tv Breaking the Set RT January 17, 2014 5:29am-6:01am EST
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uses to keep a constant eye on all of us but now looks like big brother is about to watch himself you see yesterday los angeles police officers began participating in a case study involving wearing belt and shoulder cameras as cops patrol the streets according to officials the captured video is instantly displayed on an i pod and then uploaded where the videos say for five years about thirty officers are participating in the program over the next ninety days and the use of these cameras are expected to be widely expanded take a look. but six hundred cameras will be purchased with one point three million dollars donated by the community supporters say the goal is to have the cameras for the entire force ultimately saving the city millions in lawsuits i want deny that this makes some sense and theory cameras attached to officers do ensure a certain level of police accountability in fact the city of reality california tested out this cop camera program for twelve months and in that time police
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assaults drop by two thirds from the previous year and the department had an eighty eight percent decline in the number of citizen complaints against officers but of course in a country where every city block is constantly filmed and monitored you can't blame me if i just have a few concerns about an army of recording robo cops first although the l.a.p.d. is currently working on a rules manual to govern the use of these cameras there are currently no regulations that protect the privacy of citizens second despite multiple times that have failed to prevent citizens from filming police officers and nearly every state cops continue to confiscate cameras from bystanders in california alone this happens all the time most notably back in may when bakersfield officers and timid witnesses into giving up their cameras after they savagely beat thirty three year old man david sells to death or one manual dia's was shot and killed by police in anaheim and police use excessive force against women and children the resulting protest afterward cops tried to buy footage from witnesses because they were scared
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of what the video would show so considering the epidemic of police brutality and the lack of accountability for the boys in blue why should we trust police departments to hold the only official record of events when they can tin you to try to cover up citizen recordings these are all questions that still need answers before we should start to wholeheartedly embrace this program and you know maybe instead of pointing these cameras at citizens the cops should be pointing these cameras at themselves in fact. words of ukrainians recently took this exact idea to heart last month after riot police beat protesters with the tongues and even kicked and punched demonstrators that had fell to the ground the people came back with a genius plan instead of responding with violence protesters held up mirrors in front of a line of riot cops to show them the monsters they had become these powerful images have since gone viral and demonstrate the importance of police self-awareness so while i applaud the attempt to creatively address the serious issue of police
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brutality and till citizens are allowed to freely exercise their right to film on duty cops i'll be approaching this program with my own watchful eye. i. i. washington d.c. is a place where the power players of the world converge but as rich of a history as the city has it also has a dark side and i'm not even talking about the shady willing dealings between corporate america and the politicians that are supposedly representing us no i'm talking about solving mysteries that have left permanent scars on the district's history event that have led to disappearances and unexplained deaths many of which will probably never solve so joining me now to just go over five of these mysterious deaths i'm joined by breaking the separators our man a mile the rock below what's going to let you and good to be back so this is
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probably the most bizarre case and all of these cases you know they've happened over the course of a couple decades some more notorious than others let's start with the d.c. madam well actually what's really interesting about when we were putting this case together we're talking about all these unexplained deaths and we tried narrow down this list and come to find out that when we put this list together all of these happen here in washington d.c. or at least something you know what it cools it is so you have the d.c. madam scandal i think everybody can remember that back in two thousand and eight when she was convicted you know. convicted of racketeering and all these things related to this prostitution ring that she was running here in washington the thing about it is that you know she was some people say that she was paranoid but she went on the record as many as four times publicly stating in a variety of places saying you know if i wind up dead. in immediately investigate this is this is this is murder so she went i'm never going to kill myself she said that she could implicate the entire government i mean think about it she was this
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was a very high level place there were plenty of big power players in the city that whose career she couldn't could she could have ruined lives she could have ended here in d.c. so i mean there was a motive there do we know exactly what happened no the official cause of death was that she was found hanging in a mobile home in her mother's house in florida. then it didn't you know did the manager at her condo where she lived said you know she wear nice clothes she led a very extravagant lifestyle the last place that you'd expect to find her is dead in a mobile home somewhere in florida so i mean one of the more suspicious ones and of course the corporate media totally ignoring any kind of bizarre the only the only outlet that ran it was the washington post and they did it a whole week later and even when they did the back page so it's these kinds of things you know it's an ongoing thing you see that with all these cases a mysterious deaths the one kind of common denominators of the corporate media doesn't seem to end it just seems like someone has a high profile of her that has so much dirt on so many politicians if you come out
