well coming up on our t.v. obama's second term seems to be plagued with scandal after scandal from the guantanamo bay hunger strike to the justice department's tracking those a.p. phone records things just aren't looking good and we'll look deeper into those scandals concerns over the safety and nutrition of the nation's food contend used to grow now a cure food movement takes its first steps will a child investigate his own school's bad food choices a look at the power to the people's food coming up rumors of the koch brothers buying the tribune company has been met with protests by unions and legislative leaders alike a potential buyout would include the chicago tribune and the los angeles times fueling fears of the buyout drastically changing the news coverage in favor of one

particular more for the protests in the streets of los angeles later in the show. well it's wednesday may fifteenth four pm in washington d.c. i'm margaret held you're watching r t. it hasn't exactly been the easiest week for the obama administration the president who ran on the issue of transparency now finds that ministration looming under major scandal after scandal after scandal here is on the campaign trail the way to make government responsible is to hold it accountable and the way to make government accountable is make it transparent so the american people can know exactly what decisions are being made how they're being made and whether their interests are being well served the old rules said that if there was a defensible argument for not disclosing something to the american people that it should not be disclosed that era is now over but now that his administration is

being questioned on its own accountability it seems to come up short on answers now the admin and i recused myself from this matter so i can't comment on the specifics of that i don't know but the facts but i cannot comment on that now i'm not familiar with all that went into the formulation of the subpoena has recused from that matter but we simply can't comment on the specific investigation i don't know all that went into the formulation of the subpoena i can't respond to this in a specific well the administration is not only faced with the controversy over the department of justice monitoring the associated press's phone records but now it's come to light that the internal revenue service has been targeting conservative groups like the tea party examining them with excessive audits and delaying the group's applications for tax exempt status and then there is that inquiry into the administration's response to the deadly attack in benghazi libya forefront

a political debates. and let's not forget about guantanamo bay no breaking news there so far this week but the one hundredth day of the hunger strikes are tomorrow and it's a cold reminder of this president's seemingly empty promise to close that detention facility now it just adds to the laundry list of controversy this administration is up against so how is the obama administration is dealing with all this mess well to discuss this with me colonel morris davis law professor at howard university joins me now hello there colonel let's just get right into it so obama he ran on that issue of transparency as we all know what he won because of the open and honest government or was it just a lie where's the transparency here which certainly is lacking because his administration over the last four and a half years has been anything but transparent you know as you know he's actually prosecuted more people in the espionage act than all other presidents in the history of the country combined it has just been one travesty after another that

leads us to where we are this week ok so i want to take you back to the scandals it seems to be a never ending mass for him this week as we've seen it is only one step and it's only wednesday so why hasn't he gotten in front of these scandals here appears it appears to me that he's letting the press secretary jay carney d.o.j. had eric holder or even hillary clinton who was relieved from her post resigning if he's letting all of them take the blame why doesn't he get out in front of his of his own administration and defense or give a response it should be but it takes backbone and so far you have displayed backbone on guantanamo or pick whatever issue you want to pick but he should be out there in front of the american people explaining i mean this this is democracy we're information ought to be a good thing and not a bad thing but we've got all these revelations again this week about the about our government and then we had hearings taking place now over on capitol hill and we

talk about you know we invade other countries we say you know they want to be. a democracy like us now how you can watch this and say oh yeah i want to be like that . ok so he's not giving us clear reasons for his defense that's for sure but do you think that i want to talk to you about the reasons why he isn't doing it is there a fear of impeachment maybe i mean why why not it's hard to explain i mean there really isn't a good reason for why the president there defending his own administration. other than theirs to spend bungling is it appears from what i've seen on television he learns about what is administration is doing about watching the news because everything i've seen so far as i just learned about this when i saw it on the news it's just been an apt leadership on his part and he's got to step up and deliver if he's going to be the president ok do you think and i want to take you back to this everything that happened this week quite a mess is this administration do you think that they feel like they're above the law and let me give you that example the violation of civil liberties we've seen

