to the malaysian plane and catastrophe stay with us. well going to break in a set i'm abby martin so yesterday the world witnessed a truly horrific tragedy unfold in eastern ukraine malaysian airliner was shot down killing two hundred ninety eight human beings on board one of the passengers were humanitarians on their way to an aids conference in australia unfortunately the media coverage from all sides has been truly truly disappointing within hours the sun immediately declared the missile as putin's and neo cons were given a platform across corporate media to seize upon the tragedy and resurrect cold war fervor urging the west to quote confront the russian regime. look speculation on all sides in the mere hours after any large scale disaster is a poor and irresponsible journalism and does a great disservice to the two hundred ninety eight victims of this crime who lost

their lives but as of the time of this broadcast here's what we know the plane was shot down by what appears to be a surface to air missile over the war torn area of donetsk where the russian border this is an area right for the violence between ukrainian forces and separatist fighters ever since the crew and subsequent incursion into crimea and just like the u.s. is giving support to the tune of five billion dollars on the ground in ukraine russia has been logistically backing the rebels in this territory according to nato officials if an end of international independent investigation does indeed find that the missile was shot by rebel fighters and the criminals responsible need to be held accountable to be clear we don't know yet how these people got a hold of the weapons that the investigation finds at this missile was indeed russian then it exemplifies exactly why state power should not be providing high grade weaponry to militias anywhere in the world just yesterday i covered nearly every world conflict or be traced back to the u.s.

military whether it be to. canisters and egypt bahrain bandai and weapons in israel massive artillery launchers that isis just stole fifty two in iraq and guns in the hands of al-qaeda in syria when things like this happen it should serve as a massive wake up call when weapons of war are unleashed its far too often innocent civilians that will suffer the most still there will be many to seize this tragedy for political gain in ukraine and russia and here in the united states again people are taking the wrong lessons and calling for more confrontation when they should be calling for deescalation now the situation on the ground is changing by the minute so please refer to the scroll below for the latest updates let's take heed of the sensitive nature of this calamity let's wait until the facts are revealed because right now all we can do is mourn for the victims that died and make a much more concerted effort of reigning in state sponsored instruments of death worldwide.

please. please enter a plea very hard to please. the as well or better act without her there's little doubt that they are. the to was. the to please. please. the at least. at least the law. so much the barrage of bad news this week there's at least one story out of california that restores my hope and humanity and us federal judge ruled california's death penalty as

unconstitutional and a landmark ruling judge cormac carney side of the dysfunctional system there with capital punishment is administered in the state as the basis for his decision and death penalty activists are celebrating the ruling especially given the immense curtain over the practice in recent months earlier this summer there was a story of a botched execution in oklahoma where witnesses said that the victim convulsed and rushed on the gurney clearly in excruciating pain the problems stem from the state using a new lethal drug for the first time it's unclear how long the man suffered the effects before dying as officials quickly blocked the view of the execution room when the problem became evident following this high profile mishap the u.s. went a full seven weeks without a state mandated killing the botched executions are only the tip of the iceberg last april i reported on a thirty year study by the university of michigan law school which found that the number of innocent people on death row is actually much higher than previously estimated the report found that. one in twenty five and made sense to death in the

u.s. are likely innocent and the authors about study suggest that this is a conservative estimate that in that quote of the group one hundred seventeen or one point six percent were exonerated with enough time and resources the authors concluded that at least four point one percent of them would have been exonerated in other words more than two hundred other prisoners would have been cleared during those three decades it's a shocking revelation but it makes perfect sense considering the sheer number of prisoners sentenced to death row every year across the us and fact that there are still thirty two u.s. states where the death penalty remains illegal of the states you see here in red and states like connecticut maryland new mexico which of abolish the death penalty in recent years there are still an estimated three thousand eighty eight prisoners awaiting execution since those bands are not retroactive but there is a silver lining so even though a majority of americans still support the death penalty that majority is shrinking

according to a pew research poll the percentage of americans who support capital punishment fell from seventy six percent in one thousand nine hundred six tolly fifty five last year this change in attitude in regard for human life is the backbone of the latest latest ruling in california a majority of america's death row inmates currently lives. although judge carney's rowing doesn't ban the death penalty outright it's a strong indictment that will hopefully carry the weight for a state wide ban by two thousand and sixteen and considering that the u.s. remains one of the only industrialized countries in the world that still carries out this barbaric practice i think it's time we step up to the plate and start treating human life with the respect it deserves. the most about the right of species extinction is exactly the type of thought we tend to carry in the back of our minds but make no. mistake all around the world

