the. what's happening to folks i'm abby martin and this is a break in the set last week a sixteen year old texas teenager named ethan couch was sentenced for killing four people and severely injuring two others while driving belligerently drunk so knowing texas is penchant for punishment one can only assume that this kid got at least a couple of years behind bars nope and so the judge gave him ten years probation and a trip to a four hundred fifty thousand dollars rehab facility lindsay lohan style. it was suffering from a debilitating illness called affluenza and it is a rich parents of spoiled him so badly that he's never had the chance to develop something called morals because there's no better punishment for

a spoiled brat than to send him to a celebrity rehab center if you don't think this is about class or race for that matter one only has to look at another verdict by the same judge from just last year where a fourteen year old black teen killed someone in a fight was sentenced to ten years behind bars but as ridiculous as this case is what's most terrifying is the precedent that it sets what's stopping bush administration war criminals and wall street crooks from pleading out who won at the i.c.c. or new york federal court. look guys this is america where two tiered justice is now served on a silver platter now let's break this up. to a. very hard to take. that act would that hurt right there the.

guys a lot has been percolating in the news lately but there is one story is so bizarre that i can't really blame the corporate media for taking the time to report it. controversy over a man who stood next to president obama at the on the podium at mandela's memorial the sign. in language interpreter some in the deaf community are saying he's a fake whose gestures weren't sign language at all a day off to be exposed as a fake tom suddenly hits back at his accusers blaming his bizarre sign language on

schizophrenia he says he was seeing angels a local reporter claims he is used to charges for murder rates breaking and entering. no. wrong is right there al and wait did they just say that this guy had faced charges for rape theft and murder there is apparently the fake signer is not only a schizo friend of kristi's angels but also has ties to a group responsible for a series of violent murders the corporate media has been fed enough material about him to keep us distracted well into two thousand and fourteen so what is being missed in lieu of the skits signing saga for starters the conversation about mental illness in the wake of sandy hook shooting anniversary and it's the continuing gun debate these complex underlying causes of violence are rarely addressed after all suicide has risen at least fifteen percent in the last decade not to mention continuing to mental health care across the country do this questor but an even

crazier story that's been completely ignored by the is the fact that obama authorized a drone to blow up seventeen human beings on their way to a wedding in yemen last week you have treated us form it seems like this administration has an affinity for blowing up what even parties and funerals and what was their justification because ok that was allegedly part of a convoy which proved later to be false causing obama to back pedal and claim it was a grave mistake a grave and deadly mistake indeed one that pushed yemen's parliament to ban drone strikes altogether whether or not the u.s. will respect yemen sovereignty is another story so while we all pay attention to the signer behind the man maybe we should be attention paying. to the man behind the joystick.

right now torrential downpours and bucketing snow is the bill of hate in many countries in the middle east especially israel and palestine around jerusalem more than fifty thousand homes have incurred blackouts after hundreds of power lines collapsed but it seems like israelis are faring quite well and are able to deal with the many feet of snowfall being dumped over the country however gaza is a different story entirely what has been described as a disaster area by the un there is flooding two meters high already five thousand palestinians have been forced to evacuate from their homes so why is israel coping but gaza a complete nightmare earlier i spoke to phyllis bennis and i first asked her why there is such a huge dichotomy in the same general area. it's a disaster and the reason is the people of gaza one point eight million people are essentially imprisoned in a big open air prison and they remain under occupation the siege of gaza remains so israel controls what goes in what goes out which mainly means nothing who goes in

who goes out which mainly means no one so people are trapped and when you're living in housing which now has been destroyed largely because from november first when a huge fuel storage because remember israel controls everything with those in and out of fuel shortage hits the gaza strip and one of the things that affects aside from hospitals clinics all of those things and homes is the sewage treatment plant it's not something we usually talk about very much it's not very dramatic but what happened here was dramatic because what happened when you have eighteen hour and twenty hour a day blackouts of electricity the sewage treatment plant stops working and that means rivers of raw sewage flowing in the streets of gaza there were pictures of children wading through. lakes of sewage on their way to school because there was no way to avoid it then it gets into houses there have been forty thousand people evacuated in the last five days because their houses were inundated with snow with