with the phone records scandal possible criminal violations now from the i.r.s. targeting those groups and they feel like they're above the law here well certainly if you say actions speak louder than words they've always mouth the right words about transparency and closing guantanamo and human rights and civil liberties but their actions haven't lived up to their words i mean again whether it's you know the invasion of libya when the president said i don't need the permission of congress for their consent the killing of anwar all a walkie with a drone strike reset high alone can make that decision you know these wiretaps the i.r.s. thing it's just been one thing after another has been like an imperial presidency where the law is whatever the president decides it is that moment in time that's an excellent point colonel all right we have a limited time here i want you to talk to me about this several civil liberty isn't overstepping them you know the d.o.j. snagging you know uncovering sources possibly finding leaks that they did normally have this thing to be doing that work for the department of homeland security and

the cia altogether you know. eliminating those departments and my opinion but it seems like d.o.j. here you know with all that they're doing does this smell like watergate to you in two thousand and thirteen what do you make of that it's curious like you were calling it that apartment of justice is. a misnomer because it seems like justice has been before this thing from their minds whether it was you know going after aaron swartz the way they did the imprisoning john kerry aku. it's just been you know more of a you know a farce that has been justice and people ought to be concerned you know we were here on the gun debate people say oh we get over guns we can protect our liberty what liberty you from warrantless wiretapping to drone strikes to indefinite detention it seems like liberty in that horses left the barn does it smell it watergate's you colonel it does to an extent i mean certainly i think the president if he just sits back and lets his continue to fester is that watergate smell to it

that he ought to be out there out front explaining what happened and being honest i mean the american people deserve the truth me out to be out there telling you how to ask you really quickly do you see any resignations coming out of this do you think holder is going to hang on through the summer or what's going to happen i don't know i've been thoroughly disappointed with the department of justice under his leadership from you know the persecution of my own case to john kiriakou all the other ones that we've named but it ought to be about justice and it has been has been about you know protecting this administration and doing pretty much whatever they want to in travelling on the constitution and you know we have to be a better country than that especially issues going on there colonel we have to leave it there thank you so was colonel morris davis law professor at howard university. well you are when you eat that's how the old saying goes however could you actually know what you're putting in your mouth food or eating well the documentary o.m. g g m o sets out to investigate just that now with. the news with the

flu comes to one industry anything that's too big to fail is to be a fun song the old threatens to sue the state there's nothing to hide and go. right to supporting your. not organic you get it free market might even. well with me now to talk more about these issues over food and food safety the executive per cent of o.-m. g. g.m.o. live the senate's hi there elizabeth i want to talk to you about your work tell me what you're up to thank you just exact produce d.m.o. m j were to the documentary that premiered at the been an international film festival of the of this year and hopefully will be set to take america by storm later this year. when you wrote that article for mother's day calling for mothers of pure food to help with the rebirth movement explain to me what that is and what you meant by it ok so back at the turn of the last century actually sort of the

late eighteenth hundreds women got together they understood that food was really being polluted by some of the processes that people's health was being compromised and that something needed to be done this was a time when there wasn't any labeling there wasn't any ingredients labeling on products and basically companies could put whatever they wanted to do include into their products so after about one hundred years. well now is one hundred years but then it took about seventy years for this for a piece of legislation to pass which is called the peel food and drug addict and it passed in one thousand nine hundred six and my thing my blog that i wrote the other day is really looking at the fact that that was nineteen zero six now we're in twenty thirteen and we've still got these problems with labeling we don't really know what's in a food we've got compromised food all over the place we don't know if t m o's are in there we're not sure of the source of the food so we need to be reinvigorating this movement and i was calling mothers on mother's day to really join the pro food

movement again and rebirth do you think that they are uniquely qualified in this area i think mothers really care you know i haven't been blessed with children but i feel like maybe i'm a mother more of ideas but i really feel that you know a mother understands the train of a child and that responsibility of another life is something that you know we need to understand and i'm. this to embrace and take their voices in their concerns more into the political field well elizabeth let's talk about this elementary school or zachary maxwell from the public school system now he released his own documentary called the yacc a fourth grader short documentary about school lunch we got a clip of this trailer for you. department of education since then it's comedic to providing delicious and nutritious meals through their food citrus fruit. punch being served at my school was nothing like what they were advertising

