the old story saw. a. little worse for the little thing going like that for the. radio guy. what. if you've never seen anything like this. guys and i mean mark and this is breaking this set so you may remember back in december when it was revealed that the part of homeland security had been extensively spying on the occupy movement in fact they were treating it as a potential criminal and terrorist threat despite the fact occupy organizers explicitly call for peaceful protests while another forward release from the partnership for civil justice fund or p c j s has revealed a much broader and much more disturbing picture that transcends occupy where in recent documents released the d.h.

has been operating what they call a threat management division which includes daily intelligence briefings of largely peaceful demonstrations but it goes further than just documenting activism the records show intricate chord nation between local and federal authorities to obfuscate and restrict free speech and they did this in a number of ways everything from making permits extremely unattainable restrictive to instilling free speech zones furthermore the documents confirm the military's crackdown on occupy was in fact a result of this court nation and despite what we know a spokes person from the p.c. j f says the documents were heavily redacted and represents only a fraction of what the government really possesses so i encourage you to read more on this developing injustice on ad justice online dot org and with all that said let's break the set. looks like. you've never seen anything like.

one of the most controversial aspects of obama's presidency has been his escalation of drone warfare cross the muslim world it's a practice that will cement obama for ever as a war president which is perhaps why it's so astonishing that this is the same man who also won the highest accolade for peace in the world yep it's been almost four years since barack hussein obama won a coveted nobel peace prize but let's make one thing clear obama wasn't the first controversial recipient there's been countless others starting with the very founder of the prize itself mr alford nobel the man who created dynamite nobel actually believed that his contribution to excel or to the act of death would lead to world peace this kind of oxymoronic thinking is rooted in the foundation of this prize and it's played out with some of the most powerful figures in history let's start with president woodrow wilson the man who got the u.s. into world war one resulted in the deaths of almost one hundred seventeen thousand

u.s. servicemen he's also responsible for ushering in the espionage act yes the same archaic act that nobel laureate obama has been using to prosecute and intimidate whistleblowers with what about henry kissinger buddy of genocidal chilean dictator augusto pinochet kissinger's also unknown war criminal he's the man responsible for escalating the vietnam war and overseen a legal bombings in laos and cambodia that resulted in tens of thousands dead and who could forget al gore taking the prize in two thousand and seven the businessman who built his entire empire by profiteering off the fear of climate change that brings us all back to today now one might say that obama's use of killer robots and perpetuation of many bush era war policies has merit and nuff to revoke the prize and as of yesterday their efforts to do just that a new campaign is underway that's. book his piece of board it's

a petition launched by an organization called roots action and as of today already has over ten thousand signatures so to talk more about this effort to have parker see behind the award in the media's facilitation of the war is peace mentality i'm joined now by norman solomon co-founder of roots action dot org and author of war made easy how presidents and pundits keep spinning us to death thanks so much for coming on norman lead to be with you so first of all for people who don't understand why it's so hypocritical for obama to have a peace prize and break down what he's done that stands in direct opposition to this award. well president obama a triple the troop levels in afghanistan after he took office as president it was in december of two thousand and nine when he went to us low to accept the nobel peace prize since then what we've seen is an expansion of what the u.s. government sometimes calls a war on terror. choosing to exercise

a perceived corroborative to send cruise missiles and drones and other weaponry into a number of countries irrespective of international law and one of the ways that i think you can evaluate whether it's ok for a country to do something is whether they'd like to have it done to them and how they would feel about a cruise missile or a drone strikes being exercised with impunity inside their own borders from another country i mean clearly that's unacceptable or should be in terms of international law and unfortunately the obama administration has expanded the use of drones over the last four years oh yeah not even it expanded i mean they are blowing up not no pun intended but i mean in pakistan alone it's hundreds and hundreds of drone strikes it's really amazing to look at the scale of which is expanded that program norm and what's incredibly interesting as well is that obama got this award pretty

much for his policies even went to a fact i mean you just mentioned he went to oslo in two thousand and nine in december what was the initial justification for giving it to him because really it was all talk at that point. where it was based on hope it was largely anticipatory and frankly a lot of the informed speculation was that the nobel peace prize got a order to obama because he wasn't george w. bush well that's a sort of a low hurdle to get over he did get over that low bar he's certainly not w. but he is somebody who has been expanding the claims and progressives of the works . your state of the united states and i think what we seen is that the nobel peace prize was given in anticipation of that or the hope at least that obama would move in a more constructive less militaristic direction on our website where we have a petition to urge the nobel peace prize be revoked or president obama one of the

