Transcripts For RT Going Underground 20240713

Government that is not true its factually incorrect saying so its not a defense of assads right here to promote him or excuse any number of things he said over the years that we disagree with quite a lot but just so its clear whatever his sins assad did not steal documents from the United States government he did not hack the d. N. C. Servers he didnt break into john podesta g. Mail account there is no proof that he is working for the russian government or ever has worked for the russian government has never been charged with any of that and wasnt today no matter what they tell you grudging defenses of assad by outlets like Rupert Murdochs fox news the statement they did b. B. C. And former weiqi leaks partners the guardian New York Times among others perhaps emerging because they realize they could all soon find themselves in court for merely reporting on the crimes of nato countries well im joined now by the United Nations kneels meltzer who wants answers from Boris Johnsons government about britains role in what defenders of dishonest say are attempts to eliminate him. In Londons Belmarsh prison special welcome back to were going underground before we get to issues around the court case that court the bill maher show crowd court we were hearing from people in the labor party pretty mainstream now coming on board to support julian a son is what you have been saying since your report its the alleged persecution of judaism is becoming more mainstream. I think thats a Fair Assessment im actually surprised to see compared to last june which is about a month after my visit when i tried to place an op ed on the International Day in support of the victims of torture. In the Mainstream Press around the world i was an able to place an op ed damascus in the torsion during the suns after having visited and examined him with medical experts as conducted to New York Times the Washington Post the the australian Mainstream Media the british and stream media it was impossible to place it today what were seeing is really that the Mainstream Press starts to realize through publications and alternative media that they probably got it wrong and so the get more interested in discovering the truth about a story thats face saving in law they know that if songes convicted the next people could be them well we do have indicators of that and perhaps they start to move as we say smell the coffee after the raids on the a. B. C. Headquarters in australia and after Glenn Greenwald was arrested and in brazil and is being accused you know according to the same kind of playbook that we see playing out with the sons so perhaps the start and or so public funds being cut from mainstream broadcasters perhaps they start realizing that they really did 1st come for us and then for greenwald and not it may become. For the b. B. C. Ok but Boris Johnson is on the record as saying it is only right that Julian Assange finally faces justice and that was when he was dragged out of the Ecuadorian Embassy and thrown into jail yet i think we all agree it would be about time for him to face justice as to what hes facing here in britain is not justice and what he would be facing in the us is not Justice Johnson went on to say it was a credit to Foreign Office officials who worked tirelessly to secure this outcome meaning the dragging of him the pictures of which were caught by a ruptly of the news agency i mean are you saying every one of those Foreign Office officials as facilitating what could amount to torture and arbitrated tension. You see doona sometimes been expelled from the embassy its a decision made by the president perhaps even with the support of the parliament in ecuador that was communicated to him on the morning that he had been you know deprived of asylum status and deprived of his citizenship because the ecuadorian constitution does not allow the extradition and expulsion of nationals. Without any due process and the British Police just went in and tracked him out. Without one so what do you make of the now Prime Minister Boris Johnson saying credit to foreign officials for that well hes crediting for that because he likes the outcome but it certainly has nothing to do with the rule of law well Amnesty International theyve refused to make him a prisoner of conscience why do you think there are still other n. G. O. S who refused to take on board the julian asylum i thought was i think you know i very much support Amnesty International and they did when they try to protect people by declaring them prisoners of conscience but when they use their worldwide influence to to exclude individuals from that category i think then it becomes very problematic especially in were talking about a journalist who has been exposing grave violations of human rights and who is prosecuted precisely because he has exposed their sins for human rights and this is political i mean in your view you dont think that whistleblower exposed alleged crimes a in the russian government who had found asylum here there would no be no chance of extraditing them to moscow well thats the 1st issue is the one of the whistleblower lets say snowden whos now in russia or if you have an equivalent you know the russian whistleblower that who has asylum in the west and there are people like that. But we do in the son is not a whistleblower. He did not leak information