on their website so the factory maxwell seems to be getting it right you know we're serving the sub par food to our kids and often celebrity chefs like rachael ray i think she was the shaft that was featured in his school in charge of you know something designing these foods that was going on there do you think that that influence is just a money grab what do you make of that i you know i worked at quite a bit on the child nutrition reauthorization a few years ago when it was going through congress and a lot of people saying well the other kids want to eat healthy food that's not what they'll do but actually my organization that i work with them which was the physicians committee for responsible medicine we would go into schools and the day before would put something wonderful new on the lunch line which generally would be very plant based so lots of vegetables in it we would give stickers to anybody who tried that food and of course everybody wants to stick us so everybody tries the food and then when that food is served on the lunch line guess which food is taken

up by the children more than the others it's the healthy stuff so it's really about reaching to origin and educating them and also making sure that the food service directors really have the resources that they need to work excuse me to work with and have help with planning their menus because weekend edition is healthy food to children that they will enjoy is actually a wonderful chef coat and cooper who's down in colorado and she's done an extraordinary amount of work in this area and it completely transformed the food system that she's worked in which are primarily sourcing from local produce is having a salad bar and freshly made. every single day for the children it's wonderful i sat in the in the canteen about a year ago with the children and we had a wonderful and. together it sounds like you're taking the misconceptions out if they will actually eat the best of all ok talk to me about those roadblocks what have you found to be the roadblocks you know against getting this healthy food into our school systems. well some of the the things that jamie oliver maybe came up

against when he did his work was reset the school level another resistance sometimes is that schools don't actually have kitchens anymore they can have to prepare those foods there's a lot of heat and serve which is you know plastic goes from a freezer into a microwave and then it's up to the kids so we have to make sure that the schools really have the equipment that they need and that the people who are making the food trained to a degree that they can actually make it and really understand what children would like to eat some have to make sure that the government funds these programs appropriately and we've got more children now who are claiming free and reduced lunches because they're coming from families who have been hit very hard by these economic times and many of them oh so participating in the supplemental nutrition assistance program snap which is being cut provisionally in the farm bill and so we need to be addressing food all around and make sure that we understand that

a wealthy nation really is a very strong and healthy nation right a lot of information there has been talk to me about what the plausible solution is here because there seems to be a whole lot of problem and not a direct solution to the problem if you break that down. as you say i think it's wonderful that more and more people are getting engaged and really understanding that we need to look and understand where our food is coming from that really the the food that we know is the purest is organic and so we can see that as a standard that maybe can be a baseline to moving forward now not everybody can afford again it but we understand that that is an option that we have we need to be labeling genetically engineered foods because we really don't know the effects of them there's not been any longitudinal studies that have been conducted. and the the coupling between the seed growing and the chemical industry the applications that go on g m o's we understand that there's an extremely large toxic burden going into the environment we see over one hundred million pounds of pesticides and herbicides and being

sprayed on to the un to g.m.o. crops every single year now the question there is. so much information we have to leave it there that was executive producer. of the senate she also is the policy director at the center for food safety we hear a lot about business lobbying groups driving government decisions but a new report from the food and water watch group says that the tables may have turned after combing through leaks leaked wiki leaks document they discovered that the state department has been wildly promoting biotech industry interests abroad and what's worse it may be using taxpayers' dime to do it artie's mega lopez has more. for years now americans have been concerned about the food in their refrigerators and more importantly the ingredients in those foods the debate over genetically modified crops that isn't only playing out in the fields is being

