in oklahoma is no laughing matter carries a prison sentence of up to ten years these bogus charges is only distracting from the real issue the devastating effects fracking has on the humans and the environment just this week a new journal i'm sorry a new study from the journal and open ology found the link between the chemicals used in fracking and infertility birth defects and cancer but instead of worrying about these explosive revelations on fracking the government seems more concerned about the letter bombs and let's break the set. it was. very hard to take. that back with the terror threat there so.

although we're still three years away from the next presidential election the corporate media is already salivating over hillary clinton's potential candidacy so of course it's time to cue up all the important questions like can a woman really be commander in chief was absurd double standard when it comes to politics and gender is the subject of my next guest's book dr jackson katz is an expert on gender studies and the author of leading men presidential campaigns in the politics of manhood he joined me earlier discussed the underlined forces of gender politics as well as the role of masculinity when it comes to violent crime check it out. i want to play a clip. from the o'reilly factor back in two thousand and eight when hillary was

running for president. this is a broader base discussion about you get a woman in the oval office most powerful person in the world what's the downside. you mean besides the p.m.s. in the mood swings right. so how does this overt sexism about the emotionality of women play a role in the political narrative well there's a certain set of cultural biases and expectations about power and leadership and how it's exercised and many of those by a season expectations are very much gendered masculine and for example the presidency is very much a masculine institution the white house is the home of the first family the president is that head of the first family the president of the united states plays an incredibly in powerful symbolic role in the in the sort of larger cultural system of men power not not just that he that he has always been he of course plays

the role of chief executive of the country but in the symbolics and people age the role of him by the national manhood and so when women are trying to navigate that terrain when women are trying to get taken seriously for positions like they present a united states it's not just the obstacles of raising money or building support within the party they also have to overcome the categorical assumption that as women they are not really how can they embody the national manhood if they are a woman and by the way the president of the united states does embody the nation in a certain way and if the nation sees itself the united states as a masculine entity which it has been for since its inception dominated by white men then women have a really up hill road to climb so when a woman is trying to present herself or to be taken seriously you can expect that she's going to be cut down or some people are going to try to cut her down because she doesn't measure up to that standard which has been defined as very masculine

standards and in the book you also argue that certain policies are pursued by politicians because they appeal to white men can you elaborate on what these specific policies are and what tactics each party uses to appeal to the group. well i mean this whole i. this whole language of tough on crime tough on terrorism strong on foreign policy and national defense all this all gender and language that suggests that what we need is a is a strong man whose or person but certainly man is the assumption is the default assumption will be who will be willing to use force to establish or maintain our control in the world or further our interests then and that is very gendered language and so again for a woman to be taken seriously in that discourse she has to prove that she's manly enough. to be commander in chief or and by the way is not just the woman has to deal with men have to do it as well and one of the one of the ways the politics of the united states get pushed to the right regularly especially around military

policy foreign policy military spending is by men being undermined men's masculinity being undermined if they don't take a right wing position or a strong position in favor of military action they are then feminized they're seen as less than really a man they're not they don't have what it takes to be the strong man that we need to lead but i have to say in two thousand and twelve women did represent a record fifty three percent of voters and that number is only expected to rise in coming elections why was politicians continue to pursue male oriented policies and alternately they're losing this battle. well. you're right on there's a demographic shift that's happening and for example obama in two thousand and twelve lost the white male vote by twenty seven percentage points twenty seven percentage point he was the white male vote but he still won in the in a decisive election which is another measure of the declining power of the white

male vote as a as a percentage of the total vote and so so we are going to begin to see we have begun to see a shift in. in the political reality in the political calculus as as each each successive election cycle. white men have a smaller percentage of the total percentage of the both then you will see more hopefully more sane and sober discussion of issues. because because basically progressive candidates will be able to be elected without winning very many white male votes but historically the reason for this reason for the pandering to that particular way of framing the issues is that white men have had such a disproportionate influence in terms of their percentage of the voting electorate and i want to move on to another issue that you've been very outspoken about really fascinating the role of gender and mass shootings and homicide and just in general according to two thousand and seven bureau of justice statistics young men between the ages of fourteen and twenty four represent only seven percent of the population yet commit forty five percent of homicide what do you think is behind this insane

