coming up on r t we are now less than twenty four hours away from learning bradley manning's fate the army whistleblower could face a life sentence if he is found guilty of aiding the enemy more on this case ahead and the f.b.i. response to senator rand paul's concerns over the use of domestic drones so how many times have drones been used to surveil american soil details coming up. and a new report shows that most americans are in dire straits eighty percent of the u.s. population finds itself in near poverty more on this terrible economic trend later in today's show. it's monday july twenty ninth five pm in washington d.c.

i'm meghan lopez and you will are watching our team while army private first class bradley manning is less than twenty four hours away from finding out if he is guilty of a crime that could lead to a life behind bars the presiding judge in the court martial of the twenty five year old wiki leak or has given the media notice that she will announce her final decision at one pm tomorrow at fort meade now this comes just three days after judge denise len began debating the verdict both the prosecution and defense rested their cases on friday afternoon after the verdict is announced the court will move into a sentencing phase where the defense will call an expected one of two dozen witnesses the prosecution meanwhile will reportedly call on another twenty one people manning has already pled guilty to ten lesser charges which could result in a maximum of twenty years behind bars however because colonel lynn refused to drop the aiding the enemy charge manning could end up spending the rest of his. life in

prison but no matter the outcome one hundred twelve days will be knocked off with the eventual sentence because of harsh treatment that manning received while staying in the quantico prison that included months of solitary confinement manning spent an unprecedented one thousand and one hundred days in pretrial confinement until his trial began this june and meanwhile protests are happening internationally and they happened over the weekend in support of manning in countries like australia and italy belgium and south korea and around the u.s. thousands stood in protest to even danced in solidarity with a man who was responsible for giving wiki leaks more than seven hundred thousand classified state department cables well ask and you shall receive that's what senator rand paul is learning this week after he sent two letters to f.b.i. director robert mueller demanding for that agency to explain this domestic drone program as well as the rules that govern it the letter sent by the assistant director of the office of congressional affairs stephen kelly reads quote every

request to use u a v's for surveillance must be approved by senior f.b.i. management and f.b.i. headquarters and in the relevant f.b.i. field office without a warrant the f.b.i. will nonuse to a visa to acquire information in which individuals have to respond reasonable expectation of privacy under the fourth amendment to date there has been no need for the f.b.i. to seek a search warrant or judicial order in any of the few cases where you avi's have been used now that letter went on to admit that the f.b.i. has in fact use drones in domestic airspace no fewer than ten times eight times were in a criminal investigations and two were national security cases meanwhile a federal aviation administration announced on friday that it has certified two types of drones for civilian use to talk all things the way the related i was joined earlier by michael brooks he's the producer of the majority report and i started off by asking him if we really learned anything new from this letter that

the justice department and the f.b.i. said back to rand paul. no i don't think we really did and i think that the response from the f.b.i. from the justice department highlights a lot of problems that we're seeing across a lot of different areas when it comes to civil liberties and the evolution of technology which is that we're we have a tremendous technological advances and we don't have policy and legal frameworks to really address or contain them and then agencies go out jump on these technologies use them push their limits and then sort of answer questions after the fact on clear and ad hoc way without kind of clear legal structures around them that may be that these drones have been used positively in certain cases and i think the issue is not the big scary drone issue is the rules

around them and what the frameworks are and because frankly we don't really have them very early on the adversarial process where these things are being contested until now little and we are starting to say to a little bit of a clearer picture as to what rules and regulations the f.b.i. uses on domestic drones and there's a number of standards including the privacy act the f.a.a. regulations and f.b.i. internal guidelines but the letter really didn't go into that much detail about what specifically these guidelines say do you think we have a little bit clearer of a picture now on what they can and cannot use to mr jones for and the oversight in this process. not particularly i want to think one of the really important things to highlight is that they say that they will use this technology. they'll get a warrant to use drones if it goes beyond someone's reasonable expectation of having their fourth rights fourth amendment rights respected now we clearly do not