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multiple times and says i never going to kill myself if you find me dead for god's sake please investigate everyone's like shortly before saying i'm about to do government that i write well if we want to birth a champagne this is one that's really very little people talk about this or know about it she was actually the nanny the babysitter for the bush family and lived in their home when she was six years old mexican american woman bertha champagne oddly enough she was found. smashed against a secret service building on their compound right this was just outside of the bush house right and so president bush was president at the time and. what happened was that the official story efficient narrative is that she her car was left in gear and so she found herself somehow pinned between the car and this security post that was built by the secret service and empty car mind you an empty car and so the big question is because police have never given an official story of what actually
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caused her death the big question is why did the car not move until the very moment where she would happen to be right between the big question is how could she be standing or in a rolling empty car i mean if you see a car kind of at the break offered a rolls back i mean she couldn't get out of the way something there was a force in that car that smashed against this building security out there secret service in the building didn't that is the on that's the other question why didn't the security that was there the private security that was there on site not not respond to her distress that's one of the other question is what is she now. well that's that's the other is that i mean this is a this is a time where a lot of volatile information was being exchanged at this house was she had she happened to overhear something what did you know and we may never know we might really want mike connell he was here when this was actually surprising mark crispin miller turn me on it as he was the top g.o.p. consultant for karl rove died in a single engine plane that he was flying he was the only casualty in that plane why is his death such a sense that this is
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a suspicious. if you remember back in two thousand and four mccain kerry elections in ohio there was a bunch of glitches in the voting machines those glitches were later traced back to a computer system that was developed by michael connell michael connell was later in two thousand and eight subpoenaed over potential voter fraud related to hacking that system and becoming something known as a middleman where you're able to either block votes coming in or change votes as they're as they're tabulated he was able to testify but. just just after that he boarded a plane just outside of d.c. and it was a single engine piper search over the plane crashed and what lawyers and attorneys connected to this case saying is that had he come forward with more information that would have absolutely led to the questioning and subpoenaing of call rove in connection to voter fraud connect connected not only two thousand and four elections but even two thousand and eight and of course those voting machines are
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still in place today and no one really talked about this. whole testimony following up. b.s. was the only one that covered it and i mean maybe if we'd heard more about it we'd put an end to this type of voting system we only have time for one more so we're going to talk about bruce ivans the alternate last suspect of the anthrax attacks the horrible attack that actually localized terrorism near weeks after nine eleven we saw those letters come out mysteriously sent a congressman who would oppose the patriot act and also probably members of the news it really localized event made kind of grandma in alabama be scared of terrorism whereas you know all we had seen was the terrorist attacks in new york before really odd is how much there is a lack of evidence to point to not only the lack of evidence it was all circumstantial but on top of that is the cause is the cause of death we're talking about a microbiologist who worked with the bio defense division of the u.s. government and decides to kill himself method of death is overdose of tylenol overdose one of the most painful ways to detoxify your liver you think that
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a microbiologist first of all what was his motive to frame muslims in the attack second of all this is after steven hatfill was already basically accused for years and years have millions of dollars of taxpayer dollars because he was the wrong accuser and then they accused him twenty four hour surveillance they tried to bribe his daughter she was hospitalized they tried to bribe his son to out him really all circumstantial all they could ultimately say was that he had a history of depression. and case closed again although we learned that he didn't do it and i called. so you know case closed unfortunately obama has kind of made it very clear that the anthrax attacks will never be reopened manny thank you so much for coming on break and all of this down talk about some more of the really crazy stuff here and more awful oh. coming up you guys all take on nestle once again but this time over chocolate stay tuned.
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american decision makers i wonder why is that we are. country of three hundred and fifteen million people very self-absorbed we are. saluted from the world by two large oceans. we tend to think of foreign policy is something we do to other people rather than that something we participate in. guys although it's an entire month away stars are already lining their shelves with valentine's day garbage according to corporate america nothing symbolizes love and commitment more than chocolate to us imports about twenty one percent of the
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world's chocolate and the average american eats over eleven pounds of it per year is hardly comes as a surprise considering the over size candy bars are stuffed in every vending machine and store counter across america but you might be surprised to learn that nearly every time you take a bite of that delicious sweetness you have the hands of a child slave to thank yes you heard me right and the corporations most responsible for this horrendous practice are mars hershey and most of all nestle if you're a fan of this show you probably already know about my disdain for nestle which also happens to be the largest purveyor of bottled water worldwide because really who could forget this. i left i'm stephanie from nestlé. yes i was lucky enough to receive a personal response from their giant p.r. department after calling out the company's method of water extraction and privatization well nestle isn't just sucking up the world's water supply and selling it back to the poor chaps it's stealing it from the corporations also known
