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tv   Breaking the Set  RT  July 18, 2013 6:00pm-6:31pm EDT

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and you want. to 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. i know that i'm sitting there seems really really messed up. in the old story so personally. it's a little worse if you're going through the white house or the. radio guy for minestrone. what the club are about to give you never seen anything like this i'm told. on top everyone i'm not a martin and this is breaking the set so i have some sad news to start off the show
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today you may remember our in-depth coverage of the lawsuit over the national defense authorization act which gives the government the ability to indefinitely detain u.s. citizens while after months of deliberation the second circuit court of appeals in new york city has officially ruled against the plaintiffs and struck down the suit so that means indefinite detention remains legal as long as detainees fit within the very very definition of whatever the government deems to be of quote associated force or provides quote substantial support to the enemy while following the court's decision the main plaintiff in the lawsuit and pulitzer prize winning journalist chris hedges said quote this is quite distressing and means there is no recourse now either within the executive legislative or judicial branches of government hope to study assault on our civil liberties and most basic constitutional rights it's an issue that sits close to home for hedges who like many journalists often in bed themselves with the enemy forces or even known terrorists to get both sides of the story here is precisely the kind of person who could be targeted on this law although implicate. for whistleblowers and activists
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as well so as it stands plaintiffs in the lawsuit can asked the court to rehear the case and later appeal to the supreme court which seems to be quite a long shot at this point considering the obama administration's action to preserve their right to indefinitely detain us look this decision is clearly one of the biggest blows to civil liberties we've ever seen but it's also a call to action we need to start waking up and realizing that our rights are not a guarantee and if we don't stand for them now who will. look like. you've never seen anything like. i often talk about the koch brothers on the show and for good reason charles and david koch are the billionaire brothers who have gotten their financial tentacles and anything and everything that yields even the slightest bit of influence in this country and since the two thousand and ten citizens united decision that influence has grown ten fold corporations being granted free rein to
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a load of political campaigns it's a relationship that's been magnified in a new documentary called citizen koch which examines the overwhelming amount of money at play during wisconsin's political showdown last year take a look. at look at how with the wealthiest interest it will bring now a text there's no better place to look in the state level. is a way. for the green a billion dollars has been spent making this election the most expensive on record and the chance to ever do to be a completely red state you can really do to help. the koch brothers on a number of companies for five areas that specialize in some of the worst types of oil how much you can put into the chance and since january of last year and just over ten million dollars to spend a billion dollars well the film went to sundance this year and a had plans to finish its production with the help from the independent television service right t.v.'s but it is unfortunate twist to. yes hold its funding from the
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project backlash from a major donor david koch so here to talk about her film the battle to get to the public airwaves is academy award nominated director tia lesson thank you so much for coming on to yet thank you so much for having me so why did you and co-director karl deal to believe decide to make this film. you know we wanted to look at the impact of money in politics and there was no better place to go than wisconsin in two thousand and eleven scott walker the governor of wisconsin had been bankrolled in part by david and charles koch and we were curious about what the impact of that private money on the public to mocker see in wisconsin was to the film focuses on the koch brothers involvement both in the case of wisconsin like you just said a national politics in general how would you describe their influence and was it more than you even thought it was going. well yeah i mean look the it's not just them i mean it's those two billionaires it's wealthy interests and it's corporate interests that have been super empowered and super enfranchise in the aftermath of
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the supreme court's ruling in citizens united which essentially open the floodgates to unlimited spending by third parties on behalf of candidates and the really troubling thing is that the candidates who are elected with this money. have a patron or many patrons and those interests are those interests that they serve we think when they when they go into the state legislatures or into their federal government so i think all citizens are aware of the money in politics and the extent to which it's undermining our democracy and what we tried to show is is some of the folks that are fighting back against this war actually had the opportunity to speak to an ex lobbyist jack about the citizens united case and get his opinion i want to play that for you. citizens united i think is probably a little bit overblown in terms of presentation of the problem the amount of money again i've never witnessed money that wanted to get into the system they couldn't get into the system my entire life and so there he is saying that you know citizens united is kind of over a long one. your response well look it's certainly true that there was plenty of
