to live on one hundred thirty three bucks a month for food i should try it because you know how fabulous bad luck i got so. i mean. i know that i'm still the same thing really messed up. and we're all very slow actually. it's. the worst you're going to go live to for the. radio guy and four minutes from. what. we're about to give you never seen anything like this i'm told. i'm abby martin and this is great in the set you know turkey isn't the only place that seen thousands protesting in recent weeks brazil is also been hosting protests

in several cities around the country including its capital south most of the protests have been peaceful but a few like last weeks have turned violent hundred people were injured tear gas and rubber bullets and a hundred twenty were arrested after clashes with police demonstrations began after the government announced a hike in public transportation rates but have then grown into a greater call in change brazil's government brazilians have been questioning the government's priorities when it comes to taxes and spending the country hosting the world cup next year many people have seen their tax dollars wasted preparation for the event meanwhile the people argue that they aren't seeing any improvements and result of vacation health care and public transportation problems and in response president dilma rousseff has said quote the voices of the streets must be heard and that she's committed to social transformation but other government officials seem more interested in squashing the dissent so they're lacking a unified message opposition to protesters is also present in the media there just check out this clip from one brazilian newscast where they're taking

a poll from viewers real time of whether or not they support the uprising. please. desson is that what you but then i mean this is the deal. you put it best. well let's just be because. it wasn't that funny as hard as that newscasters trying to weigh the point against the demonstrations the numbers just keep rising in favor of them so that poll is an indication of the sentiment across the entire country these protests won't be any anytime soon so let's break the set . a little for yourself or she or anything like that. while many are focusing heavily on syria's civil war little tensions being paid to another country in the region one that's defined the arab spring that struck the middle east just two years ago aside from

a spot on libya supporting and large been off the corporate news radar for the security and stability of the country is severely in question in the wake of the two thousand and eleven nato led intervention in fact two weeks ago at least twenty five people were killed and seventy others injured and major clashes between protesters government forces and rebel forces last week six soldiers were killed and five injured in similar clashes and just today bombs completely flattened a police station in benghazi and the trend of increasing violence and chaos that many experts say is sinking the country into a state of total anarchism is here to talk about the power struggle developing on the ground and how all of this can undermine real progress in the country i'm joined by huff and al ghul middle east affairs analyst and libyan american columnist thank you so much for coming on and i see so what forces are we seeing fight each other on the ground and who are the real power players here you have a complete chaos or forces you have at least ideological tribal and some kind of numbers on them and they are all. came about in the aftermath of the two thousand

and eleven war. and each one is running their own agenda depending on who and what you are seeing some of the latest security breaches but thirty one who died that saturday sadly they are being blamed on ideologically islamised groups there are no facts there are no investigations no clarity on the ground so your guess is as good as anybody at the moment so who is raw whom would you say is running the show right now it depends well this is what one question that so many people are asking i mean it is very clear that i don't think the government is running the show i think any pretense that we there is a government on the ground that is exerting some kind of an monopoly on violence and and can control its territory as been shattered over the last few weeks the government hasn't even been able to protect its own headquarters of its own

ministries it's not even the parliament which was held hostage only a few we stick weeks ago for twelve hours. and it depends on which town your talking about so but it's clear that it is really the people who have the power clearly the ones who are armed groups of all kinds would you say right now that libya is a failed state. i think it depends on the definition of a failed state but yes in my opinion it is because when you have as a government that is not able to deliver services even basic services and you have a government that is not able in no order no position to exert. control over the territory you have border an african that suffered from a period where we were talking about failed states to now we're talking about potentially a failed region you've got mali you've got chad you've got new jr you've got some elements also in algeria is more nato led and u.s.

intervention the answer because of course we saw what happened in the wake of libya we're seeing kind of a. similar approach to syria now moving on and we saw what happened in iraq completely destabilized and unfortunately the international community has failed. in many ways to to plan for something that comes after a conflict i mean we've seen nato being extremely effective in using power to destroy or to. subdue or did you but they have consistently failed in planning for the post conflict period i mean we've sort of gonna stand resort in iraq we seeing it in libya where they pulled out very quickly without really the benefit of trying to sort of held the new emerging state to build institutions and i think do you believe that might happen in syria yes so what was the intervention really about because i've heard a lot of people speculate that it was about the goal dinar that single gold

