they did read it one. way. or the. other no hello i'm abby martin and this is breaking the set so today the house of representatives passed the farm bill after two years of negotiating how many billions of dollars would be cut from food stamps after all is said and done the program will be cut by eight billion dollars and about eight hundred fifty thousand households will now lose ninety dollars a month and food assistance here and that right a measly ninety dollars is what all the fuss was about the worry the bill also provides billions of dollars to subsidize major commercial farmers many of which are owned by the very congressional lawmakers who rally all the time against the nanny state i guess government handouts don't apply when you're the one cashing in

now let's break the set. the please please take and leave very hard to take. the little. one that you have had sex with that her there are those. that believe. that. every year proximately twenty two thousand dolphins and porpoises are killed by fishermen in japanese waters and no town exemplifies the slaughter of these marine

mammals more than the village of ties from september to april ties the fishermen engage in a tactic called drive hunting returns pods and dolphin toward a cove which is then enclosed by nets to prevent escape many of the dolphins are then killed by inserting a metal pin into their necks severing their brain stems at least forty one bottlenose dolphins have already been killed so far this year according to conservationists group sea shepherd now you may be familiar with two shepherd from the organizations t.v. show whale wars on animal planet which documents the group's efforts to stop the killing of whales and dolphins by commercial fisherman instead of merely protesting this practice to shepherd engages in direct action against these ships by sabotaging their efforts the group's founder captain paul watson has become an international threat and is that every entity from interpol to the japanese government after him as a result of watson spent fifteen months at sea eluding the capture of authorities

or recently returned to the u.s. last october. to face an appeals court so here to discuss what's happening and as well as the shepherds other direct action campaigns i'm joined now by captain paul watson himself thank you so much for coming on captain. thank you so you've been called everything from an eco terrorist to a pirate to an extreme conservationist how would you describe yourself and what you do. what we're simply going out and doing what the governments refused to do i mean we have all the rules in the regulations in the laws to protect our oceans but they're not being enforced and we don't protest we go out and intervene against illegal activities and what the japanese whaling fleet is doing in the southern ocean is killing whales in violation of an international moratorium on whaling they're taking endangered threatened species in an established and internationally established marine whale sanctuary and you know they shouldn't be doing this but the government there's rules to stop them but nobody wants to apply these rules against a powerful nation like japan and let's talk more specifically about the tactics the

organizations i'm going to stop this slaughter and how successful they have been. our tactics have been very successful in fact the most efficient tactic is simply to block this turn slipway of the factory on this prevents them from loading dead whale so they can load dead whales they can't kill them and last year they took less than ten percent of their quota i think we're going to do even better this year the year before that seventeen percent we've saved well over six thousand whales in the last few years and we've cost them hundreds of millions of dollars of their legally what they sought to obtain through legal means and of course japanese prime minister shinzo has defended the practice as part of japan's cultural tradition and says that it supports the livelihood of the fisherman how do you respond. well the japanese. whaling operation southern ocean was never part of japan's culture in fact it was instituted by general douglas macarthur in one thousand nine hundred six and the killing of dolphins has been there for some time

but capturing dolphins for. sail to marine aquariums that is not something that's traditional that's very very new and that's what the main impetus is is to capture them for marine aquariums you know they get a one hundred fifty to two hundred thousand dollars per dolphin captured only a couple hundred dollars for the ones that they kill for meat so what's driving this is the marine aquarium industry if they weren't buying those dolphins for display they wouldn't be killing them in ties and as i understand sea shepherd is also accuse the world of collaborating with the slaughter how is this popular theme park involved. all the marine aquariums are encouraging the capture and display. of dolphins and this this industry is what is killing the dolphins there enslavement and the killing. when they drive these dolphin pods into tiny genie what they do is they select the prime specimens they're the ones that they take off and in slave to the marine aquarium industry then they kill others than they let them go they completely disrupt all these pods the kill about fifteen hundred ties

you know every year and they used to be more but we've managed to cut that figure down by just being there on the ground every single day and being in their face you know that we call it operation infinite patience because they've been incredibly stubborn and we've been on the ground there since two thousand and three trying to stop them you know anyone who's seen the cove or knows about your show kept and knows that this is going on in japan is there anywhere else in the world that's encouraging this type of animal slaughter when it comes to marine life. yes we're intervening against the pilot whales slaughter in the danish spero islands just north of scotland where they do the same thing except what they do it there it's for amusement for sport they call it part of their tradition too it's called the green and they drive these animals up on the beach and there it's actually even worse because you have people who are drunk you have children participating in stabbing poking slashing it's an orgy of blood and they consider this part of the tradition personally i don't feel that traditions should survive in the. twenty