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money in politics before assistance united systems united you know open the floodgates as i said i think. story you know we know how much money there is in the capital because of lobbying and we know that there's money throughout the system the think tanks and academics that are pushing public policy and politicians what we looked at is what happened in the electoral process and we know for a fact that systems united created the you know the biggest spending in this past election in the two big elections in two thousand and ten and two thousand and twelve it's documented it has had an impact and you know i think we need to look very hard at how we can overturn that decision will the film's funding was pulled from the i guess which originally greenlit the project i mean this is a public agency which funds independent documentaries why did this happen and did you find it ironic that you were censored by the same crap in politics that you're
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trying to illustrate in this film oh absolutely no i mean look we had no idea when we you know were greenlit for funding by public television that david koch had a role at on public broadcasting as the trustee of both w n e t in new york and boston. not only that he's given a tremendous amount of money over the years to public broadcasting and because of that i think the certainly the the affiliate here in new york was quite nervous about the impact that programming was going to have on david koch and because of that our funding was pulled our funding was pulled not only that but public television viewers won't have a chance to see our film which is you know i think the biggest change well i think it's really indicative of something when public organizations that are supposed to work for the public are bending to the will of entities like the cokes i mean and a hundred fifty thousand dollars is not small. potatoes but luckily you guys were
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able to raise seventy five thousand dollars on kickstarter in just three days well that's right we have a you know we've turned to crowdfunding as the answer to the money that you know david koch wields and the influence that he has over public broadcasting and so we have a campaign on kickstarter kickstarter dot com the film's name a citizen koch we are initial goal was seventy five thousand we're shooting for one fifty we are hoping that we can not only replace the money that public television took away but we can also create a distribution pipeline for this film because we are so eager to get this film out there and we have gotten a tremendous response and we're overwhelmed and inspired and moved by all the folks have stepped up and just given their small dollars i mean five dollars ten dollars twenty five dollars you know it pulled together by thousands of people makes an enormous difference so we're so grateful and we've got twenty more days to to make our target great i hope that you do it because clearly the public wants this kind
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of information to have the public broadcasting will fail the public into delivering this information hopefully we can all step up to the plate and really show everyone that we want this kind of independent media we want this kind of truth telling how do you guys receive any more censorship threats or anything else from these you know coax or any of the large scale and don't want the skating exposé to rest easy well yeah look i think they want to squash their film in any way they can and i think you know what the kickstarter campaign is showing to me is that you know there are more of us than there are of them and we're more powerful ultimately and so i think if folks can pull their money together and pull their resources and support the release of this film you know we can get out there and we can send a big message to david koch to charles koch to all sort of public broadcasting that you know we will not allow this kind of censorship of our public institutions because of big big money and to tell people were they can find out more and help. that's right. our web site citizen koch that's k.-o. c.-h.
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not c o c ok he says in. backslash kickstarter you'll go directly to the kickstarter website you can see our trailer you can see the video we made for kickstarter you can learn about the pledges because if you do make a pledge you will get an award or a reward and there are all sorts of cool rewards up there you can also go directly to kickstarter dot com their web site and type in the title system koch and look we would love to hear from folks we want to hear the comments we'd love to get their support and we'd love your help in spreading the word thank you so much tia lessin co-director of citizen coprophagia time thanks so much. every war we remember those men who gave the orders to invade to occupy and to kill and it's important to remember that these wars would not be possible without the
quote
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foot soldiers carrying out the orders you see without them the military machine falls apart and it's precisely for this reason that one military man is decided to turn in his gun his name is brandon toy and he's a former u.s. soldier who served in baghdad before taking a position with general dynamics one of the largest defense contractors in the country an open letter of resignation from his position he wrote quote at the time of my enlistment i believed in the cause i was ignorant. and misled the narrative professed by the state and echoed by the mainstream press has proven false and criminal we have become what i thought we were fighting against the powerful sentiment from someone who's been on the inside of the military industrial complex for the last decade or earlier i spoke to brennan toy himself and i first asked him to shed some light on the experiences that have led him to this moment take a look. it took me a while to come to the realization unfortunately that i was tricked you are
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something that i no longer and if i had known the truth you never would have been a part of the. you mentioned in your letter that you had become the thing that you were fighting against can you talk a little bit more about what that means yeah exactly. the america that we live in today one that i know is not the one. that they told us about when we're going out. we've crossed the line and done things that i thought our enemies did. things against the constitution human rights violations. mass surveillance assassinations drone terrorism. and many other things. yeah i mean people have said that they you know this is just terrorism on a much larger scales are really fighting terror with terror calls into question the