disparity. well i mean men commit over ninety percent of violent crime of all kinds and as well in school shootings that rampage killing men comprise ninety eight to ninety nine percent of those killers and yet in the mainstream conversation about school shootings and rampage killing which seem to happen with alarming frequency in this country there's very little discussion about gender as one of the categories the main category that people talk about are is mental illness and the availability of guns and yet the obvious rejoinder of the obvious response that we've doesn't seem to be that obvious because you don't hear it is well there's an awful lot of women who are and girls who are mentally ill there's an awful lot of girls and women who have access to guns why is ninety eight or ninety nine percent of the shootings done by men and young men and boys because obviously the answer is not it's not about mental illness or guns it's about a combination of cultural narratives about manhood and ideologies about manhood and

the availability of guns and in some cases mental illness and i think when i say cultural narrative one of the most powerful ways of thinking about violence especially when it comes to the. shooting the rampage killings is it generally is generally revenge killings by boys and men who have been bullied or and this on the other hand boys and men who have experienced great loss and rejection you know whether it's you know being laid off from jobs being broken up by the broken up by their where their houses by their wives or their girlfriends they feel feelings. facing rejection and other forms of disappointment and grief and then using violence to gain back something that they think has been taken from them girls and women don't have that same cultural narrative by the way which is reinforced in a hollywood movie that music and and television that there's so many different scripts in our culture that go over and play over and over video games write it if you've been if you're a man and something's been taken from you the way to take it back to violence which

is what we see in some of the shooting and of course institutionalize of course throughout the military as well but to wrap it up with about a minute left i think a lot of skeptics including women will say that you can call anything a gender issue or race issue how do you respond to criticism that these concepts are too abstract and don't provide a solution to the problem. well of course i would disagree i think the solution relies lies right straight squarely in the face of this issue i mean when it comes to violence but most important issue to look at is gender in my opinion of course we have to look at poverty and racism and and militarism and you know. the qualities of all kinds of course but again the numbers don't lie at the i mean vast majority of violence is perpetrated by men and boys even in situations where girls and women are living in the same conditions of poverty inequality and racism so obviously gender is incredibly important in category two exam and it's not readily in the middle to say that it's not against men it's just trying to be honest and

introspective and self-aware as as individuals and as a societal level a more broad think aboard a broad perspective and understand what's going on and what we do differently how can we define the really important insight thank you so much for coming on breaking it down dr jackson cause author of leading men. thank you very much. if you live in america and walk to television then you probably think that you have anxiety depression and restless leg syndrome and that's because the us is only one of two countries in the entire world that is allowed to have direct to consumer advertising for prescription pills but check this out that in the journal of general internal medicine has found that six out of every ten claims made in these commercials are misleading but hey at least when we self diagnose we have the

doctors looking out for health and not the pockets of big pharmaceutical companies right well in many cases doctors are paid by big pharma to peddle their drugs doesn't twelve alone the world's largest pharma corporation glaxo smith kline had a record three billion dollars in fines brought by allegations that they bribed u.s. doctors are prescribing dangerous drugs which probably has something to do with the recent change of heart about this unconscionable practice of paying doctors to promote pills andrew witty the company's chief executives said quote we recognize that we've an important role to play in providing doctors with information about our medicines but this must be done clearly transparently and without any perception of conflict of interest but that's not all the firm also announced a commitment to stop linking employee bonuses to how many drugs they sell and they're urging the rest of the pharmaceutical industry to follow whoa whoa whoa doctors making decisions based on positive health effects instead of how much money

is thrown their way that's just way too old for pharma company so either g.s. case president is on drugs in self or it's a christmas miracle either way i'll take it. coming up i'll speak with a member of parliament who's trying to get tony blair charged as a war criminal. i wonder if we can add democracy at least expansion is democracy of the kind us dollars by george w. bush to that least a few tolkien ideologies on par with communism on par with nazis mon part of it's militant really gents you know the ideology is that's going to make lead to an increase in violence i think the problem is the idea that by military force the property of the government create a state of anarchy and hope that democracy would spontaneously but also.

on the money with the business of russian business. if you. know opportunity. to construct your. bed. give don't want to be gangstas in a lot of. little ones that blow with the time that the kid came to be with you can you see. just me the others i was in i was in the hood. but i said.