first century where you know cruelty and killing is are involved you know when people cite for instance a bull fight in spain that's another example catalonia has banned it because it is a brutal sport we have to stop these brutal bloody traditions all right i mean there's only so much you can go out using tradition as a justification for mass slaughter looks like they're all just having a grand old time i saw those photos they're pretty horrendous of the danish slaughter that you just mentioned you're known for your endorsement of something called a monkey wrench what is that and why do you believe that this is the best way to fight for endangered species. so i don't think it's a best way i think that you know what we have to do is go in there and intervene against illegal activities i have to point out the sea shepherd does not protest we're simply going in there and doing enforcement work and in many cases we're working in partnership right now we're in partnership with the government of ecuador to protect the galapagos marine reserve in partnership with senegal to stop poaching off their coasts so you know we were working for affected means but the

one thing that sea shepherd has done since one nine hundred seventy seven is to ensure that everything that we do that we don't injure anybody we've never caused a single injury and we operate within the law and we've been very responsible in that but we do get. you know results and those results are we saved the lives of sharks and whales and dolphins and seals by getting in the way of the people who are killing them and unfortunately governments don't like that too much captain japan issued an arrest warrant for you as i mentioned interaction as a result you were at sea for fifteen months why did you decide to come back to the u.s. and what's the current legal status of your case. where we're fighting this but you know you arrest warrant and they won't be extradited for the charge of trespassing you know nobody got hurt and i didn't even do that trespassing in fact the man who did trespass i advised him not to do it but they made a plea bargain with him and in exchange for releasing him for trespassing on board a japanese whaling vessel he accused me of ordering him which in fact i'm on camera

on whale wars actually doing just. the officer but so you know this is they want me in japan or they get me in japan i'm not going to be released because it's certainly more charges would cost them hundreds of millions of dollars so you know they're certainly driven they have a reason to do that but legally i don't think you know we been very careful to work within the law and we intend to always do that what is sea shepherd employs so much effort to specifically target whale and dolphin killing operations and why not focus your activism against industrial farms in the massive mistreatment of livestock and the world's addiction to me for example. well because it's called the sea shepherd conservation society in our focus is on the ocean and we are involved with everything from protecting plankton to the great whales sea cucumbers or muscles or oysters we have all these things that we're involved in but you know you don't hear about that a lot we've had campaigns to try and stop the overfishing of bluefin tuna in the mediterranean. you know people from sea cucumbers and sharks in the galapagos i

mean the whales of the dolphins get a lot of the attention that sea shepherd focuses on everything in the ocean and our focus is conservation and our specific focus is illegal exploitation of marine wildlife and you talk specifically about the economics of extinction when it comes to the ocean explain how dry how many marine animals is being driven to an extent to extinction excuse me is profitable for commercial fishing. as a species numbers go down and there diminish the value of them go up for instance on bluefin tuna the more the less bluefin tuna there are in the ocean the more the value of that is in the market and what mr and other companies are doing is are stockpiling bluefin tuna in japan they want to five ten fifteen years supply the more tuna they have in the deep frozen in the warehouses the more valuable that becomes as the numbers in the oceans are diminished already bluefin tuna an average fish is seventy five thousand dollars and some was sold for well over a million dollars so you know scarcity try. into profit and billions of dollars of

profit to be made from driving the bluefin tuna into extinction that's horrifying and i think a lot of people don't understand how counterintuitive that really is i can't let you go without asking about this you describe the current state of humanity as a virus and it called for the global population to be reduced to below one billion and where communities have now more than twenty thousand people exist captain how do you realistically propose this to happen without a mass genocide of innocent people. i don't actually realistic proposal you know propose it at all i'm just saying that was what would be ideal would be under ecological circumstances viruses diminish the human immune system of the body human society is now diminishing the immune system of the planet earth the strength of the ecosystem lies in diversity and interdependence of species within that diversity by diminishing that diversity and diminishing interdependence we're

making the life support system of this planet weaker and that will have serious consequences for humanity so i'm not proposing that we reduce the populations like that i'm just saying that that would be the ideal in an ecological utopia however you know we do have to be very considerate of the fact that human populations as they go up still carrying capacity from other species causing them to go extinction to extinction and because there is a relationship between us and our survival and them the more we diminish the less certain is our future and captain we have about a minute left but how can people help the fight against the slaughter of dolphins and whales. we need to put pressure on the japanese government i thankful for and bastard to japan caroline kennedy for her statement she finally turned the tide now the u.k. and germany and italy and other countries are now coming out in this is what we need this kind of official diplomatic pressure against japan to stop this horrible massacre in ties you in the slaughter of dolphins these are highly intel it. and

socially complex creatures and you know we have no business destroying them in the way we're doing and in fact the way they're being killed this would never even be tolerated in any slaughterhouse in the world and it's extremely cruel and you know it seems to me that we get away with killing animals at sea in a way that would never be tolerated and very very true very horrifying things going on thank you for keeping up the pressure captain paul watson founder sea shepherd conservation society really appreciate you coming on. thank you. coming up you guys will hear why bay area residents want internet giant google out of their city. well. it's technology innovation all the developments around russia we. covered. the fact that.