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whole purpose of the war brannon i mean you said that you had learned that you were on willingly training and supporting sectarian death squads when you're in iraq can you explain what that consisted of shirt during two thousand and five i was deployed on the east side of baghdad in the solder city you know i'm a clown in neighborhoods as a military policeman i was only a machine gunner and you know and my units mission was to train support equip and. transport iraqi army personnel and iraqi police and we got to the police stations show them how to shoot them down to the green zone for training etc etc. jeremy scahill. i'm sorry not jeremy scahill b.b.c. arabic and. now the guardian came out with their expos any i think in april about the directory wars colonel steal their way over there in training or military counterinsurgency or us. to fight the terrorists basically with their own
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terror tactics and the sectarian violence three thousand civilians being killed within baghdad area. now i didn't have any knowledge of what was going on at the time there were rumors that much of this unit militias infiltrated directly police. finding that out completely infuriated me or what do you think as an m.p. in the military in baghdad and two thousand what do you think what the role of military contractors when you were there i thought it was very interesting we had military contractors that rode with us and went on our missions they seemed to do essentially the same thing that some of the army personnel were doing in many instances it seemed like a duplication of effort. they would go to the same places to save our courts work a lot less hours get paid a lot more get a lot more vacation there seem to be
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a large amount of wakes and i think that it's been well documented there's a lot of hardworking contractors and don't want to detract from the work those people do they're well meaning. overall it's obvious that we wasted billions and billions of dollars on contracting out for it's overseas right i think there was a report that came out that they can't even track what it is that they're doing in afghanistan and of course many times more salary plus the kind of lawlessness in the private privatization of the military but then you join general dynamics which is a huge defense contractor what exactly did you work on while there. i worked on the stryker combat vehicle program i was an engineering project manager for developmental engineering projects the small stuff nothing. nothing secret or you know but interesting really did you would you say that you know being in kind of both industries the private and. and the government would you say that
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people in the massive defense industries are compartmentalize or kind of the tap dissociated from how their work aids the war machine and really what's the danger in that. absolutely it's very easy when you're sitting there at that computer typing some benign or or. even though you're working directly for the army you talk to army representatives every day you see the army symbology you're speaking in military terms basically like a soldier without a uniform it's very easy to lose sight of the fact that there is this bigger picture upstream there's bigger effort that you're a part of. for me in my mind as i've said before it came to be that there was an alliance between sitting at that keyboard and being overseas with a rifle in my hands i knew that i was aiding the bigger picture and that's what really bothered me why did taking ten years to realize you're participating in something that was so wrong. question i asked myself quite
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a few times and i was a trouble leader after i joined after the iraq war started i thought what we're doing overseas was great it was all about let's bring them democracy and mass destruction fight terrorism on its own soil etc etc and then i slowly started getting disillusioned over the years but at the same time i needed to feed my family so when i got out of college i went to work for general dynamics it was good to start with and i was excited by the possibility of a new administration coming into office and those hopes were dashed for me obviously. and then finally i just got to the point where it was either. my own sanity or leave that place basically i could no longer live such a double life believing one thing with all you know every fiber of my being you know behaving and working against my own interests and really i think the
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manatees interests. and i commend your courage and for standing with your conscience i know it wasn't the easiest thing to do especially from working in the system for so long i wanted to read probably the most powerful part of your letter where you said i was only a foot soldier and a low level clerk however i've always believed that if every foot soldier threw down his rifle war would end i hereby throw mine down why do you think that more people don't refuse orders that they know are wrong. everything is built against you psychologically physically. many times you're overseas you're detached from any kind of support network that would support you in a decision such as walking away. to keep it personally for me the safety and comfort of having medical insurance a good job the ability to provide for my family that kept me there that keeps a lot of people as a part of it and there is. propaganda and misinformation out there if
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you speak out in those circles you will be labeled either conspiracy theorists are those just so you come up what can you do about it you know you're just one person you you can't do anything about it you're not going to change and just go along to get along basically brennan we know one person can do a lot you said that you were inspired by edward snowden to finally resign and of course the war on whistleblowers in the war on the press is designed to chill dissent to stop people from coming out and speaking out obviously and the verse is true you're proving that right now thank you so much for your courage i commend you for coming out talking about your experience brandon toy former u.s. soldier defense contractor really appreciate time thank you so much it's a pleasure to talk to you. guys we're taking a quick break but still ahead we'll get the latest on the trial bradley manning with our two web producer and a blake. looking pretty docile up in the field good luck you won't find it here if
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you're looking for relevant stories unique perspectives on top my scans and our.
