the of the. yo yo yo people's welcome to breaking the set on abby martin so turns out all those people that were kidnapped off the streets of their cities and black bag by the cia before they were subsequently tortured just aren't allowed to go yes to guantanamo detainees are he-man the sherry and i. are no suing the polish government for helping carry out the cia's rendition program during this time the men were taken to secret prisons in poland and subjected to horrific abuse by interrogators the court of the guardian amrit singh of the open just society justice initiative excuse me who represented nashiri so that his client had been repeatedly tortured

and incurred everything from naked in a hooded mock executions to painful stress positions that nearly ripped his arms apart and even threats to sexually abuse his mother considering how last year macedonia was forced to pay out thousands of dollars to a victim of one of these cia black sites hopefully this story turns out the same and at the very least it should serve as a warning to any other country willing to host america's human rights abuses. of the. it was a. very hard to take on. the. one that had sex with her right there.

earlier this summer a soldier was charged with running a prostitution ring out of a fort hood army base in texas not only was the soldier an instructor for the bases sexual assault and harassment program but he himself was involved in two instances of attempted rape while this week the trial began and female soldiers at fort hood gave their testimony over how they were coerced into prostitution at the same time there's a court martial of another fort hood soldier under way for using illegal prostitution ring don't worry though i'm sure the military is perfectly capable policing themselves and providing adequate punishment for this type of criminal activity but shocking as the scandal is it only serves as a reminder of the larger issue of sexual misconduct rampant throughout the military

according to latest pentagon report on sexual abuse there were three thousand three hundred seventy four cases of sexual assault just last year while this number represents a rise in reported incidents it excludes the fact that the vast majority of military rape goes completely on reported now is problem of sexual assault is against the women in the military there's actually another side of this issue that's often overlooked the fact that the majority of service officers assaulted every year are men brian lewis president of man men rather recovering from military sexual trauma spoke to me about just. may or. may not seek to come forward and for that matter neither do women right now in our military eighty six percent of victims do not come forward because they are afraid of retaliation by their chain of command and that's and that's alarming statistic because the chain of command is who we're told to trust day in day out from the

moment we enter boot camp. clearly this is not about sex it's about violent crimes taking place in the mill. terry not doing anything to address them unfortunately doesn't seem like changes in the near future since a majority of lawmakers continue to block the current efforts to reform the military justice system once and for all. what's truly discouraging is that most people still can't seem to understand that this isn't just about a few bad apples this spans the entire military culture calls into question a justice system that too often provides an avenue for this type of sadistic behavior to remain unpunished so as long as the military continues to police themselves when it comes to cases of sexual assault the longer this growing epidemic will undermine everything this country's armed forces are supposed to stand for.

police brutality now flexibles every community across the u.s. and nothing exemplifies this notion more than the case of kelly thomas thomas was a thirty seven year old mentally ill homeless resident of fullerton california who was savagely beaten for more than thirty minutes by multiple police officers the incident was all caught on surveillance camera the footage shows police officers taunting thomas and beating him first with their fists and their guns they also tase him throughout the assault at least four times you can hear thomas call out that he surrenders to stop beating him and toward the end he pleads for the help of his father. sadly his plea fell on deaf ears only five days later thomas died in the hospital from his injuries specifically the mechanical compression of the store x. rendering him unable to breathe. now just to give you an idea of how extensive these injuries were take a look at this before and after photo of thomas again to warn you this image is

disturbing. happened two years ago yesterday finally mark day one of the trial for the police involved former fulton officer manimal ramos has been charged with second degree murder and involuntary manslaughter former police corporal jason sonali has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and use of excessive force and a third officer joseph will face trial in late january so where does the trial stand given the current trend of police and community does the family of kelly thomas have a real chance for justice to break it all down i'm joined by our correspondent. ramon before we get into the case how did the role of the surveillance video play in getting these people on trial i'm sorry the police on trial because as i understand their stories changed and they were forced to change again once the tape surfaced. this security camera that was set up at the fullerton bus depot there and downtown is really huge i mean the prosecutor in this case orange county district

