town's tons of radioactive water has been leaking into the pacific every day for the last two years and now another week in tech goes poorly built storage tanks is responsible for spilling another three hundred tons of radioactive water into the ocean and if that isn't ridiculous enough just check out today's headline fukushima worker accidentally switches off cooling pumps seriously oh i'm glad there's so much room for human error with such a deadly technology you know almost to the point thinking that ted goes deliberately trying to destroy the planet and if you're an american seafood or all concern of radioactive fish and you know up on your plate you should be because ninety one percent of imported seafood is not being inspected during the government shutdown so while congress continues to act like petulant children i guess we'll hope for the best. the. it was a really very hard to take

a. look. at that or how to act with that break there are those. that believe. in a post nine eleven world the word terrorism is one of the most meaningless yet frequently used terms today it's become a blanket label for everything from political violence to social unrest if the person or group committing said act is at odds with the u.s. government policy however despite the fact that foreign and domestic policy is

driven by fighting this tactic there is no official government guideline on what defines terrorism seems a bit disconcerting when you realize that a word with no precise definition is one that's come to define our country it's repeated ad nauseum throughout political speeches it's uses of the reasoning behind the classification of government files and it's the final layer of judgment for the indefinite imprisonment of a potentially violent individual so i set out to find out what the word really stands for and high it's so broadly applied today earlier i spoke to lisa's stand netsky author of the book disciplining terror and i first asked her why the so called terror experts have it all wrong. part of the problem is that the concept of terrorism itself is a really problematic concept it's undefinable. and not terrorism experts themselves are many different definitions and unable to agree on what the definition should be

and it's got a number of suppositions built into it that make it really difficult for people to create rational or scientific knowledge about it. and in your book you describe how political violence came to be labeled terrorism why did this evolution occur but my argument is that political violence tend to be labeled terrorism in the one nine hundred seventy s. and that before that political violence including things that we are now say are obviously terrorism like hijacking. weren't really understood as terrorism remarks . i argue that it's funny because there were a number of new kinds of incidents in the early one nine hundred seventy s. hijackings and so forth which targeted americans and westerners violent especially post-colonial violence that went out of place. and this is trying to detention of the american government and but then the second part is that over the course of the nineteen seventies the way that experts and people in the in the government were talking about these political violence the problem that they started to call

terrorism changed significantly. and you talk about also how the rand corporation was the first and easy to turn the concept of terrorism into an object of knowledge and quantify the trends of terror what is problematic about this approach. you know i mean there are some things that are problematic about it and there are some things that. are not inherently problematic but are just made difficult by the way we understand terrorism. so in order to quantify anything. even need to you know meaning quantification meaning make it subject accounting you have to be able to agree on what it is and what it isn't so in order to construct these data bases you know people have to decide what counts as terrorism doesn't incident counterterrorism at best it's not and the hard. terrorism it's such a conflicted and contested concept you know it's inherently political any time you do that so you know that's why creating these these prostitutes pontification it's

so problematic it's not anything that the sara lee about the process itself sure and you talk about it obviously experts invented terrorism as we know today and terrorism is inventing the expertise is the war on terror essentially a giant feedback loop at this point. i mean you could see is that you could see it that way you know although i would say that you know sort of there are many other actors in there but by terrorists should terrorism experts but you know there is a sense in which you know sort of we have this war on terror which is a thing that you know it sort of we don't really even know what it is not into order to continue the war on terror we need to decide what is terror and what it terrorism well some of the roots of radicalization because we're constantly being bombarded from the media and political establishment about what the threat is without having that greater discussion about the motivation for violence the roots of radicalization how does this affect the way the average person understands the

concept. you know it's funny because at the same one of the things that are doing the book is that well there is you know commonly a question about what are the roots of violence or you know sort of these questions about what radicalized people at the same time one of my arguments is that the raid that we came to understand terrorism from the one nine hundred seventy s. up until the current period. actually precludes understanding the roots of violence in certain ways because the contessa terrorism has built into it this idea that terrorists are these immoral irrational actors and so in so much as even then for much as we want to understand why do people commit these acts there is you know in the back of our heads that sort of you know sort of always going in. in public discourse these ideas that well terrorists are just irrational and they do these things just because they're evil right this idea of evil

continually pushes the patient particularly and if something is evil you don't need to have an explanation you don't need to understand why this little violence is occurring you just say well it's evil and i say it was undeniable that that is still perpetuated throughout the asylums and the fact that this kind of evil mystic this grand myth about the evil evil doers i guess you could say it's a little bit more intelligent way now but it's still there oh yeah i was really benefiting from keeping the public misinformed about the greater picture i guess you can say that sense states benefit from it because the. state can manipulate this concept of terrorism in order to try and point it at the needs of the group that you know what we don't like so they're terrorists and you know you see this continually you can look at any reason of the world and the state fighting against insurgents within their state or outside their state and sell used the label of terrorist in order to try to illegitimate. absolutely i mean it's so subjective at

