worse for the legal right to the. radio guy. what. if you're never seen anything like. the guys i'm having learned on the break in that last week afghan president hamid karzai announced the official shift of military power from nato to the country's own security forces and u.s. envoy was formed to assist in peace talks between the u.s. afghanistan and the taliban i think is one of the good guys but a last last night official buildings near the cia headquarters in kabul and cars as presidential palace were attacked the attack led to a ninety minute firefight and left at least four people dead the taliban has since taken responsibility however this incident raises many red flags for the future of the region just days ago the u.s. and afghan governments were preparing for peace talks with the taliban you know the

same militant group that the government's been trying to eliminate for the last ten years in short afghanistan's one giant mess it's been the longest u.s. occupation in history between the green on blue attacks daily roadside bombings and now having to admit that the only way for peace moving forward is to make concessions with the quote and i mean but nothing's black and white and it's not going to be an easy transition this latest attack verifies that and it makes me worried frankly that afghanistan's uptick in violence might soon mirror iraq's post occupation adding to the trend of destabilizing the same country as the u.s. claims to be liberating but that said let's break that. you are going to be like. right now and as a whistleblower edward snowden remains in

a transit area inside moscow's international airport although he hasn't technically crossed into russia's borders the media is having a field day and tag and is in the country for not making a move earlier today russian president vladimir putin said to reporters that quote the sooner snowden selects his final destination point the better both for the u.s. and for himself who can also reiterated that snowden is not a fugitive rather referring to him as a free man adding that the whistleblower can't be turned over to u.s. authorities on the grounds that the u.s. and russia do not have an extradition agreement and as this drama continues to unfold corporate media pundits have been holding their court of public opinion on the matter paid to not only snowden but guardian journalist glenn greenwald as traitors. was a total phony he is anti-american he loves to radical regime and he did this because he hates america this had nothing to do with publicizing information that

was alan dershowitz last night on c.n.n. a slightly softer tone from the tenant colonel ralph peters who recently suggested that snowden and manning should both receive the death penalty but to cut through some of this inflammatory rhetoric to give us the real insight on the story i'm joined now by michael ratner president of the center for constitutional rights and attorney for joining us on q. and wiki leaks michael thank you so much for coming on have it's good to be with you always so you've been closely following this case do you know anything more about the status of edward snowden at this point why do you think he still at the airport now i don't know abie i mean what's been said is that you have to he's now in the transit lounge in moscow and according to what we read in wiki leaks has said he's apparently what the team you know the foreign minister of ecuador has said he's applied for asylum in ecuador and conceivably sort of what do you read between the lines possibly in other countries as well. what's interesting about that is of course julian assange has asylum from after door and he has it on the

grounds are grounds recognised by the united states that whistleblowers are entitled to asylum under the refugee convention it's because the allegation is they're being persecuted because of political opinion so that i think he has a very good claim that claim would trump any extradition for him and any interference in that claim is really considered outside the bounds of a treaty that says that asylum and people apply for asylum or to be protected as i understand it the us government made his travel documents invalid present a difficulty for him to travel moving forward. i think it presents no difficulty at all apparently appledore has given him a travel document which allowed him to as i understand it at least leave if not leave hong kong perhaps get him to get into the transit lounge so he has a travel document of a sort i don't think i don't think that's what's going to be the issue here look at the united states at this point what's remarkable to me is it looks like this

bumbling giant here they have this giant surveillance system that they're trying to justify that it's going to make it safer and they can keep track of of one of their of what was formerly one of their own it's quite a remarkable illustration of the limits of the united states it is indeed and i know that wiki leaks has obviously been instrumental in helping snowden plan this escape and map it out on the connection was initially made between the two. you know i don't know i don't know anything about that i woke up is just a surprise to everybody else in the morning when i saw that julian assange that wiki leaks had helped give advice to legal and diplomatic and apparently wiki leaks had paid for the plane fare and helped facilitate the asylum application i was as surprised as anyone else by that so that's as much as i know and when you look at the countries snowden has fled to in conjunction with the information is released about the u.s. spying on him. and kong and russia i mean doesn't it just seem like it's all very