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for their chocolate monopoly in the slave labor that goes along with it now so chocolate milk and powder aside you might be surprised to learn that nestle is the umbrella corporation that owns some of your favorite candy including kit kat butterfinger wong milky way chunky smarties one hundred grand baby ruth and even chocolate power bars that's by no means an exhaustive list to many it's simply unthinkable that rewarding your child's sweet tooth has come at a devastating cost of another child's indentured servitude that africa's ivory coast produces more than half of the planet's chocolate and the conditions on these cocoa farms there contain some of the world's most abysmal conditions for child workers. shocking pictures of children working with machetes and hazardous chemicals some said they were held against their will forced to work and many told us they never get paid unicef estimates that more than two hundred thousand children could be involved in some of the west forms of child labor. yes at least
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two hundred thousand children earned slaves on the cocoa farms in the ivory coast alone it's a country with no real laws against human trafficking and as a result children are being trafficked or outright stolen from their parents to work on the farms these kids around eleven to fifteen years old and many times even younger according to c.n.n. investigation they're forced to do hard manual labor eighty to one hundred hours a week and paid absolutely nothing most of the children slaving away their lives in the field had never even eaten chocolate and have no idea what the cocoa is even used for they had machete scars from cutting the brush all day and are severely beaten or even killed if they try to leave but it's perhaps the most disturbing is that this is still happening thirteen years after congress passed the harken angle protocol or the cocoa protocol in two thousand and one the bill called for public reporting by african governments to voluntarily certify that they had ended the practice of child labor unfortunately that didn't happen today human rights
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organizations report that some of the provisions still haven't been met and no surprise it's the biggest corporations who refuse to comply but according to former c.e.o. of nestle peter brady back the ivory coast would be worse off if nestle weren't doing business there. that's the same guy that said water isn't a universal human right so what can we do to still fill or chocolate cravings without the guilt of knowing it's helping perpetuate the slave trade or courting the washington post luckily there are several certifications on chocolate labels that indicate a slavery free supply chain including fair trade equal exchange and rainforest alliance but ultimately it's up to the consumers to stop funding this practice because i don't think protecting children is at the top of nestle's priority list.
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but the war in information more prominent than ever it can be daunting to sort through the garbage and propaganda just to find real news and even if it comes from so-called reputable sources special interests with financial backing provide enough reason for us to question just about everything we see hear and read last year it was announced the washington post had been bought out by billionaire entrepreneur and founder of amazon dot com jeff bezos a connection that didn't make the news however is that amazon also recently landed as so we deal with cia totally a whopping six hundred million dollars with bezos directly profiting from the cia and being the sole owner of the washington post this situation at hand paints a pretty glaring conflict of interest so much so that the organization roots action recently launched a petition and gathered more than thirty thousand signatures urging the publication for more disclosure that petition was delivered to the washington post headquarters
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just this week trying now to take a closer look at the implications of this story i'm joined by the founder of roots action dot org and director of the institute for public accuracy norman solomon thanks so much for coming on let's hear so norman we know that amazon's jeff bezos bought the washington post very little attention has been paid to the six hundred million dollar contract and you break down for people who don't know what that is what that contract all about you know i was on the to deal with this. as you say six hundred million dollars to run the computing cloud for all the secrets and data that they want to organize and keep out of the public purview and that's a lot of the problem because if you've got an independent media outlet that supposed to be independent like the washington post its job is among other things to expose the secrets of an outfit like the cia but as you say the sole owner of the washington post and a big owner of amazon he's got a job there at amazon to keep the secrets of the cia so which is it expose their secrets or keep the secrets well in this case it's all. all about maximizing profit
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the guy's already got twenty five billion dollars of personal wealth and as far as he's concerned he's just getting started whatever business ties if any does have that might implicate the post journalistic integrity or might call attention to his well you know many amazon in the whole world is now a big department store for that company and it's mind blowing just the extent of what they're buying and selling and their interests in either retail being suppressed or enhanced depending on whether they get more profit as a result i think really this is a growth industry for them because. amazon has already said they look forward to what they call a successful relationship with the cia so the six hundred million dollar multi-year contract is just getting started when you think about it amazon has tremendous amounts billions of factoids about people what they buy what they're interested in where they live how they buy and the cia is also in the same two realms keeping secrets and gathering data i did think it was weird when i i mean that's the least
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of what i thought it is very strange that the cia would contract with amazon to store all of their most top secret classified information on this cloud when they're saying we want to keep it out of the public view meanwhile amazon has access to it i mean potentially it just seems like that's really shady and it's self the post however is respond to these concerns and they're saying it's absurd to have to disclose bases connection every time we mention the cia i mean do you what do you think do you think that it should be mentioned every time that the cia's cover to the post if there's a traffic accident from the cia headquarters i don't think we need to mention any substantive coverage of the cia to understand it i think would require from a journalistic transparency standpoint i mean let's face it americans are conditioned to think oh if governments are funding then we need to know a bit of corporations are funding we don't need to know so like voice of america funded by the us government this network funded by the russian government the chinese news outlet funded by the chinese government ok well that should be known it should be known more but when it comes to corporations this is behind the curtain like the wizard of. i was i would wager there's only one or two or three
