the but. i'm abby martin and this is breaking on the set so last week marked the end of the nato three chicago terrorism trial involving three men and undercover police officers posing as activists at the at the two thousand and twelve nato summit and a mixed verdict the men were found not guilty of the terrorism charges but guilty for possessing an incendiary device and inciting mob action incendiary device charge carries a sentence of up to thirty years so while we should celebrate the fact that the jury did not uphold the trumped up terrorism charges the fact that these men are still facing decades behind bars for what journalism called a case worse than entrapment is extremely concerning because while building molotov cocktails is indeed incredibly stupid without the encouragement and guidance from undercover cops there's no doubt these men would never ever engage in this type of

action so if you don't want to see federal and state governments create so-called criminals just to justify spending hundreds of millions of dollars on security theater and join me and let's break this up. it was a. very hard to think that. you ever had sex with that hurt rick perry.

but. sex trafficking is a huge international industry and involves mostly vulnerable young people who were removed from their communities kept against their will and exploited as sex workers and even though this is going on around the world on the daily sometimes it takes a big bust to reveal the dark underbelly of this lucrative enterprise in the days leading up to the super bowl local and federal law enforcement cracked down on suspected traffickers and rescued a total of sixteen teenagers most of whom are young girls but unfortunately the issues far more complicated than law enforcement is able to solve and not to be conflated with men and women employing themselves as prostitutes and both sex trafficking and prostitution have numerous taboo issues that are rarely discussed for example providing health services and protection for those involved and also empowering those who make the conscious choice to engage in prostitution that's

where the hip program comes in an organization that provides services and advocates on behalf of sex workers and individuals impacted by the sex trade jeremy now as hips executive director cindy clay thank you so much for coming on cindi thank you for having me so a lot of people do conflate the two issues everyone who you know a lot of people think that every single prostitute is also a victim of sex trafficking can you speak to this misconception sure and i think the sad fact is is that the way that we've crafted our laws only add to this confusion. people currently in d.c. for example every arrest that happens for a civil or prostitution related offense is considered sex trafficking regardless of the reasons and so what instances like this doesn't this is happening across the country is that it doesn't give us a good picture of who's actually being hurt and exploited and who for whatever reason are choosing by either choice or circumstance to engage in these type of activities. law enforcement as you just said treats it as individuals breaking the

law what is being missed largely because if i feel like cops really don't know how else to approach it with the law have to change then right the problem is that we're using the wrong tool to address exploitation and to address the circumstances that might bring someone into something like prostitution of the sex trade and it's not it's not law enforcement's fault that they're confused and in many cases law enforcement has very good intentions and they're trying to do the right thing and they're trying to stop abuse but the problem is that we're for only using law enforcement as a tool to help people get out of the sex trade it's just the wrong approach because when we talk to everyone we work with regardless of whether they are in gauging in survival sex because they were homeless and struggle with drug addiction and have no no way else to feed themselves or if you're talking about somebody who makes three hundred dollars an hour as an escort and works downtown. everyone all every all sex workers and all people involved in the sex trade how to have

a fear of law enforcement a deep seated fear of law enforcement and fear arrest and so that's not our best tool you know you could even argue that it exacerbates the problem you know putting a band-aid on something much deeper you just mentioned a lot of different reasons that people do decide to get into the sex trade. when in preparing multiple reports on this topic what else have you found that you've contributed to the un reports well what we find is we try to share best practices internationally and that's by listening to people who have been involved in the exploitative side of sex work but also listening to people who aren't exploited in sex work and if we can what we recommend in many sex workers internationally recommend is that you need to unpack and you need to separate sex trafficking and sexual exploitation and sex trade that's happening by choice or circumstance and if you address the root causes and help people who choose and you can find ways to get help you actually do a much better job. sweeping in with law enforcement and trying to rescue people

