you live on one hundred thirty three bucks a month for food i should try it because you know how fabulous i had luck i got so many i mean family and friends and i believe that i'm still really messed up. and we're all very sort of. the. worst for the little thing the white house or the. radio guy and. i want. to give you never seen anything like this until. ramadan. i mean martin welcome to break in the set in case you didn't know today's the first day of the muslim holy month of ramadan well it's

a cause for joyous celebration in many parts of the world it marks another chapter in the nightmare that get the detainees are facing every day is the over half of the prisoners are on a hunger strike but since february prison authorities have been force feeding them twice a day however ramadan calls for fasting from sunup to sundown and many of the prisoners and pleaded with authorities to halt the practice during this time but no such luck the practice which is recognized internationally as a form of torture will continue but they have said that they'll try to administer the themes at night to show some respect to their religion was not so nice and really getting the torture to the evening hours the issue of force feeding those prisoners was even brought to a federal judge and in her ruling yesterday she explained that she did not have the power to hold them but added that obama does and should address the issue the sad reality but based on obama's past efforts i think we can all agree that waiting on the president to address get most pointless but it's not just obama is turning his . back on human rights

a recent report from reprieve explains how three companies are providing the force feeding nutrients one of which is surprise surprise nestle is there anything that this corporation doesn't have its fans in look at as we clearly can't rely on the president and we certainly can't rely on private companies to take a stand against torture which is why it's up to you and me so let's go to work guys and let's break the set. i . the climate of censorship that's burgeoning the last decade has given rise to a new form of dissent activism and perhaps no group exemplifies this more than the online collective known as anonymous it's a loosely associated network of internet activists who use their tech savvy skills to expose government and corporate corruption but after some high profile hacks the obama administration has been on a full out crusade monitoring and surveillance and arresting anyone not to be

involved in the group one such person has bared brown he's a thirty one year old activist and freelance journalist who was arrested by the f.b.i. last september at the agency ransacked his home but it wasn't until months later that he was indicted on charges of what she has pled not guilty while today marks three hundred days for barrett in jail without bail or trial and we finally does go to court he'll be facing a potential sentence of over one hundred years in federal prison earlier i spoke to kevin gallagher director freeh barrett brown about his disproportionate prosecution i first asked him to break down the charges barrett is facing and here's b. had to say. he's been indicted three times on a total of seventeen counts the first charges are related to alleged allegedly threatening you tube videos treats the second indictment relates to having pasted a link into a chat room and charging him with access device fraud and identity theft multiple

counts and a certain date mary is on obstruction for allegedly stealing a laptop during the march freedoms is in it's mother's and are they stacked to equate to the over one hundred years in prison or is there one that carries. time. all told all together the maximum you see he's facing up to one hundred five years in prison. i think it's really ari just see what they're doing with transforming these trivial things into multi count felony indictment it's amazing for people that don't know about his case about what he did can you can you talk about what the stratfor leaks revealed and how barrett was involved in that leak. yeah in december of two thousand a weapon i believe. i mean this is all orchestrated by assad who later turned out to be an f.b.i. informant people so she was not had hacked into strapped for and received emails

and it revealed a number of things including you know mass spying on activists. including that in the notes from h.p. gary just that small rear window into these activities of these firms the prime intelligence contact industry shows that we can't trust them because they're involved in very question activities there is the team theme a scandal where a consortium of these firms were trying to. discredit and attack since orders including going greenwald there is a coin which is a mass violence program directed at the arab world and there's also the capability called persona management which is the software that allows them to control speak on wind sock puppet personalities that can be used for a number of things so and how and how is bear involved in that. he was involved as an investigative journalist with his group called project pm and in going through the emails to actually identify the connections between the firms and figure what they're up to. and you know i can't help but wonder why brown is

considered be a bigger threat than someone who helps terrorists build nuclear weapons considering how that charge really lands someone twenty years in prison why do you think he's considered such a threat that he needs to face one hundred plus years in jail. i think the u.s. government seeking to teacher and make examples out of. people around who are working for a better world in feel like comfortable truths. we have a government that's at war with the press whistleblowers activists they're trying to criminalize investigative journalism and internet activism generally what is it that he you know you talk about this war on generals in the war on the president really what is it about this private intelligence firm and the growth of the privatization of surveillance so threatening exposing this is so threat of the establishment because in a recent op ed for the guardian bear referred to these intelligence firms as the privatized segment of the invisible empire i mean why is it such