attorney tony rackauckas before the trial started said that he probably would have been able to prosecute this case had it not been for that security footage and really before it came out it was shown to the public the city council the police chief the public information officer we're all trying to say that or trying to paint the picture any way that kelly thomas was the aggressor and that the police did what was absolutely necessary but once that video came out obviously charges were filed. the city of fullerton fired since in the alley and ramos. and. some of the city council was recalled so really this is cured footage is is huge in this case it shows your home really filming police and other cases in the initial stages right now what happened in the courtroom so far. so well it was a very emotional day in court today security footage. that we're talking about the

video was played in full today from reporters that are inside of the courtroom today they reported several people in the audience started crying including the mother of kelly thomas cathy thomas during the recess she came out and talked to reporters talked to reporters talking about called difficult it was to watch her son being beat by the police officers in calling for help saying that dad help me and eventually not being able to not being able to understand what he was same because of the blood it was gurgling in is in his throat so today is the first day of testimony but already very eventful day in the courtroom ramon it's hard to not watch that thirty minute video and not get to be honest with you it's really emotional moment there really tragic let's talk about the i'm sorry the

defense's argument because as you mentioned before the surveillance camera came out they were saying that he was the aggressor and now they're saying kelly killed himself for the prosecutors are tampered the evidence to back up the police brutality charge how are they claiming this i mean can you elaborate on that. yeah well earlier this year the defense actually tried to get this whole case thrown out in defense motions lawyers claim that there's part there's some footage missing from this security footage the judge didn't buy it because obviously we're in court right now and and the d.a. is really. basing a lot of this case not just on that security camera but there's also other cell phone videos which captured part of the altercation and then again the defense trying to put it back on kelly thomas saying he's not a victim of police violence that he's really more a victim of his own bad habits trying to say that his heart was weak because of

years of drug abuse something that i'm sure that they'll try to prove some time during this court case on believable let's talk about punitive measures in the case against the police officers what would they get if they receive maximum penalty. former police officer he is facing second degree murder charges and. involuntary manslaughter he could go to prison for fifteen years to life in prison since anally facing involuntary manslaughter charges could he go to jail for or go to state prison excuse me for up to four years so this trial is expected to last six weeks why why no i mean being from oakland i know maisha lay the officer who actually responsible for oscar grant only ended up getting near months in prison so i you know i'm not expecting much but let's hope that the judge does the right thing ramon i know that when kelly first started there was of course

a lot of public outrage a lot of public reaction the case how monumental is it for orange county to try its own officers and is there still that mount of outrage now that trials initiated. well it's unprecedented i mean this is the first time that an orange county law enforcement officer is going on trial for murder and it is very rare for any sort of law enforcement officer involved in a deadly confrontation to go to trial so so i mean yeah there was quite a bit of anger especially after all these videos of the confrontation started coming out currently there are still protests being held in. in orange county outside the courthouse to show support for kelly thomas' family but this is really been. the attention that it's been getting in the media and from the public there in orange county is really a testament to the efforts that kelly thomas' father ron thomas the efforts that he has given to really try to keep this in the media putting stuff out on social media

and really trying to get people involved in all about the actions that the floor to police have been taking over the last couple years during this case and really quickly when we have about thirty seconds left but i cannot but what is the prosecution saying and how is that going to fare in the case sure well what was really interesting yesterday in opening statements is that. defense attorney actually said that police didn't use enough force on kelly thomas they tried to say that officers were calling for help because thomas was so violent and again prosecutors were expecting this that they're trying to trying to put kelly thomas on trial and distracting the jury from the actual events of that day trying to put something that happened in the ninety's and trying to put it in context to this confrontation that he had with ramos unbelievable thank you so much for being on the ground covering this really important story ramon going to. you bet coming up

i'll talk to a journalist is uncovered what n.s.a. employees talk to their families about over thanksgiving dinner. over. did you know the price is the only industry specifically mentioned in the constitution and. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy check albus. in fact the single biggest threat facing our nation today is the corporate takeover of

our government and across several weeks when a hydrangea try handful of transnational corporations that will profit by destroying what our founding fathers once told to us by tom hartman and on this show we reveal the big picture of what's actually going on in the world we go beyond identifying trying rational debate in a real discussion critical issues facing america if i ever feel ready to join the movement then walk a bit. stiff . and. just today the editor of the guardian so that his newspaper has only published one percent of edward snowden's n.s.a. leaks a stunning admission considering the nonstop revelations that have. fourth since

