you live on one hundred thirty three bucks a month for food i should try it because you know how fabulous i had lunch i got so . i mean. i know that i'm still really messed up. in the old story so personally. it's. worse for the little. white house chief of a. radio guy and four minutes from me. i want you to watch what we're about to give you never seen anything like this i'm still. going on guys i'm abby martin and this is breaking set so there's one person that comes to mind when i think of what bodies and prove of the human condition it's

president george w. bush clearly i'm being facetious but believe it or not there are actually people who feel this way namely those of the university of denver yet the universities program an international study in the corbell school presents an award every year called improving the human condition and this year a highly coveted honors being granted to none other than you know the same man responsible for two illegitimate wars based on false pretenses the death of over one million iraqis the violation of countless international laws and you know what we're going to stop now because listing all of his crimes would take an entire show so what was the stated reason to grant bush this award well no surprise here money yet school administrators defended their decision by explaining the annual awards ceremony is the biggest fundraising event of the year and bush is presence would draw in some much needed funds but surprisingly there is much outrage coming from the student body and faculty over the decision one alarm expressed her discussed on

a circulating petition she said george bush was known to authorize porcher a new. other crimes against humanity being given an award for improving the human condition is a sick cruel joke my sentiment exactly so a war criminal torturers being recognised as improving humanity what's next president obama the drone king being awarded the nobel peace prize await let's go break the set. so guys in case you missed it obama's appointed someone new to run the f.b.i. his name is james komi a former bush officials surprise surprise although he was deputy attorney general under bush is being recognized as a trailblazer in defiance of some bushes most controversial policies he was appointed by president george w. bush is a top justice department official but at

a critical moment komi defied the bush white house rejecting a request to renew a controversial terrorism surveillance program he's seen by many as in the same old as the current f.b.i. director robert muller tough and a straight shooter wow rejected insane overreach of government surveillance maybe isn't so bad after all before we hail him as a civil liberties hero let's take a closer look at his track record first starters although he initially opposed warrantless domestic spying he has ventured agreed to it but that's just the beginning remember jose padilla the u.s. citizen who is suspected of aiding terrorists back in two thousand and two on started receiving due process the deal was held for three and a half years in a military prison as an enemy combatant there he was kept in blacked out isolation and tortured repeatedly now i'm only bringing this indefinite detention case of a u.s. citizen up because james komi fully endorsed it saying quote we'll figure out down the road what to do with jose but the administration could not care less about

a criminal case when right now before us is the need to protect american citizens. yes protecting american citizens means foregoing their constitutionally guaranteed rights that makes perfect sense but while we're on the subject of torturing someone in a cell let's talk about commies record on torture of the by the memos most famously known as the torture memos while they were internal documents created by bush official jay bybee discussing the guidelines for what's considered torture and our good friend james comey concurred with the following torture techniques which included sleep deprivation solitary confinement stress positions water dallas' scene and of course waterboarding yes comey was in full agreement that these techniques were needed to fight the war on terror wow so glad of bush torture apologist of the road to head the f.b.i. but then again what more can we really expect from ministration that's essentially just a continuation of the previous one remember we're talking about the same president

that appointed john brennan to head the cia you know the man calling is bush's drone assassination czar so please spare me the ad tricks to train this man is a defiant pioneer because he's endorsed actions that stand in direct violation of international law so instead of calling him a trailblazer let's call him by his real title a gate keeper for bush put two point zero. letters that were never seen anything like that. the hunger strike of thirty thousand prison inmates in california has now reached its fourth day and spread to two thirds of the state's thirty three prisons the prisoners are protesting what they see as unfit prison conditions but the main focus of the strike is to call for an end to the practice of solitary confinement it's common practice to throw inmates into solitary as punishment and in california

alone as many as forty five one hundred prisoners are kept in isolation cages at any given time. well in a shocking twist the l.a. times reported that as a result of these protests corrections officials are threatening to search the hunger strikers cells seize their food stash is and possibly move them to solitary confinement if they continue their meals strike that's right inmates protesting in solitary confinement may end up in solitary confinement if they continue to protest so just me or is there something seriously wrong with this equation and my next guest is someone who represents federal prisoners who are victims of this practice to help me get a better understanding of solitary confinement and what long periods of isolation do to the human spirit i'm joined now by rachel so your stuff attorney at the center for constitutional rights rachel thanks for coming on thanks for having me so rachel for people who don't understand can you break down what the conditions of solitary confinement are shore so prisoners in california and decades some of them