a dangerous trend will say since nine eleven the private contractor industries exploded in size and you have these huge companies such as booz allen hamilton were ninety nine percent of the review comes from the federal government and yet the public has no idea what they're doing there's no oversight and most of their work happens in secret so you know just from these e-mails that bear was going through they are involved in very sketchy things and. you know people who are in power don't want to do would rather keep those activities in the dark and they don't want to be revealed and that's why people are being punished rather more of the more privatized something is the less accountability the less transparency for the public the less discourse about it you know i as i understand it michael hastings the former journalist is planning to visit barrett in jail later this month was working on a story about him do you have any idea what that story was about. well yeah hastings was had contact with barry and they're both involved in projects and. she

was just playing to to cover the story because you know it's case in the context of the government's war on the press basically and. a lot of the things you reported about like the psyops on u.s. senators good things for the war ties into the persona management stuff and the stuff that barrett was researching so there's a lot of overlap between the two and of course this is a war on journalism as we saw michael hastings sadly tragically his life and ed but you know he was trying to expose this case unfortunately it's not getting more notoriety today is day three hundred if i'm not mistaken of him being in jail no trial no due process really kevin where can people go to help i know there's an active campaign called bear brown what can people do. right now the most important thing is for people donate to contribute to is the facts because we're trying to entirely from public contributions and we've put together a highly qualified legal team. people like i make of corn sherry slit both of whom

have experience defending the teaching using quinton i'm not actually so it doesn't get much better but if you go to ground or. find a way to it's important case for many reasons absolutely thank you so much kevin gallagher director of brown thank you. i guys it's been a busy month so far egypt's and political turmoil the n.s.a. scandals unraveling and whistleblower edward snowden is on an international escapade so missed all of this you might have missed the biggest story of all one barely being covered by the press like of enormous implications for everyone everywhere. to for that detective it's day seven of testimony overall underway in the zimmerman murder trial yes it's a busy day in washington all right now we're going to take a live picture of the courtroom in sanford florida where any moment now george

zimmerman's lawyers will start calling so it's already begun actually right now there's a live testimony from key witnesses coming in this day eleven of the murder. trial is for you court watchers out there were keeping an eye on the courtroom in sanford florida how many books have been sold as a result of mr zimmerman the charge against crime terms you are going to go should you go to school but i did you know. in all the money that is made from that book or you will profit you are going to promise to mr zimmerman's actually were deposited into our. savings for george after a few. stores there remember talking about the defendant right that's. barely covered sorry i mean incessantly covered from every angle oh yes it's been nonstop zimmerman and not just analysis of the trial but actually arean rawer trial footage of witness testimony all day every day oh look obviously stand your ground laws

should be a point of contention in this country and i don't want to downplay the tragedy of trayvon martin's untimely death but i'll tell you what's a bigger tragedy the twenty four seventh's zimmerman media circus without even a nod of acknowledgement for the thirty three people who were shot in chicago over the weekend including the death of a five year old boy no because the disproportionate coverage of the lone trial for months and months on end is easier than discussing the true nature of inequality or the roots of violence in the u.s. raising awareness about inner city violence means the corporate media would actually have to provide a service to the public good and we all know that that's not good for business so what else is going on that actually affects us while we're being distracted by george zimmerman in a way his problems well there's this if you take a pill for restless leg syndrome it ends up giving you a hole in your heart there ain't nothing you can do about it yet thanks to a recent ruling by the supreme court eighty percent of all prescription drugs in

the u.s. are now exempt from legal liability in the plaintiffs in the case karen bartlett was taking a generic anti-inflammatory drug that just so happens to have a dangerous side effect one that causes the. skin to peel off in the same manner one would experience with third degree burns look the u.s. is already one of only two countries in the world that allows pharmaceutical companies to directly advertise to consumers were already being treated like a bunch of guinea pigs so now we're being told that if we get crazy side effects that are worse than the ailment that we're treating there is no way to hold these companies accountable but i guess i shouldn't be surprised considering how much a big pharma is already in bed with the f.d.a. so while the drug companies and their wealthy investors celebrate the fact they're officially above the law let's move on to another story involving questionable legal actions that been completely swept under the rug the sterilization of a male prisoners in california yes this troubling story was brought to light by the

center for investigative reporting which revealed that between two thousand and six and two thousand and ten as many as one hundred fifty three male prisoners were sterilized without any legal oversight or state authorization see there's a federal and state ban on inmates sterilizations and if the procedure is done it needs government approval regardless of that the state of california was doing this for over a decade and spending nearly one hundred fifty thousand taxpayer dollars to do so what's worse however is that many of the cases the prisoners were forced into having the surgery one former inmate says that she was sedated and strapped to a surgical table while in labor she recounts her experience with the doctor he said so we're going to be doing this to bowl litigation right i'm like to the litigation what are you talking about i don't want to have a procedure i just want to have my baby and i went to a straight panic. good guys trying to coerce someone to have their tubes tied while

strapped to a table or mediately after giving birth is not exactly informed consent in fact it's straight up next but none of that's important right one salacious court cases all that matters in the world today. stick around guys after the break we'll speak with one of the original whistleblowers of the n.s.a. russell tice you do not want to miss it in the. world with. technology innovation all the list of elements from around russia. the future of coverage.

