coming up on r.t.o. white house appointed for view board made its way to capitol hill to make a case for n.s.a. surveillance changes but will lawmakers and the white house agree on any meaningful reforms when have a report from capitol hill just. found in some parts of west virginia it's now safe to drink the tap water but not everyone can drink from the fountain after last week's chemical spill also state judge has a warning for the company responsible for the leak details coming up. and an undercover drug deal exposed the d.d.a. and justice department secretly met with members of the mexican drug cartel all mexican authorities were left in the dark find out how the u.s. was doing the cartels dirty work later in the show.

it's tuesday january fourteenth four pm in washington d.c. i'm near a david and you're watching r t. we are now just three days away from a speech president obama is expected to give regarding the changes he's willing to make to satisfy concerns over the n.s.a. surveillance programs one of the most important questions to be addressed is whether the government will continue to collect millions of americans phone records in order to identify anyone it believes might be connected to terrorism but beyond the question of whether the program can continue is who would be responsible for storing the data one suggestion that's been proposed to the president is shifting the storage of the phone records from the n.s.a. to the phone companies themselves that's exactly what was explored today by obama's review group on intelligence and communications technologies and a special senate judiciary hearing former obama administration officials met to

talk about this and other possible and i say reforms are too political commentator sam sacks is on the hill and brings us more president obama's own independent and it's a review panel issued forty six recommendations to reform the spy agency and today members of that panel are on capitol hill fielding questions from the senate judiciary committee on how congress should go about reforming you have a set of some ideas including adding more transparency to the n.s.a.'s requests for data from private companies changing the n.s.a.'s leadership structure and rethinking foreign surveillance on world leaders and the entire foreign population is a lot of the reforms will require congressional action and stays here and you know on friday the president will lay out which reforms he supports but the most significant question today in the rest of the week is what happens the n.s.a.'s bulk phone metadata collection program which has been ruled likely unconstitutional by one federal court but up held by another federal court the president is spy

chiefs and chairs of the congressional intelligence committees have defended the bulk collection program calling it a critical tool for preventing terror attacks. however the white house's independent review panel found no evidence that such bulk collection prevented any terrorist attacks they suggest stripping the n.s.a. of its power to collect and store americans metadata and instead movie it to telecom companies to administer these massive databases and that's an idea the white house reportedly may get behind but one that telecom companies have been hesitant to endorse and one that privacy advocates say does nothing but shift privacy abuses from the government to transnational corporations now the chairman of the senate judiciary committee senator patrick leahy has his own ideas about the n.s.a.'s bulk collection of americans phone metadata he thinks the program should be terminated and he's sponsoring legislation to do just that but he is facing opposition from lawmakers cozy with the surveillance state to real quick things to

keep in mind one the president could on his own and the bulk phone records collection program he could do it this week and he doesn't need congress's approval fortunately he's not expected to do that and you might remember following the edward snowden revelations the white house moved quickly to stop spying directed at a few dozen world leaders but the white house has not shown the same willingness to stop spying directed at tens of millions of ordinary citizens in the u.s. and in places like germany and brazil so we'll have to hear if the white house is reconsidering its position on friday into don't forget about the courts the courts don't care what the white house or congress is doing and they're going to have their say on the constitutionality of the of the n.s.a.'s bulk collection spying program eventually and it will likely be the final say on capitol hill in washington d.c. sam sachs r t. and we're now learning that the u.s.

made efforts to oust afghan president hamid karzai by attempting to manipulate the country's election in two thousand and nine this is all according to the headline making book by former defense secretary robert gates and the book called duty memoirs of a secretary at war gates called this attempt to influence afghan elections ugly he said quote it was all ugly our partner of the president of afghanistan was tainted and our hands were dirty as well our future dealings with karzai always hugely problematic and his criticisms of us are at least more understandable in the context of our clumsy and failed pooch karzai has long claimed that us the us tried to manipulate the two thousand and nine election to remove him from power in response to the allegations one karzai spokesman said that this confirms that their specific mission is true karzai and ministration officials have also pointed to this as reason to hold off signing a bilateral security agreement that would allow for u.s.

