take a recent just an act in columbia south carolina that requires citizens to obtain a permit fifteen days in advance and pay a one hundred twenty dollars fee to feed the homeless in the city parks because according to columbia officials the homeless should be treated like ducks and the city is imposing these absurd measures on the name of reducing the homeless people's incentive to congregate downtown so they can be herded to the city's outskirts instead or take a look at what's going on just a couple states further south in florida's county over the past decade the county excuse me has spent over five million dollars are resting and jailing about three dozen homeless people over and over again for crimes like sleeping in public and pan handling according to the advocacy group and packed homelessness from two thousand and four to two thousand and thirteen a county collectively arrested these same thirty seven individuals one thousand two hundred fifty times they were incarcerated for nearly sixty two thousand days

costing the county a total of over five million dollars keep in mind it would have cost taxpayers one point four million dollars or less to house these individuals then jail them but it's not just the south trying to throw away its homeless problem san francisco's dealing with the poverty issues by literally treating the homeless like garbage according to activists some street cleaners are spray not just the sidewalks where the homeless sleep but the people themselves although city officials are denying the practice the two thousand and eight investigation by activists using undercover cameras showed street cleaners both kicking homeless people and hosing them down with water cannons so once again instead of investing in shelters and housing assistance san francisco spending over one point three million dollars a year to wash its streets clean in fact it's bound to reassure the city's sixty five hundred homeless residents look the poorest of society always has the smallest voice so it's up to the. the rest of us to speak up for those who can't and just

maybe we should use that voice to drown out those who want to hide criminalize or simply wash away the problem. the holocaust was a horrific genocide that forever changed the world not only did it reveal the extent of the evil that humanity can manifest but it also showed how cognitive dissonance can be dangerous to a society turning a blind eye to evil a lot of the nazis were defeated there was the question of what to do with the brains behind hitler's war machine there were hundreds of scientific minds behind the third reich spanning from nuclear physicist to social scientists many of which were complicit and horrific war crimes and others and even stood trial at nuremberg but instead of holding these war criminals accountable for their nazi complicity

many of them were brought to the us where they and their families were provided safe harbor as part of a decades long covert u.s. intelligence program called operation paperclip well earlier i was joined by christopher simpson professor of communications at american university and author of a low back the first full account of america's recruitment of nazis i first asked christopher why the us would even implement such a horrific program in the first place. there's several different factors are involved number one is the emergence of the cold war and there was a relationship as far as the cold war is concerned in which we crewmen of nazis or tolerance of former nazis in power in germany and. the then soviet union's worries about what were the post-war and post-war intentions of the western hours and some of those in time some of those questions went back to the war time period or even earlier. all right so then that again spurred more cold war

attention its cold war tensions and so the group meanwhile the soviets were also recruiting nazi criminals and if the track record of that they can be clearly established so you have a a open market if you will in which the. the it's on the one hand there were prosecutions of nazis on the other hand there was recruiting over nazis and protection of them in a variety of different ways by the western allies as well as by the soviets. you see today some of the same phenomenon in terms of people who are responsible for very serious crimes southeast asia other parts of the world. again will be picked up for intelligence purposes or for even for commercial gain and some of these people weren't just in the nazi party i mean they were actually they were at

the nuremberg trials for crimes against humanity their crimes i mean these people were guilty of a lot what's your response you briefly mention that the soviets were also recruiting nazis as well that's kind of the common response that we hear is that if we didn't recruit them the soviets would have taken them all the clain on the part of the western allies that the soviets would recruit them all those falls. at the major initiative to recruit nazi criminals came from the western allies that set. the the soviets to were engaged in selection of a particular people that they thought would be beneficial to them mainly for intelligence type purposes intelligence and propaganda and so on. once you start looking at the situation it gets more complicated than it looks on the surface because for example some. oh somebody who was

a german. who did participate in crimes against humanity who was guilty and then changes his or her stripes during the war or after the war well what does i mean well in my personal opinion in my view it means that they still have to be brought to justice for crimes that they did in fact commit but that they're post-war attitudes are part of the complicated judgment to society makes out against people who commit very very serious crimes and what was the long term effect on american intelligence of of him playing this program where there was a severely significant effect on u.s. intelligence operations and to some degree on u.s. appraisals of what was going on in europe. let me say that a different way if you have not seen intelligence officials who have been who have