know what that means and that's a very contested term in light of things like ball data collection and dragnet surveillance and things like the n.s.a. that's exactly the point we might have radically different interpretations of what we need to spec from the fourth amendment and they're going ahead and they're using these these technologies which by their nature are incredibly they're they're invasive they see a lot so it's up to them to decide what is and is not a reasonable expectation of fourth amendment rights that's the problem in and of itself as far as i'm certain and meanwhile federal regulators say that they have certified to try said unmanned aircraft for civilian use so michael how big of a milestone in this do we know what these are going to be used for or who will be able to use them or anything like that. well it seems like there's a them urgency response component to them which i'm not sure the distinction

between civilian and the local police or fire departments or something like that that seems like potentially great use of drones i know that drones have been used in the fallout in japan to do some on men monitoring of those situations that seems like a good thing is a good thing the others. think has to do with wildlife monitoring and things like that so you know so i think that these are potentially fine things obviously it's a pretty radical technology to put in anyone's hands and it's going to raise a lot of questions and i think again our regulatory apparatus our cultural norms our legal frameworks are very behind what we're technically capable of doing so what's said one of these things flies over your house or over my house could i shoot it down. well i guess it would depend on how good a shot you are there are i'm just kidding i you know i don't know i'm doubting me michael brooks. i would never die i would doubt my leg and i'm sure you're an

excellent shot but i you know i think you'd have to determine is is this a government plane is this a neighbor who's bothering you which is you should definitely shoot that one down. again i really have no idea i think that there's going to be generating a lot of questions we don't really clearly know the answers to there and i don't know if we should be focusing on shooting them down but we might want to be focusing on something not randomly flying over your house or my house you know what michael brooks producer of the majority report thank you so much thank you so much while the california prison system is dealing with yet another setback in attempting to content sions within mates prison officials announced on saturday that an inmate being held in solitary confinement died at the california state prison in cold koren on monday that's one of the prisons participating in the mass hunger strike in the state inmate supporters say that the end mais thirty two year

old bill guerrero cell was taking part in this protest prison officials on the other hand say that he wasn't and that his death has been treated as a suicide r.t. call so the president has not yet been answered no cell was serving a life president's sentence for attempted murder he was also awaiting trial for the murder of a sound eight now the hunger strike is twenty two days now old now with about one thousand inmates in eleven prisons actually still refusing to eat that's down from thirty thousand inmates that initially refused meals in the first days for more on the hunger strike i'm joined now by ronald a her he's a professor of politics at st mary's college and the mediator in this hunger strike hi there ron thank you so much for joining me so tell me what is the latest regarding this hunger strike. well the fact is it's still going on we're in day twenty two we're starting the fourth week and it's really serious we have a lot of concerns about the hunger strikers in terms of getting the medical

attention that they need we had reports that the individual who died was actually seeking medical help at the time when he died and so we're trying to follow up as much as possible make sure that they get the care that they need now we've heard different accounts about bill sell the presenter in solitary confinement who died about whether or not he was actually participating in this hunger strike as you say now what can you tell us about him in particular and about the varying information that we've heard about his involvement well we get reports back from prisoners and we had reports from prisoners who were in his block on his two year who knew him and they're telling us that she was on hunger strike now if if a prisoner drinks a glass of kool-aid or a gator aid or something he still refuses solid food the prison system doesn't consider them on hunger strike anymore now they're on fed they're fasting so it also could be that the prison officials are just sort of playing loose with the

words which i think would be really grotesque in this situation and that is obviously that is obviously very different from what a person that is participating in a hunger strike guantanamo bay would be because if they have to eat eight hundred calories for i think a week before they're considered to be off of that prison strike so if you're saying just kool-aid would consider them off of that present strike that the very vast difference too. yeah we were told that if you drink coffee tea kool-aid or anything like that you're no longer on a hunger strike you're on a fast to the prison officials have a definition of hunger strike missing nine meals in a row and if you take one meal then you have to start over again and start missing those nine meals before you consider back on hunger strike so now let's talk about your role in this and tell us about the process of mediation and what some of the major sticking points have been in the negotiation process oh basically i'm part of a mediation team that is trying to give voice to the prisoners concerns their main concern is an end to long term solitary confinement they started this process in