troops to stay in the country after the twenty fourteen deadline however washington has insisted there was no manipulation involved the book which gives gates' perspective on the u.s. occupation of afghanistan is scheduled to hit bookstores today. and two former california police officers were found guilty late yesterday in the beating death of kelly thomas attorneys trying to make the case to a jury that fullerton officers men while ramos and nellie abuse their authority when they responded to a call that thomas was breaking into cars in two thousand and eleven officers had used a stun gun and baton to shoot thomas a thirty seven year old schizo from a homeless man a surveillance video in the area happened to catch the altar cation on camera by the end of the beating thomas' face was bloodied and disfigured he went into a coma and died five days later ramos and cheech and nellie both faced involuntary manslaughter charges in the aftermath but after a brief deliberations were ultimately acquitted in response to the verdict thomas'

father ron thomas had this to say. it's hard launch for police officers everywhere can be just killers whatever they want. because it has been proven right here today . to get away with they'll get away with it he was so innocent. it just it just isn't fair at all they murdered my star and they get away with it and here discuss this a little bit more i'm joined by our teens from mundelein know in our l.a. studio now are known i think a lot of people are less stunned by the verdict in this case a coroner's office said that thomas died from damage caused by his the beating by police officers but he wasn't able to get enough oxygen because police had compressed his chest when they were beating him you know that seems like very strong evidence how did the defense argue against that yeah well the prosecution really their whole case surrounded this videotape in the photographs of killian

really the public perception was that these police officers were going to get in trouble after so after seeing this tape but the defense argued that it wasn't the beating that ultimately killed kelly thomas they brought in their own expert witness saying that it was actually kelly thomas' drug use which weakens his heart and that was the reason for his death oh it's a minute leave the defense strategy was to go after the victim himself kelly thomas and they they tried to paint him as a dangerous characters who had a tendency for violence and at the end they were able to put enough into the jury to where they were able to convict two former police officers and ramona why it doesn't seem like it was so difficult for prosecutors to convict police officers. yeah i mean it's very very rare for a police officer to even go to trial much less be convicted of

a crime when it involves some sort of excessive force and this case it was all caught on video but we have to remember that police departments and prosecutors work hand in hand on a daily basis so prosecutors really rely on police testimony to go after other criminals on a on a regular basis so this tie relationship really makes for a situation where da's are usually pretty reluctant to go after police officers because they know that they're going to have to rely on them for other cases. you know what's the next step here is there a chance for an appeal or perhaps for a separate federal trial right well the district attorney in orange county toner a caucus there says that he doesn't plan to retry runnels or since anally he respects the jury's decision but this has a big effect on the trial of officer joe wolf. the d.a. is not going to go after him he was another officer who was also charged on this

the f.b.i. is looking into whether any sort of civil rights violations were committed during trial or at the time of the incident but so far nothing has been announced and remember what is the reaction been from activists who have been following this case you know should we expect to see more people coalesce around this issue going forward. well sure there has been a lot of public cry and cry online we've seen days and days of protesters protests today and there will be more in the days to come run tom is here since the beating happened back in two thousand and eleven has joined with police brutality groups so it does seem like people are rallying around the cause there will be protests who will see how long how long this lasts we do remember that there was a ton of outcry right after the beating which forced. which caused three city

council members to resign and ultimately the police chief to step down at the time so there have been some changes within the city but it's you will have to wait and see whether this causes more of a movement to really speak out against these sort of things will have to see what the reaction will be from the community going forward and if another case aside after but artie's ramon glendon thank you very much you bet and a west virginia county judge has now ordered the company at the heart of a mechanical spell that contaminated water in several counties to preserve all documents and evidence relating to the spill this comes at a time when the number of lawsuits against the company are mounting artie's megan lopez has the story. after nearly a week of no showers no clean dishes no clean clothes and overall dry conditions but water taps are slowly starting to flow again in charleston the west virginia american water company has been notifying customers on a county by county basis that they can safely use tap water once again after of