early june with all the negative press since it's not a surprise that the agency feels the need to fight back what is surprising however is the discovery made by my next guest that the n.s.a. actually gave their employees a list of talking points defending the agency that they could use a discussion with their family and friends of the thanksgiving holiday coming to stall investigative journalist for the website firedoglake published the memo yesterday which shows what the agency truly thinks of itself the talking points in this memo highlights items such as the n.s.a. is the warning of fifty four terrorist attacks the agency's protection of the entire world and the incredible sacrifices that n.s.a. agents make to protect our freedom i spoke to kevin earlier and started by asking him about the details behind the memo. obtained a copy of these talking points that the national security agency apparently sent out to employees ahead of the thanksgiving holiday with the intent that these

employees could talk about the talking points if the n.s.a. came up during any dinner gatherings so they were tasked with being ambassadors of the n.s.a. to talk about what the n.s.a. leadership thinks they do as an agency and let's go through some of the specific points outlined in the memo number two claims that quote the n.s.a. performs its mission the right way lawful compliant and in a way to protect civil liberties and privacy kevin what's your response. in the story that i wrote i did a full deconstruction of each of the talking points and for this one i highlighted a foreign intelligence surveillance court opinion that. there had been instances of another electronic surveillance this was about a year it was twenty and they were looking at the collection of e-mails the program

notes collecting in. communications and found that the n.s.a. was. becoming their routine leave making misstatements not representing accurately the restraints that they had put on the collection of the internet communications but also when making the representation they were going beyond what they had told the court so they were engaging in the collection of communications that they were all the right to communicate which i take to be not being lawful and compliant. indeed and this is my personal favorite the most or well in of all number five states that they quote the n.s.a. is committed to increase transparency public dialogue and faithful implementation of any changes required by our overseers have and if that's the case why is the entire file as a court secret. correct it's good and also if that's the case why do we have staff attorneys at the electronic frontier foundation and the american civil liberties

union who have spent the last five to ten years trying to pry not just me we're not talking about how these programs work we're talking about trying to pry what is the secret legal interpretation for whether our government united states government can spy on us as citizens or what sort of procedures do they have to follow what other ization do they have to get to engage in foreign intelligence surveillance you know this sort of thing is something that the n.s.a. is not want to talk about they were particularly didn't want to talk about it when warrantless wiretapping came up under the bush administration into the obama administration we've just seen it legalized and expanded and up until edward snowden there was absolutely no dialogue going on all stood out to you throughout the memo is just blatantly false. well i looked at they make this claim about not stealing industry secrets i actually have to point to a colleague in my profession marcy. wheeler who deconstructed that point and said

you know basically that they weren't denying that they steal industry secrets just that they don't do it for competitive advantage so it's not a commercial reason it's more strategic but we do know that based on documents that they targeted the private networks of a company like the state controlled petro process oil company in brazil and they have in fact done some targeting of industry secrets the other thing the other thing i looked at was the claims about not forcing changes to any vendors products and i took that to be addressing any sort of revelations that come out around them trying to weaken encrypt and it's just simply not true pope pro publica and the new york times both published stories that showed that they did have a goal of undermining the encryption and trying to make sure that they can keep sort of access to some of the products that might come out and everyone check it

out on firedoglake come in because you really do break it down and there's so much more to really go over including just plainly false statistics that are peddled over and over again about how many terrorist attacks and poor going to cetera from this information and really i guess the ultimate question is what does it say about the n.s.a. that it has to send their employees talking points about the agency to talk to their own families. that there are two things i would say to that was one i pointed out that these talking points while they appear to be intended for family members of n.s.a. employees they could also be for n.s.a. employees themselves we had edward snowden say to new york times reporter james rice and you thought the dissent inside the ranks was was palpable that he could sense that there were people inside of the agency i don't know how he knows this but he was making a claim that people inside the agency do have problems with how the leadership is running the agency but we've seen this before it was we've had whistleblowers come

out of the agency. like thomas drake kirk wiebe e. we've had others who have taken issue with how the n.s.a. is coordinating its programs so we know that this is a reasonable assertion to make that dissent inside the n.s.a. could be the issue but that also secondly i would say that you're sending home a document that tells people how to rebut claims that the agency is violating the law how to rebut claims that the agency is not respecting u.s. citizens civil liberties and i think that's a sad statement on the agency itself i mean you're having employees do the work that you're failing to do but you obviously are admitting that you're losing the game let's talk about another recent n.s.a. leak that the agency actually monitored the porn habits of six muslim targets how was the n.s.a. justifying this practice. the justification is that these are people who while they are not engaged in terrorism they admit i think we need to be clear that none of these targets were accused of being involved in any terrorism but

