the arms race in his. dramatic development only and. i don't see how that strategy will be successful very critical time time to sit down and talk. greetings and salutations accountability and justice took a heavy blow this week oct watchers as the international criminal court despite twenty thousand pages of evidence and information declined to investigate and prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the various groups involved in the afghanistan war including the cia and members of the us armed forces. yes despite an incredible effort by i.c.c. prosecutor pot toobin so to to bring the case before the court

a panel of judges ruled on friday that while there is supposed gravity to the crimes and the request is within the court's jurisdiction the current circumstances of the situation in afghanistan are such as to make the prospects for a successful investigation and prosecution extremely limited to this one one might ask has there ever been good circumstances or situations for the investigation and prosecution of war crimes in the first place naturally the leadership of those countries and groups accused of these crimes are well they're a related it white house spokesperson told the media quote we welcome this decision and reiterate our position that the united states holds american citizens to the highest legal and ethical standards the white house spokesperson went on to slam the i.c.c. stating since the creation of the i.c.c. the united states has consistently declined to join the court because of its broad unaccountable prosecutorial powers the threat it poses to american national

sovereignty and other deficiencies that render it illegitimate. deficiency is that render it illegitimate. like say not ratifying the court's legal authority and therefore giving yourself a free pass on the legal obligations to it like the bush administration did back in two thousand and two after after it started the war in afghanistan because a who needs accountability when you've got a military industrial complex to feed in the host of wars sorry humanitarian interventions on the docket let's start watching the hawks. get the. real thing this week. as you keep trying to pull out of it. but they like you that i got. was that we. would. be.

critics are. welcome on the watch of the hawks i am tyrrel them to and i'm top of the lot so here we are yes once again discussing the international criminal court which according to so many is just some while it's. horrible. thing that's going to sovereignty something some things i say i think is what i've said something something oh my gosh oh my gosh what are we going to do so that has what or so according to i.c.c. prosecutors report there was a reasonable basis to believe that u.s. armed forces members subjected quote at least sixty one detained persons to torture cruel treatment outrages upon personal dignity and that there is also reason to believe that cia members carried out similar acts against at least another twenty seven detained persons this is

a very convenient way to not have to actually answer for for torture and of course we're not going to let them actually do anything about it because hey torture works right i mean isn't about what is most people who are hearing about are in washington saying all the time and it's really tragic because the idea of the international criminal court is so you would have you know all sorts of different types you know abusing civilians or abusing people in war zones or another you know situations around the world the u.s. didn't sign the treaty many actually major countries didn't sign up to say to be held accountable and the whole idea is it's like like you say threatens our sovereignty well look sometimes you need somebody else to say hey you shouldn't do that if you can't police yourselves well i find this whole protecting our sovereignty thing that we have been so excited about saying for. a few years it's all it's very interesting since we have apparently zero respect for anybody else's

sovereignty a great point if you want other people if you want to live in this magical world where no one ever comes into your yard and no one ever says hello to you and no one ever knocks on your door that's fine but then you need to go to some point. and you can't then tell everybody else what to do in their yards i mean look. they've been going a full court press against the i.c.c. since this prosecutor but sort of had even said like hey there's a lot of evidence here to go after you the taliban and pretty much everybody involved in the health care system or the u.s. the u.s. really. vote her. into the united states just recently as a couple weeks ago this is what you know the the great man himself john bolton our national security advisor this is learned learned we will let the i.c.c. darwood so and after all for all intents and purposes the ice is already dead to us those are the quotes of people who don't want to be held accountable for the actions of correct that they to partake in office they don't work better than the ethical standards and that's why i find it really upsetting this idea that we have

such high we have the highest ethical standards we have the highest everything but you won't use them to actually put that against if you put if you didn't have those standards and international criminal court would have to do anything but let's be serious nuremberg was necessary yes you have to have something outside of yourself to say no example world has decided that that's not right exact so sima samar chair of afghanistan's independent human rights commission told the associated press this with this decision people will lose hope of getting justice and they might take revenge fueling conflict in the conflict in the country and that's why i get it if you show people no way of justice and that we're just going to bully our way through everything then don't be surprised when another person gets killed in another serviceman gets killed or more innocents are killed because of rebels pushing back against the us government or the us military you know what accountability leads to more conflict of the exactly that point. during