well thought out plan very well executed and do you think that he has any more tricks up his sleeve moving forward you know i don't think we've seen obviously we haven't seen the end of it we have to see what happens and where it goes but what's most interesting so far is that both china and russia have refused to bow to u.s. pressure and ecuador apparently hasn't either and that's quite remarkable i mean the u.s. is the richest most powerful country in the world and they have put incredible rhetoric plus pressure on these countries and it again it shows the limits but it's also shows that there's support i think for ed snowden because he's revealed this worldwide surveillance system on all of us and he has support for that and people are upset by that unfortunately in the united states as i'm sure you know and as you've talked about on with the media the major media are lining up behind the congressional approval the presidential approval kerry and etc and we're not really getting the fourth estate except from programs like yours and

a few others as to what really is going on and that's where the support is coming from for this feeling this massive surveillance of all of us what they're upset about they claim is that oh this tipped off the people in china and hong kong etc let me just say the people in hong kong and china their governments they know what's being done by the united states they know their information is being surveilled the people that really upset and tipped off essentially or confirmed or people in the united states and around the world and then you might wonder if night and the u.s. is the night extradition treaties from all of these countries before when criminals from their countries and not say instead of the criminal but i'm saying in the past actual criminals from ecuador exciter have been in the u.s. us tonight actually i don't blame is countries because they won't you know i mean what papers do we owe you basically but i want to move on to the law as a constitutional lawyer i mean of course there are going to fishel is charging that snowden broke the law but on the flip side michael can you break down exactly how the u.s. is violating the constitution and brake. in the law in this case well you know

hacking or going into a computer in an unauthorized way is essentially against the law in most countries of the world probably all countries so in the u.s. and its most narrow level goes into the computers in hong kong or uses the prison system to spy on computers and our content all over the world that's breaking hacking laws or computer protection laws all over the world of course it's also of violating the sovereignty of the countries where those computers are it's also violating every single one of all the privacy rights that all of us have all over the world we have course in the united states have a special protection of the fourth amendment other countries in the world have their own protections it's basically made our life completely transparent while it makes the government completely opaque it's utterly contrary to international agreements contra took a mystic law contrary to our understanding of what integrity and dignity of a human being are and let's talk about snowden portrayed in the media you just said

that he's going to be judged in the court of public opinion of course there really isn't that a state holding the public officials accountable it seems to be getting more negative by the day i mean how is this declaration of guilt hurting his case. well you know it's interesting i do think it's getting more negative and you know they put the pictures on one of the t.v. shows of the o.j. simpson chases if as if snowden is you know being chased like o.j. simpson and i do think you know if he came forward in admitted it in a way to sort of take control of the story and say here's why i did it and it's a beautiful statement that he made explaining you know why he did it why felt massive surveillance was wrong and it's interesting that he would he could have said a lot more i think he said he could have revealed every cia station in various places in the world but he didn't because he wanted to go after this massive surveillance system something that would really alert people both in america and in the rest of the world and that's what what's happening with our major form of democratic communication. the internet is being completely controlled and government aided by

the government of the united states the u.k. and perhaps some other countries in the world it's an incredible statement it's where i'd like to see the media start to focus rather than on some car chase i mean it's pretty outrageous and the protection really given to the government and this program by the journalist that you cited and others and the one sidedness of the quote debate on this is i find just disheartening just disheartening which is why i'm in i'm so happy you're here and i and others to really give us what that debate is about it certainly is lacking strongly across the corporate media it's amazing the rhetoric that i'm hearing michael i'm just astounded day after day hearing what people are saying even about glenn greenwald i mean the increased scrutiny on a journalist for doing his job as a journalist multiple government officials are accusing him of breaking the law what basis are they using to call for his prosecution you know people have said there's now in this country a conspiracy to commit journalism and we've seen that we saw it with julian assange and wiki leaks we saw it with the with the fox news person james rosen when they

got a search warrant against him by accusing him of being an aider and abettor of his source and now we're of course seeing it with glenn greenwald what they're really saying is that he is essentially aiding and abetting his source that he's revealing information that's for him but it could be from being revealed by our quote espionage laws and that's the way they're doing it but what they're really going after they don't really care about that be violated the law according to them which i don't think he did at all but they care that he is breaking the unwritten understanding between the media and the government in this country or they go to the government they go to the white house and they say should we publish this should we not publish this or they do self restraint of saying we're not going to publish this people like graham and glenn greenwald julian assange and others are breaking their act and i think the the pope fourth estate and it's really not a fourth estate for most of them. or fifth estate whatever they call it is really

is really upset that there are about. as i read a time it's about time that self-censorship and thank you so much michael ratner center for constitutional rights appreciate your time thank you abbi. still ahead on tonight show nestle has responded to my story about their corporate takeover of the water they tryna find out what they had to say and whether the response backs their record. they were ready to do anything for their country to me to try out it is to love the country more than yourself if you join the military for any other reason that you're probably not going to have a good day and they were tools in the hands of the state now they live remembering the past which is impossible to get rid of i'm proud that i've been to war. but it however good people do get hurt. and i've heard good people empty

silent. a lot. but would prefer not to be sometimes i feel like. i should have died over there. because. i saw some people who had died and. there is cheaper than therapy. on our key. is he it's. easy. to. see.