course they flush their system of potentially contaminated water left sitting in the pipes in the wake of a historic water ban in the state know the cause of this unprecedented ban is a chemical spill of a reported seventy five hundred gallons of for meth the cycle hexane methanol or him c h elma by freedom industries it's a chemical used in the coal manufacturing process freedom industries has not spoken with the media nor released a press statement since the press conference on friday evening take a look at this map as of tuesday morning forty five percent of customers have their water working again represented by all the areas you see here in blue and all of this area you see here in red is where the ban is still in place so why few people are still dealing with the aftermath of this chemical crisis particularly those people in more rural less affluent neighborhoods authorities are now turning their

attention to the investigation into how the spill actually happened in the first place and independent federal agency known as the u.s. chemical safety board has deployed a team to the area to investigate the spill and has said this quote our goal is to find out what happened to allow a leak of such a magnitude to occur and to assure that the proper safeguards are in place to prevent a similar incident from occurring. so now that the situation is starting to finally calmed down let's take a look at some of the numbers as a result of this leak two hundred thirty one people were reported to local hospitals complaining of suffering from some of the symptoms associated with ingesting this chemical of them fourteen people were admitted to the hospital to undergo evaluation and treatment no word yet on how many of those people have been released sixty pets were also reported sick local authorities say they found no fish or wildlife dead as a result of the spill and that is because they say that this chemical is toxic yes

but ultimately non-lethal meanwhile at least eighteen lawsuits have been filed against freedom industries in the west virginia american water company as a result of the spill none of them have been certified as of yet and more lawsuits are expected to come in the future now the downtown charleston area and surrounding neighborhoods essentially became ghost towns in the wake of this chemical spill and nearly every restaurant was forced to close from thursday evening until saturday costing the businesses millions of dollars in lost revenue schools and nine counties that were affected by this close they remain closed in four counties as they wait for the system to be flushed before they return leaving parents to either stay at home or look for a child care provider well call business owners are now in the process of contacting their insurance companies to see if they are covered for this type of emergency but even they have they are the compensation funds are still

a ways out with the claims process the overall economic and long term health effects of this massive spill are still hazy at best residents are trying to get back to normal but if one thing is certain this story is far from over in washington meghan lopez r.t. . and we're just learning that agents of the u.s. drug enforcement administration and justice department officials have met in secret with members of a mexican drug cartel all in exchange for information on rival drug organizations this is all according to a new investigative piece reported by mexico's. news according to the report u.s. agents held more than fifty secret meetings with cartel operatives in mexico for over a decade between two thousand and two thousand and twelve and they did so without informing mexican authorities article says without the presence of mexican authorities as my lateral agreements stipulate without informing the mexican government the agents of the da met with members of the cartels to obtain

information about their rivals and establish at the same time a network of informants traffickers who sign cooperation agreements. cell based its reports on extensive interviews as well as official american and mexican court documents according to those documents the u.s. specifically had an arrangement with mexico's cinna lower drug cartel that allowed the organization to smuggle billions of dollars of drugs also to low and provided information on rival gangs conservative estimates of the cartels annual revenue is about three billion dollars and according to the head of the d.a.'s office in chicago quoted before this investigation the similar drug cartel is responsible for supplying seventy to eighty percent of the drugs and trying the chicago area and has a presence in cities across the u.s. to discuss the summer cover deal i was joined earlier by andrew chemist and investigative journalist based in mexico city i first asked him about these

cooperation agreements and what these drug lords were promised in exchange for information about cartel rivals. well first of all the contention in terms of which drug lords had which immunity agreement what we know for sure is that the lenient lawyer for the scene a little cartel. lawyer has the name castro had over six years worth of agreements with the d.a. these are called confidential source agreements and there there's no doubt this is dept documents that were released by the prosecution and there's no contention on the other side that this was and continues to be the case as heck even jack riley the head of that she probably. spoke to make sensibly several times about this and there's no contention there and now where the contention lies is to what extent immunity agreements like these apply to other cartel leaders and this is where the defense and prosecution differ with vincent peale as he's nicknamed the loosely translated as pretty boy contents is that these agreements apply to him and other leaders that in exchange for intel on other groups such as will state does he had