currency that gadhafi was trying to launch across africa do you think there's any truth to that claim no i mean i think i mean i i did the intervention i think was very clearly an attempt i mean a response to a popular appeal on the ground in libya i mean much of the population was at that time calling for a you and protection of some sort no fly zone i think that's what happened. i think the media played an enormous i mean we focused on the libya story that it was very hard for politicians at the u.n. not anywhere else to escape it. i don't think and i think at that time you have to go back and sort of look at the context in which we were talking i mean at that time you had tunisia had just. had a revolution egypt had also had the revolution you're most magazine like this and reacted to the media but we really know that the media kind of works in concert with the establishment goals and i mean you can't really say that it's about

humanitarian efforts there's something else at play here no it's not the issue of a humanitarian effort but it. this is an issue of you have a population that comes out on the streets you have a need that was crazy enough to be threatening to destroy a city on air i mean you know if he didn't make those speeches during the week when the u.n. was deliberating the potential of a no fly zone i doubt you could have had much of an argument to do it but the guy helped the case why that i think publicly did the story but. at that time in that context in february two thousand and eleven after all of this emotions of egypt of tunisia what was happening in yemen syria was just beginning and so on i think and the focus of the international community and the world was on the middle east and it's a revolution it's i think it was very hard for any politician or anybody to sort of just brush it off i mean today yes you can if it happens with

a love like syria for example you can you know it was the highest the bind at that time i think the environment sort of created that necessity where you mentioned the let's talk about benghazi it's obviously a hub for a lot of these arms transfers a lot of shady things going on do you think that the aging of rebels in syria will exacerbate that kind of destabilization in libya and also do you see kind of a mirrored situation happening if we do go that route i think would be quite worse than libya i mean that's that's very clear you have far more complex social economic and political situation in syria even internally and different ethnicities different backgrounds different political agendas but then if you take the larger region around it i mean the palestinian israeli issue is lebanon iran iraq. it's up far more complex situation the transfer of arms from libya to syria i think is extremely dangerous and you know we've seen reports over the last two days that

much of that is actually happening without even the knowledge or. but dissipation of the libyan government in any way whatsoever i mean the libyan government is completely irrelevant to this we had some leaders of the syrian opposition speaking on television in arabic which was saying we have camps we have. storage facilities of weapons and so on in libya that nobody knows about that also adds to the issue of a potentially could here you have a failed state that cannot control even the export of arms it could be potentially catastrophic situations they do so much for coming on breaking down some of the bad health it al ghul at least an analyst and libyan american thank you so much i really appreciate. and and and . it's now been one years since we can leaks founder julian assange has been holed up in the ecuadorian embassy in london and one of those high profile asylum cases

in history it all started at the whistleblower website wiki leaks which he co-founded although launched in two thousand and six it wasn't until two thousand and ten that wiki leaks came under intense scrutiny for publishing what's now referred to as the collateral murder video the footage shows a u.s. apache helicopter pilot in iraq opening fire and killing several men two of which were journalists shortly there after a period here on r t where he spoke about the importance of open source information . we believe in releasing documents to the world together with analysis to put them in contact with people to understand them because the full source material is what helps keep journalism honest it's independently verifiable independently checkable your assertions which a couple in the same way as a scientific paper is chuckle you can fool source material was released the public . outside of that. dispute is going to result. simply in the prosecution of those pilots or the media

but some high level reform although this video didn't lead to prosecutions that did shift the perception of the war in iraq and after this event wiki leaks continued to release classified documents pertaining to the afghanistan war however just as wiki leaks was posing a major threat to the establishment engaging gaining major notoriety around the world it all came crashing down when a court in sweden issued an arrest warrant for a song based on rape charges before he came mired down in the sexual allegations two more major beaks were released faced with mounting pressure term self in a british authorities is placed on house arrest pending his case there he teamed up with r.t. to launch a show in which he interviewed ecuadorian president rafael quite at a man consistently critical of the us and them knowing that extradition. into sweden was imminent because of his warrant made a plea for asylum in ecuador took refuge in the country's embassy in london that's

when things got a lot of hand precedented move british authorities acting on behalf of the us nearly stormed into the embassy to rest a song violation of international law and a response of the threat of force or granted asylum political asylum and here we are today where songes stuck he's granted no safe passage and lives in fear of being extradited to the u.s. if he leaves although some claim that that's not the case the fact that neither sweden nor the u.s. has denied that as a possibility leaves him with no other choice after all if you were extradited he would undoubtedly be charged with the espionage act and face the same fate as bradley manning the end of this tale is this a country that pit in my eyes is the beacon of democracy has left a man in limbo for doing nothing more than embodying just that. if you're wondering what i'm doing when i'm not on air follow me on twitter at i mean martin if you like you see you can follow me there you'll find all my tweets linking to

segments from the show as well as read about i have throughout the day and also please help us get the show friending on twitter ok and hashtags we can get trending on that but this only with your help so had to twitter and check me out at abby martin i took a break from my preaching for now but after the break we'll tell you about all the different factions of rebel groups in syria and why the u.s. government wants to give them weapons. technology innovation all the developments around russia. the future. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know. welcome to the big picture.