i don't want to die i just really do not want to die young young. the the. last month are two launched a new opinion show called sputnik hosted by the respect party member of parliament george galloway now if you're not familiar with galloway you should be taking on the u.n. over its oil for food program or blasting the western empire in the halls of parliament galloway has done it all over the course of his decades long career and earlier this year galloway launched a kickstarter to create and promote a film called the killing of tony blair although he only asked for fifty thousand pounds to make it he received to well over one hundred sixty thousand pounds on a project to date alan joined me earlier from london and i first asked him what

he's hoping to achieve but the film. first objective is to have mr blair removed as the so-called peace and boy which is the most inappropriate appointment since college appointed to his horse as a pro con so overall secondly to make him so toxic that decent people and decent corporation. as if they exist will no longer wish to hire him and highest aspiration is to have him on trial at the hague on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes now that's a very ambitious movie but it's not as far fetched a set of objectives as it once would have looked and so we have now more than six thousand donors to this movie growing every day and i think this film is going to be one of the films of twenty fourteen i hope so that has

a raft of executive producers of note including mike skies are abby martin of artie proud producer george i'm really excited about how well the phones are and i cannot wait to see it other than doctoring up evidence for the iraq war briefly touch upon the other crimes that you think tony blair is responsible for that we might not know about here in the us well the titled the killing of tony blair is triple on the first killing was his killing of the labor party as we knew it and i was a member of it for thirty six years before he expelled me in two thousand and four and abolished my parliamentary constituency hoping that one way or another he'd be rid of me the killing of the labor party was a crime against the working people of britain because every country needs a liberal party including your own country i may see a party that will stand up for working people whose interests are and to separate

from the interests of other classes in the society the second killing is obvious it's the killing of a million people in iraq and in afghanistan and by extension in lebanon and in palestine and many other places other third killing is the financial killing that mr blair is making. it took the previous two killings by destroying the labor party and made britain safer for the corporations he made the tax bills shrink he made the regulatory burden disappear and now they're rewarding him for all of that financially by paying him sums of money simply i want to ring he now entered the sunday times rich list he is wolfishly one of the richest people in britain let's hope that when tony blair is brought to the hague because your film he'll not plead athlete to wealthy to have

a moral conscience of what we just saw here in the us shocking president sat there let's move on to parliament recently the editor in chief of the guardian along with journalist glenn greenwald were called to testify under britain's terrorism law written said that the u.k. government is trying to equate journalism with terrorism as a member of parliament yourself do you what do you see as the real purpose of these hearings well it's a range of intellectual really into physical to the british security services and to the tauriel rooms did a thorough floor of the guardian newspaper and broke hard disks on a newspaper's computer smashed them into pieces this is even by the standards of the british state step not only too far but one that has never been taken before at least not in peacetime we are perpetually at war so that's what they might see in justification but of course the guardian was only telling us what our rulers are

doing and doing with our money and in our name and the idea that they should be allowed not only to keep these things secret but when these secrets revealed to take such draconian punitive biological measures as invading newspaper offices and breaking up their hard disks is truly extraordinary and the more shocking still is that the rest of the. british media has completely ignored this story as indeed they have more or less completely ignored the snowden affair in any detail right from the beginning i want to move on to syria because there is a huge story that just came out of course relating to you directly dr abbas khan a british man held by assad's forces were scheduled be handed over to you instead found tragically dead george according to security officials who committed suicide i mean can you tell us any more information about this case it was to be a christmas gesture and then four days before my departure he was found

dead in his cell now there are two things that must be obvious here first of all. did not order of the killing of this man that would be simply because if he was going to do so why did he make such extensive arrangements for me of all people someone who stood by syria through all of this terrible three years to go to damascus to pick up the prisoner if he was going to execute them he definitely would not have done equally obviously though i'm sorry to say it's pretty inexplicable pretty implausible dr khan committed suicide because he knew that i was coming in four days to take him home he was elated. he said so to his mother and in letters home to his sister and brother and so the idea that dr

khan committed suicide just before getting his freedom is equally implausible. i'm afraid leads to a very very dark. option and that is that somebody inside the opera of the syrian state is not under the control of the president i did fact set out to break gesture being made by the president or sort. well unfortunately are so many state actors involved with all their vested interest it's really hard to tell who is telling the truth without being a pawn in this global chess game george i'm really happy or keep the pressure hopefully we get answers soon but i want to move on to this accidental drone bombing at a wedding in yemen by the us what do you think would happen if a wedding was accidently bombed here in america or in britain by yemen the even more despicable part of this story is the promise you this has not even made the news neither the b.b.c.

