four occasions and the thought of the u.s. government using the band's dark melodies to inflict mental and physical anguish was deeply troubling to the group the lead singer seven keys said quote we never supported those types of scenarios because we make unsettling music we can see it being used in a weird way but it doesn't sit right with us so what are the band do all they dedicated and presented their new album as an inner voice of the us government it's called weapons in the album itself is a literal bill for using the band's service as torture methods so crude owes to an awesome ban for using its platform to call attention to the human rights abuses that are still going on today now let's break this up. in the book please please take the lead very hard to take a. look. at that act with that there are those. that believe.

that. yesterday over one hundred and eleven million americans tuned in to watch the superbowl for the seattle seahawks were easily crown the world champions don't worry i'm not here to trash talk america's most beloved pastime i understand why people love and get excited about sports hell i've watched a little bit of it but i can't help but wonder how the world would be if people invested themselves in politics as much as they did football political philosopher noam chomsky said it best in the documentary manufacturing consent he answers why

people identify with sports teams by saying quote it's a way of building up a rational attitudes of submission to authority and group cohesion behind leadership elements in fact it's training and irrational jingoism and in that the point is to quote get them away from things that matter and for that it's important to reduce their capacity to think in other words a diversion created from sporting events like the super bowl or the modern day equivalent of the roman empire's gladiator shows although i could sit here and talk about the n.f.l. as one big giant weapon of mass distraction i don't want to upset the millions of sports fanatics that might want to tackle me for saying so because. all of that aside the real tragedy here is how much the n.f.l. is stealing from you and mean that's right despite the fact the national football league's thirty two teams rake in an estimated nine point five billion dollars annually the organization's actually considered a non profit by the i.r.s. how are they doing this law as i've covered on the show before an f l is registered

as a five zero one sees six and given tax exempt status because it's supposed to support the industry as a whole but you don't find the leaders of nonprofits raking in tens of millions of dollars and salary in two thousand and eleven tax forms showed n.f.l. commissioner roger godall taking home almost twenty nine and a half million dollars triple the salary from the year before and far more money than the highest paid athlete in the league this nonprofit loophole in the u.s. tax code hasn't gone unnoticed in two thousand and twelve oklahoma senator tom coburn outlined that the n.h.l. and f.l. alone would generate over ninety million dollars annually for the federal government has made several efforts to amend the tax code in congress but has failed to even bring it to a vote his latest attempt the pro sports act has been sitting in the senate finance committee since september of last year but robbery under the guise of sport support

isn't just happening at the federal level city governments a lot stick taxpayer funds excuse me to build massive sports stadiums take for instance the current super bowl champions the seattle seahawks their home stadium century link field came with a price tag of five hundred sixty million dollars seventy percent of which was paid for by seattle residents and more often than not a local government's commitment to their team will go far beyond building the stadium we're talking about maintenance operations waste utilities so while professional sports seem like merely a lighthearted distraction from the world's economic woes don't forget that they're robbing you just. same. i. hope in california as a city that saw one of those brutal police crackdowns during the occupy movement

with a long history of violence and police distrust city officials have been grappling with a way to tackle to oversee the masses now oakland is creating a massive surveillance hub called the to main awareness center which holds a whopping three hundred fifty terabytes of data just to put this into perspective that's almost as much data being used by the library of congress which holds four hundred twenty two terabytes now city officials claim the center is a technology technologically superior to turn of crime and a way to respond to large scale disasters such as earthquakes and fires however opponents claim the project is actually about control and keeping tabs on protest groups one of these opponents dr merrow their name is brian hopper and i first asked him what he believes is the real purpose behind the domain awareness center. well it's going to have a collection of. at moment seven hundred cameras throughout the city that has a potential to lead to many more systems the mission creep in this project has been

pretty great instilling to social media at one time city permits property records various other databases were all in just updated should be part of this ever shifting scope of work so the real purpose as we see it based on our extensive review of salaries and have been generally knows is the monitoring of political protests we believe that in an inch and chill distance a lot of this came about us through the occupy oakland protest over a year ago and in there over three thousand e-mails there never one. homicide rate burglary assault or any other violent crime the clear intent is monitoring of political protests at describes some of the content of these e-mails you say that doesn't talk about crime what does it talk about. what it is talks about yeah it's

talks about occupy it talks about infiltrating groups it talks about. the need to track protesters as they move around the city they talk about well what do these people have died they're not talking about crime and talk about what kind of technologies the surveillance center will employ this kind of expand on that. yes i just mentioned the facial recognition software the automatic license plate readers that's become a hot button issue in a lot of local areas here in the area. flooding into various cameras throughout the oakland schools oakland housing authority the clore of the city linking to various business districts around town so that they can pretty much have the full time twenty four seventh's surveillance system in place and several lot of civil liberty violations are not the only thing your group is opposing brian you're threatening to sue the city because of the project's ties to a nuclear weapons contractor why is that