the same kind of protection that was afforded to their lawyer the prosecution denies this. kind of spiced up the case in fact a little further and actually also said that not just was intel those being exchanged but that even there was fast and furious weapons as well and i wanted to i want to get to that before we deal. in getting the d.n.a. information on rival gangs one of us in a lower cartel essentially getting the u.s. agency to do its dirty work. well sure i mean effective even officials admit that this is literally dirty work that having deals like these with leaders like these are is dirty work and security experts go even farther and say that arranging deals like these is strengthen that one cartel over others so that there's less of that detention and disputed plazas and then there or less violence is indeed a legitimate security strategy and it's one that has to be done in a war that's pretty much hard if not impossible to win and so this is their logic

for doing these kind of things and that's kind of the logic behind getting intel on a cartel that's known to be much more despised by both the mexican and u.s. governments as lose a day as they brag and routinely and narco montrose the only cartel that doesn't have any agreements with the governments they're known for the most heinous the violence violent acts by well i'm trying i want to i want to talk a little bit briberies i want to talk a little bit about that specifically you know during the height of this relationship which was between two thousand and six and two thousand and twelve coincidentally there was a market surge of violence in mexico not to mention that the in a lower cartel saw a steady rise in power during those years so do we know if this you know could be attributed to the silhouettes cartel or this in a lot of cartels you know for tat with the d.n.a. . i wanted to have a picture that i would paint the picture a little differently and during the height of the drug war it became the case that

again the government's refaeli and possibly desperate enough to enter into agreements like these again so it's a strength in one cartel over the others and have to release the violence be reduced so that there would be more firm control over clauses in list three wars and turf wars and violence and so on and so forth it's pretty well known that both in the key was on the border at parties and also to quanah there was some pretty precipitous drops in violence after the peaks when the scene we were cartel was pretty much roundly and mostly largely agreed to as having won the turf war and so this is a strategy that's possibly linked to that i would say and one of the things that somebody need blood alleged this is the man who was on trial in chicago for all of that is on trial still currently on trial things that i cracked and that the highly controversial fast and furious operation was all part of an agreement to finance and arm the cartel in exchange for information so if that is indeed true doesn't

call into question what attorney general eric holder knew about these agreements it goes even farther than that because you know eric holder's even dean has been prosecuted investigated for possible perjury about what he knew or not and that's that's been covered widely in the mainstream news media. and also what's been covered widely the mainstream news media is that supposedly these fast and furious were lost and that this was a mistake in the case what has really been covered that much is investigative work i've done even though there still aren't congressional testimony on this for instance one a.t.f. is passé was based mexico city is name is carlos and you know he described the fact that at one point at the height of the fastest furious program. there was over a thousand weapons going across the border a hard. three percent of those weapons including one that could be fielded to arm a small remote and it was even said we're going to guess what the scene

a little cartoon that's literally what the defense with the defense team for this is about a consensus that this was part of his agreement and this is additional evidence to show that he in fact did have their arrangement with the answer we only have a few seconds left but you know we know that u.s. my second relations have been strained over the years and the approach to the war on drugs what's your sense of how mexico might respond to these revelations well i mean you know what the revelations have been out for quite a long time and the mexican government has pretty much played there said that they in fact they've even expressed some concern or even some you know anger that they were really put in the know the revelations of an out of the confidential source agreement for instance which is no longer confidential between the elite in order to seal a court so and the da has been out there for almost two years now ever since that time that's been the case next conduct there hasn't been any documents or proof to

show that the next government didn't you know so it's possible that they were left in the dark on this one that doesn't put them actually govern in the clear about other aspects of the drug war but when it comes to the fast and furious operation and especially the arrangement they had possibly would visit these about the content of the arrangements it doesn't look like they knew incredible story indeed we'll have to follow up with you on this in the future investigative reporter andrew tennis thank you thanks a lot. it's not every day that one of our t.'s own experiences backlash from a news report and that's exactly what happened in the aftermath of a story covered on breaking the set yesterday abby martin brought attention to the plight of independent journalists within blocks from being recognized on the collaborative information website with a p.d.f. here's a look at part of that report. this issue calls into question the way with a pedia decides who and what is notable enough to be worthy of the text on its site on the deletion thread editor's d'anna and courtesy eric explain that i'm not