this point one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter how powerful of a role do you think semantics plays into the influence that people's perception is of what a terrorist is. i think it's extremely important i mean there is no objective definition of what a terrorist is. and so it's you know sort of our understanding of what is a terrorist is only constructed through these these debates that happen and why is it taboo to allege that a state can can can commit terrorism on a massive scale i mean we have night raids drone bombings and into these actions not terrorized but it's. yeah i mean it's it's taboo because they don't want to be called terrorists and states have a lot of symbolic both already i mean you you know you have people out there including some of the terrorism experts i said who try to assert that states can in fact be terrorists but it's very hard to make that assertion. thank you so much lisa netsky author of disciplining terror how experts invented terrorism really

appreciate your time. extraordinary rendition those two words came to define the bush administration's nefarious war on terror now the term is forever associated with the u.s. government's abduction and transfer of alleged terrorist cia black sites their prisoners could be indefinitely detained and tortured basically it's exporting torture but of course all of that was supposed to change when a constitutional law professor took control of the executive branch obama initially promised us a new era of transparency and due process for all the matter how grisly the alleged crime which brings us to last saturday's joint raids by u.s. forces in somalia and libya and somalia navy seal team six yes that seal team six you know i'm beginning to wonder if there's even a seal team one through five while they unsuccessfully attempt to capture

a high value target presumably and retaliation for the group's deadly siege of a shopping mall in nairobi last month then in libya u.s. delta force apprehended a libby the alleged mastermind behind the one thousand nine hundred eight bombings of u.s. embassies in kenya and tanzania outside of his home in tripoli of course both of these raids were conducted without the somali and libyan government's knowledge and cooperation which resulted in protests on behalf of libyans who don't take too kindly to cia black baggers in their country but according to secretary of state john kerry these actions were one hundred percent legal and appropriate. sorry but i fail to see how it's appropriate to usurp the sovereignty of two nations one over another country's mash and another over a terrorist attack that happened fifteen years ago now according to military officials al libbi is being interrogated. and held on a navy warship somewhere in the mediterranean sea officials have acknowledged that

al libbi has not been read his miranda rights and has no access to a lawyer but will be arraigned in a u.s. court room at some point mind you this could be a week a month a year or her for long it takes for interrogators to get the answers they want out about libby shockingly many are praising obama for not employing drones to assassinate a libby from the sky this sentiment alone reveals what an utter disgrace the discourse has become complimenting the president for illegally kidnapping alleged terrorism potentially torturing them and sort of murdering them only emboldens the false dichotomy of fighting the so-called war on terror but the most stunning compliment of all came from former white house press secretary for ari fleischer who treated earlier today bush's fourth term continues no lawyer interrogation secret rendition snatch and grab on sovereign soil indefinite detention no that wasn't a criticism of the president that was

a glorification of bush two point zero because apparently snatching sovereign citizens from sovereign lands for fifteen year old crimes is something to celebrate . still ahead tonight will speak to u.s. customs whistleblower katherine harris. wealthy british study. some time to. go to. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds of reports. live.

technology innovation all the latest developments from around russia. the future covered. fact that. they were going to kill the jew on the premise is the only industry specifically mentioned in the constitution and. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy albus. role. in fact the single biggest threat facing our nation today is the corporate takeover of our government and our craft semi-colons we've been hijacked like handful of transnational corporations that will profit by destroying what our founding fathers once it's all just my job market and on this show we reveal the big picture of what's actually going on in the world we go beyond identifying the problem. the rational debate and the real discussion of critical issues facing up to find her

job ready to join the movement then welcome the third. least the. lists. many of you probably know about marion kerry the woman who crashed into a gate near the white house and was subsequently executed by capitol police and we all know this because the corporate media immediately zeroed in on the on the folding drama and turned it into a media circus twenty four seven frame by frame but just one day after that tragedy while pundits were busy psychoanalyzing kerry's mental condition this happened. at

four thirty pm on october fourth an identified african-american male douse him self in gasoline in let himself on fire in the heart of washington d.c. . he later died from his injuries after being airlifted to the hospital this man chose to commit suicide in the middle of the national mall store excited surrounded by museums and monuments and before here ruptured into flames and witnesses say he shouted something about voting rights and saluted to the capitol building sadly three days later no one knows who this man was or what his motives for doing this war. but perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this unique incident is the utter lack of coverage from the corporate press after only a blurb about this burning man news anchors quickly switch back to talking about kerry's mental condition and the humdrum of political squabbling on the hill so why is zero in on one tragic incident at the nation's capital but almost completely