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percent of washington post readers who know that when they're reading as today actually the front page a story about the cia of their newspaper but the guy who owns the paper is making a killing from contracting with that agency so they're at cross purposes is that guy up to keeping secrets or exposing them it's a good point whenever you talk about corporate run media it's so much more insidious there could be hundreds of different interests plain and what you're seeing what you're and you know the bias the perspective that's being covered on there we talk about the post journalistic integrity does the paper have a good track record when it comes to covering the government well it's often covering up the government i mean when they get documents they have a history with the bush and obama administrations going to the white house saying what do you think about this will take under advisement whether you think we ought to disclose this documentary not and i would say it's a very mixed record but a lot of it is an ideological perspective that overlaps to the point that frankly
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it's often just a propaganda sheet for whoever's in power in washington and it's kind of hard to tell the difference in american corporate america and the government but this is kind of an open hey let's marry both physically and they're just getting started. do you think that this example is the most glaring conflict of interest in mainstream media today i think it's a new bridge that's been crossed because when you think about the importance of data digital technology is the extreme now and i mean that capacity to use the surveillance state and the warfare state to gather information but also to take action whether it's covert action or overt targeted drone so for instance if the post is covering something the cia is doing the top editors told me in an e-mail and said oh don't worry it's not relevant to this cloud contract that our owner has with the cia will how do we know because we don't know what's in that cloud but we've got to assume that it includes drone strike information counterinsurgency data for that matter entire global information about how to wage surreptitious.
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it's an overt war on the part of the united states so the post can't say that something is irrelevant when they're covering the cia because you've got a figure at six hundred million dollars there's a heck of a lot in that cloud that the cia isn't trusting to amazon the owner of the washington post essentially threw base those to keep it quiet so hey let's have transparency that's the best disinfectant is more sunlight and talk about the petition was there any reaction after it was delivered and really what specifically is it calling for the post to do well petition from groups action dot org and people can still sign is saying when you have coverage of the cia at the very least let your readers know that the only owner of this newspaper has a huge financial deal going with the cia the response from the post was initially cool and it's gotten a lot colder by the time i delivered this it was getting a lot of cubes here in january i delivered the stack and they told me to go back to the service entrance around the corner and it turned out they directed me through
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an alley to the garage. where the front entrance was not suitable for me to deliver and i was really disappointed that out of his busy schedule the executive editor martin couldn't take a few minutes to come down chap let me summarize the thousands of comments of the petitioners who've signed it have me very cogent once instead frankly they're putting up a stone wall they want the story to go away and i want to die yeah i mean it is amazing and kind of you don't even give you the time of day to really listen to the voice of over thirty thousand consumers and potential readers of the washington and it's a very odd thing because he's turning down this is again the top editor of the washington post one of the premier political newspapers in the world he's refusing to grant media interviews to even talk about this so how does somebody who oversees hundreds of journalists doing hundreds of minutes every day tell other journalist i don't want to talk about this you can't interview me bizarre we have about thirty seconds left but what do your advice for people who kind of still think of these stablish media publications as the only. credible sources that they can widen the ecology of
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your media don't take anybody as a gospel and understand that corporate funding and ownership is as pretty and dangerous and biased as any other way that media can be owned and pervade we've got understand that there are billions of dollars at stake and that includes the most esteemed media outlets in the united states billions of wives of the people who are you know being under reported by the inaction of these publications thank you so much norman solomon feel about her roots action dot org and check it out. thanks for watching you guys join me again tomorrow and i break that all over again thank you for. millions around the globe struggle with hunger each good. what if someone offers a lifetime food supply no charge. they can the very strong
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position against g.m.o. and we think that's. the genetic anymore the right products are pretty cool. there is no. evidence that there is any problem with genetic engineering when you make a deal. or is free cheese always in the most trying. to destroy. the free. enterprise is profit. for this golden rice monarchy. one of the wonderful strong arming a lot of these polish face and i think you're right peter.
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empty. in november the. warehouses it was the main storage place for all the food in the city people eating the earth because it had small traces of sugar in it i tried to eat it as well but i couldn't. it was incredibly heavy bombing. it was a direct hit on that very shelter and everyone was buried underneath. all of them. good leverage or. to build a new. mission to teach me. this is why you should care
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only. president obama set to deliver a speech on the n.s.a. surveillance methods as many question whether the government is ready to limit the agency's spying or reach. the syrian government's as it once to team up was a moderate opposition factions against the jihad is that statement coming just days ahead of geneva two peace conference. and foreign secretary william hague has north to try and convince scotland nods to go it alone with an independence referendum eight months away. what you are to get a national coming to you live from moscow i'm marina josh.
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