we're going to go digital 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 albus. in fact the single biggest threat facing our nation today is the corporate takeover of our government and across several we've been hijacked lying handful of powerful friends dashiell corporations that will profit by destroying what our founding fathers but once it's all just my job market and on this show we reveal the big picture of what's actually going on in the world if we go beyond identifying the problem trying rational debate in a real discussion critical issues facing america to find a job ready to join the movement then welcome the did pretty.

well and wonderful strong arm an ally should be a good news ali face i think sometimes you know he. was. a pleasure to have you with us here on t.v. today i'm researchers. looking to see if. the the. a couple. of guys last night was obama's state of the union address so i forced myself to watch as generic platitudes and the promises so i could break

through the rhetoric for you it began impressively with obama declared. let me be clear we do not drone american weddings but all jokes aside first the good obama's passing an executive order to mandate ten dollars and ten cents minimum wage for all federal and only awesome now on the bad right out of the gate obama talked jobs and elaborated on an impressive achievement. over the past five years my administration has made more loans to small business owners than any other and when ninety eight percent of our exports are small businesses new trade partnerships with europe and asia and the asia pacific will help them create even more jobs we need to work together on tools like bipartisan trade promotion authority to protect our workers protect our environment and open new markets to new goods stamped made in the usa. ok about that small business thing lloyd chapman the founder of the small business league trillions of dollars according to him in

federal contracts have gone to fortune five hundred corporations instead of the small businesses they were mandated for moving out of the clever diatribe about trade this is probably the most overwhelming and part of the speech considering what's at stake here he's referring to the trans-pacific partnership or the t.p. trade agreement that would give an international tribunal of corporate c.e.o.'s final say on u.s. laws or nafta yeah that free trade disaster actually cost america seven hundred thousand jobs according to economic policy institute and much like nafta the t.p. would only exacerbate the race to the bottom does any of this sound like the t.p. will actually bring jobs back to the us and the comment you might have missed about working together on bipartisan trade promotion is actually talking about fast tracking the t.p. through congress which is probably the most undemocratic thing a president can do moving from jobs obama jump to right and the showing for the fracking industry. today america is closer to energy independence than we have been

in decades one of the reasons why is natural gas. if extracted safely it's the bridge fuel that can power our economy with less of the carbon pollution that causes climate change sounds great to bad fracking for natural gas can't really be done safely considering how studies show that it causes artificial earthquakes birth defects and cancer so after selling fracking the teepee corporate coup and making a bunch of pandering appeals to make it seem like the president has his pulse on the struggles of average americans he leaps right into what america does best war i see obama boasts about how he's responsible for ending the war in iraq even though it wasn't actually his decision is actually a bush agreement with the iraqi government if it were up to obama we would still be there today then he moves on to afghanistan the longest and most pointless war of all unless of course you're the one profiting off the world's opium. he briefly

mentions the strategic pact which could keep troops there until twenty twenty four but don't you see it's all because of the one thing that trumps everything in terrorism. we kind of score leadership on a path to defeat the threat as evolved as all kind of affiliates and other extremist take root in different parts of the world in yemen somalia iraq mali we have to keep working with partners to disrupt and disable those networks you forgot to mention that al qaeda was never in iraq until the u.s. or glitter aided the country but i'm sure dropping drones everywhere else has nothing to do with the cranston creation of new terrorists wanted to enact revenge on america however the speech wouldn't be complete without a vague reference to the n.s.a. . reform our surveillance programs because the vital work of our intelligence community depends on public confidence here and abroad the privacy of ordinary

people is not being violated. wait wait what you're overseeing a completely unconstitutional dragnet spying operation on the citizens of the world and you can't even own up to it the best you can do is cite that the lack of public confidence is the real problem to sum it all up though obama pulls a card right out of debbie is playbook highlighting a disabled veteran in the audience as a political prop while reminding americans about the need for indefinite warfare not to mention that obama was proud to announce that this soldier had been on ten ten deployments before he spent months in a coma with shrapnel in his brain. it was all worth it so obama had the audacity to say that the poor man's sacrifice was necessary to pull preserve freedom and democracy unfortunately for the soldier his injuries and suffering have been in vain and obama and the speech by just assuring all of us to have faith and believe