rain and the rain picks up these lakes of raw sewage and sweeps it into the houses and now we're hearing things are a little better that some fuel got in on an emergency basis which is good the the sewage treatment and the electrical generating plant are starting to run again but the idea that people can go back to their homes when it has had a foot of sewage in the house and be able to clean that out it means the house is going to have to be destroyed and rebuilt and there's no. there's no goods available for construction materials they're not allowed some fuel that's allowed in but no construction materials so we don't get to rebuild the houses why because gaza remains under siege gaza remains under occupation so this is what we're dealing with it was an incredible storm you know the israelis suffered some from it there was there were big blackouts there were complaints why did the government do this and that and the government said well because this doesn't happen very often so we're not going to waste a huge amount of money investing in prevention of the attack of a of a storm that's going to happen once every one hundred fifty years or something but

they are not living under occupation the people of gaza are they have no way to rebuild they have no protection the roofs leak there are no windows often construction has been halted on new homes because there were no no construction materials to continue this is what we're dealing with day to day and keep in mind abby that the population of gaza is forty percent children that's who is being punished for this it does not help or hurt the regime it helps that it hurts the people of gaza i'm going to mention that they were already incurring blackouts days before if not weeks before eighteen twenty four hours i mean it's just unbelievable what's happening there i want to bring this up really quickly before we're going to blockade more according to hamas officials israel opened dams outside the gaza strip. baited the flooding israel on the other hand says the dam in question can't be opened when we're looking at a conflict but this information is so suppressed and it's so one sided how we know what's going on often we can't know the exact details i don't know the details of

the dam was it flooded could it be i don't know it's not the point the point is the occupation is what needs to end if there were no occupation the issue of was the dam deliberately flooded or not would not be an issue nobody would be flooding territory deliberately but if you're talking about a military occupation which is now going on in the west bank and the gaza strip and east jerusalem since one thousand sixty seven and with the expulsion of seven hundred fifty thousand palestinians from what is now israel back in one thousand nine hundred eighty eight you're talking about an incredibly vulnerable population of refugees and of people living under occupation and that's the problem that's the root of the problem until we deal with ending the occupation that's why the question of the role of the united states becomes primary the united states is in charge of these so-called peace talks that we're hearing so little about because we don't want to we don't want to jeopardize anything you know we don't want to jinx it we hear well i can pretty much promise that the talks are going to collapse why

because they're based on the same theory as they've always been based on twenty one years of failed diplomacy we're about to make it twenty two and why does that happen because the us is in control if the us is serious about diplomacy let them start by making a precondition that israel open the borders into gaza period full stop i couldn't agree more talk about this blockade that has existed since two thousand and six talk about why it was implemented in the first place and what goods we're talking about because according to israel there are only not a lot of things that could be construed as weapons the gazans had the temerity in two thousand and six added as did palestinians in the west bank as well in the elections of two thousand and six that were deemed free and fair by every international as well as local election observers including the carter center they elected a majority support for hamas now those of us who were there right. for the election though that a lot of people voted for hamas not because they love him out so much but because they were so angry at the corruption and failure of the fattah led palestinian authority so this was a political debate that was going on to wins the election and israel's response is

we're not going to deal with these people they don't recognize us the way we want them to we're going to slap and increasingly harsh embargo a blockade on the entire gaza strip one point eight million people have been under some version of the blockade it's gotten worse it was loosened at one point after enormous pressure but it's basically been controlled by israel of everything that goes on in gaza we hear sometimes wait a minute the gaza. occupation is over israel pulled out in two thousand and five well that's partly true they pulled out the soldiers they pulled out the settlers what do they do with the soldiers they redeployed them instead of being deployed in gaza city they are now deployed on the surface edges of gaza on the border between gaza and israel so gaza is now surrounded israel controls the borders it controls the water the fishermen of gaza are not allowed to go out more than about two miles which means they catch very few fish because there's nothing left that close into shore israel controls the air space doesn't allow gaza to rebuild the airport that

