a trip down all those twists and turns that our corporate media is too afraid to drive on we're not afraid to drive on them as we start watching the hogs. what's going on in the city the streets. are so slick see this joyce state. great city did slaves system it just says so but she was. so chilled as. well when watching the hogs tyrol been turned joining me today to discuss the latest on the o.p.c. w. controversy and a whole lot more including the ugly state of funding for u.s. public defenders is conservative commentator steve malzberg out to new york city and then here in washington d.c. we have political analyst and democratic strategist and me should cross our t. america correspondent rachel blevins and who the one i love doing now is former senior security policy analyst in the office of the secretary depends great title michael maloof we love and he always love having you know michael i so 1st and foremost i want to ask everybody else star was steve because he's far away in new york but 1st and foremost let's start the most important question should we take serious and do we believe the accusations that the former employee in henderson has come forward with and told to the u.n. security council should we take that seriously as the a whistleblower should we take him seriously steve. i don't believe we should you know he says things like the canisters of nerve gas may have been dropped by syrian helicopters and may have been placed at the site and that the symptoms of of the victims were not consistent with chlorine gas but never addresses what it was that killed them and what caused these symptoms and then you know then you have a robert fisk writing a piece talking about a he gave a speech and then a guy in a nato military uniform came up to him and said the report has been edited and it's compromised and it's corrupt and then he walked away and he disappeared into the night and he couldn't ask him any more questions you know you're always going to have these people making these claims and until there's evidence of what they're claiming which i haven't seen any then you got to you know you got to just go along with what it said what it is and take it for what it's worth which in my view is a bunch of nothing. to you or what is your position i think the best way to understand this story is to look at the timeline of it right because we have these reports that there was a chemical attack then one week later the u.s. and its allies launched more than 100 drone strikes against the assad government and then one week after that is when the investigators from the actually get on the ground and get a chance to see this area and to see these claims so when we're looking at a timeline like that the u.s. active claiming that they had complete and total proof in order to justify their actions yet the investigators didn't get there until another week after that and now we have this whistleblower coming out and saying that the team that was on the ground wasn't even used for the final report. and the other party think is that i don't i don't automatically dismiss whistleblowers i think that it's very important that we not do that but the american government has poor now over a decade had some some very strong interest when it comes to syria specifically and we know that the assad regime has not necessarily always been on the up and up and there is a lot of mistrust there and for good reason and i think that when they come. to an issue like this you have the american government that is absolutely fine in many cases utilizing not always the most legitimate evidence in an issue dating a strike of any type i think that we have wanted to we wanted to strike a certain level of fear in the regime and to showcase strength there for a while now and that that's what we were seeking to do they think that this this level of information and the lot of the reasoning why we actually went in and for many americans who already don't put a strong amount of faith in our systems of government currently this doesn't necessarily bode well for the story that with initially told through michael you know with the chlorine it's assessed that the bad guys on the ground 0 his son was at a similar capability there's some concern some question whether it was dropped from an airplane and when you look at the canisters it doesn't look like it was could have been planted so this then raised the question by the russians and well let's have an investigation an issue there wasn't one before trump decided to bombard with 51 tomahawks. and the crime scene if you will was obliterated anyway so with everyone going in and out so it wasn't in the u.s. interest to have that because they probably were aware that these guys had these salafist capability and we also know that they have routed this kind of stuff through turkey in the past i know for a fact and the. intelligence community knows for a fact that a lot of this originated along with sarah and out of iraq transported into syria into turkey in and then into syria so the bad guys have the capability but it wasn't in the u.s. interest to to have that kind of recognition and let's also refer to the one big thing that always bothered me about this idea of the you know assad used to use the chemical attack in this particular instance is the fact that he was being warned by everyone if you. it was chemical weapons were you know the u.s. was going to go bomb you and go in full bore so it didn't really make sense for him to do that in this situation does that mean he did do it or didn't do it we don't know but it didn't strike me as a little odd when you look back through u.s. history you see things like the go photog and things like that that's what makes me say hey we have to at least sit up and listen to what mr anderson is saying and we have to take it seriously well the russians to their credit called for an immediate investigation by the security council and they refused why that has never been said assad assad was used to the red lines drawn by barack obama who then did nothing and he made a miscalculation and a big mistake thinking that donald trump was barack obama ok you know i understand what you're saying there go ahead richard i mean i know that obama may have talked big with his red line with the same time he was the one who wanted to go in and help arm and train moderate rebels in syria and we all saw that and it up so i think it is a really good point when you're talking about what would have been assad's motives and at the same time what would have also been the united states motive because they have not been friendly to us side for the last several years and we've seen that in all