and to.

me it is easy. to. see. last week the obama administration announced that they will fishley be arming the rebels in syria part of the decision goes against popular opinion but the vast majority of americans. not wanting to see us embroiled in yet another foreign conflict much of this disapproval stems from the question over who these rebels really are are they the rebels who've been fighting for democratic principles that are being met with a brutal resistance by the assad regime or are they the rebels who are just last

week raided a syrian village and massacred sixty shiite muslims that's the question that needs to be answered as the u.s. as the u.s. gears up to provide deadly assistance to one side of the conflict so to give us a little bit of insight on who these various rebel factions are and why washington wants to arm them i'm joined now by political commentator sam sacks what's going on man first of all how is this latest decision with the official stamp of approval different than what the u.s. has been doing by proxy for the last two years the white house doesn't want to get into specifics of exactly what they're going to be doing moving forward they've said providing additional military support read between the lines that means arming the rebels they've previously been providing us non-lethal support things like meals ready to eat communication equipment so that the rebels can communicate with each other and that the cia has been assisting in getting weapons to the opposition

through neighboring countries but it sure seems like moving forward the white house is going to start supplying direct united states weapons small arms and ammunitions to the opposition moving forward and then we talk about the opposition i know that they're being pretty vague but do they know or have they said who they're actually going to be arming. well that's the question i mean i think when we say opposition that's a bit of a misnomer and i don't know what else we can describe it but really when we're talking syrian opposition we're talking three different major armies operating we're talking nine different brigades operating under the flag of the syrian opposition we're talking about a thousand different militias you just get five people together and it's sponsored and you can be become part of the opposition and also fighting on part of the opposition are some more radical forces to bottle nusra which is affiliated with al-qaeda has been very instrumental in the opposition they're considered to be the most effective most well trained best equipped fighters in the opposition and yet they are declared

a terrorist organization by our state department so when the when the white house says we're going to start supplying arms to the rebels the question is how are you going to get those arms to certain factions of the rebels that you trust and not get them to other right is there any plan at all about tracking in the web of the making sure that they don't get to the hands of most extremist al qaeda factions of this militia will that the commanders the the white house is working with on the ground the syrian opposition they've come out publicly and said that they you know they don't want to extremist forces in the opposition there's no room for that but really these forces have been instrumental in the war is if if the opposition is fighting against pro assad forces in aleppo and you have to tell news in the foxhole next to you you know you're fighting with them that's who your allies there that's or you're going to be sharing weapons with it's going to be hard to put the mechanisms on place in place on the ground to make sure the weapons are only stay with certain vetted factions of the opposition and i have to ask why now because obviously this conflict been going on for two years i mean tens of thousands dead

is the timing a coincidence at all here let me just another way to phrase it is why after ninety thousand people have people been killed why it is one hundred fifty people killed by chemical weapons makes such a difference. there's a couple things going on the tide seems to be turning in the the in. it's turned a few times but assad's forces have reclaimed certain cities that were taken by the opposition and the we're running out of time till the geneva convention convention on to trying to settle this this conflict and i think the u.s. wants to be able to deliver the opposition to this conference to work out some peace deal in order to do that the opposition needs to have a stronger hand than it has right now so the u.s. is is perhaps thinking that it needs to buff up the opposition before heading into these peace talks whether or not that's a real viable option remains to be seen because really the arms aren't the problem the opposition the opposition is getting arms from from other places the problem is organization and it's always been organization the u.s.

has been trying to organize the opposition for two years now and hasn't been able to this seems to be their last ditch effort to try to do something well even the chemical weapons new declaration i mean i still have to question that considering the failed war based on false premises from the chemical weapons and biological weapons scare was going to rock because i mean it really is and like you just said i mean to have this report come out why is that the catalyst that doesn't make any sense and also ban ki moon is actually disputed it so i think we should really be questioning that claim as well but it's probably up to the u.s. to present a little bit really evidence i mean this is in france to on this issue of whether chemical weapons were used considering the past of us making those claims and really there's reports that some of these more radical forces within the opposition led to bottle nusra has been trying to see topical weapons as well in this conflict and the un report that said that they did use them and i would hope that the media would demand the evidence and let's hope that we've learned from iraq sam but you know it looks like we're going to move forward with that with arming these rebels not we but of course the u.s. government what is the best case scenario moving forward with this disastrous