download. cation so choose your language stream quality and enjoy your favorite. if you're away from your television just doesn't do so now with your mobile device you can watch on t.v. any time and you were. lucky to. have you ever seen anything like. this. as the ongoing n.s.a. revelations yield more information about the government's secret spying program the man who leaked the story edward snowden has been thrust into the spotlight however it's important remember that this is far from the first time someone has come forward to expose the overreach of the n.s.a. before edward snowden it was thomas drake former senior executive and before him it

was bill binney a former intelligence official but before binney the very first person to claim the title of n.s.a. whistleblower is a man you've probably heard the least about his name is russell tice and he served twenty years with the various government agencies including the n.s.a. two thousand and five ties and blew the whistle on the n.s.a. engaging in unlawful and unconstitutional surveillance of american citizens so here to tell us his story and why he thinks that snowden's leaks are just barely scratching the surface rust tice thank you so much for coming on thanks for what did you see that made you come out and blow the whistle and nationally well the first thing our soul was. a satellite system specialist so with the things that i was doing with satellites i sort of inadvertently that american citizens were being spied upon by your base capabilities so that was my first sort of.

heads up in the what was going on and i was just shocked because n.s.a. was not supposed to do this it was against regulation that was against the law it was against our constitution so it was sort of. it was sort of a come to jesus moment for me and so for a wake up call there you've alleged that the n.s.a. abuses go far beyond what people are even talking about right now how far does it go ross. well it goes very far because initially what i saw was. they were targeting news organizations they were chart targeting targeting u.s. companies that did international business they were charging looking at financial institutions but they were also going after the state department and secretary of state colin powell at the time and they were going after high ranking military generals and that was just with my space capabilities that i saw later when i got together with colleagues and we started to put together the trust that's the side that is being done with all those nodes all over the country with the fiber optics

and that sort of thing then we found out that it got much worse because this was just the phone that we were looking at but it was also being done at the e-mail level but that wasn't the information i was getting the information i was seeing were phone numbers that were being plugged into a system that was going after people's phone phone numbers and associated numbers and a lot of a lot of numbers i was huma sure but they weren't after they went to law firms and lawyers they went after more generals general petraeus was one of the guys it seemed like right about that level was they were going after admirals and generals they went after the supreme court of which i held judge alito his paperwork in my hand numbers associated with judge alito that someone had put into the system that n.s.a. used to spy on judge alito and let's just break this down a little bit because these are explosive allegations right now that i have not heard anyone talk about before that there. actually orders that you use personally

saw in your hands to wiretap judge alito high ranking intelligence officers david petraeus barack obama. want to be senator barack obama at that time he wasn't even a senator he he had won his primary in illinois and i think maybe the catalyst and i'm not sure it was the fact that he had just done a big speech at the democratic convention no you know i was at that time a lifelong republican i didn't even watch the democratic convention so at the time you know the significance of it really didn't hit me until later i mean i did look up well who is this guy barack obama well ok you made a speech blah blah blah but then of course later things you know started to come into play that this is our future president the united states and you've also said and this is not just in their congressional offices i mean we're talking about home surveillance and personal correct this is this would be for a senator or congressman it would be personal phone numbers associated it would be

and a lot of the times i could not tell because there were a lot of the numbers were unlisted and we would go to try to sue to reverse to find out where these numbers were and we were being very careful about it because we didn't want too many people to figure out how we were doing that but we would find that it would be associate with family members especially wives or spouses you know the other direction but it would be there also the district office it was a congressman for whatever state they'd have two or three or four little district offices back home so he would be very yes it would be very. i guess the next election is who was it who was administering the surveillance. that's a good question i don't know the answer to that it looked like the inference the plugging in of these phone numbers was being done in the evenings at n.s.a. so almost it was like being done on the sly even so that most n.s.a. employees did not know what was going on a highly. well person at n.s.a.