up to twenty years in a small cramped concrete cell they sleep on a thin mattress on a concrete slab on the floor and they never have normal face to face conversation with other human beings the only people they have access to to talk to are the guards who slide their food tray through a slot in their cell door they don't have a window they can't see the outside world california alone out of any correctional system that i've ever heard of even denies prisoners in solitary confinement telephone calls they can't make any social phone calls to loved ones friends on the outside unless in the case of an emergency like when an individual's parent dies they might be given one call in that decade prisoners spend decades in this type of confinement you might expect that an individual who spends five ten fifteen years in solitary confinement is there because he's committed an act of violence in prison or has violated

a prison rule but in california that's not the case these men are being held in these conditions. of alleged gang affiliation sometimes something as simple as having artwork that president officials claim shows gang affiliation displayed on their cell walls. and what are some of the effects that this has on a person physically and psychologically. well social science has shown us that this type of solitary confinement is incredibly detrimental to human beings it places individuals at significant risk for developing serious mental illness and even individuals who don't sort of become diagnosable the mentally ill suffer serious effects prisoners report headaches hallucinations anxiety depression our clients talk about the fact that you know after fifteen twenty years in solitary confinement they feel completely they have lost the ability to concentrate to read

to engage with people even in those small periods of time when they're allowed to have some sort of human contact they have sort of ceased to be able to function as human beings function because of just being denied contact for so long looks talk about the color fornia strike what exactly is going on in these prisons that's prompting the mouse protests and how common is it to punish prisoners with solitary because it seems like that's going on as well. well we've seen a lot of solitary confinement across the country california is not unique in placing prisoners who violate prison rules in solitary confinement what really makes california unique is the number of prisoners they place in these units for such prolonged periods of time and for such you know amorphous reasons so instead of requiring that a showing that a prisoner has violated a prison rule california places these individuals in solitary confinement just because of intelligence that they may be associated with

a gang and then holds them there in till the individual debriefs in other words snitches on other alleged gang them. to show that they have renounced the gang for many individuals there's no way they can do this they don't have any actual information about gang members and they're unwilling to lie about another prisoner and put them in the same situation they're now facing now prisoners in california engage in hunger strike to hunger strikes in two thousand and eleven challenging these policies the california department of corrections. led them to agree to stop that hunger strike by promising real reform that reform hasn't happened and that's why the prisoners are once again engaging in a hunger strike and one issue that your organization is working on is the growth of the communications management unit so what are these and why are they predominately filled with muslims shores so the states don't have aren't the only ones that violate prisoners' rights the federal government does it as well and we've seen two communications management units that have popped up in the federal bureau of

prisons these are units designed to isolate certain prisoners who the federal bureau of prisons considers dangerous mostly to keep individuals who are engaged in social movements primarily a significant amount of muslim prisoners who the bureau of prisons doesn't want to spread their religious practices and thoughts through the larger prison system individuals are sent to these units without any procedural protections so individuals are told you know reliable evidence indicates your involvement in recruitment or radicalization or something to that degree and with no more is sent into one of these communications management units in the units they're denied contact visits they have extremely little limited telephone access to the outside world it's about segregating and isolating unpopular prisoners and your organization has concluded that solitary confinement is torture i heard multiple eyewitnesses who had been in solitary testifying at the senate's first hearing on

solitary last year i mean it seems. cut and dry why is the us still using this practice to an enormous degree well that's the right question to be asking and we're in the courts right now trying to ensure that this country no longer tortures people in this way the courts really haven't had a chance to rule yet on prolonged solitary confinement court cases considering kultury confinement for shorter periods of time largely allow it especially when it's in reaction to a proven rule violation so a prisoner receives indeterminate sentence of months even years in solitary confinement to punish his misbehavior but as i've said courts haven't had the chance yet to rule on california's brand a prolonged indeterminate solitary confinement and we're looking forward to them doing so thank you so much paul senior staff attorney for the center for constitutional rights thank you. for taking a quick break but when we return i'll respond to some of the your home so stay

tuned. to. stream quality and enjoy your favorite. if you're away from your television just. now with your mobile device you can watch your t.v. anytime anywhere. and. i was a new alert and scripts scare me a little bit. there is breaking news tonight and we are continuing to follow the breaking news. alexander's family cry tears of joy. that.