just one five day period this april three veterans have committed suicide on the grounds of veteran affairs medical center's an april fifth twenty eight year old navy veteran kerry presley shot himself inside his car in the parking lot of the v.a. medical center in dublin georgia the next day sixty eight year old olin hancock shot himself outside the main entrance of the atlanta v.a. medical center in decatur on april ninth another veteran her manes a name shot himself in the waiting room of the veteran affairs outpatient clinic in austin tex. this comes less than two months after the us president donald trump signed an executive order creating a task force to combat veteran suicides which he attributed to a lack of awareness of the a services president trump explains. most veterans who die by suicide have not been in the care of the v.a. many of them don't know about the programs that we have where the programs that we've instituted interact nearly seventy percent of those lost to suicide have not

received care from the v.a. in the previous two years they're just not a aware of those great strides is just not aware. so because of this lack of awareness the suicide prevention programs touted by capitol hill only funded marketing solutions so just texting programs and hash tag campaigns they did not fund the v.a. enough to cover a single suicide prevention counselor much less one at each location would take four hundred v.a. locations so hop watchers is a time to admit that while politicians are far more than happy to find the money to send our loved ones to war they are not willing to fund the care they need when they get home. complete know very very are very they would much rather sudden johnny and susie and damon and everybody else off to war they're very happy about that but no they don't want to take care of them and you know they'll take care when they want to put them in a parade or the stand up arm in arm and say look i want you and i only about others

i have time. you know then we care then we parade the road any other time no and this thing of trouble due to sort of we're owes all veterans are idiots oh yeah they just don't know they're just totally totally stupid these veterans they wouldn't know no i'm sorry three people killed themselves in the v.a. while they were looking for treatment there making a point why these aren't this isn't just suicide this is a protest meant it and you know it's kind of below what they say is just not good the numbers don't know. they don't because while the v.a. says that suicide prevention is their highest of high priority it belly is what their statement in january of this year said which is quote the goal of veterans association super budget efforts is not to get everybody in v.a. care but rather to equip communities to help veterans get the right care whenever and wherever they made it home. so if somebody over somebody else yeah that's obviously going it's like this is ridiculous and if seventy percent of our using

the v.a. and your suicide numbers are ultimately going up why wouldn't you want as a priority why wouldn't you want suicide care as a priority in trying to get these people in to the community you know into the v.a. to help well enough doesn't make any sense when you really look at it because of the ideas well the problem is just you know seventy percent of people aren't using it while out of the other side of their mouth they're sitting there arguing about how you know we give the best care so quick so why are you so far behind if you can't even you can't even serve thirty percent of the people who you should be able to serve you should want them all in there you know the best way to handle p.t.s.d. from a wartime situation is by having people who understand that in the same place and that's what the problem is so you have p.t.s.d. and there's no what you can't pretend is this this is something else you've got the numbers the v.a. estimates that one in every five veterans who served in iraq or afghanistan currently suffer a spare p.t.s.d. the v.a.

should be treating that yes they should be the number one place to go for wartime p.t.s.d. and nowhere else and that's where that should be the most definitely and that's just sickening of the of the debate when you see these vets being paraded out by politicians who toss them aside rather cherubs they did and this is the thing because they're not really dealing with these onsite suicides or not really dealing with the twenty two plus a day twenty three a day that they already have it's now become that the v.a. seems like an unsafe place to go because of this. you have people who are trained in firearms who have access to firearms who have mental health issue and the concern is that they're not going to shoot themselves at some point so jack's so slow swope a licensed professional counselor in austin had actually said they go when i went home my wife that's what she brought up i don't know if i want you going back there if this happens because what happens when it's not a suicide what happens so now we have unsafe places that don't have enough money to run actual counselors and you're just sort of shoving them off funds have private

health care and then making more bedrooms at the end of the day and giving up more p.t.s.d. with each new war you and the way we have to send them to go fight with no way to treat it absolutely gut wrenching scene that happen to others as we go to break our borders don't forget to let us know what you think of the topics we've covered on facebook you tube and twitter and your poll shows that are to dot com coming up things are hashtag dealing with the law enforcement officers taking part in the social media challenge and then the house foreign affairs committee is getting in the twitter wars with servers. so stay tuned for watching the whole.

what holds if you should. put themselves on the line. they get accepted or rejected . so when you want to express. some want to. achieve right. this is likely. to get. interesting all those of. us.

since the very first tweet or my space post social media has been a boon to bringing worlds together but like with many of humanity's great breakthroughs in communication with all the good comes the bad in this week certainly showed us some of that bad thanks to our friendly neighborhood law enforcement and corrections officers who took a a fun loving social media challenge to a very dark level called the feeling q. challenge the viral fun started after a columbus waterworks employee posted a pic of him stating feeling cute might go out your water of glitter. this inspired many in uniform jobs around the country to send similar photos under the hashtag.