which often puts them in more or just as vulnerable positions as they were before let's talk about decriminalizing or legalizing prostitution is that something that has advocates for hips actually this year came out and took a strong stance against criminalization for many years the people that we worked with had varying opinions on it and so we felt like it wasn't necessarily an issue that we need to take a stance on but after twenty years of working with this population in twenty years of working with people what we do find is arresting people doesn't help it's really not the best way to help them and so continues criminalization actually creates this cycle of incarceration that keeps people tied to the sex industry having a record for a prostitution arrest even if that record was expunged is something that people can search for and it leads to people not getting jobs people get kicked out of their homes and people get kicked out or lose relationships because of it and so we're

wholeheartedly against criminalization you know remember the war on drugs prostitution and drug use has been around since the beginning of time a beginning of civilization rather and it just seems like criminalizing it has never worked and won't ever work very few places have decriminalize or legal prostitution what communities have to gain from going that route right well there are definitely some instances are around the world and we're beginning to talk about places around the country where we're making less of a issue with arresting sex workers specifically and making in the less of an issue of policing this and what we find in those circumstances is that violence is actually reduced because sex workers feel that they can go to the police or go to law enforcement to report dangerous people to report people who are abusing other people sex workers are actually really interested in stopping sex trafficking that's not good for their business it's not good for anyone and so when we find that law enforcement is. uses this tool to arrest people specifically for engaging

in sex work we are much more able to come and use law enforcement for the tool it is which is to stop violence and to stop people who are hurting other people yeah absolutely in december california voters overturn a discriminatory rule that prevented sex workers who were raped from accessing a special victims compensation fund are there other campaigns like this that people can support to help give more rights to sex workers we have about a minute left there are there are organizations like hips in d.c. we do local advocacy and also train on this issue nationally there's organizations called swap sex workers outreach project which are actually chapters all across the nation in many of the major cities that are beginning to try to have a different conversation a more comprehensive a more compassionate conversation about this and we really feel like the public's ready and so in addition to supporting those kinds of organizations make sure that where you're putting your time your energy potential your donations are with organizations that in that involve active sex workers in their programming or in

their advocacy and finally i think that we can demand with the media and with our politicians that we have a real conversation about what's going on with this issue in the u.s. because we're ready and it's time it is we need to take it out of the taboo into the mainstream thank you so much cindy clay executive director helps ensure that. last week's startling reports surfaced of a pipeline break that dumped upwards of eighty thousand tons of coal ash into north carolina's dan river now you might not have heard about the story given that the state's environmental agencies said that the situation was contained and then that water tests showed no reason for alarm over the weekend the north carolina department of environment and natural resources backtracked and said that they mistakenly reported the early toxicity tests record of the agency the levels of deadly arsenic are in fact well above the. exceeded the limit for human exposure

but not to worry everyone a spokesperson for duke energy the company responsible for the spill has pledged to clean the river and by clean they probably mean abdicate responsibility to state environmental groups have cited at least three instances over the last year where duke energy has avoided its duty. and to similar coal ash leaks that have dumped thousands of toxic sludge into the dan river this latest spill underscores the dangers of toxic fossil fuel by products and the difficulties that exist in containing them you may remember the ten thousand gallon chemical spill that infected the water supply of three hundred thousand people in west virginia just over a month ago since then the city of charleston is closed at least three schools after detecting the black licorice scent of the chemical and c h m and get this although there has been no credible churns by authorities that the water is safe to drink residents are still getting water bills you heard that right charleston residents

are actually being billed for potentially poisonous water needless to say residents are furious and currently there's a clock a class action lawsuit underway there's no silver lining to this story as freedom industries the company responsible for the catastrophic spill recently filed for bankruptcy the bankruptcy by the way is also being investigated as a company called mountaineer fundings stepped up to provide bankruptcy capital for freedom industries the conflict of interest here stems from the fact that the man who owns mouneer funding also owns you guessed it freedom industries it seems the company is poised to transfer assets under another name leaving the baggage of the nasty chemical spill for someone else to clean up and this same story is becoming all too common in this country whether it be a coal asheville north carolina or chemical spill in west virginia people and the environment are being victimized with no one held accountable believe it or not