many comments we've gotten we've gotten well over ten thousand signers in the last several thousand of them have written comments and one of them was that and then to split tory award turns out to be just as wise as a preemptive war so you can't have time. confer on someone a nobel peace prize simply with the anticipation that then they will do something good we've seen in terms of u.s. action in iraq for instance that so-called preemptive work comes to no good as well oh absolutely i mean it just completely cheapens the whole prize itself when you're honoring it based on symbolism and of course talk is cheap we've seen that validated over the last four years but let's talk about the position and what will come of it i mean obviously you guys are going to get the twenty five thousand signatures if you just got ten thousand in the first day but what's going to happen at that point i mean are they forced to respond to and really what will come of

this petition even if they do respond oh i should clarify this petition is not on the white house website right this is a root section or we had a launch last week of a petition also to the nobel committee in oslo calling for the conferring of a nobel peace prize on bradley manning the whistleblower who is now in prison by the u.s. government work revealing so many horrific documented events based on the evidence he got as an army private in the intelligence aspect. the u.s. military we have more than thirty five thousand of those signatures i mention that because ultimately this is about the public changing the perception of what is possible and how we use words it's not a peace prize that that all it if it's given to warmakers and likewise we should be giving and honoring prizes to those who are we going to stick their necks out and

take risks for peace that's certainly the case with bradley manning so those petitions are symbolic as well in a sense that we're just you guys are trying to get the message out there kind of just show and reveal the irony the terrible irony of the situation and of course the bradley manning decision really does reveal the change the reflection of a growing awakening for true tellers in this country norman i want to move on to your book though war made easy where you point out similar efforts across various administrations that are used to justify and retain support for war i why do you go over a couple of these similarities that you found. yes well there is a in effect a repetition compulsion disorder that exists in washington and in other capitals that resort to military action but at this point the united states has engaged in serial warfare over the past several decades and my book begins with the vietnam war and looks at these patterns of agenda setting here or building up the messaging

that military action may be necessary then the hysteria for an invasion then trying to justify an occupation and say that withdrawal would be premature and we went through that entire spin cycle over more than a decade beginning with the lead up to the invasion of iraq you know early two thousand and three and the bottom line is that like other societies but the united states is the strongest militarily of the us society is one where there's. tremendous momentum to engage in what i call jingo narcissism and that is that when we do something it's good we are the light of the world and our military interventions are only to help people and actually unfortunately that is basically a fiction norm and it's american exceptionalism absolutely where indoctrinated with

it since we go to school and on to the media i mean you discuss the perception management also the media playing a role in this in selling the war i mean on the tenth anniversary of iraq all the major news networks were talking about iran's nuclear weapons program and syria's chemical warfare i mean is the media just repackaging the next two wars to sell to us well this is a chronic problem all around the world where the press is largely relies on a visual sources and the united states that means that rather than serving as an independent or a state that challenges and does a lot of digging in and best you work the vast overwhelming preponderance of the u.s. media basically serves a stenographic function and if you've got media that are still not prefers rather than journalists then they're amplifying rather than questioning the claims made by those in power and as we've seen well allies can and will kill if we don't unpack them and challenge them well said norman solomon thank you so much for coming on

co-founder of roots action and author of war made easy thank you. if you're wondering what i'm doing when i'm not on air you can check me out on twitter abby martin like you see you can own me there you'll find all my tweets linking to segments from the show as well as random thoughts i have to add the day and also please help us get a break in the said trending on twitter occasional thoughts and hashtags we can get trained in on the twitter sphere but only with your help so i don't twitter and check me out at i mean martin right now late take a break from my preaching but say to me here about washington's revolving door next . wealthy british style some time to explain the fine.

art of. markets why not. come to find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds a report on our. goods and media right. ten thirty tons total through space towards russia. putin. with the power. of a nuclear bomb. should be open sky full on itsy.

international and in the very heart of moscow. washington d.c. is a city of an enormous influence most influential people here are constantly evolving through a door between the private and public sector whether it be outgoing politicians that continue their prominence in the corporate world or corporate leaders that

find their way to high level government positions like former massachusetts senator scott brown recently joined the boston based law firm nixon peabody is now working on government affairs and banking focusing on finance and real estate or about former longtime connecticut senator joe lieberman who's going to be heading a foreign policy group at the american enterprise institute another notable name is mary shapiro former chairwoman of the securities and exchange commission who stepped down from her post for a cushy new job position and general electric's board of directors these of course are just a few of the countless examples of this public private trading of influence so i hope we talk about a few more examples the revolving door and why you should care about the sketchy practice i'm joined now by rachel curtis or to produce or not to lead so aside from all these examples that i just mentioned i mean this is more prevalent than ever before of course and in the land of d.c.t. which is like what i like to call it were obama got