a problem. wolf one it's the expressed will of the of the voters of oakland we passed this ordinance saying that we don't want to get in bed with these guys that have ties to a nuclear weapon whether it's direct or indirect schneider electric has direct ties to nuclear weapons work there are a large supplier of components and guidance systems for nuclear weapons we chose this tactic specifically because it seemed the quickest and easiest way to try and solve your war to the phase two contracts are using the contract in policies of the city of oakland it's so to stop this before we even get into the civil liberties battle. and where. that stand right now. well that we've scared about enough on january twenty eighth a postponed the award of the contracts and the city attorney's office will be advising them and close session tomorrow on how to move forward based on our

threat and then it will come up before the full council for a vote on february eighteenth and the creation of the center comes around the heels of one of the most egregious crackdowns on the occupy movement as you mentioned before occupy oakland very brutal there why do you think that open in particular is so susceptible to this type of oppression. i think it's because we actually fight back i think this is becoming a testing ground for the feds if they can do it here in oakland where we fight back whether it was the black panthers the free speech movement draft or. our p.p.i. we don't just sit down we strike back and you know the writers trial from a decade ago has instilled great distrust among citizens so if you have evidence illegal searches and seizures that's where the o.b.d. is under a consent decree could be placed in a federal receivership at any moment and so there's

a lot of distrust here what can we learn about civil liberties violations from other cities that have already built you know surveillance hubs or these types of fusion centers. we have quite a bit. of video footage at this point of police infiltration we have quite a. large amount of time over ten thousand documents now in our possession showing. the harm the direct harm to certain individuals where they've lost their job and. whether they've been harassed directly by the police beatings illegal arrest improper searches in. cesar's without probable cause that these are real facts people have suffered real harm and were trying to stop according to san francisco chronicle the protests against the surveillance that are started off strong but have dissipated over the months brian where the protests stand right now

and what accountability accountability excuse me look like if the center does indeed move forward. we're going to have a big rally on february fourth during the council hearing as i stated our our i will be joining the close session agenda so we won't be allowed to participate in that but we still intend to have a rally and i imagine we'll have another want to contribute chains. i we just agree that participation or just sense is waning and i think a lot of people have kind of been waiting to see what we're going to do waiting to see if the a.c.l.u. and for going to jump in with legal action and we're constantly getting approached with offers of help. and just a great many groups joining our lawsuit there will be many co claims there's so i just agree that there's no support for a movement here. that was brian hoffer of the oakland privacy working group.

coming up we'll talk more about keystone pipeline more pipeline problems. crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want. 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 trek albus. role. in fact the single biggest threat facing our nation today is the closure it takes a look of our government and across several we've been hijacked lying handful of transnational corporations that will profit by destroying what our founding fathers one still just my job market and on this show we reveal the big picture of what's actually going on in the world we go beyond identifying the problem trying to fix rational debate and a real discussion of critical issues facing up to find her job ready to join the movement then welcome to the big picture.

put it under control marginalized the bank of new knowledge face time to time you know. the pleasure to have you with us here on our team today i'm researcher. in the the. particular trouble. over the weekend along into supported report on the controversial keystone x.l. pipeline was finally published by the state department the results small apartment deemed that there would be minimal environmental impact resulting from the construction. the massive oil pipeline last june obama announced that approval of

the plan would depend on certain factors. allowing the keystone pipeline to be built requires a finding the doing so would be in our nation's interest. and our national interest will be served only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution. it seems the state department's report is just the kind of push obama needs for his final decision to move forward with the project considering how the southern leg of keystone has already been built on the oil flowing the pressure from oil and gas companies to get the ball rolling on the northern side is mounting however if obama does indeed approve the project it could leave a lasting environmental scar on his legacy so they break down the real impacts of this plan and join my nation reporters that we carpenter and legislative director of the national wildlife federation josh sachs thanks so much for coming on both of you thanks so start with you based obama's statement and also the latest report at the state department do you think that the likelihood what what likely or do you

think the pen will be approved sorry can't you know i think it's really hard to say at this point there is so much wiggle room that this report left open for the president to maneuver. we've heard contradictory statements you know he still keeps repeating this message of all of the above energy strategy which i think is very worrisome from a carbon climate perspective at the same time he's laid out a pretty clear standard in terms of that at what the national interest as you know i think it's pretty clear that this project does not meet that standard and josh i want to read a key part of the report that said approval or denial of any of the crude oil transport is unlikely to significantly impact the rate of extraction in the oil sands the continued demand for heavy crude oil refineries in the u.s. essentially crude oil will continue to be extracted no matter if the pipeline is built or not your response i think there's a couple things to look at their first is crude oil is certainly going to keep coming out of the ground but this is a different type of oil this is a very heavy very very dirty. well and we know that under certain circumstances the demand for that oil is going to greatly decline and if we allow the keystone

