just yesterday get my military officials affectively declared the strike to be over the military said it will stop issuing daily reports of a number of these protesters since only a core group of one thousand of them remain striking now considering how the response of a strike was force feeding the inmates is it any wonder why so many of them have given up as i demonstrate on this show force feeding is torture and a complete and utter violation of human rights going through this excruciating experience and day after day after day is unimaginable but just because so many detainees have reached the absolute limit of human suffering doesn't mean we should pay any less attention to the crimes occurring at the shadow prison just a few hundred miles from our shores. the. people they are very hard. to. get her back with that her right there.

was. you know it's not really my style to give props to someone who claims they are deigned wegg by god to be as right hand man on earth but i got to say i'm going to begin this new pope and i don't think i'm the only one. you know i freaking love this new pope pope francis you know i'm talking about right the pope are you guys watching this guy because you should be it's early but i'm thinking best pope ever saying let's get. back to the roots let's get back to serving people at one point

in this article actually he calls the church the old hospital he's not afraid of anything and i think that's what's really getting these crowds of more than a million kids they're excited to see him it's pope mania. and his first album hasn't even dropped yet. that's right folks puns from across the spectrum seem to be love in the new pontiff for good reason too bob has been whistling a new tune attempt to rebranding the church i don't know maybe has something to do with the tarnished legacy of rife with sexual abuse or exclusion of women gays and atheists just name a few sealed up boston cisco has been quite busy asking parishioners worldwide to stop making issues like abortion contraception and gay marriage the primary focus of good policy is a wow almost sounds like francisco might just might be slightly in tune with the twenty first century just check out how he's doing on social media you know the

facts is absolutely killing it on twitter just recently he offered catholics reduced time in purgatory for a faithful follow perhaps the best shout out came from the treat of god who outed pope francis is either world's coolest pope or the world's most conservative hippie . i'm not sure that's entirely accurate i did find a few quotes from the holy bishop to give you an idea of where he stands on the real issues on women in the church and in society pope francis said quote the feminine genius is needed wherever we make important decisions the challenge is this to think about the specific place of women also in those places where the authority of the church is exercised although that's not a direct indorsement for women to become priests it doesn't seem like he's ruling that out either if you could call systems finally going to catch up with most of the world religions and allow women to rise to the highest ranks of the church but let's move on to that issue of homosexuality because that's where the pope is really starting things up saying that quote if someone is gay and he searches for

the lord and has good will who might to judge. him that's a huge change in tone from the last pope benedict the sixteenth who firmly held on to his archaic belief that homosexuality is an intrinsic disorder that finally the laws of nature have pope francis seems pretty firm about moving past these divisive issues of the main. owners of the church and while some conservative catholics might be hyperventilating right about now i can really get behind a lot of what he's saying especially when it comes to what's truly important today's global society he said quote it is the consequence of a global choice and economic system which leads to this tragedy and economic system which has as its center and idol called money. ok ok and the pope things that the love of money is the root of all evil wow but really the pope's critique of current crony capitalism is really just an extension of the core values of christianity stepping outside our comfort level to be generous kind to others and taking care of

the poorest among us before i really get ahead of myself here none of this means that there will be a revolutionary transformation in the doctrine and practice of catholicism and i was refreshing that maybe to hear such a new progressive discourse coming from. i can't in good conscience indorse the catholic church i still feel very strongly about the fact that institutionalize religion is a main hinderance of progress in the world and is greatly inhibiting humanity's collective consciousness but that's the world we live in today so for now the change in tone promoting a more inclusive and tolerant catholicism is something to celebrate. the regular viewer break in this you know i often criticize u.s. foreign policy but you know when it comes to syria i am in lockstep agreement with obama on what needs to be done with this country mired in debt it's more important

than ever to port our pocketbooks and make sure this war happens. i'm going to bomb a supporter i support president obama but the president needs your help our president can't launch into another war without you and remember we voted for him in two thousand and eight and twenty twelve we promise to support him. no matter what together we can do it that's why we here at the americans for whatever brag obama one did you know he's president say they have launched a kickstarter campaign to blunt world war three and america is dead ass broke so our goal is to raise one point six trillion dollars on behalf of the u.s. government. with a lariat sketch from the comedy groups i can fit it has gone viral so far racking up nearly two and a half million new this quarter i spoke to one of the creators me on the video tyler alexander and i first asked him why he thinks the sketch is so popular. i think people can relate to it and that's you know the agrees and the other side of

it is that it's really funny and it's just a really great piece satire so you know that it sort of came to be it's interesting it came in originally the writer john lewis said just an idea you know we to work at it and you know we gave him a couple of notes he took those notes turned the script around and you know about two and a half hours and are at a production just order pretty much for old straight into production and organizing our crew and everything like that you get your shot and produce. all it's excellently done i really really enjoyed it you know it's still a tense topic of conversation you know amidst the serious debate going on in the world right now be receiving a backlash from obama supporters from putting out the sketch. the people don't understand that it's actually a piece of satire when some of the the most frustrated or vocally angry. and that's on either side of the coin i mean there is the funniest one that i think