devoted large parts of their life to german intelligence and then later to hitler styled nazi intelligence they have particular point of view as to how they see the world and when the united states are in good relies largely on such people for their information about those who they say of the enemy which in this context of the soviets i think you get a highly. warped picture about what is happening in the on the other side of the of the atlantic. so. particularly in the early cold war these people had significant effects on american intelligence we were dependent or the americans were dependent upon what they had to say was going on in germany at that time i mean was that type of thing it feeds on itself in. this way is that for example intelligence agencies don't

just process intelligence they don't just kind of sit behind desk and act as scholars know these are action agency so they do covert operations they do propaganda they do different forms of subversion and attack sabotage against whoever the enemy of the moment is. so that the former nazis would be some of them had a new incentive to paint as dark a picture of the soviets as possibly could be painted in order to finance their own organizations there's a very powerful drift towards war chris you mentioned it went beyond physical scientists i mean we're talking about social scientists what do you say to people i mean in a broader sense that this country and this government has kind of adopted the nazi propaganda model what gerbils was doing has been implemented here and just

a much more insidious way i mean do you see any correlation there. i think its truth is that everybody in the mass media. of every nationality has learned some lessons from gerbils frankly i think that that's true and that all of the major powers have very large scale. propaganda operations so. the. the problem is not abstract the problem is literally with it's with us on this right now and it's with this in. the most reputable media sort of situations where we news media this is my belief anyway. is tends to be highly ideological and it doesn't mean that everybody has the same etiology. it doesn't mean that everybody agrees with whatever the official he ology

is what i mean is that people shape what they do in the media based on what they believe every year and that seems that there's another movie coming out about nazi germany about the holocaust and now monuments men as out of it talks about saving the artwork from world war two to what extent do you think hollywood plays a role in this story vision is i'm kind of leaving out all you know everything about operation paperclip everything that happened afterward and also just corporate influence in aiding abetting the holocaust i think that's the that's a complicated question basically there is a polite version of the whole cost. which explains what took place in very simplistic terms. and the extent to which the whole across was an organic product of german society as it existed at that time meanwhile there is there is also a in my view

a very serious problem in which. victims are. recognized all those are tonight complete just one example. people understand the whole cost as being the gas of a. terrible crime many many people died in the gas up of the stories of the gas ovens are not made up they are facts history. that said most of the juice were murdered in the whole of cos they were worked to death they were shot with guns they were they were destroyed you know they were starved to death they were destroyed in other ways so what that means is here in western culture we get this idea of whole cost each equals gas so. these other means of destroying whole societies they are somehow not recognised as actually being crimes because ever since then professor communications american. intercity really

appreciate it thank you coming up a break on the big business of world war two and its impact on survivors and corporations state turned. a transit route to vnukovo report you'll best way to the heart of moscow. chaos on the streets of kiev after a short truce rioters are again wrecking traffic the so-called opposition appears to have no interest in a legally elected government force is being met with force where ukraine goes from

here is anyone's guess. on the money with the business over russia this.

during world war two the level of coordination and efficiency in an altercation of germany was on precedent but the systematic extermination of people based on race and class may not have been possible or not for the many corporate interests that aided and abetted the nazis during the war for everything we learned about hitler in the second world war the war corporations played in a conflict is conveniently omitted from history books for example there's a world famous fashion designer hugo boss we can all thank for the infamous black uniforms worn by the german as us and the brown shirts worn by the hitler youth as well as an entire fashion collection for the third reich but being a member of the nazi party himself hugo boss benefited greatly from the cheap labor of concentration and p.o.w. camps to manufacture the uniforms then there's siemens the multinational

engineering slash electronics giant c. during hitler's rise in the one nine hundred thirty s. siemens use nazi prisoner labor to build everything from railway infrastructure to electrical power well in two thousand and two siemens received international condemnation for its plans to trademark the name zajac line for a line of home appliances that included gas ovens coincidentally is the same name of the deadly poison gas use. to exterminate jews concentration camps to that no you might also recognize the companies that manufacture that gas bayer next is i.b.m. or international business machines while the tech giant is now a staple of america's digital industry during world war two i.b.m. played an integral role in carrying out the holocaust and poland thousands of documents archive in seven different countries have proven how this company no we only worked hand in hand with the death machine see i.b.m.