it was illegal he was leaked to him ok. You dont think this. Anymore has anything to do with what you call fabricated Rape Allegations if you believe those allegations could be linked to the afghan war logs revelations of. Anglo american nato troops in afghanistan yes well im not in a position to you know confirm or deny whether there has been some kind of a sexual offense at some point between the women and and to the son or consider it say ive seen the in the original Swedish Police documents where the women are not claiming to have been raped but you can see even the woman sitting in the Police Station sending a text message to message to a friend saying i dont want to accuse a son of anything i just want him to take an a. T. V. Test but the police wants to get their hands on them on him so i mean who would write a message like that not a raped woman then. We see ace consecutive series of grey violations of due process in the swedish case and all of this happens within a month of the publication of the afghan leaks so we are to us as i asked their allies to initiate prosecutions against us and wherever possible so you know the. The choreography of this how it plays out and how sweden actually at no stage in the proceedings really tries to protect the womens interests refuses to question our sons when he is still in sweden and offers and actually demands to be questioned but the day he leaves sweden and he receives written permission by the prosecutor to leave sweden the issue an arrest warrant against him for trying to evade justice so there is a series of contradictions that is clear is acted upon by the now supposedly leading candidate to take of jericho been in this country the then director of Public Prosecutions kissed ahmed yeah im not im not aware of who exactly at that at the time but clearly that plot stand played out to. Push assads into a corner where everybody had this image of him and i was influenced d by this image as well in the beginning this narrative of him being a suspect with being a hacker being the narcissist being a spy and as soon as you scratch the surface a bit of this case you realize there is nothing to back it up ok we also discovered a trail that led to swedish Justice Minister told us bob strong the former Justice Minister who you claim effectively supervised the kind of rendition torture that was documented by wiki leaks of the kind documented by wiki what he was the Justice Minister when sweden and the Security Police of sweden kidnapped 2 people that were registered Asylum Seekers in stockholm and handed them over to cia without any due process and they were immediately treated on the airport. Territory and then flown to egypt where they were tortured in the tent arbitrarily of these 2 people we know because they survived both of them filed complaints with the United Nations and sweden was obliged to pay them i think each of them about a half a 1000000. 00 in compensation. So you think that the guilt. When the Rape Allegation was used just mirrors. It was an admission of guilt on the part of sweden when it dropped all the allegations well i would say drop the suit against him well they admitted that they never had any evidence that was sufficient to even press charges against him 5 days later the leading prosecutor of stockholm closed the case saying i believe these women but nothing they said indicates a crime that could be an explanation but i know i asked sweden formally in a formal letter as a mandated to do by the United Nations i submitted all the contradictory evidence to them and said please make sense of this explain to me how this complies with human rights law and before i draw my conclusions and now the 1st response of sweden was criticizing the judiciary which is independent from us and we are the government so we cant comment on this roll back to the minister please you know your my counterpart but please transmit my concerns to tishri and let them answer to me. Then they responded in a one page letter saying we have no for their observations my experiences were states dont want to respond to my questions probably they have something to hide. Ok well as the court case gets underway here in london in 2 parts another part in in may Chelsea Manning who is let out early by president obama a source for 4 weekly leaks has been virtually bankrupt they say by the United States theyre refusing to testify against julian. So u. K. Authorities here are they basically deciding on whether a show trial should go ahead absolutely and thats i think this is not what its its about whether this trial should go ahead because theres not going to be nothing else than a show trial in the u. S. Theres no chance is going to get a fair trial its not just about who are innocent in this is really is the battle over press freedom over the rule of law over the future i would say even of democracy because democracy which means that the people control governmental power this can not exist with secrecy that you you deprive the public of their right to know and you deprive them of the tools to control the government or you know that we have a supposedly independent judiciary here having said that the new Prime Minister Boris Johnson newly elected Prime Minister has previously expressed reservations about the conduct of the iraq war and was after 911 can you even call on Boris Johnson to do anything in the case of