this is russian propaganda i know. what's up everyone i'm out here martin and this is breaking the set us lawmakers did something very rare this week actually managed to pass a piece of legislation this time around it was a long awaited farm bill simple budget plan for america for the economy that was two years in the making right now and our dismal economy in the need for food stamps at a record high but the farm bill would be cutting food assistance by eight billion dollars over the next ten years but i'm sure our lawmakers carefully thought this through i mean it's not like there are more wasteful programs out there that they could have cut instead right well it took me about five minutes on google to find out how to save thirty five billion dollars meet the p eight poseidon is overpriced

submarine hundred program comes in at a whopping thirty five billion dollars and the best part the machines don't even work michael gilmore of the pentagon testing office recently told bloomberg that the aircraft is quote not effective for intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance missions and is not effective for a wide area anti submarine search but hey at least acknowledgment from the pentagon on the program's abysmal failure means that they'll halt the spending and we'll save money right guess again maybe plans to go ahead and purchase one hundred thirteen of these aircrafts if only you can eat underwater sub hunters now let's break this. the the the the please please take that leap very hard to take i. want to get on the line that you ever had sex with that hurt their little.

league. education please please please. please please please. please. let me. in the lead up to the two thousand and twelve nato protests chicago police raided an apartment in the neighborhood of bridgeport eleven people were arrested six eventually released but a trio was singled out and they were charged with planning a terrorist attack to the struck the nato summit the trio consisting of brett better lead jared chase and brian church have been quite the nato three and the

evidence presented against them was collected by undercover cops who infiltrated the group now since their arrest almost two years ago the nato three have been behind bars and are currently facing forty years sentences which this week jurors attended the final day of evidence in the trial of a nato three but the precedent resulting from the outcome of the trial is yet to be seen earlier i spoke to firedoglake journalist kevin castello who's been reporting on the trial for us as a breakdown of what exactly happened in the courtroom yesterday as well as the undercover police's testimony. importantly we learned that the prosecutors do not have any evidence beyond. the fact that these three men were on the porch of an apartment there were. that were being made on may sixteenth the same day that they were arrested they were making by import only what we figured out is that one of the men it's name is brett betterly was on the steps was there in fact the inner

cover officer can't really credibly pinned down that he was on those steps and not in the house the defense thinks he was in the house and not their church another person and that three church was on the other side of the porch so there's one guy chase who was involved in being and pouring gas into your bottle of and then there's the two undercover officers whose names are obvious servant matt also known as bow and then obviously they're not even chico and we have. egan on the stand continuing testimony and it seems like again we've got more evidence from them that there were efforts to focus the nato three into actually doing something that would pose a threat so they could then stop it and then arrest them. for a million or do you believe it to be a case of entrapment and outline some of the evidence pointing to that. say first

is that the defense is not made and trap men defense because legally what they have to do is admit to crimes so what we have here is a case that is even worse than entrapment because even when these two undercover officers were amateurishly going about their police activity trying to get these men to be involved in acts ranging from maybe attacking police stations in chicago attacking obama's reelection campaign headquarters here in chicago going and. doing these things like shooting an arrow at rahm emanuel's house it's really crazy or smashing a window in chase bank headquarters or mounting an attack there they couldn't get them to do that to actually planned out you sort of attack what they could do is they could. get some bottles get some gas on the porch making four of these mala tough cocktails and then have them on the night of may sixteenth in the apartment

one that was rated so much worse than entrapment because they really weren't able to ever can beenz the men to a point where they had the intent to commit these terrorism acts how did the chicago police department justify embedding undercover cops within this community well it was all under the guise of a national special security event you might have heard about these this is the near that is given to any sort of meeting like the republican national convention democratic national convention trade meetings meetings of world dignitaries like the nato meeting here in chicago they have deployment of. incredible police resources and personnel they they clamp down they send police officers actually in the immediate months before the nato meeting into the chicago activist community where they were basically spying on people at punk rock shows at public meetings where they were talking about organizing for protests at the summit