the effects of climate change are causing irreparable harm the life on earth according to a recent un report climate change is doing widespread and consequential harm to animals and plants that are struggling to adapt to new conditions many climate scientists agree that our rapidly changing weather was undoubtedly lead to near term extinctions threatening the future of our planet this is exactly the topic of a new book called extinction dialogues how to live with that in mind or i was joined by the book's co-author former psycho therapist and professor of psychology carolyn baker i first asked her how she came to the conclusion that climate change is much much worse than we've been taught. and mostly the research of various climate scientists in all the research that guy macpherson has been compiling for several years and you know elizabeth cold there is a book the sixth extinction an unnatural history in that book she says the sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy it compels us to rethink

the fundamental question of what it means to be human now of course it's not only cold there this talking about extinction this topic is coming up everywhere it means stream media in two thousand and nine you wrote sacred demise forecasts of the collapse of industrial civilization what driving forces are behind this alternate downfall. well human beings inability to really look at the problem you know introduction one zero one to solving problems you have to admit that you have one and so we have most of the planet being unwilling to really look at it and you know i wrote an article recently around what does it mean to do something about climate change and there are four things that have to happen if we're going to do something one is agree that climate change is actually happening secondly understand that the situation is so dire that humanity is living arrangements have

to be radically altered sacrifice our economic security and industrial profits to significantly reduce carbon emissions and agree that you know in order to avoid the next two degree rise in temperature which is becoming increasingly lethal we do have to change our living arrangements radically and that's not likely to happen all the money the purpose of your book our current as to scare the hell out of people but it's a wake up call so that people can find meaning in the collapse prepare a motion only a law breaker on why that's so important. well you know one of the things that that we sort of talk about in there is is the hospice model you know and the possibility that our planet may actually be in a state of hospice and what do you do when you know you have a terminal diagnosis and you've admitted yourself to hospice you know a lot of people think oh my god that's the worst thing that could happen but many people report who have been in hospice that you know it was one of the most

fulfilling times of their lives because they got to really deeply reflect and look at their lives and repair relationships and you know for us were asking questions like how can i be more loving what can i do to serve fellow humans and the more than human world how can i create beauty and joy and i know that as an artist you know how much this matters and in short the whole question is how going to live more passionately more competition at lee and increase a sense of meaning and purpose in my own life and the lives of others around them one of the most important messages that you advocate for is that need to strengthen our ties as a community getting to know our neighbor sharing learning from one another building is relationships why did we lose this sense of community and how can we really root ourselves in it. well we lost it through it goes way back i think to the enlighten it and the whole sense of reason as primary and you know when you go down that

road you know that reason is is the end all would be all then you start losing feelings and we start losing feelings and emotion you stop you stop connecting with people and you start viewing yourself as separate from people and other beings and so i think since that period of time seventeenth eighteenth century we've become extremely individualistic you know it's me and mine and to hell with you over there and what you need and so one of the things that is positive about all of the crises that we're in is that. it has the potential to really drive us together to support and help one another caroline you're of course encouraging your readers to resist become activists get my community sense i guess what i'm struggling with and i know a lot of other people who who might be watching this also are as how can we bridge this feeling of just utter hopelessness and a lack of control with the future and a harness that toward tangible action for the here and now. but one of the things

that i think is really important is to understand that what guy and i are not saying is you know get on your favorite pair of pajamas and go that they didn't go to sleep we're not saying that at all how you know guy is often often quotes it would add the who said if you're dick if you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't then do and i recently wrote an article which you can find on my website at carolyn baker dot net in titled when surrendered means not giving up and in that article i agree i argue that rather than trying to do something about a phenomenon that cannot be fixed in the face of what increasingly appears to be the sixth great extinction we focus on living our lives in a particular way that brings meaning to ourselves and others even more important you know to connect with other people and to be of service and to spend quality time in nature and appreciate the hell out of our lives absolutely well yeah

exactly cultivate that artistic nature provide things that will make people happy our music philosophy conversation carolyn a few months ago intro a good friend mike rupert tragically took his own life as someone who was very close to mike what can we learn from his approach to seeking truth and i guess gain from his wisdom. well we can have compassion for people who are very troubled. and we can reach out to them as much as possible and we can realize that they are there but for the grace of something or rather go all of us it could have been been any of us you know everyone has a right to take their own life but it's it's i still think it's tragic when somebody leaves us so soon when they have so much to offer so if we can have more compassion if we can strengthen those ties with each other then very often we can

prevent an early demise and my group or go where no shortage of passion and compassion carolyn ok psychotherapist professor author of extinction dialogues how to live with death and mine always amazing to hear and cycling thank you andy. coming up i'll discuss alternatives to the west's global banking the monopoly status and. i wonder if allegations of propaganda also represent a form of propaganda because what you do is essentially diligent to my i think if someone without looking at the context without looking at this from the me that's not what i think it's a real small problem i think it's a political call and you need to play which distorting them with the whole thing all the ukraine crisis come to a sudden. on the left maybe one side you know listening you know most of you