it won't. is a story. it's playing out in real life. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so foolish you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you don't. charge is a big issue. well guys i'm always asking you to write your feedback and let me know you think about

the show it's a it's viewer feedback time story with twitter at coal while the drunk thirteen am says and the city for a legals as a stand in for an army inside america's borders every president has done it for the past thirty years what seriously suggesting that undocumented immigrants are a standing army right here over the u.s. government if they get amnesty w.t.f. man ok seriously let's move on to the you tube where overseas expert says you seem to fall into the trap of thinking that any riot or rebellion is an arche anarchy simply the lack of an organized government you know what you are absolutely correct in that statement sometimes i fall into the trap of equating chaos with anarchy which couldn't be more incorrect understanding anarchism is fundamentally nonviolent ideologies and thanks for that still on you tube venice it one writes in response to a segment that i did about obama and mendell up can anyone else detect the buyer's remorse coming from abby she probably voted for obama both times like the other

obama girls now or she now lights going off in her brain that tells her that she got to do it toral failed bro. oh please don't lump in with the other quote obama girls if you knew anything about me on the show before making such absurd insinuations you would know that i've been against the two party system years before i even knew what an abysmal failure obama was supposed to spare me and i wanted to move on to e-mail where i just got a lot of this warning from a man named blair that said how do you deal with anxiety fear that someone may come to get you since you're shedding a light on this corruption blair first of all thank you for worrying about my safety but i choose not to live in fear fear is exactly what the establishment would like to use to cripple us from speaking out what i do want to daily basis is much bigger than my life remember the only thing the fear is fear itself and finally on facebook and response to my nestle segment where i call it the corporations for takeover of water woman actually day sent me this is a photo of

a screenshot you got of a text from our friend that said just want to know that because of his video my wife and i made the decision to stop selling bottled water in our pizza shop ice and filtered tap water for free thanks for helping to bring about change in a positive kick ass fashion whew that is the coolest freaking thing ever when i read things like that it makes everything i do worth it and in that same thread many other people added that they too are now filtering their own tap water even the smallest change can make a world of difference thanks as always guys for watching and writing the show would be nothing without your love and support. over recent years there's been a staggering increase in the number of sexual salt in the military and as more attention is paid to the issue question is are rising over whether the military's response is enough to remedy the problem while the discussion is largely focused on

the women who have fallen victim to the aggression there's another part of the story often overlooked. the majority of service members sexually assaulted every year are men the pentagon reported that in two thousand and twelve an estimated twenty six thousand service members that experience some form of unwanted sexual contact and fifty three percent of those incidents were attacks on men mostly by other men now while the evidence does support the fact that women are more likely to be sexually harassed experts say assaults against men have been vastly under-reported so here to talk about the silent epidemic and how it's being addressed i'm joined by a male survivor brian lewis he's an advocacy committee member of protect our defenders and president of men recovering from military sexual trauma thank you so much brian for a question and i know it's a obviously sensitive subject how were you sexually abused and what happened when you tried to report it. was such a abuse while stationed in guam. he was

a superior noncommissioned officer and when i was tried to report this crime to my chain of command. they came back down to me my. senior level my commanded and said you're not to take this any further you're not to make a report of a criminal investigative service and basically silence the whole thing. how did it affect your life there after as i understand more negatively discharged yes i was i was seen by a psychiatrist for medical center san diego and he had me discharged with a personality disorder which means i received no benefits from my military service after that i sank into a deep hole. i had after the assault i suffered by attempted suicide several times. and i became a self harmer to try to deal with the pain and eventually about five years ago

i met. my partner and began climbing out of the hole that. was dug. brian is this more common than we'd like to think absolutely it is men are. men do not seek to come forward and for that matter neither do women right now in our military eighty six percent of victims do not come forward because they are afraid of retaliation by their chain of command and that's another statistic because the chain of command is who we're told to trust day in day out from the moment we enter boot camp and then to have that staggering violation the trust is something that a lot of survivors or aren't prepared for and it is variably rivett demises them so you know the numbers that i mentioned before the fifty three percent cases are men i mean since you said it's such a vast and reported issue i can imagine the numbers actually much higher those that are cited right now of the best guest estimates from the pentagon say that about

ninety percent of men do not report this crime and we're talking ninety percent of. right now the military is about one point two million men and roughly two hundred three thousand women so if only one point eight percent of men are experiencing sexual soul you're talking upwards of fourteen thousand sexual assaults occurring every year and only about three hundred or less are being reported to through their channels because men are afraid of being labeled and discharged and nobody wants that. the issue might confuse people ryan because when a lot of people think of rape rape in the military they think of men raping women. give some insight on what the motives are for the rapists here well i've got it. most survivor so i don't really want to see the look inside my perpetrators head at all but clearly there are no just motives right but i guess this has nothing to do