feeling cute challenge that's when the controversy began after law enforcement officers and corrections officers started posting photos with captions declaring feelin cute might just tase your girlfriend later feeling cute might deliver o.c. spray to your baby daddy today feeling cute might take your homeboy to the hole today and feeling cute might shoot your baby daddy today so is this just a viral media fun or has viral challenge exposed a dangerous mindset and lack of morality and our law enforcement community joining us today to discuss is former washington d.c. metropolitan police community relations officer ronald hampton thank you for joining us today ronald's thank you very much for having me ronald you know as a as a former officer how does this a scandal like this and you know seeing these kind of social media to you know things put out there how does that affect the trust between more foresman in the

community when they see their officers or someone they might run into have an interaction with suddenly was their social media pages most of it was first of all from a historical supply this isn't the first time a situation like this is happened is this is happening because in the social media aspect but it actually happening in a different colombia when they first put computer monitors in cars they had a monitoring system and the old chief of police the old systems who pulled these happen to had the responsibility to monitor and then from time to time and actually discovered this conversation that was going on between police officers across the city that was on the system and it was those kind of comments was on the alone with comments about police officers from police officers gay comments and all those other things so it is in the fortune that kind of thing but it's also in the in tampa with how do what has happened the disintegration overspread and professionalism in the professional police and. and you're right i think is

seriously reduces due respect in. understanding that the community understand why the community doesn't have respect for the police but how they've lost confidence in the in the law enforcement agencies in our cities in the cross the country so one of the things that always sort of shocks me is when they're so glad about something that is so terrifying to most civilians whether you know no matter the color of your skin or your gender i think that you know we're all kind of terrified of the idea of being tasered of being shot as accurate and as seen in the overlarge and think that it's right you know all police chief in the city of los angeles years ago during gates' years of meeting you can. you can paint these things but you can't really say i'm going now what we're finding out is there are people who are willing to stand and if they say i'm guess what they're doing you just have to give them the opportunity or create the opportunity for them to do it and then they do and so that's why that's why it

is psychological that's why there's some test that takes place to be in the early stages of police and recruits to sort of weed out those kind of people that will think a thing and then ultimately do it but evidently the testing process wasn't successful with these individuals because as i went through their. i would file all of them up and all ready to be gone. and i wonder sometimes like the thing is is the idea that these things are so clever and they're nothing i mean you look at somewhere like to me there's a lot of as you see started with rodney king and how glib the three officers were and how they were about everything and i was a story that years later i met one of the attorneys that had defended i was working for an attorney that was working against him just so we know what side i was and it was a police violence thing but it was on the other side and that attorney when we went into his office for a meeting literally has a bronze diversion of one of the officers boots that be rodney king with he has it

bronze behind his desk and i think that talks to some of it that we kind of feel like we're allowed we're allowed and i what do you think that that has that has had an impact of making it like our lives really don't matter and looking up shows up it's up to them whether we live or die absolutely i mean i think it was demonstrated that running is demonstrated to some extent in the shootings that we've called life has no value but we want to talk about people in certain communities clearly for example in this city in georgetown we would do that in new york they wouldn't do it in up a man had they wouldn't do it out on the al and they would just that's just now how the law enforcement agencies and individuals work and perform in this country and we don't do that to poor we don't do that the rich people would do it the poor people who have interesting too because a lot of these a lot of the this kind of viral you know challenge and when you saw a lot of law enforcement there a lot of corrections officers a lot of people working in prisons and things like that and i know the argument

from the other side is going to be look we should just relax the officers who did this are just having fun and making a joke in a way we wouldn't understand because there is a certain dark humor and i've talked to many police there's a certain dark humor that you do get working in corrections according to what fortunately. the comes of having to deal with a lot of times with the worst parts of human nature right but is that a good enough of an excuse you know when you see things like this slowly recede on our screen right now and you know people writing that because. people who work in corrections don't own the people who they supervise as or look out for there's a responsibility that they're there believe it or not to keep them safe in that environment and you can't keep someone safe spanking that you can put them in the hole when you want to that you can bust them in here when you want to and you can. spray em in the face or the hours in the time you want you can but you do have a responsibility to look out for them. i've seriously think that one of the things