nor mr murdoch sky news have yet reported that perhaps dozens of guests in a wedding convoy in yemen were destroyed torn into pieces from a sofa somewhere in washington presumably or elsewhere in the united states someone pressing a button and wiping out a wedding convoy the paradox is unbelievable they are prepared to destroy innocent wedding guests in yemen in their war against al qaida and yet they are arming and funding al qaeda in syria that's the point i've been trying to make about the doctor of us can story britain is up to its neck as is the united states in blood and gore in syria but they're on the side of al-qaeda in syria whilst the wiping out waiting guests in yemen supposedly in a war against al qaida and of course they're getting away with it because the

so-called mainstream media simply a very sits passes by on the other side of the road and the question you asked me of course doesn't even need. a manager if iran had bombed a wedding party in the united states or bombed a wedding party. in britain imagine if the chinese navy was in the florida straits in the way that the united states navy is in the south china sea imagine of pres the shooter was on the streets of mexico agitating anti american. in the way that john mccain is on the streets of kiev. the russian feeling if you begin to put these part of boxes like in them up i mean

you don't know whether to laugh or cry so farfetched. and yet it's really happening oh man of all i'm laughing right now because it is just so absurd a contradiction is staggering i would imagine that we would be in world war three right now george if that happened and speaking of the scenario yemen you know we would definitely i mean look at the look at the reaction when president clinton paid for a page. in the wall street journal of the new york times or where it was imagine that he showed up on anti american demonstrations in canada can you imagine it well at european and american leading politicians are doing it's the reverse iron curtain george speaking of the scenario yemen now banned drones in our country the u.k. government has already made a statement it's not ruling out a drone but i mean them in the future. is the government already ignoring yemen sovereign decision here pakistan made the same sovereign decision but it hasn't

stopped britain and america fighting drone missiles. pakistan don't give a damn about the national sovereignty of pakistan and more fool pakistan for continuing to describe itself as an ally of the very people who are bombing them. in the case of yemen the political situation is a big. less clear but nonetheless the mini government's sovereignty doesn't help to a row of beans these countries will be bombed and when white men in britain and black president in the united states have their kill meetings on tuesdays or thors this and decide that they're going to fire rockets these people remember president obama made a joke about it he said. boy friends sniffing around his daughters

you don't see them coming just like drawn missiles it's true you don't see them coming until your wife is minus her head sitting next to you until your daughter is lying in pieces in front of your eyes you don't see them coming but the hatred and bitterness that they leave behind is sowing dragons deep for a terrible harvest further down the line because i'll tell you this if my family was wiped out by a drone i would devote the rest of my life and i'd encourage my sons to devote the rest of their lives to getting revenge on the people who had destroyed us and one thing we can see coming is the wave of anti-american sentiment in the wake of all these drone massacres george let's wrap this up you've got a show on this network now it's called sputnik talk about the show is how people can find it we've got

a minute left sputnik orbiting the world with me george good and my wife. and we are located in london and i hope that people will check it out on the website of r.t. and follow us underscore sputnik follow us on you tube so i'm very glad on this and on many other things to be a convert of yours about same it to you george. much respect u.k. parliament member respect party amazing to have you on. that's our show tonight you guys thank you so much for watching and join me again tomorrow when i break all over again have a great night. drop some of the sixteen percent of feeds you imports came from illegal fishing. the european union is ironically taking fish from some of the poorest nations on earth

so this is a very serious and very urgent problem that needs immediate international action. they enter our territorial waters they fish they load this fish into the ships and leave for europe. to day illegal fishing just taking the bread out of our mouths. martin's consumer p.c.'s and i see what many in the country is the federal government would simply say is property of the united states government. this the united states number demijohn it was done in public has to realize it can't just by . just throw it away this is a problem for instance belongs to the united states environmental protection agency and i found this on a dump site here this is in the theater it's not always alone on the produce of the

bees and that's what i have to should be able to collect these though i believe that this should be responsible for the approval from cradle to grave. for mexico comment of mine told no property will sell to merge from the corporate or all but also belongs to the washington metro area transit authority to the properties of a dentist aids page and trademark office. right to see. first street. and i think the church. for. instance.

could be in the. president says he's ready to sign a pardon for russian tycoon mikhail khodorkovsky who spent more than a decade behind bars for embezzlement and tax of asian. i'm just international says hardline syrian rebels have established a new form of tyranny and forcing a reign of terror with secret prisons where children as young as eight and the. pride and prejudice london projects and fund the food banks despite hundreds of thousands of people in britain going hungry our top stories this hour.