know i'm basically sourcing the whole of the reporting. and i think there's a need for the board to have a public discussion about. so you may remember that two years ago a stunning study came out giving the organic movement a big boost in its campaign against genetically modified foods or g.m.o. foods conducted by a team of french researchers and led by scientists giles' erik sarah leading the study found that rats fed by monsanto's roundup ready corn over the course of two years had increased levels of tumors and mortality compared to the control group of rats now just take a look at one of the highly disturbing frankenstein photos showing the rats that were fed g.m. corn on the findings were published in

a peer reviewed scientific journal food and chemical toxicology in september of two thousand and twelve but pretty much immediately after its publication the ceremony study began to come under intense fire from one sample scientists say the ag giant took major issue with the fact. but sara lee only used a small sample size of ten rats to make its conclusions and the type of rats he had used had a natural tendency to develop tumors and this constant barrage of criticism worked leading the editor of the journal dr wallace hayes to retract the paper completely claiming that the study's methodology and the results were inconclusive is a big blow to the advocates of a g.m.o. free food supply and monsanto's criticisms of the study may have held some water except for one small detail monsanto conducted the exact same study on the exact same number and type of rats and published its findings in the exact same journal eight years before sara lee name the only difference between the two experiments is

that while the sara lee study observed the rats over two years on santa study and it at ninety days when the rats were still healthy yet one study lives on the journal for all of eternity and the other was delegated to the trash now thankfully one hundred fifty scientists all over the world condemned the food and chemical toxicology for its decision citing the disturbing level of monetary interests influencing the science and as dr michael hansen a senior scientist at consumers union and guest on this show said last year there's only three reasons to retract a paper one clear evidence that the findings are unreliable due to misconduct that is data fabrication or honest error to plagiarism or redundant publication three on ethical research and the letter that the editor of food and chemical toxicology dr wallace has sent to dr sara lee mean they admitted that they found no problem with plagiarism on ethical research or data fabrication now thankfully the work of these

scientists to bring to light the disturbing story of the surliness study has not gone unnoticed in fact after an extensive review process and which the paper passed no less than the really rounds of peer reviews. the study was republished last month in the journal environmental sciences europe dr michael and a new molecular geneticist in london even went as far as saying that quote few studies would survive such intense scrutiny by fellow scientists the paper even went to great lengths to ensure every level of transparency possible by publishing the raw data associated with it something on the heard of for monsanto's g.m.o. research and if that weren't enough sara lee takes the unusual step of her via a separate commentary on the conflicts of interests that led to their original retraction he points out that mere months before the situation food and chemical toxicology hired a new assistant editor for biotechnology richard goodman well it just so happens

that richard goodman who worked at a certain multinational agro chemical company for seven years you guessed it on santo. listen it's one thing to launch a p.r. battle in defense of your product but it's another thing entirely to allow politics to dictate science this is a public health issue that people deserve to know so well the findings of the study are definitely not something to be celebrated the fact that sara lee and his team were able to overcome every corporate obstacle magical and republish this vitally important piece of research is a scientific victory for us all. i talked a lot on the show but the surveillance state here in the us and the ever expanding powers our government's willing to grant agencies like the n.s.a.

however the exact same abuses of power taking place across the pond just yesterday the u.k. house of commons passed a legislation known as the data retention investigative powers act or d r ip designed to widen surveillance capabilities of new. spy networks and strengthen their abilities to cooperate with private corporations the bills now slated to be passed by the house of lords and with little opposition from any political party there will likely be rubber stamp through what a breakdown d.-r. ip as well as the other drama brewing in america's partner in crime this week earlier i was joined by journalist and host of r t is going underground afshin rattansi i first asked him to break down exactly what our ip means for the people britain. all the major parties supporting this legislation it was fast tracked through the house of commons then through the house of lords it's basically going to allow internet companies and telephone companies to store message data logs of

all our incoming and outgoing phone calls geo location and all that kind of thing for a year it's a response of europe will be in court of justice is judgment that what britain was doing after the edward snowden revelations contravened privacy law as it stood oh so great so they're just codifying it now or railroading this legislation through i wanted to read something snowden said about the bill in an interview i mean that the n.s.a. could have written a draft they passed it under the same sort of emergency justification they said we would be at risk they said companies would no longer cooperate with us we're losing valuable intelligence that puts the nation at risk i mean that same interview he noted that this type of legislation excuse me is rarely passed in times of peace what sort of emergency justification to parliament have to push this through now they needed to go on holiday that seems to be the only possible justification already people are picking holes in it because say some teenagers playing minecraft