harvested in the courtrooms as well as within the walls of capitol hill and it turns out the u.s. government might have a bigger stake in the biotech industry than anyone could have imagined a report released by the food and water watch group shows that the u.s. state department played a major role in promoting g.m. foods and crops around the world the report examined diplomatic cables from two thousand and five to two thousand and nine to provide the first comprehensive analysis of u.s. foreign policy when it comes to the viol tech industry the cables were released by wiki leaks in august of two thousand and eleven and food and water watch group actually researched some two hundred and sixty thousand cables to discover that no fewer than one hundred twenty six of them dealt directly with promoting the biotech industry abroad here's what they discovered state department officials actively promoted the commercialization of specific biotech seeds in more than one hundred countries it was a push that began during the bush administration and continued into the obama

presidency and the c.f. issue is an experts claim the biotech industry will help increase farm productivity combat global hunger and strengthen economic development opportunities all leading a lighter environmental footprint the state department cables say this diplomacy their target audience spans from the scientific community to the media of farmers to legislators in fact the state department actually invited experts to participate in nearly one hundred sixty nine events in fifty two countries around the world this happened in between two thousand and five and two thousand and nine those department meetings they also invited individuals that may influence the national biotech policy to the u.s. to learn more now here are the force. data goals that food and water watch discovered in these cables the first one is to promote biotech interests of rod they try to facilitate trade and encourage cultivation of g.m.

crops seconda lobby foreign governments to weaken biotech rules you can't after all profit off these countries if you can't get your products in some of them along with lobbying the need to protect biotech exports by stopping trade barriers like terrorists all this to promote and protect an estimated twenty five billion dollar industry and biotech crop exports and in particular one company monsanto which was the biggest biotech seed company in two thousand and eleven and finally reach out to new markets by pressuring the developing countries to adopt a biotech crops the main argument here is that these crops are stronger and can end food insecurity around the world with a growing global population the state department also lobbied against the labeling of these crops and genetically modified foods they don't want any type of labels on them countries from egypt to hungry argentina to mozambique were targeted in these efforts and many of them were very receptive some of them actually changed their

regulations as a result you know this lobbying started happening around the same time that monsanto admitting to bribing indonesian officials in an attempt to weaken environmental oversight of g.e. crops monsanto attempted to pay in division indonesian officials fifty thousand dollars as an incentive but ended up coughing up more than one point five million dollars in fines so the u.s. government instead now in the wake of these cable releases it appears that monsanto and other biotech firms don't need to bribe country officials anymore they have the government to do that using taxpayer money nonetheless it is the latest chapter in a dispute over your dinner plate in washington meghan lopez r t. charles and david koch are among the richest people in the world and are known for their libertarian and conservative causes the rumor is that the billionaires might be buying the tribune newspaper group giving the coax potentially

a direct outlet for their message and it's hitting a nerve among the prize media outlets that are a part of the tribune company are the chicago tribune and the l a times newspapers . lindo shows us how some people are trying to keep the koch brothers from gaining control of the l.a. times. union members and progressive groups are sending the koch brothers a very loud and clear message they are not welcome in l.a. and we will get there until we set this thing down and tell we stop this madness and the koch brothers coming to los angeles david and charles koch aren't moving to southern california but they are reportedly preparing a bid to buy the los angeles times and the seven other dailies that make up the tribune company's newspaper division there was fraser outside of oak tree capital one hopes of putting pressure on the major shareholders of the tribune company not

to sell to the koch brothers they're worried the billionaires will put their political agenda on the front page of the paper sit tight labor in time by any anti-union type hinting. seems like the want to put everybody back on the plantation charles laird has worked at the l.a. times for decades and is concerned about a possible shake up if the koch's can control we need this paper for really we don't need this paper or pursuing another political boss the l.a. times has been decimated by massive staff cuts in recent years but the major daily in america's second largest city remains very influential the fear is that the influence of the times will be used for conservative causes close to the koch brothers chosen david koch became household names or in the twenty two election when the brothers spent millions of dollars in an attempt to prevent president obama from winning a second term as we do support having newspapers owned by local owners because we think that there is more of a commitment to keeping