. even going to concerts and going to cafes a very well known cafe here in chicago called the heartland cafe was they sent six surveillance of service there to spy on them and i got to tell you this place is mostly just a hangout for old old lefty. and what's what's really disturbing kevin is it's not just limited the police force is a study by the center for corporate policy just found based on public documentation that one out of every four activists could be a corporate spy i mean how widespread do you think infiltration of these groups are beyond police. or the question that is faced here for the activist community is how deep did this implication run we have the two identities or. undercover police officers that have been involved in bringing this case against the data three but there's another person a medic who was found out to have working for the police there's other people there

are probably people from the f.b.i. or secret service that were there and done being there surveillance in order to ensure security for the nato meeting and so we do not know right now how vast the surveillance was in the run up to the nato meeting but we do know that there was an effort you know under the guise of trying to figure out where to allocate resources and what kind of personnel we were going to need more of security what we know is that they had fabricated this case out of suspicion list surveillance of the chicago activist community they were able to come up with anything better than least three guys who they have on tape from a court order of a wire talking just talking about things that they would do mostly joking about things they might like to do to police that are violent that are kind of macabre times but at the same time they never coherently sat down and tried to piece together an actual plan to attack anyone here in the city of chicago and i think that's the scariest part is the precedent that this sets kavin and what are the

broader implications of this case if they are indeed found guilty but the broader implication is that this is a state case even though it has elements that seem like a federal case and probably should have been pursued in a federal court it's in a state court so significance or here in the state of illinois maybe other states is that you have this case actually setting a president for convicting terrorists i mean if these guys are convicted they'll be labeled for life as terrorists and when prosecutors bring a case forward in the future they're going to have this law to refer to and so we've got a total weakening of the state terrorism law here in illinois potentially maybe other states are going to look to this and their laws will be weaker and. essentially making a mockery out of this state terrorism law because it could actually be used to prevent rare exceedingly rare and improbable cases of terrorism ever would occur

but prosecutors have taken this to a level where they've been very zealous and they're making a mockery of this law an unbelievable thank you so much for being there reporting on it having a stolen journalist for firedoglake appreciate it thank you. in a country with only five percent of the world's population with a whopping twenty five percent of its prisoners america's incarceration rate continues to explode and a large reason for this prison boom is minimum sentencing laws that require mandatory prison terms for certain crimes as one size fits all policy is incredibly costly and efficient according to a recently released a.c.l.u. report there are currently three thousand two hundred seventy eight people serving life without parole for nonviolent crimes one of the horrific crimes that have

landed these people in prison for life all things that range from a shoplifting to jacking a wallet and of course don't forget how seventy nine percent of these cases involve nonviolent drug offenses punitive measures like three and four strikes laws in many states are direct result of the failed policies of the drug war and also of a toxic indoctrination that society should read itself of criminals and lock them away forever instead of rehabilitating them with prisoners out of sight out of mind we forget that we the taxpayers are the ones fronting millions of dollars to keep the prison industrial complex thriving in fact according to the a.c.l.u. taxpayers would save one point eight billion dollars annually if nonviolent offenses were ineligible for life without parole clearly these laws are counterintuitive not to mention extremely destructive as to society which brings me to the good news see moves are finally being made on this issue last week the

senate judiciary committee overwhelmingly approved the smarter sentencing act if passed this bill could cut mandatory minimum sentences in half for some offenses put an end of the disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentencing and increase eligibility for defendants to get sentenced. below the minimum the drug policy alliance is calling the reform effort quote the biggest overhaul in federal drug sentencing in decades great it's about damn time but it's amazing to see the federal government finally trying to solve this country's out of control prison issue as well as the disproportionate effect incarceration has on african-americans but as good as the news may be the smart sentencing act doesn't go far enough to alleviate the punitive measures put in place against nonviolent crimes and drug use not to mention this bill is still a long way from becoming actual law and also doesn't do anything to address the people already in prison serving outrageous sentences or the institutionalized

racism in the criminal justice system that leaves these type of policies but for now if passed it could prevent thousands of people from wasting their entire lives behind bars and for that it is something to celebrate. coming up i'll talk about the biggest celebrities sell out stay tuned.

it's far worse. than the finish line of the marathon. like the.

celebrities tend to be extremely influential so it's no surprise you'll find a lot of them fronting billboards t.v. commercials or magazine ads but sometimes famous people walk a thin line between corporate sponsorship and total celebrity shilled i'm now going to make it very clear that i'm not hating on celebs for having a little side hustle in fact most of them do but it can be disheartening to find out about a certain movie star you might look up to is willing to sell a product while turning a blind eye to the corporate policies that often hurt people and the environment scarlett johannson for example is a gorgeous starlet was once a champion for human rights as the goodwill ambassador for the charity group oxfam however she recently became the proud face of an israeli company called soda stream a business that operates on a legal land palestine's west bank now given the fact that oxfam opposes illegal settlements and israel johanson sponsorship posed a slight conflict of interest and sort of choosing a stand by a charity group committed to fighting poverty she chose instead to embrace the