and running a server he's now under threat because he has to have all these friends' names and addresses of of people playing video games on a server that he might have in his house all sorts of of pieces. aspects to this legislation that have been thought through there was some attempts at amendment saying at least can it not last till twenty sixteen all those amendments were defeated to the british labor party the labor party famous for of course the iraq war no surprise that completely back the government and. i don't know how it will affect sovereign governments over seas as people may have services overseas how that will affect british law and there really has been no debate whatsoever about it so i guess the emergency justification was let's get this codified and legalize as quickly as possible so that we're not breaking or violating the law we have

a lot in common. in the us here glenn greenwald just broke the constitution that. depends on whether or not politicians are going to follow that. you know just broke more snowden docs that shows how far g.c. h.q. is going to infiltrate the internet and if any and what's your assessment of the latest leaks well i mean it's so. bizarre that it hasn't been covered more widely over here people talk about the reshuffle the end of william hague the latest snowden documents go into great detail about how they have all names for they can change d.c. h.q. of setting a beautiful english countryside in gloucestershire is busy faking online polling they have the ability to bug skype taking photos from people's facebook accounts increasing decreasing web traffic for different sites they also say they have the ability and they all have different names i don't remember all of them because whoever they are g.c. h.q.

they have funny names for all these things they also have the ability to connect two different phone calls together i don't know what that means for the spying legislation that could mean the possibility of a great potential for entrapment one would think they could easily have your phone call or difficult maybe. in america because he was based in britain connect to a phone perhaps a phone line of a known terrorist who knows i want to transition now of course what you said has everyone in a for the foreign secretary william hague announce his resignation on monday of course whenever a high level for resigns you hear a lot of niceties always great serve and it's time to go what do you think really drove him to resign now we're unsure as yet there have of course we in the room is i know around the world the headlines coming from this country make every british subject seem like some sort of child abuser in waiting given that. abandon inquiries and then creating quantities as to the fact that child abuse seems to

stretch through every element of the establishment in this country with with proper sources of mainstream news reporting that can stretch from the b.b.c. to the government to the royal family but as for william hague. it's quite amazing that foreign secretary who of course got britain involved in those nato air strikes on libya which the college of which we're witnessing this week tripoli airport one to britain one to the m.p.'s he had to vote for the bombing of damascus and someone who continued to try to derail reproach more with iran and on ukraine was absolutely clear the whole thing was russia's fault and nato better be prepared for a cold war against russia there's also news today there is speculation that a swedish court may have lifted the arrest warrant for joining us on of course they decided to uphold it at the end of the day either way the u.k.

has said that they're ready to arrest the saunders regardless what reasons does britain have to do this considering the war has nothing to do with england for the . very sad day that we had the swedish cordell poll that arrest warrant it seems. so we've just gotten interested in questioning julian assange about these allegations and they see one able to make a charge but they just won't i mean even for the two women that initially made the complaint doesn't it of their cause right that some of the swedish authorities comes here and questions us who is. plead for for his life is at the ecuadorian embassy here in london the metropolitan police here has its share of scandal of course in paedophilia as well let alone cash for questions as rupert murdoch the whole of the metropolitan police here is a war with the conservative party over numerous things the police here huge cloud

over them from even elements of the establishment but if there's one thing's for sure they felt whatever sweden did it was a sign of a did to their. power by taking refuge in asylum of ecuador therefore he must be punished presumably the police here would have arrested him for a fleeing fleeing the police when he was under their protection finally i want to get your thoughts on something that m.p. george galloway recently said on the show when talking about the fact that former obama obama campaign advisers jim messina and david axelrod are vising david cameron and ed miliband campaigns in the u.k. he said of the three mainstream political parties their backside could have three cheeks they would be the three cheeks of the same back side i mean absolutely i have to put a parties here do you think the parliament a parliamentary system there at least allows some political diversity to your political system is a fake thing on as such is the respect for that old colony where you're speaking to

me from is that both political leaders of the main parties here of hyde president obama's advisers david axelrod and jim messina i think that was the guy who ten years ago was involved in a homophobe. homophobic ad campaign in montana or maybe that's the other one the idea is a blank start top politicians that what we need is that glamour and gloss of american political intrigue it's not helping both bodies deeply unpopular apathy never been a polling turnout at the most recent council elections so despite all of your wonderful obama white house people coming here probably a great expense being paid for by party members in on the tories and the labor benches they failed to enthuse certainly young people and more and more people generally in this country week andrew. bird.