two thousand and eleven in which they went on a hunger strike in the prison officials did agree to change their policy and they did but the policy still makes it possible to keep somebody in solitary confinement just about indefinitely and that's the main the main sticking point and even though we're mediation team we have not been negotiating because prison officials have refused to negotiate with us when we meet we do talk we clarify issues but so far we haven't had negotiations and we think it's time for the governor now governor brown to step in and ordered negotiations good faith negotiations and put an end to long term solitary confinement in california now a lot of people that are critics of obviously the people that are on president say that the people who are in prison have committed crimes and they are now being punished for them so why is it important that these people are treated with dignity . because punishment is this is beyond punishment putting somebody in

a solitary confinement ok i ask you viewers to think of a cell eight by ten foot concrete walls all the way around with no windows no phone calls are allowed no contact as it's with family or friends and you're being held there not for months not for years but for decades over five hundred of these people have been treated like this held in solitary confinement for over a decade seventy eight over two decades as one individual who has spent forty two years many of these people quickly develop mental illness due to this they start hearing voices they start getting suicidal that kind of stuff can not just be chalked up to punishment and finally there's expected to be a day of action on wednesday where these people with cornell west and michael moore among others will stand to in solidarity with just some very quickly do you think that this will gain the attention that you'd like to say i really hope that it does

and especially the fact that we're into the fourth week we really need something to happen here because pretty soon we're going to end up with prisoners collapsing and i am afraid very frankly that there's going to be more deaths it doesn't have to be the governor could have ordered negotiations from the get go before the hunger strike even started but if it's if that didn't happen it's time to do it is now ronald a hernias the professor of politics at st mary's college thank you so much thank you. well america's slow road to recovery is looking like it has more potholes than paved paths these days the associated press released a survey saying as much this week when it found that four out of five adults struggle with joblessness near poverty or reliance on welfare programs for at least part of their lives here's what else they discovered the country is poor remains at a record high with forty six point two million people or fifteen percent of the population living below the poverty level and if you're wondering what that poverty

level is it means that they have an income for a family of four of less than twenty three thousand dollars a year and this issue is not confined to minorities according to this survey seventy six percent of white americans will experience some sort of economic insecurity by age sixty eight now of the forty six million living below that poverty line at the moment almost half or nineteen million are white here to help me break down the numbers in greater detail are two producer rachel currency a stand prime interest host and bob english join me now and then bob i thought we were on the road to recovery why would you don't mind i don't know president obama says obama ok some of those statistics look good but it's kind of a mixed bag and here's why you look at unemployment statistics and if you're out of month for if you're out of a job for as long as a month you don't get counted in them and the jobs that we're seeing today are a vastly lower quality than they were before we're looking at jobs increases in

retail sector in the hospitality sectors and a lot of this is just part time work so the quality of jobs is not what it used to be and then the actual full time paying jobs are in construction and we're seeing another manipulated housing boom mortgage rates are rising and we're going to have a fall in that sector as well so it's not going to look pretty i would say you're out from no those are some very ominous predictions bob and just to add to that i think it's important to think that we are on the road to some sort of recovery but the idea that the recovery we're looking at is going to be the same as something we had in the past. it's kind of misleading when people have new jobs these jobs as bob said are going to be in manufacturing fast food work things of that nature and you can sense even the fact that fast food workers have risen in their median age it shows that this is no longer a stepping stone to a job for teenagers this is now full term employment for people who just don't have other options is the right so can you break down some of these statistics more depth for our viewers are as obviously a lot of them in this survey yeah there definitely are and i think that as you said

the most eye catching one that four out of five americans are on the brink of poverty is one that that i think deserves a lot of our attention especially if you think about what the definition of new poverty means here right we're talking about people who have experienced unemployment have a year or more of government reliance on for things like food stamps or something like that or have an income below one hundred fifty percent of the poverty line so that's a pretty wide definition then why don't i just want to add one thing to that because it says experiencing unemployment at some time during their working lives i think that's just kind of to generate headlines statistics things are better now if you don't need to goose it with those kinds of you know broad numbers to do the same time when people are facing unemployment that is being on the brink i mean there's no necessary understanding that when you lose a job that you're going to be getting another one so even though it may be you know a headline catching statistic at the same time it's very real for four fifths of americans at some point in their lives certainly and it's a very scary reality for those four fifths of americans are