produced punch cards for the nazis better known as hollerith tabulators which were the precursors to the i.b.m. computer and according to researcher edwin black the hollerith was used to keep records and statistics of the death camps for example how can in the rate of deaths per square kilometer of railway due to starvation but despite the evidence of the company's sort of past and requests for a formal apology i b m has kept largely silent on the matter and then there's chase bank now j.p. morgan chase and while we don't need any more reasons to distrust this financial behemoth between one nine hundred thirty six and one nine hundred forty one chase along with a few other u.s. banks helped germany with currency exchange unclassified documents from the u.s. department of treasury point to a disturbingly close relationship between chase and german officials in fact in one thousand nine hundred eight chase finally acknowledged that its paris office had preemptively seized nearly one hundred jewish bank accounts before german officials

i've even asked them to do so but perhaps the most shocking example of the corporate nazi connection is ford motor company hitler's most prominent foreign benefactor yes the legendary american entrepreneur was also a famous anti-semite and nine hundred thirty seven adolf hitler had created a special medal for foreign friends of the third reich and the regime awarded it to henry ford that very same year this might explain why ford open an assembly plant berlin just before the war. which according to u.s. army intelligence produce vehicles designed for troop transport but these are only a handful of corporations that ensured the success of the holocaust and thankfully hugo boss and siemens have since set up compensation funds for victims of nazi germany look while we learn a limited scope of how the holocaust happened and why we must acknowledge the role corporations played in these imaginable horrors only then who would begin to hold accountable the many corporations that continue to profit from war and genocide

today. the. protests in venezuela have continued late so far at least five people have died in connection to the on the rise with countless injuries and arrests being reported as almost been no media coverage of these protests and what little reporting is conveyed appears rife with disinformation which could have something to do with washington's interests in the country speaking at this point co-director of the center for economic and policy research mark weisbrot recently wrote an article in the guardian about what's happening on the ground he joins me now to break it down thanks so much for coming on mark so can you give us a brief timeline of how these protests have gotten at this point well they started out. just where they started from beginning to manning that the president resigned and of course he was elected in a democratic election in april and in december which was seen by the opposition in

the international media as a referendum on the presidency just two months ago they had nationwide municipal elections and the government won by a much wider margin by ten percentage points so i think what happened was the opposition was facing two years without an election which is actually a long time event where they have a lot of elections and they figured that this was the time to go for it. if they can get people in the streets destabilize the country you know maybe they can provoke some kind of regime change why did opposition leader leopoldo lopez decide to turn himself in oh well the government had announced a judge had issued an arrest warrant for him and so he he turned himself in i mean if you saw the some of the footage and the pictures and you know it was immature of the president said he would go she hated the the surrender with him so he it was it

was kind of peaceful and he got to make a speech and have the megaphone with him before he was taken away and everything else mark you recently wrote an op ed in the guardian as i just mentioned called u.s. support for regime change in minnesota is a mistake in your opinion what evidence is there i guess what evidence is there to prove that western forces are actually trying to destabilize the region well. v united states has been involved in venezuela for the entire time of the since java's was elected in one thousand nine hundred eight took office in one thousand nine hundred nine so of course they were involved in the u.s. backed military coup in two thousand and two we have state department documents that actually say explicitly that they paid big money to the groups that were organized but then after they were caught with that and had to back off. they increased funding to the same groups and they've been funding these groups all the way along with the total of hundreds of millions dollars in fact there's five million dollars in the fiscal year two thousand and fourteen federal budget right

