hope a steady 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 embed themselves with the enemy forces or even known terrorists to get both sides of a story his precisely the kind of person who could be a target of this law although implications loom for whistleblowers and activists 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 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 i would 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 will ever do to be a complete red state you can really do to help. the koch brothers number company of . the five areas are specialized and some of the worst types of oil how much you

can put into a child and since january of last year in just over ten billion dollars ten billion dollars well the film went to sundance this year and i had planned to finish its production with the help from the independent television service where i had t.v.'s but it is unfortunate twist t.v.'s hold its funding from the 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 to lessen thank you so much for coming on to us thank you so much for having me so why did you and co-director carl deal to believe decided 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 the film focuses on the koch brothers involvement both in the case of wisconsin like you just said to

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 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 the 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 i actually had the opportunity to speak to an ex lobbyist jack about the citizens united case and get his opinion i want to play. 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 couldn't get into the system my entire life and so there he is saying that you know citizens united is kind of overblown what's your response well look it's certainly true that there was plenty of 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 biggest lections 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 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 and he 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. 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 the hundred fifty thousand dollars is not small potatoes but luckily you guys were able to raise seventy five thousand dollars on kickstarter in just three days but 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're 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 of information to have the public broadcasting will fail the public and to deliver 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 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 pool their resources and support the release of this film. you know we can get it 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 what our website citizen coke that's k o c h not c o c o says and. 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 website 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 import remember that these wars would not be possible without the 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. sentiment from

someone who's been on the inside 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 of that i was taking part in something that i no longer believed in and if i had known the truth i never would have been a part of 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. assess the nation's 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 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 sugar during two thousand and five i was deployed on the east side of baghdad in the cider city element of the neighborhoods as a military policeman i would say only machine gun or you know and my you know its 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 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 coolies. 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 i 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 of 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 be cation there seem to be a large amount of waste and i think that it's been well documented there's a lot of hardworking contractors i don't want to detract from the work those people do their well meaning but overall it's obvious that we wasted billions and billions of dollars on contract he got for its overseas right i think there was a report that came out that they we 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 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 this 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 take you ten years to realize you're participating in something that was so wrong. question i asked myself quite a few times and i was a true believer 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 he 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 you speak out in those circles you will be labeled either conspiracy theorists are they'll just tell 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 the end of 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 blake. wealthy british science. that's not on the front. markets finance scandal find out what's really happening to the global economy for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines joining in to cause a report on our to. do least be told language. programs and documentaries in arabic it's all here on. reporting from the world talks books the v.o.i.p. interviews intriguing stories for you to. see in trying.

to find out more visit our big. dog called. exactly what happened that day i don't know but a woman killed. piers later is when i got arrested for. for a crime i did not do. we have numerous cases where police officers lie about polygraph results. innocent people to confess the police officers don't beat people anymore i mean it just doesn't happen really. in the course of interrogation why because there's been this is like meant no because the psychological techniques are more effective in obtaining confessions than physical abuse and they were often they could get what they wanted they could say what they wanted and there was no evidence of what they did or what they said.

download the official. to your cell phone choose your language stream quality and enjoy your favorites. if you're away from. mobile devices you can watch artsy anytime anywhere from. more news today. and these are the images world world has been seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations are today.

i. have a military judge in the trial of army private bradley manning 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 the death penalty or to its 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 that there was no proof that he actually 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 been saying ok manning deleted the enemy because you want to wiki leaks you gave them files those files got on 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 never been proven to cause any harm you know 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 when 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 the enemy afterwards the defense said we don't think so we don't think you even you we don't think you even gave enough evidence that the judge can actually make this decision so they filed a couple of motions a few weeks back and just today colonel denise lynn 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 a 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 in prison leaves a hell of a guy you might live to read yeah yeah who knows 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 naturally aid 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 these doctors separately released iraq war logs afghan war logs collateral murder video that went on will be a detainee assessment briefs all these information and that's what the last couple of weeks of ben what this is 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 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 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 the internet so 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 thank you appreciate it. i. perhaps one of the most disturbing home marks of the post nine eleven era is entrapment see the government spends hundreds of thousands of dog. and countless

resources every year to coerce individuals into breaking the law or 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 a practice carried out by local law enforcement across the country and take for instance the story of thirty eight year old sal. close who 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 small wagers but when virginia detective david camm overheard talking about bets one night at a bar he decided to make close to his next project the friend in him and ultimately setting him up as their friendship evolved over many months bo cam continuously pushed closely to up the stakes of his betting hobby ultimately convinced 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 by authorities 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 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 both can of never be friended. 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 dollar 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. and that's a wrap for us here in d.c. today you guys have a great night thanks for watching and we'll see you right back here tomorrow. when the great spade blind to what is happening in their country. the american

dream is disappearing. the houses with gardens are laid down. the poor are left hopeless the streets are full of angry crowds that are fighting against. the storm the american dream. kenya.

syria and reversed momentum rebels are now killing one another in alienating the people they claim they're fighting for the assad regime has regained lost ground and is on the offensive in the meantime western powers are showing we lucked into providing arms to the rebels is it now time to consider a process to stop the violence and talk peace. well. science technology innovation all the list developments from around russia we've got the future covered. good leverage sure. to believe. the league doesn't give a darn about anything. to teach me reason why you should care about. this

is why you should care only. breaking news russian anti-corruption blogger all explain of all the walks free at least temporarily has been released with travel restrictions pending his appeal a day after being sentenced to five years in jail for embezzlement. a life sentence looms for u.s. army private bradley manning after a judge hold a charge that he aided the enemy and releasing classified documents but washington faces an uphill battle for its efforts to crack down on leaks. and the e.u. puts a damper on israel's settlement expansion plans as new cooperation guidelines block the occupied territories from future funding.