i saw was are that it's ten to see. are people that are. a company and as a comedy brand for why mr all who are three. actually want to start all we're through. and really. absolutely missed the point of the video if think that we would support anything like. this how to tune out completely some of the trolls because it just drive you insane but you know i think if you're not offending people then you're not really doing your job at a certain extend you ever consider the sensitivities of your audience when you're writing comedy and how do you really balance that medium with politics and comedy if you're approaching a subject like that sure i mean the most important thing for us is not being afraid to make fun of those in power and it doesn't matter if the republicans you know liberals you know neo cons it doesn't matter to us you know we wouldn't be

doing. our audience a service if we were. taking shots at both sides so that includes obama that includes you know george bush during his presidency so we need to make those those we need to make fun of those in power that's what we have to do as a as a comedy brand that brace satirical sketch comedy that's politically charged and i just know not taking any side just going after everyone that's kind of what i try to do with this show as well how would you say that the proliferation of social media and kind of the evolution of the internet has changed a revolutionize the way sketch comedy is done. i think it's a lot more accessible that's for sure there is so much content out there just in general. you can find really great pieces and sketch comedy and satire online. you know so that great on one side of the coin you can see more people

writing more comedy on the other side of that is those people are also who are competing with you know for eye walls and in the end we all want we're all proud of the work that we're doing and we all are people to see that so you know you tend to get lost a little bit as you tube is grown industry that's it. as a community is using technology to create this content so what's next for me you guys are you plan to play out more political sketches or is this kind of a one time wonder you know we're constantly producing we're constantly you know coming up with video ideas along with you know written ideas for the second city. and we're releasing that stuff weekly but yeah i mean definitely political stuff is on the table and we're excited to do more what we need to laugh about what's going on too in order to elicit change taking so much tyler xander everyone check it out whole areas sketch second city thanks so much. still ahead peter king uses

a tragic shooting to fear monger against muslims again. listenership the first mistake knology is the name in aviation is the game which is late he still fights takes leaps into the much unknowable tell a soul springs innovation sundstrom don't look around at the night shape looks of the splinter to see i'm danged if you're. listening to. live right close to. the first response you live and i predict future. live

on a recorder splitter listens to live live in the live on live live olympic. live. good speech. live. i wish i. lived. slow and good live.

play lists. and. come out fine i'm a little. mass violence struck nairobi kenya last weekend when al shabaab militants held hundreds of people hostage at a shopping mall standoff resulted in a horrific three day gunfight between the kenyan military and the militants leaving more than sixty people dead and one hundred seventy five injured now details have emerged that at least two of the militants are american are going to be half of the militant islamist group and that's where our favorite congressional islamophobia comes in say representative peter king has created

a unique legacy of fear during his time in office thanks in large part to his memorable hearings on the radicalization of most americans aka mccarthyism two point zero and during those hearings king repeatedly warned congress about the threat of al shabaab outside the horn of africa. some argue that al-shabaab is only somali problem and the group will never strike outside the horn of africa region that kind of thinking is a glaring example of what the nine eleven commission called a failure of imagination we must face the reality that al shabaab is a growing threat to our homeland a failure of imagination high rose on that case let's build giant robots to fight the sea monsters from pacific rim you know as tragic as this massacre is al-shabaab is not an immediate threat to this country look we have our own regular gun massacres to deal with here that doesn't stop king from using air time to call for the racial profiling of american muslims. i would assume that the f.b.i.

and local law enforcement are looking into the somali american community where the leads are indicators using or where sources and resources to make sure that there's no follow up attempt here in the united states yes kings blanket approach suggests that law enforcement should hunt down every single somali american just in case one small problem you can. abs on every brown person in this country has proven itself an effective king is from new york same state where police and gage in a decade line spying program on local muslim communities and guess what they didn't get a single legitimate lead on one terrorist attack but king doesn't care about facts if he did he would have ended his witch hunt years ago no no no he just wants to keep churning the gears of the islamophobia machine and we all know that fear sells in the halls of congress so for being a bigoted fear monger peter king for the second time is my villain of the day hey

one more time and i'll give him a one way ticket to mogadishu. for many the issue of prisoners' rights is out of sight out of mind but a recent hunger strike of nearly thirty thousand california inmates drew international attention to the condition of america's prisons the prisoners who began striking in july have banded together to call for an end to the use of extended solitary confinement a practice which many human rights groups have likened to torture now after the use of solitary is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes. machine this country has only five percent of the world's population that holds twenty five