it before of course reminding us that god blesses this country specifically and slowly. silicon valley is home to some of the largest tech companies in the world more so than google which brought an influx of thousands of employees into the bay area but the google buses that transport employees to and from san francisco have become the target of a growing campaign growing activist movement called counter forces singing singling out vehicles claiming that they make it easier for wealthy google workers to live in san francisco which is destroying the city's culture at a recent protest one of the group's flyers read all of google's employees should be prevented from getting to work all surveillance infrastructure should be destroyed no luxury condos should be built no one should be displaced the grievance is shared

by many san francisco red. so the tech sector has skyrocketed to housing prices making it practically impossible to make a living with anything under six figure salary so joining me now to break down the root cause of this frustration i'm joined by journalist and writer for salon dot com natasha thank you so much for coming on to talk. so what set off these demonstrations initially. well i mean it's been a growing anger and. sense of need for action in the entire bay area in response to the google is almost representative of the gentrifying force of silicon valley in a lot of bay area. residential space is. not just changing the culture but the very cost of living i think it's a relevant time that people are targeting google in the wake of and i say

revelations i don't think that's an accident but i think it's specifically kind of opting of tactics and a slightly more militant approach to. silicon valley gentrifying that we're seeing in the past couple of weeks and it's been going on for a couple of months that people have been trying to gain an activist movement against the way these google buses are separating the bay area into essentially a tale of two cities but it's only in the past couple of weeks that this is become what some people are calling like militant radical action and you said that you support counterforce because google should quote no longer get away with playing the good guy what do you mean by that. well i feel especially in the past few months google has been on a quite explicit p.r. campaign to almost exempt itself from the role it played in up holding and maintaining a surveillance state that you know

a lot of this is come out through n.s.a. surveillance and you know there are other paul potts. google culture such as that terrible sony intend ship that came out last year that suggests it's just this kind of totally loving. meaning don't do evil you know it was their original corporate unofficial slogan. and you know what's actually happening on the ground in silicon valley and in the bay area is that people who used to be able to afford to live around there can't be pulling displaced rental prices along the google bus route city plan has recently found twenty percent higher than in the rest of the surrounding areas and that's not an accident so it's about living costs and it's also about breaking the shiny patina that google is trying to put forward. it's interesting that people just kind of goes inherent trust and drooled this corporation they trust everyone views that it's a household name don't be like they're trying to you know get their transparency

out there they're not part of the system the taj you were called by some journalists for your support of counterforce who said you're actually advocating violence what's your response. well i think violence is one of those hot button. this is a very age old debate around activist tactics and i think the very concept of violence needs to be better thought and destabilized essentially this isn't a new argument this happened during occupy it happened in the ninety's i think it's an interesting time we live in when militant radical violence is the same as handing out flyers and maybe breaking a window and i feel like that's a worrying state of affairs when this is not particularly stream. and you know i personally believe in a diversity of tactics when it comes to your activism against these kind of huge corporate government nexuses so i have taken some flak from liberal handwringing is

and certainly conservatives. if you don't believe in radical responses but i'm certainly not going to tell countable list what they're doing might not be an interesting escalation in tactics venture capitalist tom perkins like in the protests against google and its employees in nazi germany and its crystal night program says it's a rising tide of hatred against the successful one percent he seems to believe that the next step is sending google employees to death camps what's your response to that. i mean that i mean it was particularly ridiculous what it said but actually my colleague alex pareene wrote a piece today that highlights how his comments on to actually that unique kind of paranoid one percent the police the police your crops you genuinely think that any popular ism that maybe has some sort of symbolic or active display of resentment

for gross inequality is in fact persecuting them it's a paranoia it's a lunacy and it's terribly worrying that these people all the people that you know have the ear of capitol hill and policymakers not america's general population so i think perkins's view is taking the insane but reflective of a one percent paranoia that is also not new and we have about a minute left but google doesn't seem to be going anywhere it has its roots in the barrier for those involved in the protests what do you think would be a realistic goal. i don't often realistic goals but i think what's actually important is just growing growing a kind of sense of. you know being a force a threat making people's presence known making that and then we'll see what happens next you know we can't see the future but certainly not backing down and a diversity of tactics you know how has had

a history of success in activists past in recent decades but certainly can expect some pretty hard pushback from silicon valley and in fact law enforcement it's a very interesting situation i'm curious to see how it's going to fold thank you so much for covering it for your insight natasha lerner journalist writer for salon dot com for shit. thanks for watching everyone join me again tomorrow when i break all over again. wealthy british style. time to write for. market why not. come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy

with mike's cause or for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report on our. big corporation find to. do and i think it's all been all about money. that's like that for a politician right a lot and right. here just to plug. that.

the fact that. everybody go to the job did you know the price is the only industry specifically mentioned in the constitution and. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy shrek office. told. them you know i'm sorry and on this show we reveal the picture of what's actually going on will we go beyond identifying to try to rational debate a real discussion critical issues facing america about ready to join the movement then welcome to the big picture. go on tell marvin in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture president obama.