just in the first month and a half a dozen fourteen there are already been thousands of gallons of oil spilled in minnesota new york pennsylvania and several other states involved debate continues over how safe the keystone x.l. pipeline would be phase one of that project has already leaped over ten times in its first year in canada but unfortunately regular. aren't very stringent for reporting the leaks according to the state department's assessment keystone x.l. would quote have to spill more than twelve thousand barrels a day before its internal spill detection system would trigger an alarm what why is such a rush hold maybe because then test the bit they're going to spill in a hell of a lot of oil according the e.p.a. there almost fourteen thousand oil spills reported each year in the u.s. not to mention the ones not reported so how much more persisting landscape will suffer and degradation of human life or curb before we end our addiction to toxic

energy once and for all. stick around you guys of a break and on the latest on how the n.s.a. is contributing to drone strikes. just like. everybody else 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 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 why handful of friends dash and the corporations that will profit by destroying what our founding fathers once built just by 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. rational

debate and real discussion critical issues facing define ready to join the movement then welcome to the big picture. please. wealthy british study done. on time. on. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger the no holds barred look at the global financial headlines kinds

of reports. last i'm a obama made a wide ranging speech on u.s. drone strike policy in which he established new rules meant to lessen casualty rates in countries like yemen and pakistan yet despite this declaration an analysis by the bureau for investigative journalism found that drone strikes killed more people in these countries in the six months after his speech than in the six months prior although two thousand and thirteen we did see a noticeable drop in a practice that has killed as many as four thousand five hundred ninety eight people since two thousand and two according to your investigative journalism a couple of bombshell news reports demonstrate how the people of somalia yemen pakistan and afghanistan will continue to live with the constant threat of death from above for the foreseeable future just today the associated press released an

extremely concerning report describing how pentagon officials are trying to figure out how to legally kill an anonymous american citizen by drone again since the guise of transparency obama's decision to transfer drone strike authority from the cia to the defense department prevents drone operators from assassinating americans until the justice department builds a case to. it's them let's be honest finding a legal loophole to carry out state sponsored murder shouldn't be too difficult for the d.o.j. considering how the authorization for use of military force allows the assassination of any american deemed an enemy combatant by the us government yes because apparently the white house just didn't receive enough backlash for killing four american citizens since two thousand and nine alone. of course as i pointed out time and time again on the show the continuance of the kone of policy is not only responsible for the deaths and injuries of thousands of innocent civilians it's completely counterintuitive to stopping the spread of anti american sentiment look

no further than a recently released video clip to come out of afghanistan the stunning footage shows afghans cheering and throwing stones at a crash predator drone and really can you blame them for celebrating a broken heart because of this mechanical killer after all it's not every day that the innocent people suffering from drone wars get to turn the tables on these deadly machines furthermore report just released by the enter septa brand new web site started by journalist glenn greenwald and jeremy scahill shows that the entire military industrial complex is called looting to contribute to innocent drone deaths thanks to n.s.a. documents leaked by edward snowden as well as an interview with a former drone operator we now know that the cia and pentagon rely primarily on cell phone tracking to determine acceptable drone strike targets sort of compiling intelligence from human sources threats or determine through the n.s.a.'s cell phone location and sim card tracking programs the problem is that the intended

target an original owner of the phone does not always correspond to the people that ends up with it the cell phone owner can unwittingly give the phone to a friend or family member or target's aware of the tracking will purposely mix up their sim cards so that the n.s.a. doesn't know which phone belongs to whom to the drone operator who declined to be identified but once the bomb lands. or night raid happens you know that phone is there we don't know who's behind it who is holding it it's of course assume that the phone belongs to a human being who's nefarious and considered an unlawful enemy combatant this is where it gets very shady he or she goes on to say they might have been terrorists or they could have been family members who have nothing to do with the targets activities. well i guess we know now why drones only have a two percent success rate at killing actual high profile targets part of the new america foundation so according to director of national intelligence james clapper the collection of metadata is knock us some plus of course you live below