ignore the other yes you can argue that the woman was more sensational and that using a car as a deadly weapon is definitely easy fodder for disaster porn coverage but knowing how much the corporate media loves to glom on to any disaster big and small it's complete lack of analysis does seem like a glaring omission or maybe it's because self emulation usually signifies a powerful political statement and it's confusing for people to rationalize someone behind being driven to such an act of desperation in america you know the land where dreams are made i mean they have to be completely mentally ill or in same right. perhaps it was the to museum street vendor who self-immolating and sparked off the entire arab spring painted in the same way now or in fact he was hailed as a revolutionary a martyr who was driven to such an act against all political odds first centuries self-immolation has long been seen as a form of radical protest against

a radical regimes as a child i remember the beauty and sesame covering the buddhist monk self-immolating during the vietnam war and fact this form of protest is far from unique and is actually on the rise in industrialized countries in this era of global austerity and financial uncertainty dozens of people have set themselves on fire across europe because of unemployment yet most of these tragic cases receive little to no media attention in fact just one week ago here in the u.s. a man in a business suit tried to light himself on fire in houston after declaring that he couldn't find work before he was able to light the fire he was arrested and is now being held for psychiatric evaluation but are these people crazy or is the current environment of hopelessness of state that inevitably and negatively drives people to the edge as sara kensi are writing for al-jazeera so eloquently states quote unemployment is not only the loss of a job loss of dignity loss of the present and over time the ability to imagine

a future that is hopelessness and shame and open struggle every one witnesses but pretends not to seen as a social and political crisis we tell a man to solve and blame him when he cannot. serve suggests that for the many who face these bleak conditions self-immolation is a way to matter in the moment like the case of moloch's the rich chicago man who self-immolating in two thousand and six to protest the iraq war and use his dying moment to send a powerful and eloquent message that made nothing more than a crazy man blip on the news he wrote or have. i'm required to pay for your barbaric war i choose not to live in your world and refuse to finance the mass murder of innocent civilians who did nothing to threaten our country i will not participate in your charade my conscience will law not allow me to be part of your crusade now while this may be an uncomfortable topic for many it's important that

we pay attention and approach this ultimate self-sacrifice with empathy and compassion only then can we change the conditions that brings someone to such an act. of. stop and frisk may have been ruled unconstitutional the man behind the idea new york police commissioner ray kelly insists that it's still the best policy no surprise there considering kelly's history of implementing similar racially motivated policy prescriptions throughout his law enforcement and here in fact as customs commissioner between one thousand nine hundred and two thousand and one kelly was subjected to congressional scrutiny after an overwhelming amount of complaints about searches that disproportionately targeted african-americans it was during this time that former u.s. customs inspector cappy harris blew the whistle on the agency for its belief in racial

profiling and later the g.a.o. report confirmed that black women were nine times more likely to be frisked than white women and now that ray kelly is being night as the top candidate for head of homeland security kathy harry is speaking out again and joins me now to discuss the real possibility and implications kelly's nomination could have for civil liberties thank you so much thank you so much. so your story is in this book the kind of the air of story and let's go back to you when you blew the whistle in one thousand nine hundred eighty you blew the whistle on abuse within the u.s. customs office what did you see that was kind of like the straw that broke the camel's back well the fact that all the women african-american women were being taken to hospital in detail. and there for four days they were being handcuffed to the bait for four days in order for among coworkers to make overtime money and i just got sixteen i'm sorry they were detained for four days i have to hospital wow . and way more i mean disproportionally and two other right braces right right.

talk about some other discriminatory it's discriminatory practices that you saw for a while in miami what they were doing down there and they would have handcuffing women to cheers to force them to have these strip searches and the women that refused to strip searched in the game they would have handcuffed them to the chair of the outside to search room so when all the travelers came in the country they would ask us why are all the women handcuffed to cheers so it was a form of intimidation for women to have the pat downs in the legal strip searches . and you said that when people did speak out and filed complaints they were actually blacklisted you know they were blacklisted regularly came in agency and he told how rank you manager is to go after even one who filed the complaint most whistle blowers to also complainants so ray kelly fired over one hundred whistle blowers and he created policies and procedures which made it harder which may be easy for the the employees to be fired what were some of the politics one hundred

as a number there are a bunch of them was out of miami because down there are reporters from miami was also reporting on what was going on some of the internal abuses so again it would just kind of thing that they would do it internally mismanaged the agents the agents the inspector just a lot of things and a lot of people came up blew the whistle supervisors of high ranking manager against thirteen g.s. fourteen and ray kelly came and he just fired all these people to death how he was able to sal and all of the travelers because everybody who was speaking out against the travel is abuse or against internal practice it's he just fired and i wanted to make this clear for the audience that. ray kelly was actually hired to deal with the racial profiling which is actually whole areas considering how he exacerbated the problem tenfold i mean would you say that considering how he actually came in to rectify it it made it worse does this problem go beyond just one bad apple i mean was this systematic and people should know it was always systematic i mean the