bubbles apparently the have to pay out from soda stream was a much better guide than her moral compass it also leaves the rest of us to wonder why the twenty million dollar contract she just landed for the next avengers flick isn't worth her carrying just a little bit more. but the plight of palestinians now this next endorsement is just as strange as the man behind it tom cruise shelling for wal-mart now you might ask why an a list celebrity would be endorsing one of the worst corporations in the world so let's hear from cruz himself. that culture that you have going here is really like no other company of sheol know this but it is a role model for how business can address some of the biggest issues facing our world. wow so wal-mart is a role model by role model he means economic death stars since wal-mart destroys everything in its path leaving behind nothing more than a modernist wasteland and keep this in mind tom cruise is charging twenty five

million bucks a pop per movie so how much did wal-mart shell out to have crews tout the company as the gold standard of business models after all we're talking about a company that has complete disregard for safety standards number one thousand deaths resulted from a collapse the garment factory in bangladesh a factory wal-mart commission for its products what wal-mart still refuses to sign an international safety agreement that would help prevent future disasters like these not to mention the fact that this corporation is the biggest welfare queen of all costing taxpayers millions of dollars to subsidize food stamps for its underpaid employees but i guess the money they're not spending on these issues is going straight to the pockets of a listers like cruz. and i can't help but talk about bob dylan the musical legend who you know back in the one nine hundred sixty s. he was a revolutionary in american counterculture icon last week dylan appeared in

a chrysler commercial during the super bowl in said commercial dylan croons as long as you buy american cars you can let your phone be assembled in asia clearly this is a reference to apple but use the natori as foxconn manufacture to create its i phones . as revealed by a new york times exposé many employees at these factories work so many hours their legs swell up leaving them unable to walk while hundreds of others have been exposed to a poisonous chemical used to clean i phone screens and just last year three foxconn employees committed suicide which explains the anti suicide met surrounding their factories but it's also worth noting that just last year yahoo finance estimated bob dylan's not worth to be near one hundred eighty million dollars and i can't hope but wonder what protest song in one nine hundred sixty s. version of dylan would write about the seventy two year old version of himself look the line between art and commercialism becomes more blurred every day and perhaps

it was the great bill hicks who said it best he said you do a commercial you're off the artistic roll car for ever your corporate f. ing shilly or another whore of the capital gang bang and if you do a commercial there's a price on your head every thing you say is suspect harsh words but he's right being famous carries the weight of great influence and responsibility so i guess the real question is whether or not and dorfman deals worth the cost of becoming just another celebrity sellout. for the first time since nine hundred seventy three the abortion rate in the u.s. has hit a record low according to a report published this week by the guttmacher institute there were less than seven thousand abortions for every one thousand women in america in two thousand and eleven while the paper presents the raw data the question remains over what factors

have contributed to the decline reports also timely as more states are passing laws aimed at making abortion access more difficult and while the debate over abortion rights and contraception continues to intensify and so help me break down the findings in the report i'm joined now by the writer by writer and activist and taylor thanks so much for coming on and. great to be with you so what do you think are the main factors leading to this abortion decline. well i think you know as you said the study doesn't. venture into conclusions as to why there's a decrease in level of abortions so everything is a little bit speculative at this point but i would imagine that there's a combination of one abortion becoming more difficult to access ninety seven percent of rural counties in this country do not have an abortion provider there's more and more restrictions that have been passed in recent years. there's also the

fact that abortion has become more stigmatized and there's a lot more shame associated with it a lot more. of a burden put on women and women being made to feel that it's wrong to get an abortion so i know that that deters women as well and then there are of course among certain sections of women there is there has been improved access to birth control which obviously then has a big impact on the rate of unintended pregnancies so you know i think there's different factors but to me the big thing that has struck me is that in all the discussion and debate. of this study there's been sort of a. underlining underlying assumption that keeps being stated that this is something that everybody can celebrate the rate of abortion going down anti abortion people can celebrate it pro abortion people can celebrate it everybody should celebrate it and i think that this has embedded within it the assumption that there's something wrong with abortion which i firmly disagree with i think abortion should be as available as accessible as common as women need it without any shame without any

stigma and that there's nothing wrong with that so i think that's an important thing that is being left out of the discussion the discussion about this study you know you mention the state. potentially contributing to the study it's interesting because most state laws creating stricter requirements for abortions are actually implemented after the period of the study and you're talking about you know people touting this study is a great victory i want to get your response conservatives are touting it a great victory in morality women's attitudes are changing what constitutes life so i'm sorry what's your response. fetuses are not babies this is really important a lot of women have been convinced of this a lot of men have been convinced that this is our babies but just like the earth was round even when most people thought it was flat just like evolution exists even though a lot of fundamentalists want to deny that as well fetuses are a subordinate part of a woman's body there's been an all out assault on science there's been all of this . you know fight to institute