israel bombed doesn't allow them to rebuild the port that they destroyed so gaza is completely surrounded completely controlled by israel and walled in so when israel bombs gaza as it has over and over again most notably of course in two thousand and eight and nine in operation cast lead the israelis claim what we gave them notice we dropped leaflets they had nowhere to go they could not leave the gaza strip because they live in this enclosed open air prison that was the beginning of the sanctions period those sanctions have only gotten worse so you have now a almost a generation of gaza children who have been born and grown up who are now six seven years old who have known nothing but this kind of. now what they keep out changes when there's more pressure they open up and they quote ease the sanctions for a while they weren't allowing in pasta because it was considered a luxury they could have rice but no pasta pasta is

a luxury children getting chocolate oh no children do not deserve chocolate if they're palestinian children israeli children can have all the chocolate they want as children should children should be allowed to have chocolate palestinian children in gaza were not allowed to have chocolate because it was a luxury no luxuries were to be allowed and there was actually an israeli cabinet decision that determined how many calories total should be allowed into the gaza strip on a daily basis and they said we don't want to starve them we just want to put them on a diet so this is what we're dealing with a little bit of fuel has now been allowed in there was an emergency shipment of of fuel paid for by cutter that's all fine but that's not going to solve the problem the problem is occupation it seems like palestine gaza is completely fallen off the radar and it's all the instead of going on the world what can we do here in america to help these people who are suffering right now keep in the united states it is united states support to the tune of three point two billion dollars a year to the tune of massive support for israel and protection of israel united

nations that makes possible the continuation of israeli occupation and israeli apartheid organizations like the us campaign to end the israeli occupation jewish voice for peace these are the organizations that are working to change u.s. policy to stop this the b.d.s. movement the boycott divestment and sanctions all of these campaigns are crucial the goal for us in this country we don't live in israel we don't live in palestine we live here and our obligation is to change our government so that these things do not happen again thank you so much amazing insight as always phyllis bennis director of the new internationalism project the institute for policy studies appreciate you. coming up out of an exclusive interview with a man who says the obama administration has cheated small businesses a billion dollars. i got a quote for you. it's pretty tough to. say what it's about story. let's get this guy like you would smear about john stead of working for the people

most issues the mainstream media are working for each other bridegrooms vision. opportunities. were they did rather well. i think. they would like to do is show that 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 trek albus. in fact the single biggest threat facing our nation today is the corporate takeover of our government and across several we've been a hydrogen client handful of transnational corporations that will profit by destroying what our founding fathers once told to us by 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 trying to fix rational debate and

a real discussion critical issues facing america if i ever feel ready to join the movement then welcome to the big picture. of. the the. small businesses are often called the backbone of america's economy and it's easy to see why when the u.s. census bureau ninety nine point seven percent of all u.s. companies employ five hundred people. last ninety three in two thousand and eleven small businesses accounted for sixty four percent of all newly created jobs in fact they're considered so important that laws are in place to ensure that these firms have fair access to government contracts by the law the government must provide at least twenty three percent of all federal contracts to small businesses i mean excuss claims that the small business administration which is responsible for

handing out these contracts is breaking the law lloyd gardner is the president and founder of the small business elite he joins me now to discuss these revelations thanks so much for coming on lloyd. let's start by talking about this yet to be released a legal opinion from professor charles tiefer one of the foremost experts on federal contract in law he claims that over the last decade small businesses have been cheated out of as much as a trillion dollars can you briefly outline how this happened and what kind of documentary evidence he has to make this claim. all right well professor chief for israel the nation's leading federal contracting law he was a commissioner on the commission on wartime spending in iraq and afghanistan and he said extensive research in his research really complies with what done a lot of other people which shows that the federal acquisition budget is actually one point one trillion that's significant because federal law is the small businesses are supposed to get twenty three percent of all government contracts