pipeline that's like lighting the fuse on the biggest carbon pollution ever that would be a real problem what kind of oil are we talking about here it's called some very heavy tar sands oil and it's much more toxic it's much dirtier to refine and it's much harder to transport so when we move it to the point we have to move incredibly high volume volume that's much higher higher pressure and it's much different the moving the lighter crude oil that we extract here in the united states is interesting point zero your news article outlines a conflict of interest and the findings this report the state department sector general is allowed to finish investigating potential conflict of interest that you talk about what is this intel and why the the rush to release the findings well this report has been in the works for several years now and there has been a previous conflict of interest investigation the second contractor that's worked on the project it now appears that there have been failures to declare disclose some financial relationships between this contractor environmental resources

management and trans canada and other companies that stand to benefit from the development of canada's tar sands so the inspector generals looking into this and the state department says these are two separate processes that they want to get going with the reports and that they believe that their conflict of interest procedures have been followed. joshua many proponent of the project to point out this shipping crude oil by rail is more dangerous than the pipeline and do you believe this is true well i'm not sure what is more dangerous but what i do know is that every way we ship this dangerous and moving this much oil through a pipeline that's going to go through the united states not to the united states is an export pipeline is a risk that the american people really don't need. to report also noted that if an if the estimated eight hundred thirty thousand barrels of oil work transported by train instead of the pipe and. twenty eight to forty two percent higher percentage of greenhouse gas emissions how do you respond to the argument that the pipeline

would actually be cleaner. well we don't think the pipeline will be cleaner and i think important point when we compare the pipeline to rail is if we're going to move that much oil if we're going to move eight hundred thousand barrels a day we're going to have to be running trains constantly there's not enough room on the rails and that's why they want this pipeline is there isn't enough rail capacity to move that much away. a lot brought on why that is well there simply aren't enough trains and aren't enough train tracks to move that oil that quickly. so why should we support a project that will create thousands of jobs it will not create thousands of jobs simply put those job estimates that you keep hearing thrown around are for a temporary construction jobs within a year or two years max those wall disappear and you'll have most fifty long term jobs fifty jobs that's hardly any where is that number coming from that's from the that's the state department official i'm. going to says the same thing we get more

jobs if we opened a wal-mart that's a terrifying concept joshua what do you say to the argument that projects like keystone are the only way to lessen our dependence on middle eastern oil because you keep hearing obama say we're we're shifting over middle eastern dependence we're coming back here it's a good thing right sure but the united states is the third largest oil producer in the world behind only two countries and in the majority of our oil comes from the united states right now this oil this tar sands coming from canada is not for the united states market it's to be exported around the world where they're going to be exported to it's going to be exported to places that want this cheap or dirty your fuel mostly foreign markets china russia still what is that going back to the bit you said it was what is that actually used for in that crude form what's an ultimate lead gets refined and turned into other petroleum products just like any other type of oil the problem is the extraction and the refining is much more. a nurse and has much more costly impacts on the environment so let's talk about those

. what what would they have wildlife and the environment at this pipeline is indeed built shortall first and foremost climate change is the biggest threat to wildlife and if we build this pipeline as i said we're going to greatly increase climate action in going to see an animal's across the world the of two other problems where we extract this oil up in canada is the burden nursery for one hundred ninety species of internationally protected birds and then if ever there was a leak and certainly we've seen these pipelines leak again and again any animals to drink water from there come in contact with the oil and on and on are going to be impacted we've already seen a side of this pipeline be built i mean has there been any sort of detrimental impacts from that sure could use are one of keystone that leaked ten times in its first year ten times in its first year these pipelines are not foolproof and as i said before this is an oil for americans this is oil to go through america it's really not worth the risk for the everyday american and if i can add to that it's not just wildlife and the environment it's people that we have adverse effects on

communities around the pipeline and around the tar sands and so this isn't we have immediate impacts and immediate health impacts especially around the refineries in houston and where the tar sands development is in canada so we were kind of action we've seen from environmental groups wishing to prevent the completion of the pipeline this is really about a strong grassroots activism push around keystone and tonight we're seeing vigils i believe almost two hundred vigils across the country. asking for the president to reject the pipeline this is become a touchstone of the environmental movement and i think while it's true you know you could argue that the one pipeline isn't solely responsible for climate change this is really an opportunity for the president the administration to make good on their goals and to really turn the tide you know break the addiction you need to at some point just say no and i think the community is really fired up to make that happen what are the alternatives here because i think people look at obama's rhetoric and they're saying well you know compared to all these things where it's not as bad to do the pipeline as it would be to transport this and other ways what's the one