a four out of five now you have talked about a little bit more but help one of the indexes at a record high so what about these unemployment people going in filling these jobs why is it so far from flyers to find employees and for unemployed people to find these jobs and kind of make it work well i always question the statistics in the first place but a lot of people are kind of stuck where they are because they're stuck in their homes and wise a because they're underwater in them people owe more on their homes and they're actually worth and that creates a situation where lou. is not mobile that could be one possible explanation now john stossel of fox news network said that if americans could get the same amount off of an unemployment check that they can working a lower wage job than the often choose not to take up that low wage job they think that's the case i think there is a bit of decision there people have a lot of options and there's government help and they can simply take the decision to take a government check we had an extension a record extension of unemployment benefits and i think that condition the

population that you know just rely on the concern for the check not necessarily on mcdonald's i wouldn't say that it's necessarily conditioning the population in any way i think that there are a lot of cities that show that people would prefer to be working rather than be on the government dole but as you said there are people who who are underwater in their homes meaning they owe more than they're they owe more in their debt than their home is worth so they can't really sell another thing is that the jobs that people are looking for are often very different than the jobs that people are advertising is jobs that need employees so i think it might also be a question of education one let's also play with the term near poverty now this article said that eighty percent of americans are facing near poverty rachel what do you make of that term near poverty well i do think that it's very broad i think that all of us know i allot of people in our lives who have been unemployed for some part of their working lives younger generation certainly and i think that you know as as there are a lot of people who don't really have the opportunity to get jobs when they're younger for instance like these teenage jobs are now going to people in their mid

twenty's and it kind of shifts upward that there is a last generation of people who are in their twenty's right now who haven't had this meaningful opportunity to be gainfully employed and now the question is why would you employ them when you can employ a fresh upstart straight out of college so there are people who are getting lost in the shuffle here and bob we just have a minute left so i'm going to give you the last word here what should we make of the difference between the numbers that this is survey shows and the economic census data that we've seen i think the economic sense of state is just a little bit older. so what we're seeing in this new report is reflecting the new reality and like i said i think this report is in is a little a little bit playing up the unemployment it's a little bit broad but in general the census data gives us a lot of information and insight and if you look at the census data itself it's not that great either. prime interest has bob english and archie producer rachel carson yes thank you so much. well you may remember last year or two america hosted the third party debates featuring candidates that were left out of the mainstream

media's obama romney rivalry and while we have a long way to go before the next presidential election in two thousand and sixteen third parties realize that they have to get to work early in order to work around the two party system and connect to voters the green party was just doing that in iowa this weekend r.t. political commentator sam sacks was at their national annual meeting and he brings us their story. the corn belt the american heartland the new place for green politics we all know i was famous for its corn but in just a few years iowa will be the epicenter of american politics with its first in the nation caucuses but already one political party is here in iowa laying the groundwork for two thousand and sixteen it's not the republican party or the democratic party it's the green party green party delegates from around the nation flock here university of iowa for their annual meeting and activists are on hand using the green party to promote their own causes environmentalists campaigners for

peace those promoting sustainable and local agriculture it's being made into a new store for the nutrient cycle and proponents of ending corporate personhood the real business took place in meetings like this. for the future of the party was debated green party committees reported on their activities new members were elected to the national steering committee the forum was held to discuss what was learned from the two thousand and twelve campaign and while the crowds were small and the funding scarce greens are confident their movement is building two thousand and twelve green party presidential candidate dr jill stein the greens are out there as the driving force in the social in the social revolution which is taking place right now and what the party can do is give that agenda. a focus and a set of demands and put them into the political context because when you bring a social. together with a political movement that's when history tells us we succeed stine garnered less

than one percent of the vote last year and the greens are well aware of the difficulty of a third party breaking into the nation's two party system the efforts that it takes for a third party to gain basic access to local state and national democracy is completely ridiculous we're concentrating first on changing electoral systems on local levels including adding rank choice voting like exist in many cities across the country now as a way of having people see that alternative systems give them more voice we think if people have more voice they'll choose us in greens. from an unlikely source washington d.c. where a series of issues have leapt into the mainstream debate exposing the flaws of the two major parties people are seeing that the democratic president and the powers that be on the democratic side but on the republican side they are firmly entrenched with the big money corporations who are killing people overseas killing

