sex let's break this. it was a relief very hard to tell. you that back with the earthquake there though. when you think of conflict minerals the film blood diamond might come to mind are images of guerrilla fighters overseeing the mining of precious gems and some more

corn country and while many diamonds and gems sold in jewelry stores do have questionable origins a conflict mineral can be any mineral or resource in a part of the world extracted under conditions of armed conflict and human rights abuse some examples include ten tungsten and tampa light and gold all of which serve as essential components for everything from automobiles to electronics most of these minerals however are mind of the democratic republic of the congo along with nine of its neighboring african countries where warlords militia armies and rebel groups profit from the sale of these minerals all the while perpetuating regional wars the conditions found at the conflict mineral mines can be downright abysmal were laborers aren't hired but often forced to work at gunpoint threatened with their lives and expected to do a job that will likely kill them the human cost of mining for this buried treasure is almost unthinkable tens of thousands of young boys forced to work in mud pits digging with their bare hands for metal or the irony of it all is that buried. to

the ground in countries like the congo there's a mineral wealth worth trying and some dollars but it's a wealth that is traumatized and poor population the country will never see thanks to a forever war that's the result of what many call the resource curse so how does a conflict taking place far away across the ocean affect you and me the consumer most recent disclosures by giant tech companies like google apple and intel reveal the components found in their products may have their origins in armed conflict in the d r c and its surrounding countries take a look at apple for example as recently as two thousand and ten apple was listed as being among the worst electronics companies in terms of relying on conflict minerals for its products and it wasn't until last year after public pressure and government oversight but apple began to make pledges to pursue a conflict free trade finally now the reason large multinational corporations are even making these disclosures is because of the wall street reform act better known

as dodd frank see one of the very few positives to come out about law is that it requires that companies identify where minerals used in their products come from but even as more companies are forced to disclose the source of these minerals and detailed reports for the first time conflict mineral watchdogs like global witness argue that the first finally mines are simply inadequate take for example blue box jury icon tiffany's record of the company's disclosure report there were at least five a whole categories of its products where the source of the materials was put on the terminable and google's documents reveal that only thirty six percent of the company's suppliers in the dear sea were certified as quote conflict free and in fact in the findings for the larger tech giants not a single company was able to definitively prove their suppliers are not using conflict minerals the move for more accountability from the companies that purchased these resources is still a good first step but considering the lives that are at stake these reports fall

short of real transparency in the internet. national rescue committee estimates that upwards of five point four million individuals have died as a direct result of the regional conflict with millions more displaced more deaths than any other world conflict since world war two and unfortunately there is no point turn around for any ongoing humanitarian crisis that's driven by the profits of these conflict minerals so the importance of accurate reporting is the bare minimum we should expect. this problem is so widespread it's almost impossible to boycott the purchase of these conflict in electronics but it's very important to understand the sacrifice made to build every i phone every laptop and every television so that one day public pressure can finally ensure that not one more dollar will contribute to these deaths.

drug addiction and abuse has reached on the poorest attended levels in the u.s. and it's having deadly results in fact since one nine hundred eighty the number of deaths attributed to drug overdoses in the country has risen over five hundred forty percent according to the partment of health and human services but nowhere is this more evident than with opioid prescription medications such as oxycontin and percocet and it as a lot of alone one point four million americans went to the emergency room for overdosing on these pills resulting and twenty two thousand deaths but now to a district attorneys in california are taking matters into their own hands and filing a lawsuit against five pharmaceutical companies last month da's in orange county and sac clarified a lawsuit against these corporations for their role in promoting new drugs despite knowing the risks of addiction and this month the city of chicago filed its own lawsuit against big pharma as well the companies include subsidiaries of johnson and johnson and have two of the largest pharma companies in the world joining me now to discuss the details of these lawsuits as well as the larger issue of opium.