that we ought to be at least expose in our correction officers to codesa that's in a depressive environment to be working there is some kind of evaluation in the now this is around how they feel about the people that they working with and responsible to because if that's the way you feel or the next not to die for you i give a lot of credit to those guys that would go into the prison and work in the prison eight nine hours a day and in that environment but we know also that they don't have to be that type of environment in prison because we have so model environment prisons in this country that are doing some positive things when it comes to incarcerating people that is very true that is a virtue and this is something that we're not looking out either for the mental health of of the people that we're watching that we the people have incarcerated but for a lot of times i keep hearing this thing that we're not looking after the mental health of the people that are there and these actions i think put your good correction officers at risk and also makes arthur for them and we're not looking at their match up to handle it i one of the largest county jail systems in the country

in chicago in cook county we have good leadership there for example this is a program where the warden is a form of psych was she's a psychiatrist about trade but also right and she's doing some things to look at that because it's now we have more people that are incarcerated that have mental health problems and really should they be incarcerated in that sense but in some kind of sense where they get out there absolutely absolutely thank you so much for coming out of there always a pleasure in your knowledge and insight into these matters thank you. since last week's controversial incarceration of wiki leaks founder julian assange political leaders journalists and activists have been waging a nonstop viral war of words think pieces and opinion articles over the u.s. government's charges against the saw and the potential dangers to press freedom that they represent and while this was certainly to be expected what wasn't expected was the amount of fish. us government organizations and representatives

who have gotten in on the game including the u.s. house foreign affairs committee who took time out of their busy schedule of rubber stamping arms deals for u.s. president some fear mongering their way through u.s. foreign policy to dive into the debate tweeting at r.t. america correspondent and comb quote the first amendment contract protects free expression even for russian propaganda outlets like the one you work for it doesn't protect criminals who weaponized stolen information joining us now to discuss the actions of the committee and the viral war surrounding the jailing of julian songe is our two americas thank you so much dan for coming on you've had an interesting few days on social media. what what is the story surrounding this tweet and what are people saying about this over the part of a former foreign affairs committee tweeting at you the way they did well it's remarkable that the house foreign affairs committee or the staffer behind this tweet or whoever you know took the time away from maybe stopping the genocide in yemen or something like that to lash out at me but i mean there's two things that

are really remarkable about this tweet first it says songe is being charged with weaponize and stolen information number one that's not true it's talking about that's talking about hillary clinton's e-mails that were either stolen or leaked we don't actually know but that's not what he's charged with that is clearly what he's been put on public trial for and that's what the house foreign affairs committee is talking about number two the charge. is actually conspiracy alleged conspiracy to hack to to assist chelsea manning in getting into a computer that she belongs to the department of defense that she actually already had access to that's called protecting your source so it's totally misinformed and and really insidious truly truly one of the things that came out of this is sort of the twists in what came out of the fallout of the julian assange. arrest and the legal jumps and everything so what is the latest on the actual charge well songe

faces they're saying five years in prison and there's a statute of limitations with what he's charged with of this conspiracy to get into this computer that runs out the statute of limitations runs out after five years and this was allegedly the climbers allegedly committed in two thousand and ten so it's a long expired so what the trump administration did is use the magic word of terrorism that they dug up from the patriot act which you know we can thank george bush for and the war on terror and that basically gave them two weeks until the very end of that statute of limitations is about to run out and that's how they got him that's incredible that's a great a. doubled up like that absolutely it seems like whatever we do where weaponize them for a man they are delicately holding and protecting and everybody else's as loving greece so that the u.s. government possibly be weaponized. charges bringing charges against people

recognizing the justice system yes the house foreign affairs committee is not even sure what it's what they're charging him for but get him no matter what thank you so much for coming on a limb and ending this war is always a pleasure having you know. forty percent of the world's population is at risk of contracting malaria most likely by a mosquito way which is why as we move away from dangerous chemicals to rid ourselves of the bloodsucking little monsters science has looked to dubstep that's right i do have international researchers discovered that when female mosquitoes for tens were played music for ten straight minutes straight were were subject subjected to the skrillex electronic dance hit scary monsters and mice sprites for ten minutes straight they sucked less blood and made it last the song was picked to do its continuously intensifying pitch. i earned a disproportionate level of loudness these. miskito were also five times likely

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what they did have given up the right to live among us some might even proven innocent up to years on death row and how many more exonerations is it going to take before we as a society realize that this is not working and we actually do something about it. join me every thursday on the alex simon show and i'll be speaking to guest in the world of politics sports business i'm show business i'll see you then. maybe. you. should really. love.

how you. fire engulfs the cathedral in paris. in the iconic structure. we are losing tonight. expressed condolences saying it is not just part of french identity but of world heritage. and prominent european politicians and the e.u. not to follow the us as example when it comes to the middle east.