which would be around two hundred fifty three billion a year well the government is using a number that's less than half of the real acquisition budget which is about four hundred eighty and they're claiming that last year small businesses scott eighty nine billion and most of that went to fortune five hundred four so that's a real one hundred ninety eight maybe two hundred billion a year it's gone on for a decade so you're talking about in the last ten years american small businesses have been cheated out of about two trillion dollars and that's just unbelievable and it's again this is professor t. for one the nation's leading experts. he says it's fraud and i agree with him completely so you're saying it's intentional fraud i mean how many contracts are really talking about here going off to fortune five hundred companies instead of small businesses. you're talking thousands of contracts the last year or two hundred thirty five fortune five hundred firms got federal small business contracts

and number fred what's happening is i'm afraid president obama is going to close a small business duration within the next thirty days to try to cover up the abuses his as his rationale for trying to close the s.b.a. just to save three hundred million dollars a year well that's that's ridiculous at the same time he's proposed to close the s.b.a. to save three hundred million he's going to spend seven billion dollars to build power plants in africa and literally trillions of dollars are unaccounted for at the pentagon and the federal reserve so it's a ludicrous to close the only agency in america to help the twenty eight million small businesses that create over ninety percent of net new jobs for three hundred million dollars so when you look at professor teachers opinion when you look at the investigations for b.s.p. the inspector general that obama appointed and all the other investigation that have been done by federal agencies about the media clearly there's rampant fraud and abuse of the small business i've been cheated out of over i'll say right around a trillion dollars and i think president obama is going to close the s.b.a.

to try to cover well as you just mentioned he's yet appointed a replacement for karen mills who resigned over ten months ago i mean it's really amazing how reluctant they are to have replaced this really important position let's talk about what they're alleging is happening here they're saying it's because of anomalies and human error that all of these contracts are going to fortune five hundred companies you allege that that's not the case you're saying this is deliberate what's the motive what's the reason to give these contracts the giant corporations well you know basically i think the government is corrupt i think what's happening at the s.b.a. a systematic what's happening in every agency but. it's about a grevious large corporations want. that money we're talking about you know two hundred fifty billion dollars a year they want the money so they've lobbied congress and work with federal agencies to get policies you know to divert the money to them. but it is kind of interesting that says karen mills resigned by the way he's appointed two hundred seventy people to fill vacant positions but he hasn't filled anybody to take over

the s.b.a. i get i think that's very clear evidence that he's trying to to close yes pay to cover up these rampant abuses has he given us and has why he hasn't fulfilled that position. no that's interesting another way is to not. just explain that but it's been uncovered by the major media. you know you won't see any stories in the mainstream media talking about the fact that he's appointed two hundred seventy people but not anyone to have the s.b.a. you won't see one in mainstream media mentioning that he's cheated small businesses out of over trillion dollars since he took office. this is the skews about anomalies that's really kind of comical anomaly would be a random occurrence right right like getting hit by lightning or flipping a coin and on a federal contractor you are small or large so if people were making random mistakes half the time they would report an award to a small business as being

a large business contract and half the time they would pour into war to a small business of being a large mrs contractor but castle itself out right we don't see that every year for a decade we see billions and billions of dollars being reported as going to large corporations so this excuse of anomalies in this coding and computer glitches it's just it's absurd and i think what really perturbed me is this is been going on for decades and at ten years not one reporter in america's ever asked by the government to explain why they suppose that random anomalies always diverts federal small business contracts from small businesses and given to big business it's now. on several other topics the first thing i want to ask let's talk about that because why i mean we live in a corporatocracy that's not really surprising that these contacts are being doled out to giant corporations but why the media i mean beyond just corporate media even independent media why have there been has there been no follow up to this story lloyd and you claim that you've been censored trying to tell the story but i don't see how that claim well i'm afraid i think everybody knows that the media in