diction i'm joined now by our correspondent megan lopez hi thank you for coming on me thanks for having me on so record levels in the u.s. i mean this is just i'm saying the u.s. is one of two countries in the world with even direct to consumer advertising for pharmaceutical companies could that be a reason why we've seen such a massive rise in addiction that is absolutely the reason why these two counties in california are saying that we are seeing this rise in addiction so just to kind of be some context and to put this into a bit of verse perspective the center for disease control is calling this the worst epidemic in the united states history when it comes to drugs so that is surprising thinking of back to tobacco and think you know of things that are much more dangerous than you would kind of associate cocaine and heroin and whatnot but just to give you some numbers two thousand and ten study by the national institute for drug abuse said that five point one million americans abuse opioid pain relievers

and to show you how big of a problem it's become over the last couple of decades or so since one thousand nine hundred nine twenty nine states have reported that the numbers of overdose emergency room visits caused by opioids has doubled ten states report that those numbers have tripled and four states report that those numbers have quadrupled now another study found that twenty five hundred years between the ages of twelve and seventeen try and abuse these drugs every single year within the united states so that is just a really shocking kind of statistic when you think about how prevalent these are and how serious the problem could be in the doctor that's unbelievable megan it really is shocking statistics there let's talk about the california lawsuit what are its allegations there are a number of allegations that it kind of. incorporates so first of all it says that these companies are responsible for false and deceptive marketing campaigns so that makes that makes a lot of sense because as you said this is the united states is one of the only

countries that can really appeal to. doctors and to others and kind of market their own drugs and some of them it also accuses these companies of promising unsubstantiated benefits and for downplaying the substance abuse and addiction kind of problems that stem from these drugs and then also it kind of looks into the false advertising so there's a number of different kind of allegations that go into these these are behemoth lawsuits with very serious allegations very serious language but also very broad language serious indeed i have to ask though why are the specifically targeting the drug manufacturers not the positions that are over prescribing the medications because we know that they get kickbacks to absolutely so that was one of the first questions i asked is why are you going after the doctors why take on these behemoth companies and the reasons that the d.a. is gave me the orange county california and also from santa clara is because these people who are of users are going to get their drugs no matter what they are going

to find some doctor and some situation who will prescribe them so what these d. is are trying to do is attack the culture as a whole to really minimize the number of perspiration that are being sent out to minimize the number of people who potentially could abuse them and also do you know to kind of just raise awareness even if this lawsuit isn't successful it does raise awareness about the fact that these drugs are being so commonly prescribed and for such a long time these are very serious drugs they were only supposed to be described for people that were suffering express really horrible pain for cancer and now they have wide wide range of uses yeah i mean i think all of us knows some people who've had their lives utterly destroyed by the pharmaceutical drugs making it is very serious very very serious issue for the pharmaceutical companies responding to this claim well their defense right now is no comment so they're not really responding i think they're kind of taking this case by case obviously we're still very early in

the trial in this lawsuit they've got as you mentioned two different. lawsuits kind of go through one from santa clara in orange county teaming up and one from chicago so they have to take each of those by the head but again they're not responding to anybody who questions about the case in chicago and how it specifically relates to veterans so the case in chicago really goes above and beyond and what it says is that these a pharmaceutical companies weren't only targeting doctors for anyone that might be suffering from anything really they were saying that these pharmaceutical companies were specifically talking targeting doctors of elderly patients and also doctors of veterans so what we know right now is that despite the veterans affairs administration being in disarray veterans themselves have a very good insurance system meaning that the insurance companies are willing to pay top dollar in order to get them treated and or to get the medications so the pharmaceutical companies or is being alleged they are apparently targeting those

doctors and putting up these so-called front groups to essentially pay off doctors to write the reviews that make these medications seen a lot safer and a lot more prevalent than then they need to be really you know. dr gabe or mob to use an addiction specialist on the show last week and he his whole theory is that behavior is the primary influencing factor in addiction and i just wanted to see what you thought about how this relates to the soldiers especially those returning with p.t.s.d. because i feel like we're not getting to the root of the problem here of why there's so much addiction right so i had the doctor nearest to him and he said that there was a lack of information a loss of control uncertainty insecurity and stress now if you're thinking about something that's going into that combat environment somebody that has studied combat environment quite closely that describes a combat environment they don't know what they're going into every day and many of them are coming back with p.t.s.d. so right now at least twenty percent of our veterans returning from iraq and

afghanistan have suffered from some form of p.t.s.d. . many many more are undiagnosed and up to thirty percent of our vietnam era veterans are suffering from some form of p.t.s.d. whether it is diagnosed or undiagnosed so those are one of the some of the problems also they're coming back with horrific injuries that obviously are not going to see in many other places or as they just free up these these farmers who go pills and we have about twenty left but will this set a precedent this lawsuit that might be huge and absolutely could set a precedent now something that's interesting is that they are comparing this lawsuit to the back row industry lawsuits that we saw back in the one nine hundred fifty s. just going after this industry as a whole so who knows but at least it's getting the conversation going it is making we really need to start because america has a whole problem about is for sure thank you so much for coming on. coming up you guys find out why the government isn't the only sector spying on you i interviewed the former in clean people mission is after the break.