a drone. i. i. so this week is the first official week of the olympics in sochi russia but something has been off in the coverage leading up to the games here in america unlike previous years when the games were held in britain canada and even china the mainstream media largely focused on the players themselves however this year the corporate press seems obsessed with fear mongering and how dangerous so she is for the people who dare to go i'm not even talking about the nefarious islamic terrorist wives or black widows i'm talking about toothpaste. there is new concern over flights headed to be olympic games the u.s. government is warning airlines that flights to russia and on them to be on the lookout for efforts to smuggle explosives in toothpaste tubes the explosives hidden inside a toothpaste tube can be powerful and potentially deadly. this bomb in

a toothpaste container blew off a car goold the homeland security department warning airlines flying into russia that terrorists might try to smuggle explosives on board hidden in toothpaste tubes at the same time russian law allows its intelligence agents to do electronic snooping on anyone inside the country so that means americans phones fair game. actually fox out a whole hacking story originally lauded by n.b.c. as robert angles turned out not to be true about a security expert robert graham says the story is completely fraudulent current attack times graham accuses angles of faking the report and intentionally downloading applications that would ensure his smartphone was hacked almost immediately look i'm not saying that hacking isn't a problem or that there isn't massive surveillance going on in sochi that's to be expected but it's certainly no different than what's being done here in the u.s. so the level of hype around the story even if it were true is just

a bit odd about that toothpaste interest in the enough to have any direct flights from the u.s. to sochi in fact most tourists and players travel through other countries to get into the city so even if that story holds merit which it doesn't it doesn't make any sense to terrify americans about it in fact former head of department of homeland security and the leader of the u.s. delegation at sochi gena paul tano offered an upbeat assessment and contrasts of the ridiculous fear mongering according to guardian the poll said that the level of security is very good and that she hopes the attention of the media and the world turns now more to what the athletes are going to do instead of the threats that are being made while for once i agree from the poll tunnel here but unfortunately the senate isn't ready to give up on that fear baiting just yet so tomorrow they'll be holding a hearing on worldwide threats to u.s. national security so here to give us a preview of what we can expect out here in our political commentator sam. has a gun so it is sam why now why is there this hearing on worldwide threats facing

the u.s. which seems like the time of year that we all have. there are a lot of threats in the u.s. and that our intelligence community that defends. defense agencies are very much needed remember this comes at a time in which the n.s.a. is under a lot of pressure as a result of the snowden leaks so let's bring out the director of national intelligence james clapper who's going to testify tomorrow let's bring out the head . military intelligence believe planned let's bring out all these people to let them remind us just how much they're needed moving forward. i mean they're so are is about this is the third time we've had this year and we had a hearing last week and the house intelligence committee on a worldwide threats in the week before that we had the senate intelligence committee weigh in on worldwide threats now we're getting the senate armed services committee weighing in and got out in much the same way they got to have them all you know so are any of these threats actually legitimate because you attended the theory that that airing a hearing last week and you've got some clips of that i mean is there anything to justify this fairmont right well this hearing last week it was quite

a show let's play this clip here of just some of the threats that were rattled off by the director of national intelligence james clapper. schools and diversification of terrorism the implications of the drawdown in afghanistan the deteriorating internal security posture in iraq the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction a competitive china a dangerous unpredictable north korea a challenging iran the specter of mass atrocity an increasing sophistication of transnational crime the insidious rot of invented synthetic drugs the tension for pandemic diseases. diseases so look there are threats around the world no one's going to say that but a list that long there was also not mentioned the chinese shooting down satellites there was the on resit in ukraine these aren't eat threats to u.s. national security there's stuff that happens around the world but it really shows a lot about what our military officials and defense officials think every single