a cult of motherhood and to make women feel as if they are nothing more than a vessel and a potential breeder of a child and that if they have a pregnancy that they really are subordinate to the life within them it's not true a fetus is not a baby and to the degree that there has been a shift in public attitude especially among young women and young men where there's been an increasing feeling that there's something wrong with abortion i think this is a very negative trend it's actually frankly immoral it's immoral to be. remoting this lie and convincing women of it and having women go through life feeling that their their greatest accomplishment is to is to have a child if you want the child that can be wonderful but if you're pregnant and you don't want to have a child you should not feel any pressure or moral obligation to have a child and frankly it's immoral to force or coerce or pressure or shame women into having children that they do not want and that they cannot care for it forces women to foreclose their own dreams and ambitions it traps them in abusive marriages it

traps them into poverty or deeper into poverty and already across this country there are and i've seen this i've traveled the country i've seen it in mississippi and in wichita kansas there are women who are self inducing abortions because they they are they can't get access they can't afford it they're too ashamed we have to reverse this trajectory i want to jump in there really where there's a perfectly moral or i want to jump in there really quickly according to two thousand and twelve gallup poll sixty one percent of americans believe that abortion should be legal within the first three months of pregnancy i mean this goes back as we know roe v wade institutionalized here why are we seeing a continued assault on abortion if the majority of americans agree samsara. well the assault on abortion rights has always been an assault on women's full participation in society it's an assault on the role of women as full and equal human beings the movement against abortion has always been also against birth

control look if you really wanted to reduce abortion if that was really your aim you'd be the biggest advocate of birth control and sex education comprehensive sex education that's not the case the movement against abortion is against birth control they're against sex education they're against science being taught in the schools because they really want to return women to the position of being breeders of children and property of their husbands or their fathers and it's about control of women and this is you know there's we live in a patriarchal society we need a revolution to get rid of this page. system we live live under and i think that we have to confront that this is a this is this is why we call it a war on women it's actually a war on women right yeah i mean i get a lot of vitriol every time i even cover those topics and it's pretty interesting to see the response still i want to move on to another issue that also deeply affects women breastfeeding last week the united arab emirates introduced a bill requiring mothers to breastfeed for the first two years of their child's

life do you think breastfeeding should be mandatory. absolutely not women should not be criminalized for how they whether they have children and how they really are their children obviously abuse of children is something that should not be tolerated but that's abuse by anybody male female i mean there's there's all kinds of violence that gets perpetrated against children a woman's decision whether to breastfeed or not there's all kinds of reasons why a woman might choose to or might choose not to or might not be able to and the idea of bringing the state and once again a patriarchal state which obviously the u.a.e. is bringing the force of the state down on women is just a horrific prospect i think it's an absolutely immoral and outrageous and illegitimate law that was passed and there's trends in this country too towards shaming women who don't breastfeed towards looking at them as if they're not good mothers not good people i think this this has to be challenged and talk about that stigma i mean as you just mentioned there's

a huge stigma here surrounding this topic in america we have about a minute left. yeah i think women that we have to break out of and we actually have to have a fight in the resistance in this country in the streets in mass public ways that is challenging the notion that women's fundamental role is to breed and rear children. parenting can be wonderful it's wonderful for fathers as well as it is for mothers there's nothing that is a woman's duty here and i think you know that. that that this is something it's a very important morality that must be fought for it must be fought for you what is a legislative war and when and thank you so much you know so much since our taylor writer revolution newspaper really appreciate it. that's our show you guys i'm going to my i want to break this up all over again. christian let's see i'm. going to use. their words i

would. say look. i would rather as questions to people in positions of power instead of speaking on their behalf and that's why you can find my show larry king now right here on our t.v. question lol. i

know c.n.n. m s n b c news have taken some not slightly but the fact is i admire their commitment to cover all sides of the story just in case one of them happens to be. that was funny but it's closer to the truth and might think. it's because one whole attention and the mainstream media work side by side with joe actually i'm here. at our team we have a different brain. because the news of the world just is not this funny i'm not laughing dammit i'm not i. if. you guys talk to the jokes well handled that.

it was supposed to be just another news reports although admittedly for a special occasion it was one hundred twenty three days before the start of the winter olympic games in sochi and i was in greece for the lighting of the olympic flame the ruins of the limpia one of the most famous monuments of ancient greece the site of the very first olympic games where stones like this would have been part of the temple. to temple temple .