regardless they found these to be quote unquote radicalized or so people who had influence in these countries where the u.s. has operations and they were concerned that these radicalized theirs were being effective in their dangers of use against the united states and these views are range from being things like we believe the united states was behind nine eleven to things like i think that people in my country that are from the u.s. military are foreign occupiers and they should not be respected in fact should be driven out by people in my country and so these views oh so a view that non muslim people should not be allowed in in the country and things like that we're not talking about actual calls to violence against the united states necessarily and regardless these people were put under a microscope because the u.s. government the n.s.a.

bought. it would be fun to try to discredit these individuals so that they could be less effective by embarrassing them by showing possibly exposing that they look at porn so this goes against their religious values. real slippery slope they're having as you just mentioned i mean that's really really shocking. i don't even know what to say about that let's move on from the time let's talk about the fact that the media has completely shifted over from really talking about anything and as i say to now just completely obamacare and also just seems like not only the media coverage of the public pressure on the n.s.a. is really subsided since the bulk of the leaks came out is the public just jaded i mean what chance do you think that the wall see legislation passed in the near future as we know they have been nearly passed last time that will actually limit the n.s.a. has powers we have about a minute left but what i said to that is that there are many many more and they say stories to be coming out from even the guardian but then also from glenn greenwald

who has this new media project that he's going to be getting up next year and so that's part of why you've seen this lol and activity around it because we haven't we've had stories recently there's starting to come out i think the focus should be here on this the media had mike rogers and senator dianne feinstein come on their programs and talk about how al qaeda is a bigger threat than ever and candy crowley of c.n.n. did really nothing to challenge these assertions we need reporters who are going to question the claims that government officials are making and then we need media who are going to continue to cover some of these releases and we need people look at them at places like britain these countries where these organizations that are doing coverage of this are coming under attack and that's why people need to read your blog kevin to stall firedoglake to see that true integrity in reporting and really hold the n.s.a. is key to the fire thanks so much for coming on breaking it all down kevin casal. thank you.

with all the attention placed on the n.s.a.'s mass surveillance of american citizens it's easy to forget the other countries that are taking a page out of the agency's by a book just this past week and it was revealed that in two thousand and eight australia's surveillance agencies shared information about the country's citizens with its most trusted intelligence partners perhaps the most concerning part of this recently will be snowden documents was the discussion between these allies over whether or not to share the medical legal and religious information of australian citizens but this story is just a microcosm of the larger international spy in cobol working together to peer into every nook and cranny of the world so who exactly are these people and partners well they call themselves the five partnership made up of intelligence agencies and five english speaking countries the u.s. the u.k. australia canada and new zealand just like the i have sore on the all region

especially appropriate analogies and the lord of the rings was filmed in new zealand this is the five eyes agreement has been around since the end of world war two it was so secret that the program wasn't even disclosed to the public until two thousand and five on the surface this treaty is just a friendly agreement between allied nations that it's essential to stopping global terrorism but that the snowden leaks we now know just what an asinine agreement it's actually being used for just realist the knowledge and circumventing those pesky laws that prohibit warrantless surveillance of a country's own citizens in theory these nations are not allowed to spy on each other's people we all know rules are meant to be broken in two thousand and seven man is a analyze retained and a british citizens mobile phone number email and ip address wept up and its enormous dragnet another memo dated from two thousand and five shows that the n.s.a. was working on a procedure to spy on the other four countries and while one sentence in the memo

states that the. the u.s. and u.k. will not explicitly target each other very expensive as governments reserve the right to spy on each other citizens one of the best interest of each nation it's not open to interpretation at all look i think it's clear at this point that the myth of the american empire exporting freedom and democracy really means exporting surveillance and subjugation. and that's it for our show you guys join me again tomorrow when i break the set all over again.

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rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want. the windswept journey to can be an act of pennants in itself. alone doesn't also excitement or adventure yet many come here for months at a time some never leave until they say that the love saves them.