of their policies as they've gone along so when they're sitting there saying hey don't attack your own people don't have people in the office and they have a reason for attack not works for a lot of us foreign policy interests that doesn't like us about poor always bothered me about this and i think it's one of those stories that we definitely have to pay attention to him and real quickly before we go i want to ask is it impossible for an organization today like the o.p.c. wu to truly remain independent when everything's so politicized now every decision and every fact all of this is always contestable that organizations be truly like political in today's atmosphere i would like to think yes but i think that because we have entered such a hyper partisan society that's going to be extremely difficult we have a currently an administration that has worked very tiresome to ensure that everyone is in lockstep with whatever his goal setting is. garlits of the fact that you may have some people within those organizations who are long standing who have all of the history who understand what's going on but it's not like that what this president sees as his vision then he's going to push them out a different course and we're going to get rid of them entirely or diminish the standing of that organization in and of itself so i don't think that we're in an era where we can get beyond and get beyond that hyper partisanship michael i ask you because you worked in government can any of these organizations remain we only a little bit we used to be able to believe it but i think given the cynicism that we have of government today especially the especially the u.n. which seems to be dead on arrival it's going to be very very difficult to believe anything they say really the point really good point all right everybody as we go to break court watchers don't forget to let us know what you think of the properties some of them will be sure to check out watching the hawks the pod just now available on spotify help with music and everywhere you listen to your favorite out of order you know not so favorite podcasts coming up we take a look at the underfunding of your 1st line of defense in the u.s. criminal justice system and then the university of new mexico of the bella pink facial recognition software or firefighter yes firefighters stay tuned for watching . thanks. and we're going to fulfill the repeated promises probably to the people come out of the you know weeks or box thank you. very well. now you want to verse that. you know. the cat. i'm on it. almost. as a science of the future russia. here in the united states of america as you've seen on all of our cop shows except for maybe 24 when that was on when you were arrested and facing down charges or criminal court you have the right to an attorney yes you do you have the very it's a very important but often forgotten in constitutional amendment popularity contest it's the 6th amendment that guarantees all of us us so this is that very important line 1st line of defense for many that line of defense comes in the form of the public defender the boy you're assigned by the court to defend you if you can afford the alan dershowitz those are johnnie cochran's of the world but now it seems the public defenders need defending from budget cuts take georgia governor brian kemp's newly proposed budget for the 2020 which the appeal dot org reports is saying as asking lawmakers to slash the. funds available to state public defenders by more than $3000000.00 and to increase the funds available to prosecutors by the same amount talk about stacking the deck but georgia's governor is not alone my friends according to the guardian while the numbers are scant even going back to 2008 statement county government spent a total of 5300000000. defense systems a year that's just 2.5 percent of the roughly $200.00 billions spent on criminal justice by states and local governments every year so i asked the panel as we kick things off in the 2nd half have we turned our backs on yet another one of our most important constitutional rights by shortchanging and underfunding our public defender system michael i think that's a bad omen to do such. because by cutting the. funding you're actually going to be increasing the workload as a consequence and people are not going to be able to afford lawyers so you would be denied your due process as a consequence and i think that really needs to be thought out more carefully before they do that they can always get get funding from other resources but the inherent right of defense defending yourself is really essential and we need to stick to the constitution absolutely i would agree and we also have to point to the fact that the united states has the largest prison population in the world and so you're taking away from public defenders and you're putting it towards prosecutors you're not exactly ensuring that that is going to be cut down at all and you're especially hurting the people who not only are unable to pay but also don't know their rights and so they need that access to a public defender to work with them as specially if they're in a case where they're being accused of a nonviolent crime and they're facing all kinds of charges and they don't even know exactly what their rights are. of work in the criminal justice system and this is really frustrating and frustrating beyond brian. i think that at this point most people can acknowledge or at least if they. i have reading the news news headlines that he is an election thief in chief but beyond that what we're seeing here is something that has gone on for a really long time in america we've we're seeing more and more of them didn't population a lot of the minority population really suffering under our criminal justice system in the weight of it and we're already overburdening a lot of our public defenders as it is they have ours that run longer than any other person who is practicing in this field there are people who have caseload that are thousands of folks and in many cases they have 15 minutes to learn an entire case before they have to go before a judge and actually argue for this individual and this isn't only affecting the prison population this is also affecting the overcrowded oversized amount of jails we have in this country in which the majority of individuals over 90 percent are going to be released and not be convicted of anything anyway but when you don't have someone to represent you when you don't have someone like rachel said to go over your rights with you this is going to be a very difficult process and we're only going to increase the amount of people who are spending more time in long