what. did you ever think that. ramadan. and i mean martin welcome to break in the set in case you didn't know today is the first day of the muslim holy month of ramadan while to 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 have lead 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 for they have said that they'll try to administer the themes at night to show some respect to their religion was not so nice

relegating 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 halt 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.

the climate of censorship that's burgeon in 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 is barrett brown he's a thirty one year old activist and freelance journalist who was arrested by the f.b.i. last september after 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 related to alleged allegedly threatening you tube videos treats the second damon relates to having peace student link into a chat room and charging him with access device fraud and identity theft multiple counts and a certain date maybe is on obstruction for allegedly stealing a laptop during the march creative's is in its 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 are you just see what they're doing with transforming these trivial things into multi-county it's only 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 of leaks revealed and how barrett was involved in that week. yeah in december of two thousand a weapon i believe. i mean this is all orchestrated by who later turned out to be an f.b.i. informant people so she was not that hacked into strapped for and receive 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 contract 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 henri's 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 piano in going through the e-mails to actually identify the connections between the firms and figure out 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 your view are 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 barrett 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 contracting 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 there 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. the more 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 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 in 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 and 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 on the most important thing is for people to donate to contribute to his legal defense because we're trying to entirely from public contributions and we put together a highly qualified legal team. people like i make of corrine sherry swift both of whom have experience defending the detainees in guantanamo actually so it doesn't get much better but they should go to ground or. find a way to help out it's an 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 midst all of this you might have missed the biggest story of all one barely being covered by the press lack of enormous implications for everyone everywhere. who 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 before you court watchers out there work in and i am a courtroom in sanford florida how many books have been sold as a result of mr jermyn the charge against crime terms of how many books are you going to school i did you know. in all the money that is made from that book or you will probably get are you going to promise to mr zimmerman's actually reduce the cost of doing it. for george after if you can see stores or 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 hour 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 no way has problems while there is 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 the plaintiff 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 we're 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 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 biegel actions that been completely swept under the rug the sterilization of female 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 inmate 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 immediately after giving birth is not exactly informed consent and in fact it's straight up eugenics but none of that's important. 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. russ tice and you do not want to miss that. interview.

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choose your language clearly we can with know if they feel some of the. treatments that the concerns get to. choose the opinions that invigorating to. choose the stories that entire life choose me access to your office. ever seen anything like that. 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 intelligence agencies including and has a two thousand and five ties blew the whistle on the n.s.a. and gave an 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 ties thank you so much for coming on thanks for having 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 found out sort of inadvertently that american

citizens were being spied upon by our base capabilities so that was my first sort of heads up into 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. well it goes very far because initially one. 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 wasn't sure but they want to after they went to a 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 as 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 they're actually orders that use personally saw in your hands to wiretap judge alito high ranking intelligence officers david trance barack obama. want to be senator barack obama at that time he wasn't even a senator 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 you know 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 oh who's this guy barack obama well ok you made a speech blah blah blah but then of course later things started to come into play that this is our future president of united states and you've also said that 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 just an office it was a congressman for whatever state they'd have two or three or four little district offices back home so we live in a 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 that it looked like the end for 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 now a high level 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 and i mine 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 could the reason be to be wiretapping and spying on people like obama. the 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. say it's the intelligence community yeah 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 and not our government that's and i guess that begs the question what is there some sort of shadow government at play i mean we talk about the military national complex here what do you think as an insider and through all your research on 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 got wired but if i if i had to guess i would say. the upper echelon of the intelligence of the intelligence community who is running the show

and it makes me wonder people like dick cheney i mean are they still working behind the scenes we know that these people been working on the administration in behind the scenes for decades i mean kissinger all these people 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 an. 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 record richard nixon going after a few you know a. this is everybody and everything and now. n.s.a. is literally tapping every communication every digital communication in this country content not just not just the better 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 four capabilities 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 primed to suddenly pointed at the camera and said we only do such things with a court order now now i did not know at the time that the president was lying because i did not know how high up you know that went 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 any 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 a 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 thought 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 for 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 occasions 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 light 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 the return address and they're looking at the main 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 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 a lot more to be sad ross i'm glad you're in town operating on again sand rest ties original and i say some aren't. thank you. for our show today guys we'll see you right back here to break the set tomorrow.

i would rather ask questions for people in positions of power instead of speaking on their behalf and that's why you can find my show larry king now right here on r.t. question more. emissions

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you. know it was.

a gift from prosecutors issue an arrest warrant for the muslim brotherhood leader after monday's deadly clashes while rival political factions failed to agree on a transition plan leaving the country in deadlock. russia uncovers evidence that syrian rebels non-government troops have used chemical weapons and the spy those findings being played down by washington congress puts military aid to opposition fighters on hold. and without a word snowden widely expected to receive political asylum in venezuela solidarity for the fugitive whistleblower is growing across latin america r.t. speaks to act with the worst foreign minister about what's behind the support.