with sex is what i want to make no absolutely not this is not an issue about sex this is. an issue about power control this is an issue about a crime taking place and the failure of the military to properly address it's not. bumped into men that have been victimized going as far back as world war two in vietnam and that's fifty sixty years ago i've also talked to men who have been victimized by women. and we are we really need to be talking about this in a gender inclusive way where we're talking about victims and perpetrators we're not talking about this as a women's issue or a gender issue where men are always seen as the perpetrator and women are seen as always the victim we need to be talking about it in a broader sense and we're starting with that in some areas of society we've learned from the penn state scandal that boys were being abused there we've learned in the catholic church that boys are being abused they are even in the russian figure

skating federal federations were learning that people always have been abused there as well so that really needs to start translating over into the military more and more men like yourself are starting to come forward why do you think male survivors are starting to break their silence on their show. i think. i can't speak for every male survivor out there but for my personal experience i was tired of living in silence and a lot of male survivors are tired of carrying that secret it's a secret we shouldn't have to carry it's a shame and forced upon us by the perpetrator and by the department of defense and . it's not our shame to carry and we're finally in a place where that message can come out do you think that the don't ask don't tell policy and in two thousand and seven had any sort of effect on the increase or barry not all on whether male servicemen came forward or not i believe it did.

don't ask don't tell was a very horrendous policy and it was used as a club for me. any survivors heads to say if you report this crime we will discharge you for being homosexual when in fact the issue of homosexuality has nothing to do with the crime of. brian it's hard to imagine the military in any other way than this kind of tough guy mentality i mean it kind of defines the culture there how can any change be possible in a quilter like that. the key to a culture change is the same key that has started in other institutions and now it's the investigation the prosecution in the judy cation of those crimes has to come outside of that culture we wouldn't ask. we wouldn't ask to turn over to investigate jerry sandusky we wouldn't we don't ask pope francis to investigate the bishops we asked trained criminal investigators we asked neutral judges and

prosecutors to do that and that's what's going to inevitably lead the charge in the military is getting these crimes outside of the chain of command where victims feel safe to report and just make this clear is that people understand when this crime happens you have to report to your chain of command and sometimes i've talked to survivors that said that they were actually actually abused by their chain of command and so really it's taking it outside and there's actually a bill in the senate you're testifying about this is you talk about what's being pushed through legislatively about changing this so i was i was very honored to be asked by center joel brandon the ranking member graham to testify on the issue of sexual assault in military and. i believe that bill right now is that. is going to if it's incorporated into the national defense authorization

act is going to be the way forward invariably there are several bills competing and none of them have been adopted into the core piece of a. legislation for the defense department yet and congress really needs to step up and act upon that quickly who is in opposition to the bill as it stands i mean does it have a lot of support generally as far as i know yes. the opposition is coming from the chairman of the joint chiefs and most of the service chiefs that are saying we are in charge of our military and we can solve this problem but fifty years of evidence. they cannot adequately solve this problem as far as i'm concerned they've had their swings at the plate they failed three strikes the batteries out and that's just the way of the world brian lewis can you give some advice to people out there who might have suffered from this sort of sexual abuse what would you tell them absolutely i'd really like to tell any survivor watching

this male female transgender whatever that. we need you to come forward we need you to. break the silence that your perpetrator imposed upon you and come forward and talk about what happened call your senator call your congressman and tell them that what happened to you isn't an isolated incident and you need their help enough calls like that and hopefully will get somewhere and hopefully we'll make some culture change along the way to those survivors suffering in silence please don't do it anymore thank you so much thank you brian this really appreciate your courage and strength pleasure. guys that's going to do it for our show tonight check us out on twitter if you want to know what i'm doing when i'm not on the air at abby martin directly so you can follow me there you'll find all my treatment in a segment from the show as well as i have got the day and also please help us get a break in the set when being on twitter because you know we can get from you on

that with us here but only with your help so i had a twitter check me out at a martin and i'll do it here. for tonight in d.c. thanks a bone for watching a great night. shifts. to the world. elite.

which. i've. believed. it.

blog's omar bin in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture libertarians like kentucky senator rand paul go on and on about states' rights and government tyranny what are they really talking about and just his rights are they defending more of that in just a moment also speaking of rand's fountainhead author and philosopher iran is a well known opponent of religion christianity in particular so why would any self described christian call himself an objectivist and charles koch things poor americans are living on the writs they why he's dead wrong in tonight's really take .