a look. ritually so that he would not have any lobbyists on his cabinet of course we know that that's not the keys let's go over just a few people. that we haven't talked about yet burwell yet so sylvia burwell is still waiting to join the cabinet she is the nominee for the office of management and the budget which means essentially she's in charge of allocating all of the money in our government which is you know a pretty hefty task if you ask me so she was in government once before she was a deputy chief of staff under bill clinton's administration then she went on to join the bill and melinda gates foundation which is you know it's a charitable institution it's a charitable arm of the gates fortune but charities big business to see that charities have a lot of power the bill and melinda gates foundation is hugely involved in education in particular charter schools which means they certainly have a very specific take on what it means to be charitable and then she went to the wal-mart foundation where we got really good journalism out of josh eidelson from

the nation regarding essentially what was going on at the wal-mart foundation so in in less than a year they spent almost two hundred million dollars to different charities right charities for you know for children charities for the environment all these different charities but it's not necessarily out of the good of their heart because what happens ultimately is that in moments of contention and certainly you've covered a lot of instances where wal-mart has. rifled public opinion or has made people a little concerned about what they're going to do next for instance moving into new york city moving into washington d.c. all of these charities that they supported ultimately ended up supporting them right back it was a little of you know i give you this you give me that and the question is did they think to themselves oh you know this is a good this is a good foundation after all because wal-mart gave us this money so they can't be that bad whether it was more of a legitimate tit for tat we don't know but the bottom line is that we see this influence going back and forth where if you have the money to influence policy then

you might even be able to in flu. it's your way on to create and of course bill gates is a whole propaganda effort to accompany his initiative with charter schools as well i mean with billionaires we're talking about a whole media aspect as well jack lew he was also a former clinton official with the private sector big wall street k.-street guy and now is back yet he was at the o.m.b. he was sylvia burwell would actually be his replacement he was just confirmed at the treasury department another incredibly powerful position and during his confirmation hearings this was pointed out by bart naylor of public citizen during his confirmation hearings they actually addressed the fact that ok so when he was working for city he wasn't just working for citi group he was in charge of what's called their alternative investments those are the kinds of funky mortgage mortgage backed securities other kinds of securities these strange sausages that ended up getting traded and ultimately bankrupted our economy he was briefly in charge of

that citi group which was one of which was one of the banks that has been found time and again to have committed wrongdoing during this time period and when he left the city they said that they would give him a big bonus if he found a quote high level government job now ahead of the o.m.b. head of the treasury department i hope they're paying him out because that's certainly a high level government job and also during clinton's administration he was he was he was not directly in charge of the destabilization of glass steagall but he was overseeing a position when that occurred so it is a very interesting that he ends up taking these really and i actually said he's only allowed to do because glass steagall is and now he's supposed to be in charge of making sure that. gets you know a little in charge of actually making sure that all of these rules of dodd frank go through let's talk about lanny breuer former head of the justice department criminal division now is joining a prominent law firm that represents some of the biggest names on wall street so now we're talking about people who have left the government and are working yes

exactly because it's a revolver. just going around and around someone you're going to be yeah we're going to jeb bush. what's the problem with this so it's one of the examples so if we're talking about the banks and bankrupting our economy lanny breuer was the guy at the justice department who was actually supposed to bring these people to justice he was in charge of about five hundred lawyers and their task was to investigate all of the wrongdoing of the banks and in a very famous quote he said that he had trouble sleeping at night you would too right if your entire job was to make sure that all these people were brought to justice but you wonder why he had trouble sleeping at night abbie he had trouble sleeping because he's afraid quote of the effect on innocent employees and shareholders if it turns out he was wrong little is he thinking about you know all of the people who say no longer have a home and have trouble sleeping because they were they were given baltimore c.e.o.'s they didn't get the million dollars the eighty million dollars in bonuses you know these poor people working at these banks unfortunately what about the

whole neglected foreclosed out of jobs lost all their pensions or for one case all of those things are gone for them and i think that somebody shot in a tear for them yes exactly you know somebody somebody has got to lose sleep over it you know what i mean so now that he's back at covington and burling where he actually started off before the clinton administration he's now making four million dollars defending the same banks he essentially defended by his inaction so then the question is is brewer i mean the question of whether he's evil is i kind of beside the point right so but the important thing is why does he actually think that this is a legitimate perspective right why does he actually because what we've heard time and again from from just public justice officials is they've said listen maybe what the banks did was immoral but it's not in our code of laws to actually prosecute them because they didn't do anything illegal so the question here is why aren't they being creative certainly the federal prosecutors had no problem being creative in using the computer fraud and abuse act when they were going after aaron swartz but that's of course exactly it is that they have these people in there to create.