percent of the world's prisoners according to and he joins me now to discuss how it got to be this way as eugene career author of shackled and chained mass incarceration and capital of america thank you so much for coming on and thanks so much for having me a pleasure eugene i want to show this chart to our audience showing that no country incarcerates are higher percentage of population in the u.s. what is the main factor behind this shocking statistic well i think the main factor behind this massive growth we've seen in the u.s. prison population what's come to be known as mass incarceration is really in the context of the development of u.s. capitalism that ultimately it was a surplus population problem what you have is if you see the post world war two period in the united states was a period of so-called rise in prosperity it created amongst people this feeling that life should continue to always get better living standards to get higher the civil rights movement raised a similar sort of. expectation among black americans that they would be integrated into this quote unquote american dream but what we saw with the economic crisis of the one nine hundred seventy s. is not just

a general rightward shift in the country but a decision that social services and jobs programs and creating jobs for people would go by the wayside which created with the rise of technology as well this issue of what are you going to do with this growing number of unemployed and underemployed people particularly those concentrated in the ghettos as it were the people of color black americans who have a traditional revolutionary sort of rebellious legacy in the history of the country and that sort of confluence came together to create the policies of mass incarceration as we know them of course the drug war would come a little bit later providing a crucial fuel to that fire. people joke about how they need to go to prison or to get health care and services your genes it's just really sad state of affairs your book talks about the horrible conditions and the presence of like an intellectual torture chambers what do you mean by that well i mean it's an interesting point i mean you pointed out for example the california prison strike pelican bay is. five hundred five hundred people who've been in solitary confinement for over ten years now the council of europe in two thousand and eleven said that anything over

fourteen days in solitary confinement should be considered and so that's just one example twenty five thousand people being held under solitary confinement but everything from generalized overcrowding with the federal prison system roughly thirty six percent overcapacity to food cost for example in two thousand and one the u.s. government estimated that people spend about eight dollars a day on food now the year after that the key state of california was spending roughly two dollars a day. on food per prisoner so we can see a large degree and whether it is access to health care access to mental health and all these other things that exist the situation in prisons is quite dire indeed one thing that i thought was really fascinating that you point out is that a lot of these prisoners the overwhelming majority in fact don't have a trial by jury fair want to talk about that yeah well you've got about eighty percent of people who end up in prison who never even really had a trial and i think there's a lot of things about that i mean obviously recently what we've seen is cuts to

public defender services happening all across the country and in the federal public defender service but beyond that things like these draconian sentences that exist under mandatory sentencing laws and so many different states and on the federal level create a situation where people don't want to even take the chance of going to trial rather than going to prison because they feel that because of their legal counsel or the way the laws are written that they have absolutely no chance and so we see that the deck is kind of stacked against people really from jump street when it comes to you know a criminal trial you bring up a good point which is these minimum sentencing you know considering the massive overcrowding that we're seeing in prisons today why are these laws still in effect like the three strikes law well everyone good thing is that we're seeing that that's starting to move by the wayside but the real reason is because this issue of mass incarceration as a policy view has not really fully come around i mean you saw in the one nine hundred eighty s. when reagan. the first thing he did is he put in the very first thing one of the first things he did was put together an attorney general's task force which stated

that the most important issue when it came to criminal justice in america was the need to have more prison beds and this sort of punitive law and order and mass incarceration set of policies is still had a wide variety of the political and economic elites view the issue of crime and how it should be dealt with eugene right now an african-american male who doesn't have a high school diploma is more likely to end up in prison than with a job really sad why is the justice system so disproportionately skewed against minorities well i think it goes back to the original point i made about sort of the surplus population problem and the fact that the african-american community is really the most oppressed community in this country and is sort of the further outside of the mainstream when it comes to employment and all of these other wealth building type issues and indicators education and so on and so forth so the laws that have existed to create mass incarceration have been aimed disproportionately at those two who where african-americans are overrepresented ultimately that's what it comes down to and we see that it plays out sort of on that structural level and

also you know for example seventy one percent of black men who are convicted of drug crimes end up in prison as opposed to sixty three percent of white men that could you know reflect a number of different things but i think it certainly reflects the biases of the judges the biases of the juries and so on and so forth so really it's very inception this issue of how to deal with mass incarceration was how to deal with the problems in the quote unquote ghetto the perception that crime is mostly black people mostly poor black people and they live in certain neighborhoods how do we control them how do we make our police and prison policies match up with our need to not help these people not give them jobs not give them health care not improve their situation but just deal with them so we'll find a way to approach throw them in prison and make these listen to superficially and just argument to say that they have to know they're inherently more criminal obviously when you look at the conviction rates of the same exact crime is white versus. it's very apparent what's going on here you talked about the drug war very briefly i want to you elaborate on how much of this really has to do with the drug