so you guys may remember that a few weeks ago i called out nestle the largest food company in the world which raked in almost twelve billion dollars and share profit last year i criticize the

company specifically for its corporate takeover of water because you see nestle owns multiple brands of water in this one right here in spring in fact bottled water might just be nestle's most lucrative product well shortly after that video aired this network received a vaguely threatening letter from nestle accusing me of making a series of quote offensive and hysterical allegations that have no basis in fact according to nestle one of those allegations was that i was the company of quote leaving villagers dying of thirst and sucking the world dry leaving millions of people without a drop to drink wow nestle ever heard of the term hyperbole clearly i'm not saying that nestle is a literalise stealing the entirety of the world's water supply but if you think that their p.r. machine is in full swing now just wait because this is about to get cray initially they said it would be glad to offer clarification if i had asked for a response and so to be fair i invited them on the show and offer them a platform to set the record straight but instead i got this. i'm

stephanie from nestlé we saw the video you post on you tube criticizing nestlé over water so his obvious. wait was that serious. thank you stephanie for the prompt response and video form which i'll play now and phone or jack my response since i can't talk to you like a real human being so please go on. you claimed we make a huge profit on both water but the figures you quoted were wrong in reality we pay mold for all water other ground water uses. first of all i never said that nestle pays any less or any more than its competitors but you know what she's right i did quote an incorrect figure the profit i cited of fifty three million nine hundred eight thousand two hundred fifty five percent was calculated from the council of canadians canada's largest citizen advocacy organization would receive zero

corporate or government funding according to their website nestle pays three dollars and seventy one cents for every million liters of water it pumped from the local watershed which are then packages in single use plastic bottles and sells back to the public for as much as two million dollars as stephanie points out the insane profit margin of fifty three million percent doesn't take into account some important costs. that you have to add to the manufacturing costs infrastructure water resource protection quality control salaries stool age distribution in fact profit margin is this than ten percent you know ten percent doesn't sound like that much but unfortunately i couldn't find a breakdown of how much nestle spends on any of those things however i did against an insight on how extensive nestle is water treatment process is it turns out that nestle was recently embroiled in a lawsuit after it was discovered that one of their brands ice mountain was really

just well repackaged tap water yes folks tap water which by the way costs about two thousand times less when it's not in case in plastic but even if that is just repackaging tap water to. a fair i'm still not counting for the cost of extracting oil to make the non-biodegradable plastic water bottles shipping them around the planet to be consumed in mere minutes only to be gotten thrown in the trash and shipped to landfills in india so what's next. we take water during droughts in canada and fact we've always reduced our water use during droughts i will continue to do so we use less than one percent of the available spring water at hillsborough in ontario the water cycle naturally even pension is every drop of this water weight millions of gallons of water extracted from lakes and reservoirs will be magically replaced by nature ok so what about during droughts all according to the huffington post government tried to put limits on nestle's water struction during

shortages guess what being the big powerful corporation that is messy was able to convince the ontario ministry of an environment to remove the restrictions back to you stephanie. you chairman doesn't believe water is a human right that's wrong he does the whole company dolls' we've no recognize the human right to water and we ensure all people respect it really really you know what i'm going to let your boss peter brain back chairman and former c.e.o. of nestle respond. water is of course the most important raw material that we have today in the world is a question of whether we should privatized the normal water supply that's the population and there are two different opinions on the matter the one opinion i

think is extreme is represented by the n.g.o.s. that they have who bang on about declaring the water. as a public rest stephanie your boss just said that thinking of water is a public right isn't it stream view clearly not shared by him since he then is goes on to say that water should be applied a market value just like any other food and carry on. is a crisis that threatens food security and we're determined to help address this i couldn't agree with you more stephanie there is a global water crisis and i'll tell you what's making it worse the bottled water industry is mining water taking it away from its public municipal sources and selling it to make a profit so is there anything else you'd like to say. thank you for drawing attention to water it's an important issue an important resource but we