the legal framework to get away with the legalities i mean we see it time and time again and the point the reason why they were able to do these things in the first place was because they were engineering things that didn't exist before so the laws can be really fooled with that kind of foresight with people trying to when they make laws is make them so that you can apply them to situations and then it's up to people like lonnie brewer to be creative and actually apply them but the so if the question is why isn't that happening i think that neil barofsky he was the former special inspector general for the troubled asset relief program which was. commonly known as the bailout and he has a really interesting idea as to why this happens why the revolving door keeps going around and around and i was hoping we could play that over here get our. it's not like sort of just the traditional way we think of the way that any corporate corporations or powerful corporations have influence in washington where we typically see that we think about the money and the campaign contributions and the lobbying and all that it's totally valid but what i saw was far different and

frankly far more insidious and to me much more damaging in dangerous it was more of the the complete ideological capture of these individuals and by that i mean these were people who fought and believed they were doing the right thing but so would benefit i had with the interest of wall street and the largest banks that became the only thing that mattered. so i really like what he said there it was good to get a perspective from him i want to ask you though about jim de mint i mean think tanks when you're thinking about washington policy you really have to take things into account because really it is the shadow kind of government body where you have corporate c.e.o.'s foreign diplomats and ex politicians and even politicians that are active sitting on these boards i mean this in-tray this of do you see all come together they call it a trifecta and you have him jim de mint now having the heritage foundation i mean what is the problem with these think tanks or do you think there is a problem with them will so first of all jim de mint doesn't have to register as

a lobbyist because he's essentially one step removed from the process they are able to get all of this funding from essentially whoever they want and then they get to write research and stuff like that all of the break up and they should actually and all of those things often get totally cribbed by whoever the congressman is who's supposed to be listening to them so you know the heritage foundation is considered conservative absolutely they're going to politicians with lots of that thank you so much return of the results coming up very very important subject create it. by now you've probably heard of exxon mobil's massive oil spill in central arkansas stem from a ruptured pipe line a pipeline that carries tar sands oil from illinois the american southwest the pipeline carries about ninety thousand barrels through it every day and already at least ten thousand are estimated to have poured out of the gash the oil flowed like a river through a residential neighborhood in arkansas coating

a thick layer of black sludge over the streets and pouring the toxic soup into the sewer drains but hey another day another oil spill rate just last week i reported on the oil spill in utah but that was overshadowed by a fifteen thousand gallons spilled from a minnesota train the very same week seriously oil spills have been happening in the u.s. at an incredibly alarming rate according to e.p.a. administrator lisa jackson approximately twenty thousand oil spills are reported each year to the federal government this figure represents the millions of gallons of oil that end up contaminating land and waterways destroying the environment wildlife and ultimately the livelihood of people despite the heavy cost on the planet or oil companies seem to always responsibility for their pollution for example in the most recent disaster exxon mobil has completely a vade any sort of culpability never guess the reason why according to them the oil they spilled isn't technically oil it's actually a substance called beat him in

a low grade unrefined oil that's so vicious so full of contaminants and carcinogens that it's not even classified as oil and this technicality is why they're exempt from pain of the oil spill liability trust fund required from all companies that are transport oil in the u.s. but this technicality aside what's important to point out is how these spills happen in the first place despite these companies having billions of dollars in annual revenue so little of their profit is invested back in the upkeep and oversight of their machinery for example this pipe in arkansas was over sixty years old when. multibillion dollar corporation is still using pipes built in the fifty's there's one word for that negligence but really it's far worse than just turning a blind eye you see federal law requires the oil and gas industry to run what's known as a pig or a pipeline inspection gauge their pipelines the pig software is designed to squeal when it detects any dangerous anomalies in the pipe that could potentially cause

leaks or worse an explosion that happened in san francisco in two thousand and ten according to investigative journalist greg palast whistleblowers from the company that designed the software is said that the pigs contain deliberate errors so pipelines can and have busted. let me break this down the industry is rigging the software software that supposed to identify the fall to protect us all for massive environmental destruction and guess what they know this but they don't care because they've been to the day they know they'll get off on a technicality and hey in the cases that they do pay it's a mere few million dollars that to them it's worth it after all it's much cheaper than investing in proper oversight needed to maintain the pipeline and it's a shame because these corporations have failed to ensure consumer safety but the one thing they have ensured is a cheap license to pull the. dangerous

experiments on prisoners they want to make money and they have these healthy guinea pigs in the regular society they're not able to use prisoners i mean will they wish they could. drug tests on human guinea pigs. to deadly pills you couldn't possibly he was killed. he didn't pass away they let him die. is pharmacy really about helping people. download the official publication so choose your language stream quality and

enjoy your favorite. if you're away from your television well it just doesn't go about with your mobile device so you can watch your t.v. any time anyway. time. for america but international airport in the very heart of moscow.