notable enough for my own page because apparently they couldn't verify any information about me through third party sources so i found this interesting considering how there are dozens of third party sites that have talked in depth about my work as well as the show including one called white house press der spiegel max kaiser alger minor joe rogan stuart wilde global post and firedoglake yet none of these sites are apparently notable enough to allow me. now here to talk about what's happened since that broadcast went to air i'm joined by abby martin host of breaking the set thanks for joining me ok take me back to the beginning how did you find out in the first place that this was an issue you know i don't i don't really care if i have a picture of a computer i just thought it was funny my dad at christmas is like hey you're on wikipedia it's really cool and i saw that the page you got removed and then it got resubmitted by another user and then it got removed again and someone wrote an article about it saying hey what's the deal and so i kind of just wanted to bring

attention to the fact that this editing process is actually really a skill how does it work i mean anyone just upload an entry notice anyone who's a user can create edit or vote to do the content but there's only a sacred few admins that can kind of oversee the whole process and they consider anything that's really not corporate media unverifiable third party sources that they can you know validate your page from being that's incredible well what happened since you brought up the issue of your wikipedia page yesterday so after we did after i did that report. that someone had given me every version is history because one would be you can see the whole thread of everyone who's kind of talking about it and why they chose to make these actions that they did and on the very top it just says user john reeves actually voted to add it to. block all non admin users to recreate my page indefinitely so this is basically an explicitly set it explicitly says that he is blocking all non admin users from ever recreating my

page so it's kind of i don't know what i think i just have no idea what to say i mean i'm just kind of appalled at the fact that even if someone tries to you know verify these sources book now and you know for sure that that wasn't an issue before yesterday's broad no that i don't know i mean it happened yesterday. it seems like it's a little bit of a quins i think maybe people flooded with computing was saying hey what happened then you just like hey screw this i'm going to block it i think it's a personal bias decision and that's the problem is with this online encyclopedia it is ultimately up to the subjective personal bias of these admins and that's really i think what the editorial decision was and hopefully you know it will be reinstated actually heard from another admin who is like i was lobbying for you i'm going to try to get it back up and just one says curfews have break in the set your brain is that audience sort of been involved in this at all or they've been lobbying we compete in there they're kind of just figuring out i mean i just figured out kind of how kind of a shady this whole process really is there's

a whole corporation called wiki p.r. that you can essentially you know pay to make your page verifiable and all this stuff so it really goes back to how it can be bought just like a democracy definitely gotten more difficult i think over the years are a lot of people i know i knew that personally had to get to get pages that all the sudden were taken down and it's based on a notability standard that really applies to whatever the biases of the admin that's in question well lastly you know a lot of people see as an accurate source because obviously a lot of those biases and you think of it as this sort of you know generic sort of objective site for information do you think this incident should really change how people perceive the site i mean it definitely changed the way that i perceive this i mean of course teachers will say don't go to wikipedia if your source is but you know you do because and you can link back to the down. citations and you can see what everything's going back to but the thing is when you're reading the first paragraph you are influenced by the bias that's put out there by these admins and

so really i think it will just take a second look at you know what's deemed to consent absolutely i definitely well it's a breaking the set abby martin thing. and that does it for now i'm a mirror david stay tuned boom bust is next. sink estates mar the u.k. equivalent to american ghettos council states with high levels of economic disadvantage and often blighted by high crime rates but there's a new sort of sink estate in the u.k. and it's not in. charleston or gospel oak though this sink estate is right here in the city of london this moral sink estate is also nurtured by the government dole but rather than locking in the high levels of economic disadvantage this state is plagued by intergenerational economic advantage that instead of being impossible for the residents to succeed it is impossible for the residents of this banking

sink estate to fill. the. time of the new alert animation scripts scare me a little bit. there is breaking news tonight and they are continuing to follow the breaking news. alexander's family cry tears of the war i. think. that. we have read or found online there's a story many movies playing out in real life. hello

there i'm marinated this is boom bust and these are the stories we're tracking for you today. it's coming from inside that house google that is they just acquired nest labs for a cool three billion dollars i'll tell you all about it coming right up and jim rickards is on today's show the self-proclaimed gold vigilante and author of the new book the death of money joins me to talk gold paper huey and you name it work over in it and in today's big deal ed harrison and i discuss the new millionaires club it's called congress actually the true story you won't want to miss a moment and it all starts right now.