situation there are there are many. it's probably not enough to arm the rebels at this point it's probably going to have to be accompanied by military strikes by a no fly no fly zone by the united states which really in the united states isn't really willing to get it to put it. wants to stop it that's what it's going to have to do which will be a huge mess but let's assume it works listen soon the united states gets what it wants and the opposition wins what happens next you have this giant power vacuum for the opposition to fill and you have this opposition that's split among different factions different ideologies that are going to be competing with each other i.e. fighting with each other for this power presumably both sides now armed with more weapons supplied by the united states which is a whole nother problem that we're looking ahead as a result of taking this course about action and of course i count i think that pew research poll that showed only twenty percent of americans even support this and i mean where is this huge disconnect coming from the white house the military establishment the industrial complex the people who are saying we don't want to get

in brown another conflict right will do what the white house has tried to stay away from it for two years there's been a mess men's pressure coming from senators like john mccain lindsey graham these people who think that the world is a battlefield where this empire mentality and it seems to have worked on the white house this point maybe the white house is afraid of what might happen if the opposition loses under their watch but it really is empire mentality of the american people are starting to reject they want to take a more isolationist approach to especially to issues going on in the middle east and it's a matter of whether or not congress is going to get the message from them on believable stand thank you so much for coming on breaking that down very complicated situation sam's x. . yesterday the small field of real journalism lost a hero michael hastings tragically he died in

a car accident at the young age of thirty three however hastings will leave behind a spirit that will inspire generations to come throughout his career of investigative journalism he's probably best known for singlehandedly taking down stanley mcchrystal the commanding general of the afghanistan war and a brilliant exposé for rolling stone called the runaway general hastings depicted mcchrystal and that man leading an unwinnable war who held contempt for his commanding officers report eventually led to the general stepping down from his position mike was actually a regular guest right here on our team here he was talking about mcchrystal open admission of how the corporate media is in the pocket of the establishment. of the pentagon spokesperson which in which the was at the time of the invasion of iraq telling me we totally co-opted the media on that one so most didn't think it was a good idea and then you went through a list of all these journalists we felt were co-opted these are the main these are big time well paid well represented tons of audience and he was telling me that

they were co-opted by the media so i think the invasion of iraq is a great journalistic sort of scandal of our lifetimes hopefully will be that of a lifetime that only the country could take much more than that and the question is how we learn from that and sadly i don't know if we have i totally agree with him here hopefully we have learned from that the. michael never shielded away from speaking controversial truths or confronting those in power for that matter in a famous altercation with philippe today is an aide to hillary clinton provoked him with such tough questions that it drove rain is to call his themes an unmitigated a hole as in patients for media spin masters also made one of the more entertaining t.v. spots in light of the trade a scandal or hastings reminded us why the controversy is so much bigger than an affair. the media has played a role in. david petraeus and promoting dave betrayers and mythologizing david petraeus and we saw it here tonight general kimmitt was

a spokes person in baghdad who was a roommate of who was involved in one of the biggest the bottles and reason foreign policy history is on t.v. you know defending david petraeus without actually addressing the real problems with david petraeus his record and those are the fact that he manipulated the white house and to escalate in afghanistan he ran a campaign in iraq that was brutally savage included arming the worst of the worst shiite death squads sunni militia men and then you go back to the training of the iraqi army program that also had similar problems so for me all the while he's going around the country talking about honor and integrity well that's a nugget of truth you rarely see on the corporate press news to say piers morgan probably never invited him back on hastings was a refreshingly honest human being who hold no punches and i read it and may last year he offered some advice to aspiring journalists and which is said to dedicate your life to the field as if it were medical or law school also to accept rejection

and move on and to never never stop so although i never met you michael thank you i'm truly inspired by your legacy and work as well as millions of others will continue to fight in your honor to do what you did every day bringing the darkness into the light rest in peace brother.

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longtime are going to washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture house democrats have released the testimony of an i.r.s. official involved in the political targeting controversy much to the dismay of congressman darrell lies what does that testimony reveal and does the joe mccarthy wannabe have any semblance of credibility lup also the obama administration is expected to make a final decision on the keystone x.l. pipeline within the next couple months ministration decide to protect the environment and break america's addiction to fossil fuels or truck up another victory for big oil and those staging silent protests and blocking construction

vehicles from tearing up the earth make some.