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the military judge in the trial of army private bradley manning has decided to not drop the charge that accuses the twenty five year old whistleblower of the enemy and he has pled guilty to ten lesser offenses but is still denied culpability for twelve more charges that he faces a guilty verdict of aiding the enemy could land manning a life sentence or even death penalty artie's very own web producer andrew blake has been closely following the case and joins me now to break down the very latest hi andrew. so why wasn't this charge dismissed because i was under the impression
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that there was no proof that he actually did the enemy well what happened was you know this case is three and a half years at the making at this point almost and you know the government's long and saying ok manning you aided the enemy because you want to wiki leaks you gave them files those files got the internet and then osama bin ladin dialed up his modem and got those papers and because of that we can send you away to prison and you seas for the rest of life and you left because a lot people think that's kind of funny that by using the internet and sharing documentation that has actually been proven to cause any harm not really aiding the enemy right so i think that was that was the defense's argument and they said you know this is a bit preposterous and way and you know this trial has been going on actually only happening for a couple of weeks now when the prosecution actually had to present their case and they had to call witnesses and they actually had to try to make an effort to say bradley manning you waited the enemy afterwards the defense said we. we don't think so we don't think you even you we don't think we even gave enough evidence that the judge can actually make this decision so they filed a couple of motions
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a few weeks back and just today colonel denise lind the military judge presiding over the case she finally responded and said no there's enough evidence that i can actually go ahead and i can make a decision not to make the decision now the court case is going to wrap up sometime next month most likely but she is not dismissing the charges by not dismissing the charge bradley manning will now face a maximum of life plus one hundred fifty four years in prison i believe life plus one hundred fifty four years and has to be at least a hell of a guy who might live to regret that you know you know aiding the enemy or not your life span how is the prosecution going to prove this i mean i guess we don't know but based on what they've already said it seems pretty flimsy elgar we already know that manning did all this stuff not really a the enemy but we know he's played with the leaks of hundreds of thousands of classified documents that sets that's out there he admitted that the prosecutions tried saying that these documents caused harm to national security and they had people come in and testify about all of these doctrines separately released iraq war logs afghan war logs collateral murder video that went on will be
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a detainee assessment briefs all these information and that's what the last couple of weeks of ben witnesses being called by the prosecution and by the defense trying to say well either you know he did it knowing that this could happen or no he was a naive twenty something guy who wanted to help the world but that's going to be ultimately up to the judge to decide unfortunately none of this if we go from here and what's next and when can we expect to hear closing arguments closing arguments could begin as early as tomorrow the best thing that everyone can do is go to fort meade and attend the hearing because it's it's pretty much held in secrecy and without people going there today i believe there were twenty seven spectators it without people going there and without twenty seven members of the media without people going reporting on it the case can't be accurately reported because the government's not releasing the actual file so that's what people can do if they want to get involved or at least hear about the case otherwise we'd have to wait and see if the government can actually prove that a soldier. should spend the rest of his life are going on here at the shame that we've heard so much about the zimmerman case and virtually nothing about this one has enormous implications for everyone thank you so much and. for shit.
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perhaps one of the most disturbing hallmarks of the post nine eleven era is entrapment see the government spends hundreds of thousands of dollars and countless resources every year to coerce individuals in the breaking the law where they might not have the means or motive to otherwise do so now while this tactic is widely practiced by federal authorities to justify the war on terror is domestic front it's also practiced carried out by local law enforcement across the country take for instance the story of thirty eight year old sal. close it was an optometrist in northern virginia and like many others he was also a fan of sports betting which is something he and his friends and quite often with small wagers but one virginia detective david bowie cam overheard talking about bets one night at a bar he decided to make close to his next project the friend in him and ultimately
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setting him up as their friendship evolved over many months bo cam continuously pushed closely to up the stakes of his betting hobby ultimately convince closely to bet more than two thousand dollars in a single day now under virginia law that was enough to charge him with running a gambling operation and that's where things took a turn for the worse on a night when both camera range for the two to meet he wasn't alone the detective brought in a whole swat team with them to raid home for any evidence linking him to run in a gambling operation and as closely stepped out of his house to greet his friend he was suddenly shot and killed by another officer his last words were directed at beau cam and he said dude what are you doing the entire incident was chalked up to nothing more than a mere accident. if there were days to add insult to the death fairfax attorney robert horan said i feel for the family of the victim in this case but i also feel
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for the police officer this is a good police officer fine record almost seventeen years really you feel bad for the officer wow you know it's bad enough that a full swat team is issued to take down small scale bookies but at the end of the day closely was molded into a criminal at beaucaire of never be friended the thirty year old optometrist he would still be alive today and what's worse is that instead of police taking accountability for using excessive force the taxpayers are the ones who end up paying the price so in the case of closely this family eventually received a two million dollars settlement from fairfax county paid for by the residents along with a warning statement by police about the risks associated with betting pools but something tells me that you might be executed if you gamble wasn't included in that note so i guess it's business as usual police grossly overstepping their bounds a man is dead and you the taxpayer is left to clean up the mess.
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and that's a wrap for us here in d.c. today you guys have a great night thanks for watching we'll see you right back here tomorrow. download the show location so. stream quality and enjoy your favorites from. if you're away from your television just doesn't matter now with your mobile device you can watch on t.v.
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anytime anywhere. for. iraq. coming up on. crime. watch. the video might be shocking but it's simply a ploy used by us police offices. filming with their own cameras they inform this
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woman. being killed they want to gauge her reactions as they suspect she may have hired a hit man to murder a spouse. who can look at that. in fact no killing has taken place and the police have made up the story to try and confuse done. what they want is a confession and a few hours later she will be charged with attempted murder in this case it was the cross-examination of dalia that led to the truth and then eased the way to her prosecution. among the police the interrogation process is considered a key element of the investigation where everything might fall into place which explains why in the united states.

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