to try to. pull it out of new york and you know. it's hard to get everybody to. know what. the law like but. it's. nothing. and it's just. it's not just you steve you'll be shocked if you see the state. to be. but each other.

liz liz writes the same place. the first trip to live and i think the term limits. on our reporters. uninstall the live. t.v. and the live. over. did you know the prize is the only industry specifically mentioned in the constitution and. that's because a free and open prize is critical to our democracy track al gore's. role. in fact the single biggest threat facing our nation today is the corporate takeover of

our government and across a cynical we've been hijacked lying handful of transnational corporations that will profit by destroying what our founding fathers once all 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 america to find a job ready to join the movement then walk a little bit take. your friend post a photo from a vacation you can't afford college the difference. the boss

repeats the same old joke of course you like. your ex-girlfriend still pens tear jerking poetry keep. ignore it. we post only what really matters out r.t. to your facebook news feed. in the short time since n.s.a. whistleblower edward snowden the trove of highly classified documents former agency insiders like bill bennett and promise straight or thrust into the spotlight their claims of illegal spying finally vindicated snowden's leaks didn't just reveal the role of government surveillance they also expose the extent of government cooperation with the private sector in supplying consumer data is explosive findings absolved another man former eight hundred communications technician mark

client klein blew the whistle back in two thousand and six on the fact that his job entailed room routing internet traffic from eighteen thousand via hardware allow the government to directly indiscriminately suck up private data this is being done in a secret room an eight hundred seven cisco office and duplicated across the country but klein didn't speak out for years for fear of retribution instead he took documents proving his case and waited until the tide turned before bringing his story to the press or earlier i spoke to mark klein about why americans should be just as concerned with private sector surveillance as there are with government spying i first asked him what recourse he experienced from speaking out. if anything. a change she's threatened was to sue me for taking it to put it documents a change the engineering documents but they never do. this because they didn't want any more bad publicity. it wasn't couldn't get me because i didn't work

for the government so they couldn't convict me breaking security oaths because i never saw anybody your experience of discovering the n.s.a. room at eighty predated all forms of corporate data mining that exists now on google e-mail sniffer google street view facebook facial recognition etc i mean the list goes on and on do you think that these things in the age of digital technology creates a conditioning problem among the general populace to not be upset at us government surveillance. well as i say people you know people who are just out there are not political don't think about it they just figure i'm not doing anything wrong and they don't feel threatened but once the government goes after you into realizes how dangerous this is. and so particularly people who were involved in protest movements and find that they've

been singled out in one way or another. she will definitely get the government's activities or sure it is the pains and pains of people's knowledge about it governments and what people's activities are right now and i guess we're about to find out really more on not as glenn greenwald been hinting mark recently facebook c.e.o. mark zuckerberg google's eric schmidt have lambasted the n.s.a. for using a backdoor to spy on their data centers do you believe them do you believe the tech companies when they claim that they were in the complete dark about the extent of the spying here. to some extent. i think some of them providing some stuff about how knowledgeable they were but also. i think there is evidence that some companies like google who have cooperated will basically double crossed and so why the way and starts to go. through the front door as

a result of some legal order the n.s.a. was top was also taking a vastly more through the back there were. companies like google probably didn't know about them and they actually got pissed off and i think that's genuine anger on their poor on their part to quote this stuff about how the n.s.a. was intercepting. between international servers. google servers in international countries they were exchanging data that kate it was not not encrypted and so to say was just intercepting your and storing it i suspect that google didn't wasn't aware of that because they probably figured it will cooperate so i think there's anyone to think or there. mark in two thousand and eight eighteen t. was given retroactive immunity for its cooperation with the government regarding

illegal surveillance a pretty unprecedented move there how did this decision influence private public surveillance cooperation today. well i think certainly it put a legal standpoint what they were doing illegally before that and so i'm sure the phone companies and other companies that still work. some confidence if they can collaborate with the n.s.a. without any problems others probably there are other companies that might have wanted to receive just and there and felt that they couldn't resist anymore because congress had put its own stamp of approval on the whole thing so congress basically joined the system helped it is say legalize everything and undermine any resistance that might have been out there along the companies. as