told me this was being directed from the vice president's office that would be vice president dick cheney i don't know that for sure but that's what i was told from a very senior person so high level bush administration official i guess the next question is why why was it being done i mean the first thing that comes in i mind is blackmail. i don't know the answer to that either what do you think i mean based on your experience for us well what what could the reason be to be wiretapping and spying on people like obama. trance. i think you hit the word you know to me i don't know for sure but that would be a means of control if you were to look and be able to listen to everybody's conversation for years on end for a period of time you you could probably find out perhaps some salacious information that could be used to control that individual now you know. the intelligence community you know i noticed that the intelligence community is not being hit with

the sequester the intelligence budget well how is that possible. is there some kind of leverage that's being placed on our three branches of government to make sure that the intelligence community gets what they want in other words is the intelligence community grown in this country not our government that's and i guess that begs the question what is there some sort of shadow government out playing i mean are we talking to military national complex or what do you think as an insider and through all your research in people that you've talked to who's running the show here us. well remember i don't know for sure but i just know i just know that a whole lot of people guy. but if i if i had to guess i would say it's the the upper echelon of the intelligence of the intelligence community that was running the show and it makes me wonder people like dick cheney i mean are they still working men it seems we know that these people been working on the administration in behind the scenes for decades i mean. this injure all these people of their kind

of who knows i mean do you think that they're still vetting people. like obama you know to get in the positions that he's n. . but you know what political opponents have been spying on each other for decades so how is this different now. but what's different about this is this this is the orwellian scale this is the the everything scale this isn't just rickard richard nixon going after a few you know enemies list this is everybody and everything and now and i say. n.s.a. is literally tapping every communication every digital communication in this country content not just not just the bed of data the content and where and when they're saying well it's not that far there once again they are lying they are they they continue to lie about the full capability right what's your response to obama consistently saying we're not doing that. we the previous president in

april of. two thousand and four you know a plan to send in lee pointed at a camera and said we we only do such things with a court order now you know i did not know at the time that the president was lying because i did not know how high up you know that when but now we know president bush was lying you know blatantly to the american people so now now president obama is lying to the american people is it because he's being controlled i don't know but i certainly know when he was candidate obama even though i was a republican i heard that he wanted to stop these things that he was going to make sure that we didn't have national security letters just william william and mary and say i was for obama even though i was a conservative i can't trust anything i mean all these political politicians just seem like actors i mean i call d.c. hollywood for ugly people it's and you can never tell what these people really think but i want to go to the media because really why do you think the media is in

. frenzy over snowden's allegations really you came out eight years ago and said almost the same thing except on a smaller scale ross and really you've been censored tell us your story about trying to get this information out as well well i mean as i said i was trying to get the news out and i was trying to with snowden coming out i figured now was the time to try to tell the rest of the story because i've been holding on to this for a long time and i when i went on keith urban show four and a half years ago i decided i was going to tell the media that n.s.a. was going after journalists and news organizations and there seemed to be no interest whatsoever from the media that i was telling that n.s.a. was going after you so they either considered me a liar or they considered me you know that i say you know all this guy must be crazy or there must be some other interests that was making sure the media was not covering this now i don't know what that is but i know that it was got not getting much coverage so i figured with the snowden thing and the difference with snowden is he has evidence he has

a paper now because he has paper and it has cost me cations they are they are after him because he has the tangible proof of what i've said in the past it's easy to dismiss me when it's my words and you just say well the guy's a lawyer or crazy liar but now we have the proof that what i've said in the past is true and they want snowden bad because he's now codified the truth of what is going on with the national security agency you said that we are living in a police state right now why. well i sort of consider this sort of a like police state because they're hiding the fact it's a police state i mean the fact that they can literally go into all of our communications all of digital communications the fact that you know it's been disclosed recently that the post office is now doing a cover on every tangible letter that goes to the post office they're taking a picture of everything they're looking at there. the return address and they're

looking at the major address of who's mailing something and that is also being digitally store so every means of communication in this country everything is being watched by the federal government and that is orwellian and that is a trademark of a police state thank you so much we're going to have to wrap it up now lot more to be said ross i'm glad you're in town and russ tice original and i say. thank you. to wrap up for our show today you guys we'll see you right back here to break the set tomorrow.

wealthy british style it's time to look for a little. market why not. 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 in to conjure reports on. what defines a country's success. faceless figures of economic growth. or a factual standard of living.

well i'm john berman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture if the g.o.p. really is the pro-life party why does it keep cutting funding for programs that keep babies and their mothers alive talk about that and more tonight big picture politics and also every monday for the past few months north carolinians from all walks of life at gathered outside the state house in raleigh to protest the far right policies of republican legislators this is the start of the american spring and ignore all the bluster about objectivity and truth the mainstream media does all it can to prevent you from knowing the true horrors of american foreign policy .