gated in jails and prisons across this country but also diminish the faith that people have in our criminal justice system and to begin an era where we're finally seeing people on the left and the right come together and try to work towards criminal justice reform this isn't the time when we need to continue to overburden a lot of our people who are literally working for pennies to defend individuals who cannot defend themselves and cannot afford an attorney studio or your take on this one. not one person is mentioned the facts of what's actually happening these positions are positions that have been empty for a year you're not going to cut public defenders that are now working with these budget cuts these positions have been on field for a year and they will remain unfilled because in the eyes of the legislature and the governor they've got a lot without those people and they could continue to get along so i'd like to. i know that before this announcement where has been the news stories the reports and the stories of people not getting their lawyers what it's all about having the right that he's ok and i'm talking i didn't interrupt you people not having representation if someone is denied representation they'll be free of their charges will be dropped i mean this is insane to say because of these budget cuts to continue vacant positions that are already taken for a year that ever there's going to be chaos where's the chaos it is happening across prisons and jails and are on top and the grand jury. georgia have classic a are there and there are literally 45 different nonprofit organizations that have been working across the state of georgia for the past decade on this issue just because national media has not picked up on it doesn't mean that local media has not let me ask you this isn't isn't this an also an example of putting too much emphasis on the statistics to say we're winning in the criminal justice system meaning that politicians always want to appear tough on crime right so they push for more conviction numbers well more conviction numbers do they get that when they stack the deck in favor in terms of funding like you know if we put more funding into the prosecution of attorney general in various states or all that and put less funding in public defenders doesn't that then raise the conviction rate because you've got less people out there fighting. and that's what actually ends up happening with the formula and that's what we've seen across multiple states not just georgia we've stayed in california we've seen it in new jersey we've seen in new york that is literally what is happening and steve i want to say you know you were you did bring up a good point this was a bunch of d c c did you didn't cut an actual defender was a bunch of to see it so let me ask you guys this why do you feel we're not getting more people stepping forward saying i want to be a public defender is that because there's a low it's a low paying job with very little benefit i mean what is the reasons for that it's an extremely low paying job on average around 50 k. and you're asking people to literally take on hundreds of thousands of cases and i think that that is a very difficult after for anyone and if you're coming in and they get all they get burned out really quickly we have a very low percentage of people who are literally looking forward to this work with the same reason we have a low percentage of people who are going into the education bill today they are being overburdened overstressed and they don't have the level of support they need . and so they're not going to be following your case and going going to the hill on your behalf because it's just you're just a number and and they're going to get paid regardless of the same i'd love i love the fact that again we have a liberal media in this country and they have been basically 0 stories about people in georgia not getting representation especially. you know as that some kind of problem because the all these vacancies and that people are convicted because their lawyers are public defenders and they don't have any time that's right and you know they were all clearly how they are in our black wall now where they all are going to get coverage yeah well in jail and you guys are good and he didn't like this the likelihood of this is good news and good back and forth 6 trains of ideas coming here right now i want to i want to ask very quickly at the end of this too does part of the problem too is that most of the lawyers today are all running for office. you know most complaints you know i mean well no i mean when you really think about it and maybe that's part of the problem i don't know not literally that they're all running for office but most of our elected class in this country comes from a legal background right and so when you have so that means you know who are they going to really side with the they're going to side with the public defenders and that or they're going to side with all that plus let's not even begin to get into the fact of this is also gets in the wealth inequality as well because look most of the time the people who make the decisions in this country the people who donate to the campaigns they don't ever have a problem getting legal advice because they've got the money to afford the big name defense lawyers so that doesn't even bother them so they're not going to push that as an agenda when they start saying hey i gave the democrats x. amount of money i give the republicans x. amount of money i want to see this in the legislature indigence do not have a lobby to go before a legislature that's the bottom line finally i want to have this last story because this is wild to me ok researchers at the university of new mexico have been developing facial recognition technology for use in fire fight it's not what you think the university of new mexico department of electrical and computer engineering is led by professor manual martinez ramon has been working towards the development of a high tech wearable device for firefighters the device will help emergency service workers with navigation communication and threat assessment during tense life threatening situations ok that sounds good and helpful but then the report goes on to highlight an innovative new facial recognition algorithm formulated for use in firefighting technology and that where ing a device that quip that the latest facial recognition technology could help a firefighter and his commander recognize the face of someone in need of help which in turn could result in the reduction of fire related deaths ok when you're running into a building burning building i'm pretty sure everyone in