someone who studied history and participated in protests against vietnam more mark and then became a whistleblower against the n.s.a. or how have your feelings evolved regarding government surveillance over the decades and into today. well i guess my eyes were open from long ago so i guess i didn't trust the government ok so you go right i knew about it back in the seventy's. so l.b.j. nixon was using the n.s.a. to to domestic spying against in the war movement states they have what they called operation going array which was to collect. the names of anti-war people and tracks what they were doing so i knew about this war so i was suspicious when the n.s.a. showed up with a small company in two thousand and three. so it was not. exactly

a surprise to me but i was still outraged and must have an amazing night of kind of be right in the middle of this scandal essentially i mean since that his home was plainly illegal and unconstitutional mark you've also called the democratic party at trop and you know we kind of hear often we hear that one party is more pro civil liberties pro privacy i mean what do you mean by that statement mark in sixty four here is the l.b.j. the peace candidate supposedly against goldwater the republican warmonger. and have e.j. was posing as the peace candidate and the slogan on the left was part of the way when o.b.j. . and i believe it i've had in claims that l.b.j. was going to escalate as he had done work there were people about that and sure enough right after he got elected he said one hundred thousand troops if you're not in the people or you know got bigger and bigger. and the pentagon papers revealed

later. l.b.j. was planning to escalate the war even as it was running as a peace candidate is sixty four so he was it was a whole lot democratic party was a trap then so the left is to trap today obama functions in the same fashion as old he did in his posturing in the when he first got elected people pinned hopes on him as the it's a war candidate and it what you would clean up those flying and all that stuff it is since you go escalated the war it continued to spying it kept the same you know running the program defense robert gates and it continued bush's policies and they actually expanded the so people got fooled because obama had a friendlier face. at this point mark do you think it's possible for the government

to internally reform itself to not violate the constitution and our privacy rights . no indeed this is it's not possible to do in several recent forms i mean i'm trying to deal with others want to try that route. i didn't think anything much would happen and it was even worse than i expected the congress put its stamp of approval on what bush was doing bush was caught out doing things that was completely illegal he had bypassed the foreign intelligence surveillance act in the face of court and just with arised spying by his own signature completely illegal issue to impeached for that instead congress have to do the same for a couple years past that he needed a law which covered the phone companies and. it hasn't been

a backhanded way covered bush's blockade that was the purpose of it to pay basically legalize with bush was doing and that is evidence of internal reform is not possible that the police state its surveillance they need three president red is as just what they need to run their system it's an opinion or system of the rich oppressing the poor what recourse do we have i needed to instill privacy rights and adherents of the constitution once again mark we have about a minute left where the old have and use of change as a school or just blocked who you are people have no say in congress and congress is run by rich lobbyist and the military industrial complex and then people seek channels outside of government and that it is usually becomes some kind of social explosion in the states which generates some new order which changes to

ordinary working people how that happens you can protect against the road that's going to happen thank you is so much mark lyon of putting your neck out there speaking the truth. are really appreciate coming on. thank you. as an evolving political crisis continues to grip ukraine the eastern part of the country has become the site of a growing death toll for civilians are penned in the middle of the violence just today two russian state t.v. journalists were killed in a mortar attack on assignment correspondent igor cornell yoke and sound engineer on all ocean were killed while reporting from blowguns one of the eastern most cities in ukraine takes tremendous courage to go into a combat zone great port on a story and my heart goes out to not only these families of the men but also the many innocent ukrainians caught in the crosshairs.

seriously school basis try to play. a pulling out of. your life for the sure thing everybody. the money no law no weapon. like ok. most famously say the. place cases most elite clubs played sometimes for nothing which led this season and. it's not just keep up the story it's still being jobst if you see

a stage eight look to be. the teacher was. plenty. the first. choose your language calling a kid with no influential say still some of the. treatments that the consensus here can. chew through opinions that immigrate to. choose the stories that impact the. child's access to often.

eugenics but eugenics vulgarized darwin science punishment for an on committed crime i was done for believe in eighty feebleminded still today for the few i don't know why. but i still don't know why genetic improvement through forced sterilization the basis for nazi ideology don't stop at just sterilizing. go to the point of death. for years rarely discussed. till now i'd really rather not talk about that right.

the un condemns the killing of two russian journalists in eastern ukraine calling for a full investigation. during all the shelling while filming refugees fleeing from the area. elsewhere iraqi forces are struggling to push back sunni rebels who are closing in on the capital while also launching an attack on the country's biggest all refinery. plus the king's farewell speech the spanish monarch want call us officially leaves the throne after the senate approves his abdication we recall some of the royal.