now to go to opposition groups so it's no secret but i think what was what i was trying to call attention to in that column is you can tell from the language of the state department when these protests broke out they didn't say anything like a call for dialogue or you know condemning violence. we took the side of the protesters and made it clear who side they were on and they supported this. mark you mentioned the five million dollars being allocated in two thousand and fourteen budget i couldn't find a confirmation of that under what auspices is this being allocated in the budget i can't tell you right now what the program is but i could send it to you i mean it's in the budget we have it actually says to have a civil society has a whole bunch of different descriptions of it but it's going to organizations within venezuela and it's a very polarized society and in so even if you don't name all the organizations they are all against the government. one of the major stories reported last year

that might add to the other side of the argument is that the duros forces were forcing electronics store owners to actually lower their prices by gunpoint i mean can you speak to that well the government did put pressure on them to lower their prices i don't think they put a gun to anybody's head but yeah they did a actually put pressure on them and i think there was a lot of news coverage because they sent troops to the stores and it did work and i think that's one reason why he the government did so well in the december elections and what about the media because of course i am hearing from other people in the country that they're barely seeing images of these protests i mean of course you know that it is tightly controlled can you speak to that point you know that's greely a gross exaggeration in fact i was just looking on the web this afternoon and you could see interviews with the opposition leaders some of them making wild allegations you can see the biggest t.v. said that it is you know the biggest television channel in venezuela. you can see

the scenes of the protests i think what the press reports here are saying well some of the real time coverage is there there are but you know our press didn't cover occupy in real time all the time right but nothing's hidden i mean there's nothing that's hidden from the venezuelan people in terms of what's going on there everybody knows what's going on so it's true that there self-censorship but not anymore and you have here. and. so it's really grossly exaggerated i mean. i want to get in that we have got a little bit of time left opposition leaders of our opposition to this of course is alleging that maduro is inside of the violence of course but they're all saying that the right wing factions have incited the violence can you speak to either of those allegations well it's very murky i mean you know we i mean you do know that the protesters are having violent protests that's that you have plenty of video you know i mean during the day it's usually peaceful the night they set fires and put

up barricades and trash buildings and they've burned cars and things like that now the government is also implicated of course and the world has acknowledged that in the in the shooting of one of the students but the circumstances of that are still clear so. you can't really mean it's clear what i think is most important is that if you if you have protests that are calling for the resignation or the overthrow of a democratically elected government there's no real path you can see from here to there that isn't going to involve violence they're not going to just step down because a handful of people say they should and of course as your column points out of course the broad history of the u.s. you know sticking their nose in venezuela really irks that of course the duros there the brookings institute memo kind of calling to see the unrest if there is

can you speak to that to what would happen to the region what are the broader implications if the u.s. does back regime change there we have about thirty left well the rest of the region is very much opposed to obviously the countries brazil argentina. o'dwyer and even part of why. very strong statement condemning the attempts to destabilize the government and most of almost the whole region feels the same way this is another case where it's really the u.s. again. sells america right absolutely thank you so much mark weisbrot co-director of the center for economic policy research appreciate it thank you that's our show you guys join me again tomorrow night the set all over again. in the future one show we go into sometimes done where we meet some of his sons

innovators in the ninety's that. we find out how the big black queens for compazine and craft. pulled in the modern day planking but still money takes some smocks to the album said none here on r.g.p. please the future of. no cholesterol pianist depression. these efforts to work. to improve your life. are you see. form those that's. closing in on the heart says. yes i feel it when i close my eyes i see people in mosques because. you know sometimes i think in itself is a face covered by a mosque those people in both sides of the barricades we don't want.

to be under way sometimes it feels as if all of ukraine is no most. rights. to the. lives. of the young girls. all for the future harder. between two and three hundred million guns united states so you can act like they're not here and keep kids away from them. the causes. you know i mean this teaches them

a lot of for a responsibility i'm simply going to pay for the children if we can do it for our children for our future. a little.

slip on your. face. a pleasure to have you with us here on our team today i'm wrong. leg right to see the lead search tree limb and i were being put. on a reporter's. instrument. to

be a mole a little. fresh street fights are reported in. government rises shooting at police again the death toll from the recent violence which was at least a scene with hundreds more injured. radicals refused to leave the streets despite the president promising and number of concessions including early elections and a major overhaul of trying to say they will only accept his resignation. as western powers seem to be ignoring the vast arsenal now in the hands of the protesters as the e.u. on washington slapped a large part of the blame on the government.