thing that you would say to someone to say hey it's not worth it. there aren't benefits one of the benefits they're not jobs the oil is not coming here it's not going to give us energy security and so even if the risks are uncertain if there are risks at all but no real benefits what's the point going to be i think that's exactly the case and i think now the president has everything he needs to say no to this point. do you think that he will i can't tell you what the president is going to do but i sat in the audience when he gave that speech that you showed earlier in the segment and he committed that if the pipeline is going to greatly impact quantum effects he's going to say no but according to that report it said that it wouldn't necessarily however if i can just write in there they said that their market analysis was uncertain and it was changeable and the report did find that if oil prices go down and if there aren't feasible alternatives such as they can't scale up for a while to the extent that they would have to do then it would increase climate

pollution or carbon pollution excuse me so that you have to read between the lines of the report you can find suggestions that if things don't go perfectly then this pipeline is really necessary and you wouldn't see canada lobbying so hard on behalf of the pipeline if it weren't necessary and the white house chief of staff went on face the nation on sunday morning he was asked about the keystone pipeline in the first thing he said was to remind everyone about the president's climate speech i think that's a good sign it is indeed i just worry because of how insanely strong the holby is here you know kind of puts everything else to the wayside. let's talk about another repeated argument that i constantly hear about the pipeline which is proponents rather saying that it will make lower prices at the pump well that's just flat out not true right now we have depressed prices in the midwest because we don't have stone what's happening is the only place for the tar sands oil to go is to the midwest because it's landlocked so there's a huge plot of tar sands oil in the midwest and it keeps prices low once you move

out of oil pass the midwest get it out to a wider market they'll be more demand the price will go up. and you have rising gas prices twenty to forty cents higher per gallon in the midwest is the estimate and roger it seems like the only direct action is is like idle no more and these groups are really throwing their bodies on the construction of this pipeline here is faith in obama enough to prevent it from being built i mean really is there anything else who can do because i just it's not about faith it's about facts and the president has told us he's there's a calculus to be made he told us what that is and it's very obvious that if we had eight hundred thousand barrels a day of the dirtiest oil it's going to have an impact that's just cut since i just feel like it has if all those pipelines already built i mean do you think that the pressure is just overwhelming to him to try to prove it do you think that he's kind of delaying it because he doesn't want that scar on his record i think there's two separate things the pipelines that have been built thus far are moving petroleum products around the united states that's

a separate issue this is the linchpin the keystone x.l. which will bring the tar sands from alberta into the united states he hasn't said how he's going to decide yet but as we've discussed he's laid out all the framework for a no and we're hoping he gets there and what else do you recommend people to do that maybe are concerned about this issue or want to stop the construction well there's a comment period now there's a thirty day public comment period and those comments will be taken into consideration as the administration considers the national interest guidelines so whether this project fits the national interest and so this is a great opportunity to comment publicly and to get involved in some of these rally is we would expect to see a lot of direct action and i think that that's going to be very important to counter the big money lobbying of course and you know josh if he does approve the pipeline do you think that it will leave a lasting scar in his environmental legacy i think that if he approves the pipeline it's going to have a dramatic effect on the environment and i think everyone's going to have to reckon . with i think that's true and if he's serious about climate change you have to

kick the carbon. of the oil addiction and there's no. time to do it that now you can't just keep saying all that tomorrow and somewhat you have to do it i mean coal oil it's also dirty and i just hope that we see some real moves to get on clean energy here because time is running out and climate change is not going to anytime soon you guys thank you so much so a carbon report for the nation joshua sachs legislative director national wildlife federation really going on thanks. that's our show you guys thanks for watching drunken tomorrow and i break the set all over again tell them have a good night. wealthy british style sun it's time to right on. target.

market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds of reports . we welcome their innate and abby martin to two of the coasts on the r.t.e. network. it's going to give you a different perspective give you one stock tip never i'll give you the information you make the decision don't worry about how breaking this works it's a revolution of the mind it's a revolution of ideas and consciousness and frustrated with the system the extremely new approach which would be described as angry i think i'm a strong enough or single. live. live.

live live. talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want. i've got a quote for you. that's pretty tough. stay with substory. let's get this guy like you would smear about guys instead of working for the people both issues the mainstream media are working for each other bridegrooms vision by. the bedroom.

were. i think. over by the if you were to go did you know the price is the only industry specifically mentioning the cost of your conscience by that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy attract all books. i'm going to go i'm tom on and on this show we reveal the picture of what's actually going on will we go beyond identifying to try to fix rational debate a real discussion critical issues facing our family member ready to join the movement then welcome to the big picture. more money on top of our by washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. i.