a robust investigative reporting staff other billionaires are also in the running to buy the paper news corp boss rupert murdoch has expressed interest and just recently bought a new home in los angeles l.a. brode a former real estate developer and democratic party donor is also interested no one knows yet which way the new owners will take the l.a. times. do the whole record. for the time being a growing number of people in liberal l.a. arsinoe to the cooks in los angeles for mobility r t. doesn't begin to describe the events surrounding the arrest of an accused cia operative on russian soil this week one tuesday an american embassy worker identified as ryan fogle was apprehended by russian federal security service who detained him under the notion that the third secretary of politics with actually a u.s. cia operative now full at the time of his arrest was allegedly in

a blonde wig and a baseball hat carrying a promissory letter of one million dollars and one hundred thirty thousand dollars in cash now russian officials say that fogle was trying to recruit a spa i know photo has been shipped back to the u.s. after being ordered out of russia r.t.s. igor pushkin up has more. as more details off of the latest spying scandal between moscow and washington continue to emerge we've managed to obtain audio recordings of what the federal security service claims were phone conversations between the undercover cia officer and the person he was hoping to recruit you don't want to so it's a lot more to that and even more sinister is the person talk a sort of warning you want to store attack us because of your just a lot of there was a million little you win yesterday so someone will at the idea that i'm a. darling yet it all happened late on monday night in one of moscow's city parks

where another cover cia officer officially working in moscow as an american diplomat was hoping to meet an officer of one of russia's security services who he was working to recruit and here is where the classic spy story begins the man brought to the meeting several wigs including one on him tens of thousands of the euro in cash map of the city of combat and the cheapest and most simplest mobile phone you can possibly find and pretty much throw away right after using presumably the one used in these phone conversations but despite all the common flyers and the spy tricks obviously he didn't know that he was under surveillance by the f.s.b. for the past few years and that the man he was hoping to recruit would be the same one to detain him but just before that happened here's a piece of what seems to be the last phone conversation he had an upload a vast. sea of park. where you have a seizure with

a spa basically that didn't turn out very well for the undercover cia officer and all the f.s.b. has also released. note that he also had along with them with instructions apparently to recruit agents on how to connect the center. it included registering a separate to g. mail account which would be used specifically for the connection with the center and had information about salaries that this person would received receive it which would reach up to one million u.s. dollars a year plus bonuses depending on the importance of the information that he would pass along to the american side now after he was temporarily detained the man was passed over back to american authorities has been announced persona non grata in russia and is reported now to be getting ready to return to the united states there's still the north fishel reaction from washington but we do know that u.s.

ambassador in russia michael mcfaul did make a visit to the foreign ministry earlier today but no details have been released of that russian officials have been voicing outrage with what happened saying that the leaders of the two countries have been working to develop and improve relations that there's been progress around the syria issue and how to deal with that and now this scandal here in sochi where the russian president currently is one of his advisors told us that it's really surprising that it happened now despite orders from the leaders of both countries to their security services to work together on one side rather than against each other it was artie's eager press kind of reporting that's going to do for nail for more of the stories we've covered go to youtube dot com slash r c america check out our website at r.t. dot com slash usa you can also follow me on twitter it underscored j underscore how

will stay tune prime interest is coming up next. giving peace a chance this may or may not be the case when it comes to the fate of syria russian peace plan to end a civil war is being reconsider are the u.s. and its allies serious or is this a ploy to merely intensify the conflict. download the official. language stream quality and enjoy your favorite. if you're away from your television just. now with your mobile device so you can watch on t.v. anytime anywhere. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something

else you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought . i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture. more news today. again flatow from these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. the giant corporations are today.

good afternoon and welcome to prime interest i'm terry and boring here and watch t.v. and here's the story that i'm tracking today. remember john paul's no i'm not hank paulson bush's treasury secretary who pushed hard i'm talking about john paulson who shorted subprime and made a millions or as a hedge fund now he's long fannie and freddie along with some other hedge funds who bought preferred shares to match uncle sam's investment senator bob corker characterized the stock as a lottery ticket but that hasn't stopped a run up in price of over one hundred seventy percent in the last few months just last week of fannie mae and now they will repay the treasury fifty nine billion dollars for bailout money it took during the crisis but this is a one off event.