war i think quite a bit i mean a quarter of prisoners in this country are convicted of drugs but i think what's important realize is we mess incarceration policies first came in i mentioned reagan's report you didn't have the crack boom that would later happen in the eighty's and so what the crack epidemic in particular did and giving acceleration to the war on drugs was provide this kindling to the fire so things like mandatory sentencing which notably joe biden and other democrats like ted kennedy so-called liberals were key and bringing in these sort of things that before people were a little skeptical about when crack starts to happen with a cocaine overdose you start to see that as an impetus to bring in things like three strikes laws and other mass incarceration policies that might have been a little bit on the fringe in the early eighty's late seventy's but then because of the crack epidemic they were able to push these these punitive policies very heavily on the state and federal level let's talk about private prisons which is something that's expanding greatly in this country the whole argument that we hear is that privatization was basically lead to better conditions for prisoners less of a burden for the taxpayers of course what's your response well i would say that you

know it's not borne out by the facts i mean one thing that we point out in the book which people can get shackled and chained dot com is this massive growth just since one thousand nine hundred five in private prisons i mean obviously what we've seen through all the studies is there's no evidence whatsoever that private prisons cost less and in a number of cases they turn out to cost more or do create scandals that are so bad that they're not worth the issue in so many different ways they turn out to be more brutal and also you know the whole idea that people have to be incarcerated for profit and i think sixty five percent of private prisons the contracts they sign require states and localities to put a certain number of people in the prison for you know the period of the contract so ultimately they're not concerned with corrective activities rehabilitation or anything like that just get as many people in the door as they possibly can and locking them up for profit yes it's been it's been also revealed that you know payoffs from. from people who are putting people in prison get cut back from these private prisons is just a really shocking how kind of openly corrupt it is let's talk about the corrections

corporation of america the umbrella company the kind of taking over this president for profit how they exploited prison labor for their own advantage well so you see a group all of them i mean the federal prisons they're now exploiting prison labor and a big way and it's sort of creating a new dynamic i mentioned the issue of social control and excess population but now you have this whole new billion dollar industry that's looking to use prisoners to exploit them and we see it whether they have them doing farm labor working for eight hundred companies taking reservations for things like american airlines wrapping nintendo games i mean almost anything you can think of these prisons both private and public are putting prisoners to work for extremely low wages the federal prison industry unicorn and those are the people who make military uniforms and repair that are destroyed in afghanistan the average high is the average salary for people working at unit core is less than a dollar fifty per hour which is just shows the high level of almost slave type wages was sweatshop wages no doubt that are happening in prisons and it's the

biggest fortune five hundred companies like i said american airlines bank of america they're all involved in this was a really just modern day slavery i mean that is i don't. know i thought they were only making license plates until i heard that b.p. actually to outsource prison labor to stage these photo ops of cleanups on the beach and i just couldn't believe that that was happening you know it's interesting you repeatedly hear that the reason top bankers can't be prosecuted is because of the devastating effect to have on the communities the company why is that same standard not applied to entire communities that are inflicted and destroyed by mass incarceration policies i mean you know it's a great point i mean it was unbelievable to hear eric holder say that people you know people who've been convicted of crimes of the economic crisis and of laundering drug money were too big to jail i think it just shows the reality of this system that it's a system that's skewed towards the richest people the one percent if you will the financial elites the ruling class. and not the poorest most oppressed people so that you know those who are considered the job creators and so on and so forth are

able to live this gilded lifestyle and sort of fly above all of the double standards that are put out there and those who are at the lowest end of the totem pole are the ones who become really the blood of society those who have to put up with the worst forms of oppression living standard exploitation in the fact that they will put millions and millions of people in oppressed black communities in jail absolutely destroy so many of these communities and then do basically nothing towards wall street bankers is a clear clear indicator of what the priorities of our society really are indeed about thirty seconds please tell people where they can find your book and find out more about this issue of course so people can check the book out at. shackled and chained dot com they can also follow me on twitter at eugene per year i also write for liberation news liberation news dot org you can see some of my writings on this and other issues excellent work eugene peer author of shackled and chained mass incarceration in capitals america appreciate your time thank you so much. for after us here in d.c. you guys thanks for watching it was. all over again tomorrow. i

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anything like this before this is going to come in a house. in the fortress of isis grown in just one hour and it's only the beginning . do we speak your language anybody will or not a dance. or music program some documentaries and spanish more matters to you. use it will turn it into anglos keaton's stories. for you here. in troy i'll teach spanish find out more visit eye to eye on t.v. dot com. secret lover a tour to mccurry was able to build the most sophisticated robot which on fortunately doesn't give a dog. mission to teach me why you should care about. this

is why you should care only. on r t tonight not pirate sport of. greenpeace activists international law and they tried to. protest against drilling for oil in the arctic. the un chemical weapons. in syria after criticism of its previous findings the one sided and inconclusive. residents of a british colonial outpost in the atlantic. to make room for a u.s. military base.