people over here and spending people over here founded in two thousand and one the green party usa has yet to win an election to national office but with the political climate and demographics around the country rapidly changing their prospects could be brighter heading to two thousand and sixteen recognize the sign campaign really increased our profile nationally that has generated a lot of young people who will be registered green now for the next forty fifty years and run for office over time together we can turn the breaking point we face into the tipping point we need to take back our democracy and the peaceful just green future we desire thank you for making it so. we're going to green party resigned one and facing them is the monumental task of defeating money politics with movement politics but as more and more americans go unsatisfied with the two party system and as new issues from drones to surveillance

expose the similarities between republicans and democrats in the end it might not be the green party trying to reach voters as much as voters trying to reach the green party and i was city iowa sam sacks are two. so well we see a rise of a third party in the twenty sixteen elections well here to tell me more about the grassroots efforts that are already taking place across the country political commentator sam sacks thank you. fresh from iowa thank you so much for joining us so first of all give me a little bit of historical context of third parties well recent history hasn't voted very well for third parties. but i guess when ross perot ran as the reform party in ninety two he garnered nearly twenty percent of the vote that was one of the more successful third party bids in recent memory you had a third party rise up during the civil rights movement on the opposite side of civil rights the american independent party but you've had these third parties rise up throughout history whether it was the populist party in the one nine hundred twenty s. or the progressive party

a little bit before that you see them rise up to push for some some issue whether it's workers' rights or slavery or something like that and it tends to push the mainstream parties in that direction eventually that third party will get consumed by that major party including their platform and push that party in another direction and that's really what what you could see is a strategy here is you have these third party suddenly rising up during a time in which the country is dealing with a lot of issues that the two parties aren't really adequately addressing perhaps changing the dialogue a little bit before twenty sixteen comes around but let's talk about the slacks the election things and go about well no i mean you had two. major third party candidates will say you had gary johnson the libertarian ticket and dr jill stein on the green party ticket johnson got less than one percent joel stein got less than a half percent of the total vote but really a lot of this comes down to with how impossible it is for third parties to even

break into our election system in your two party system this was something that i talked with joel stein about and i think we have a clip of what you said. greens transcend those traditional left right boundaries we've been working actually with libertarians throughout our campaign to address the issues of censorship you know we were both locked out of the presidential debates even though our campaign was on the ballot poor eighty five percent of american voters they deserve to know who their choices are so really i mean the greens in the libertarians are in the same boat here they're both shut out of the debate mean imagine how important it is it would be if you had mitt romney barack obama and then gary johnson and jill stein on there expressing that is that alone would reach so many voters plus trying to ballot access trying to raise funds when you're in a post citizens united political world where you're having to raise a billion dollars now to compete with with the two major parties these are all obstacles that green parties have to face just to get into our electoral system

sure and you're talking right now about presidential elections but let's talk about the next upcoming election that we have which is the twenty fourteen congressional elections do they have any big plans for that well remains to be seen i think the green party knows that they have to have to set their sights lower to start building momentum that means going after local offices and already there's a handful of greens that have been elected to local offices in the package there jesse was elected to the rent control board in san francisco so start small somewhere then go in the city councils and then maybe move on for mayor mayor all races a governor here and there and then maybe work your way into getting a seat in the u.s. congress the house or senate like that but still folks that doesn't mean that they're not going to run someone in twenty sixteen again that they will run someone that brings notoriety to the party and brings attention of the party and finally sound just a short time left but who should we have our eye out for. i think dr jill stein probably will plan to run into the green party and i spoke with her running mate

from from last year sherry and she's they all seem on board to there's a lot of rising young people in this party that. i talk with my. i'm starting to think he talked about how the demographics have changed and suddenly there's a lot of young people the green party that are growing older and may be running for office in the future very interesting i have to keep our eyes out for all of those in the future political commentator sam sacks bring us that story of the green party thank you so much. all right and that's going to do it for now but for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r.t. america and don't forget to check out our web site r c dot com slash usa from all the greatest information that's coming out around your world that we cover today and a few stories that we just didn't have time to get to don't forget to follow me on twitter at meghan underscore lopez to see what i'm doing when i'm not stuck to this news desk and finally coming up at the top of the hour abby martin will have a new episode of breaking the set so stay tuned that's coming up soon.

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