would urge you and your view is to look for the facts about tell use of water on a website nestle dot com stephanie you're welcome and thank you for that video with that beautiful green screen landscape hey stephanie maybe i'll see you again in nestle's new ad campaign for peer life a high end bottled water that targets stylish british women oh and did i mention that this new brand will get its water from an endangered salmon fish hatchery in oregon according to the state's department of fish and wildlife but don't worry they will still be paying the same standard price for this more high end water folks here's what all this water talk boils down to initially the idea of privatizing a resource that every living thing on earth the pens on was coughed at especially considering how water is practically free all ready now water's a multibillion dollar industry that tricks people into essential

a bind filtered tap water wrapped in plastic waste and i mentioned that the e.p.a. standards for tap water are much more stringent than the f.d.a. is oversight on bottled water so. really what is the difference look at there is one thing to take away it's this filter your own water and not just to save a buck but to save the future of the earth. it's been a busy month for the supreme court have been deliberating on a love in different cases including a number of very controversial issues that need to be resolved before the summer recess on monday two decisions were issued that made it harder for workers to prove they had suffered employment discrimination one ruling narrows the definition of what constitutes a supervisor in racial and sexual harassment cases the other makes it more

difficult for employees to prove that they have faced a legal retaliation for complaining about discrimination needless to say. very good news for countless individuals and organized workers that have worked tirelessly to fight on behalf of disadvantaged employees and yet another decision released just yesterday the supreme court avoided a sweeping ruling on the constitutionality of affirmative action programs it was a highly visible case brought on by a white student who sued the university of texas saying that the school had denied her admission based on race and then the court sent the case back to the lower court for further review and while it did affirm the use of race in admissions it has made it harder for institutions to use these policies to achieve diversity while it may not be a loss for affirmative action just yet it's certainly not a win so what new decisions came out of the supreme court today and what hot button issues will be decided by the end of the week to give some insight on all of that and more is b.t.s.

producer amir david on the ground at the supreme court. had the today the supreme court ruled in yet another historic decision no five to four decision the court struck down a key provision. of the nine hundred sixty five voting rights act now this provision mandated that nine states mostly located in the south be subject to federal oversight election laws now the court says that these laws were based on outdated information and is mandating that congress come up with an updated formula to determine which jurisdictions will need to be subject to that election law monitoring now civil rights groups are saying that this is a major setback that this of course removes the protections afforded right now to african-americans and minorities who are beginning to up their participation in the voting process however the state subject to this law argued that the discrimination that once existed in these southern states does not exist anymore and therefore

that this statute is completely irrelevant now we're still awaiting a decision on two more high profile cases regarding gay marriage we're expecting to hear back on those either tomorrow or on thursday of this week the first is called windsor versus united states and the corners really taking a look at the constitutionality of something called the defense of marriage act or doma was passed back in one thousand nine hundred six and restricts federal marriage benefits from being applied to same sex couples so if this act is found to be unconstitutional abbey thousands of same sex couples will be eligible for federal marriage benefits things like a state tax treatment social security even something as simple as applying for a green card on behalf of a spouse who is a foreign national the sacket gay marriage case so i'm sure you know abbey has to do with proposition eight which was a referendum voted on in california back in two thousand and eight and which voters

decided to ban gay marriage within the state so abbie there is still a lot at stake here in the coming days that could dramatically change the legal and political landscape for gay rights going forward. well if you're wondering what i'm doing when i'm not on earth check me out on twitter and adding learn if you like what you see you can do it in only there you'll find all my tweets linking that segment in the show as well as random thoughts i have throughout the day also please help us get breaking the set trending on twitter ok finally on the hashtags making it true when you're on the twenty. but only with your guys help so how did twitter dot com and check me out at abby martin and guys that's our show for you tonight please come back again and join us to break the that tomorrow.

good laboratory. was able to build most sophisticated robots. found anything tim's mission to teach me. about humans and. this is why you should care only.

whistleblower edward snowden is sitting in transit at a moscow airport. also though dismissing the conspiracy theories of u.s. officials. meanwhile the u.s. is trying to throw the world off. saying it's. terrorists. that extremists even use them in the. u.k. has more bad news in store for the british public. another. billion pounds from government.