greater profile profile had took place since for years before i came for what i have seen since the paso border what they did to women down near the end i went to miami i saw a dui then i came to lamma and i saw it there so i had to eventually come forward and expose the abuses. you know and as we know ray kelly is of course currently the head of the n.y.p.d. is the police commissioner in the favor paid for the d.h.s.s. if he is appointed to what sort of policies that we can expect to see well i just think anything that he does if he gets back in the agency is going to cause the employees to really. you know despair and hopelessness people alone they've lost a lot of hope in the put a person like ray kelly back over homeland security is just going to be a bad thing to do right now for the employees. why do you think that you know even though the judge ruled the stop and frisk unconstitutional why is it still being used well i'm not sure about that but the thing about it rick kelly gives bike an

agency he's very anti whistleblower. intime ploy now when it was for protection act passed in december of last year n.s.a. whistleblower intelligence was the blowers wilson cover also t.s.a. whistleblowers was uncovered so ray kelly gets back in as homeland security chief of course he's going to go after the t.s.a. whistleblowers he's going to go after all the other whistleblowers so again we do not want to i think i speak for everybody even though i left there eight years ago i still know what's going on and i speak for all the employees they do not want ray kelly back in agents have you been following us record as the n.y.p.d. commissioner i mean what has he been doing there. kind of proves your point while he's been making statements saying that african-americans deserve to be stopped and frisked more than any of the race simply because they commit more crimes that is what he has been telling people in a new i mean he not only promotes racial profiling where he allows it to take place . i guess the biggest question of all is why is this administration. even

thinking about appointing someone who is just openly racist in implementing such a ridiculous unconstitutional program in new york i have no idea whether i'm thinking about electing him i'm sure there are some of the candidates which would do a better job it just that hoping that they don't put this guy back in its position they think it's strange at all that this administration almost rewarding someone for being just having complete disregard for civil liberties that doesn't have a federal government works i mean i was a federal government employee for twenty seven years and they were war the all the bad in punish the good they've always done what a that's horrible deaths the federal government that's just how they operate they go after people who complain even though is their right to file these complaints they just that is just how the system is set up we've tried to fix the system though the all kind of organizations out there that have try to fix the system and

they can't the whole we'll see system need to be abolished and redone again and they've tried to do this and at this point it's just no hope well i guess yeah i mean you know you have you have your book i you're trying to lobby to prevent his appointment from going through what can people do to help prevent this but really as you just said the system is broken i mean aren't we are you aren't you worried that someone kind of like ray kelly will just get in and get it out roll anyway do we have to what we need to do is form a oversight committed to monitor who they put in its position to monitor everything that they do well read now everybody needs to go to all their legislators entailed their legislators to block this nomination and what can people do to help sign a petition well there are tons up to this petition the m. in it so just googled the petitions on him and that blog grace kelly there is tom a petition so we want everybody to stand up attentions and they go to your legislators entailed they are to block the election. i'm with you there

thank you so much for coming on sharing your story out there is former customs and border patrol senior officer and whistleblower or should it be ok. if you want to know what i'm doing when i'm not on the air check me out on twitter at abby martin like me so you can follow me there i know my tweets linking to segments from the show as well as i have to up the day also please help us get a break give us the rundown on twitter there's also some hot dogs we can get trending on the put it's fair but only with your whole know how to twitter dot com checking out at abby martin and that's it for our show today you guys see tomorrow a great night brought the set.

it's ok james it's a little. respect some of the straight. to . see. one of the new a little more than a lot of the bank of new college face i think sometimes you don't need. the. pleasure to have you with us here on t.v. today i roll researcher.

torch is on its epic journey to such. one hundred twenty three days. through two thousand one hundred towns and cities of russia. relayed by fourteen thousand people or sixty five thousand kilometers. in a record setting trip by land air sea an outer space. a limpet torch relay. on r t r two dot com. will do the. science technology innovation all the list i'm elements from around russia we've got the future covered. this immediately so we leave that maybe . i'll see potions to cure the other party there's

a poll. questions that no one is asking with the guests that you deserve answers from it's all on politics only hard to. react to situations i have read the reports. from and no i will be next to the state department to comment on your latter point of the month to say it is. a car is on the docket no god. no more weasel words. when you faded direct question me prepared for a chase when you throw a punch be ready for a battle pretty much a speech and down to freedom to cost. that. was.

moscow's serious after police allegedly beat up and detain a russian diplomat in the hague president putin to demands an apology while the dutch ambassador is summoned to explain. flush with cash to beijing's finest snapping up prices read european corporations and brands. manufacturing industry with some western knowhow. syria's chemical disarmament is on track with a new one plan as its approach lessons plays by the u.s. and russia asia pacific summit in bali.