america is predominantly liberal and i fell in the wrong little after all come on lloyd it's run by i. think i have problems yeah. yeah well let's just say this. when you when you see a liberal media outlet they just won't do stories that are not flattering to president obama and you know to tell you truth will have to say i'm puzzled really why this is happening but you just don't see it happening if you go on you tube got a you tube channel. on you tube and look at the stories you don't see a single story that questions this anomaly excuse you don't see a single story that talks about the fact the small business of the cheated out of a trillion dollars and you don't see the mention the word fraud so we've seen the s.p. inspector general mentioned fraud we've seen a. fraud professor t.

for whose opinion is irrefutable and i will i'm so sorry off we're out of time we'll look out for that legal brief and we'll definitely follow up thank you so much for coming on breaking down that really complicated issue lloyd chaplin president founder american small business league really appreciate your time. i. you know if there's one news program that's been absolutely killing it lately it's sixty minutes whether it's trumpeting a fraudulent report on benghazi allowing cia black baggers to spew revisionist his . three or running an ad campaign for amazon drones this hollow shell of a news show has really represented the best in journalistic integrity but yesterday's story on the n.s.a. might just take the cake for agree just propaganda touted as an opportunity for the n.s.a. to tell their side of the story about snowden's leaks the report was unabashedly biased from the opening seconds. of explosion i once worked in the office of the

director of national intelligence where i saw firsthand how secretly the n.s.a. operates. yeah it's pretty much an infomercial you guys that's what sixty minutes has become and let me get this straight sixty minutes actually shows john miller who worked for the director of national intelligence to do a story on the n.s.a. i guess conflict of interest just isn't a term that sixty minutes producers are familiar with not to mention miller left out a couple of important notes in his full disclosure you see previously worked for the n.y.p.d. and the l.a.p.d. and helped establish the l.a.p.d. as counterterrorism and criminal intelligence bureau and they're in there is the report itself see according to everyone's favorite four star general keith alexander the n.s.a. has just been misunderstood you guys they misunderstood by the american public and they have two very important missions. we need to help

the american people understand what we're doing and why we're doing it and to put it simply we're doing two things we're defending this country from future terrorist attacks and we're defending our civil liberties and privacy. it's here that currently that the n.s.a. actually defends people's privacy and civil liberties that's right i forgot that civil libertarians are really into collecting five billion phone records a day creating unconstitutional monitoring programs data mining the world tracking millions of cell phone call occasions spine in the world of work of gamers and overseen people's porn habit but alexander's next challenge statement about whether n.s.a. activities are legal really makes you wonder if sixty minutes producers are on the government payroll themselves. there was nobody willfully or knowingly trying to break the law. well you can add another whopper to alexander's increasing web of lies especially since we've actually known since august thinks the n.s.a.

is own inspector general that in multiple cases analysts have purposely skirted laws to spy on americans but miller probably just didn't have enough time to follow up so what exactly was this so-called sixty minutes report well i can't answer that question any better than forbes tech writer andy greenberg tweeted this sixty minutes opposite has been a pretty good infomercial for the n.s.a. so far did anyone catch that one eight hundred number so i can order yup infomercial that's what sixty minutes has become a news program that's more concerned with selling the lie than reporting the truth . that's our show you guys thanks for watching today join me again when i break the set all over again all over again all week until then have a great night. the same story doesn't make it news no softball interviews no puff pieces some tough

questions if you. got a quote for you. it's pretty tough. they were it's a story. it's just this guy like we're about done stead of working for the people go to the beach. for a joke right on stage. i

would rather ask questions to people in positions of power instead of speaking on their behalf and that's why you can find my show larry king now right here on r.t. question for.

when i was a child i always dreamed of becoming an actor. but a sailor. people know me as. the mobile phone. and sadly i've got no other family. i'm still looking for my calling in life. so my place in the world. sometimes fighting helps me get close to let go. among a label tell me i'm a legend. yet again but really. i'm just an ordinary man up.