the building is going to need help why would you need facial recognition to tell you that is this another example of pushing a technology into places that ultimately does not need it steve i'll start with you . no i don't believe so i think that it's also going to help fellow firefighters save fellow other firefighters because a lot of times those firefighters are in a position where they can't speak or they may see something they're lacking oxygen whatever so it's not only the people in the fire that you'll see their face but you see the your fellow firefighters around you who may not be able to say that there something's wrong with them and this will help in that effort too so i don't see you know as you might expect i don't see anything nefarious in this i think any safety measure especially when it comes to our 1st responders is a good thing but i don't disagree is that this is one of those rare instances where i actually do agree with steve i have my cousin is actually a police chief and i also have another cousin who was a fire chief in chicago and i think that this type of technology does help them because at the end of the day you know in many cases don't know how many people are in danger in a burning building you don't you don't know which rooms they are in this could help you to one navigate which one should get to the bird i understand and also just be able to again back to steve's point also protect other people who are a member of your department or in your words when you enter those space it's going to be very high attention you have to think on your feet really quickly and i think that anything that could help them in those circumstances is extremely helpful i think one thing to remember here as well is that once you create that technology you can't uncreate and so it sounds really great to say oh let's create this for firefighters that will help them but at the same time what happens in that technology is used by other agencies what happens when the f.b.i. and the cia come in and they pick up on that technology and decide that they want to use it for whatever they want to use it for you know it's like when we look at the patriot act being passed at the time everyone wanted to be patriotic they wanted to go with it but it ended up taking away a lot of our rights so we have to really consider that whenever we're looking at technologies like this one and we also have to wonder how does that go hand in hand with the facial recognition. technologies that are being used by local police departments where they are seeing a lot of issues with those and places where those technologies aren't even accurate a good number of the time good point i can see it with law enforcement with intelligence agencies with homeland security i'm a little baffled on how you going to use this technology in the midst of a fire when normally it's fleer technology that distinguishes that there's a body out there but if you have fire all around you you're not going to be necessarily see that body is going to be something that penetrates this is going to be a technology that penetrates the fire itself and i don't know what that technology is as yet so it's not it's not explained it's interesting too because when i mean here's one of the kind of weird red flags with me and maybe i'm just paranoid because i'm a been torah and i get it i get it but it doesn't affect the university of new mexico is a kind of experimenting around with facial recognition software and other cutting edge surveillance technology i think they also help make like there's a 1000000000 dollar city in new mexico a bit like a century is like a smart city that no one actually lives in but it's where they can experiment all these things and. but they're also a cia signature school they actually do recognize the cia so that kind of scares me a little bit when i hear about them messing around facial recognition tell you know because a lot of times you like rachel said they hide it in something good that our 1st responders and things can use but then later it's like hey well if the firemen are using it you want to and everybody else you're such a cynic and i am but in reality. i recognize that they have a and they're going to use that as a subterfuge or could use it as a subterfuge i mean i can't relate how it can work with firefighters as opposed to law enforcement or intelligence i mean we quickly let law enforcement and intelligence use it 3 d. no no ma'am if you talk about our constitutional rights and i don't mean that off base algorithm that things have recognition software there it's already happening why. so i mean you saw the these cases come out where they take members of congress and the facial recognition software fix in the kernel that's true but the problem is they are now there may well have been a problem is it's not perfected just yet and it can really result in mis identification so that's that's a problem too well i want to say thank you all for coming on today steve malzberg mr krause rachel blevins michael maloof fantastically fun to have you all on today thank you so much and that is our show remember going in this world we're not told we're loved enough so i tell you all i love you i am tyrone visitor a keep on watching those talks and the great day about it. and we're going to fulfill the repeated promises of politics to the people and come on you know weeks or buts it was really. really. pretty there burka now you want to 1st correct that. no. the. many call the impeachment trial of donald trump in the u.s. senate a political show well if it is. it's not buried entertaining in fact it's quite boring repetitive and tedious clearly this entire process is a blood fest to play for keeps but what about the institutional damage left in the wake of this low energy process. rather than a as he should be. one of the people so he'd be in luck because. that's pretty much what i mean i well me and nothing. but the same. one i was was. the who moved me to. little. ole industrial zone when i could even enjoy the pieces from people watch musical blood from a bitch who looked a. little. when to get it and then have none removed can you. here michel i. him in. santa most and. that. was. god. world leaders and dignitaries gather in jerusalem for a holocaust commemoration ahead of an anniversary marking 75 years since and the red army liberated auschwitz. i me i will never forget it every morning i look at my hands and see. i have the number here and i see it every day that time enough for. despite the remembrance event in israel being aimed at uniting it in the face of tragedy the leader of poland where auschwitz was located was not in attendance.