thing that's happening around the world is a threat to u.s. national security at good point and considering how clapper is going to testify again tomorrow they're going to expect a ton of just snowden bashing and rhetoric about that i think it's likely any time you have represented the end of the n.s.a. there you will see the snowden bashing last week there is a huge portion of the hearing devoted toward bashing snowden and hyping up some sort of link between snowden and the russians top. but how much damage snowden is down there for the russians must be behind him the chairman of the house intelligence committee mike rogers has been pushing this mean a lot here he was trying to get the director of military intelligence to provide evidence for this link between starting a russian and it didn't quite work out i think we have to. do you believe that. there's any indication that the n.s.a. contractor who is now in moscow might be under the influence of russian intelligence services chairman i don't have any information to that effect excuse me. excuse me these are not exactly at all what exactly the answer you wanted you

didn't get the answer you wanted so the next question this is the very next question you asked do you think it's possible so he changes it do you have facts to strickly going in your window and here's how we rephrase the question from there. do you believe that mr snowden who is in the custody of intelligence services in moscow today by your own information has the possibility to be under the influence of russian intelligence or yes there is a possibility so we don't have evidence is there but there's a possibility it's important that there are no evidence to support these things yet just innuendo innuendo leading the witness is there a possibility that space aliens have you know taken over the u.s. government yeah sure there's a possibility i guess there's a possibility for anything but the chairman just using innuendo to smear snowden is about then later on in the hearing he says that a lot of these leaks a lot of the damage done to u.s. national security is also a result of journalists like glenn greenwald like jeremy scale people who are dealing with these documents as you were talking about earlier and he was talking

to james komi the director of the f.b.i. trying to criminalize journalism itself as quote i'm a newspaper reporter for fill in the blank and i sell stolen material is that legal because i'm a newspaper reporter. right if you're a newspaper reporter and you're hocking stolen jewelry it's still a crime and if i'm a hocking stolen classified material that are not legally in the possession of for personal gain and profit is that not a crime. i think that's a harder question because it involves a news gathering function could have first amendment implications that's something that probably better answered by the department of justice those pesky first amendment implications you know the chairman of the house intelligence committee just completely disregarding the constitution and press freedoms believable and sam of course when the media's not talking about toothpaste bombs or trying to link snowden into this whole thing i just wanted to check out c.n.n.'s erin burnett breaking news snowden no show at sochi what the hell i'm sure why anyone is expected to show up

a lot alone but in this is already down there us and we're really i mean really if you think that this insane coverdale index has anything to do with the intelligence here is how we know right here on the hill what the real focus is russia snowden journalists or even the n.s.a. leaks i mean clearly he's done incredibly think that he's done incredible an incredible amount of damage to the security of this country there does seem to be something else going on i mean with all the kind of fear mongering him and shade that's being thrown at sochi from the u.s. media you have seven people tweet pictures of hotel room experience suddenly it's a giant catastrophe at sochi with these terror threats that we've seen for two weeks all along the state department has routinely said we don't have any direct threats to the olympic games and yet you keep seeing that pushed even congressman mccaul on sunday he was a republican on the house homeland security committee so there's going to be a detonation somewhere in russia during these these olympic games so there seems to be something else operating here beyond. the back for snowden who knows man

i just seems really crazy and you know when the media is lockstep in coverage and the narrative you just have to question what's the smokescreen harris thanks so much sam sachs break it down. you guys that's our show me going to break all over again. pluto science technology innovation all the list i'm elements from around russia we've got this huge area covered. player play the for.

please please. play play play. play. play. play. cross talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want. play.

it's a classic. over by the if you. did you know the press is the only industry specifically mention in the constitution which says that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy which i call books. will. never go i'm sorry and on this show we reveal the picture of what's actually going on we go beyond identifying the truth rational debate a real discussion critical issues facing the i'm ready to join the movement then welcome the big picture. oh i'm sorry been in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big.