story there could actually be a real discussion about the nuclear nonproliferation treaty i believe and many researchers believe a new mic may have pulled the u.s. out of compliance because this was never seriously investigated and so right now i

think is a prime time for people to begin challenging not just secrecy with numac but strategic ambiguity as a whole and in fact there's a movement online called and ambiguity dot com where people can start to join together and say stop pretending stop pretending we want to accountability then we need transparency and just to wrap it up talk about what the rose recent documents revealed during the carter administration what we got out of this ration was investigating it was going to actually prosecute the c.e.o. of the plant for obstruction of justice because again he was lying about his meetings with the really intelligent officials but he had two things preserve he had to preserve the camp david peace accords this would have probably gone bad and he also wanted to maintain the civilian power industry and so the folder released by the national records administration just last week is full of information about

this but all of the truly important things such as the summary of thousands of cia documents they're not really. thank you so much for coming on exposing this very important issue grant smith author of diverts new makes all the trip iran the diversion of the us weapons grade uranium into the israeli nuclear weapons program thank you so much except. so last week the widely acclaimed p.b.s. program nova from the highly anticipated documentary entitled rise of the drones take a look at the trailer. here real robots taking the pilot out of the cockpit revolutionizing warfare planes can fly and they can. they can be more precise when they buy the secrets behind their power potential in terms of providing sort of hard to be what

a robot can do this is the next generation. the rise of the drug on. notice anything off about it oh right because it's just the trailer doesn't mention that p.b.s. once noted as pointed out by journalists. that the program received additional funding from some pretty interesting sources p.b.s. lists david koch foundation for science and also manufacturer lockheed martin one of the largest producers of us if you drones in the whole country. there's anyone else think it's a little bit absurd that one of the most recognizable symbols of the military industrial complex is funding a documentary on the very weapon of war they develop but of course the rabbit hole goes much deeper than the corporate media has been picking up on the fact that drones will soon be at the forefront of an international arms race they have to question whether or not this technology is moral or abusive and fact the documentary features one so-called drone expert missy cummings who also happen to

be a guest on the daily show with jon stewart just last week they talked about the practical aspects of drones noting their alleged success rates how cheap they are to build and how they make war safer for our troops stuart incomings joke together about the potential to stop it future of drones but the morally questionable aspects about them you know like targeted assassinations without due process or why are governments classifying who they kill and why you have those small hiccups for conveniently omitted from. conversation suffice it to say jon stewart is just another apologist for the establishment sorry but i just don't believe he doesn't get how dangerous drones are and how much of a failure in policy they represent but back to p.b.s. which prides itself on being america's largest classroom aired the documentary to showcase how drone technology is the future of avionics but really what it was above all else was an infomercial for the military industrial complex because all

it did was mark full of the capabilities of drones by displaying impressive stats and misleading information about how drones have solved intelligence gathering problems but aside from the lack of truth telling about drones abroad a critical eye on their domestic use was lacking as well. the documentary covers drone surveillance by highlighting argus the world's highest resolution one point eight billion pixel camera that can monitor an entire city from a single drone technology can simultaneously track a moving targets and pinpoint surface objects as small as a shoe but it doesn't talk about the implications that has on our privacy so we're also a setback in our seats an all out how fucking cool the technology is vs be amazed at the aerial acrobatics of these automated aircrafts and forget about their role and redefining due process and the boundaries of privacy and the borderlines for warfare. and that's just the problem isn't it that this in-depth look at these

unmanned carrier killer robots barely scratches the surface of reality p.b.s. is supposed to be one of the last networks that's nonprofit above the fray featuring some of the last objective programming on television and that's why it's so disturbing that this military propaganda aired on this public platform but then again the p.b.s. mindset isn't what it used to be and a fox news world. can. hear the reindeer is interesting for the herders. and when it suffers people do their best to help.

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. good news it should be good lumber touring each year mccurry was able to build a new most sophisticated robot which all unfortunately doesn't give a darn about anything tim's mission to teach music creation why it should care about humans and we're going this is why you should care only on the. guitar sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you don't know i'm tom harvey welcome to the big picture.

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