julian as the home secretary of the previoUs Government signed the extradition request and granted it. Exactly and thats and that was not a challenge to the court and thats why its with the court if it had not been challenge to be extradited although that tends to be just a formality when its the United States one of britains closest international i think to be fair there have been individuals that have not been extradited to the United States by britain which i believe is one reason why they wanted to go d through sweden because sweden has a track record of extracting just about anybody to the United States with or without due process now that is obviously off the table with the case being closed and in sweden and now to go through the british system. As were able to thank you after the break wiki leaks didnt only tell us about secrets kept from the masses of them in the tree Industrial Complex in the war on terror it also told us about the imperialist war on drugs we explore what connects the 3 of londons kings cross to the killing fields of Central America to the major cocaine transit routes in west africa. To a going underground. Nuclear power become a battleground in the Us Government people are demanding the shutdown of a local plant for my yankee is right now my focus because its a very dangerous. Power plant the owner is attempting to run the reactor beyond its operational limits this case just sort of puts a magnifying glass on wheres the power in this country wheres it going is it moving more towards corporate interests or is it more in the idea of a traditional for just a few democracies or power lie with the people this case demonstrates that struggle in very real ways a struggle on r. T. Welcome back in part one we had the United Nations allegations of u. K. Complicity in the presentation of julius anja of wiki leaks whose trial begins today in london while wiki leaks told us of u. S. Military assassinations of journalists torture in guantanamo multinationals endangering health in the developing world and the d. N. C. As war on Us Democratic president ial candidate Bernie Saunders it also exposed corruption industry. Delusions about nato nations self proclaimed war on drugs joining me now is acclaimed author and journalist country lowenstein whose new book is called pills powder and smoke inside the bloody war on drugs to the well while the drug deaths are at record levels here in the u. K. Your book kicks off with hyundai or a switch thanks to the songes wiki leaks explains how the socalled war on drugs is actually sort of nothing to live in to. Imperialism like the united Free Food Company where honduras for a book on drugs that is into the i think a lot of people when i think of the drug war dont think of honduras in effect i should because most of the cocaine going into the u. S. Goes via honduras from south america its mostly a transit country rather than a Production Company country but it is a narco state the violence is some of the worst in the world abortion is illegal there was a coup there in 2009 supported by then president obama and Hillary Clinton so these problems existed long before trump became President Trump or certainly worsened it to be sure but i think the really important thing for me about going to honduras was to show this is a neighboring country of the u. S. For at least 100 years has been a client state of washington since the eightys during the reagan era it was a staging post for the u. S. Fighting its dirty war in that part of the world and i think people often think that thats all in the past weve forgotten that the fact is today the violence is arguably worse than it was not even arguably in arguably worse than it was in the eightys as not soley because of drugs but a lot to do with drugs and i wanted to investigate on the ground to show you what that actually manes for people so when people are using drugs in say the u. S. And they use and race and abuse of cocaine others has never been higher in parts of the u. S. Maybe they should think and this is not judgment against people use drugs i think people should have the right to do so if they want to say that there is a very dirty supply chain assure that were not encouraging anyone to take good game with maybe. Little bit of one duras in the game the Boris Johnson admitted to taking. But well get on to the it a 2nd yes you say that thanks to u. S. Policy the drugs then go to africa. Is what you concentrate on rather than through the the commonwealth caribbean so i did that so guineabissau is a small country in west africa and i wanted to investigate where most of the cocaine coming into europe and in the u. K. Guys via west africa from south america goes from south america by bush or by plane gets to west africa. Ivory coast countries like that it depends on where the Law Enforcement is most effective and these countries the transit countries for cocaine and then it goes up africa crossings a year and then its distributed by variety of different groups often albanian gangs across europe and into the u. K. And Guinea Bissau is not like honduras in the in the way that its not as violent but it is it on the poorest countries in the world its main export is. And i want to go there again because most people realize the drug exactly and most people i think when i think about the drug supply chain never think about places like these and we know that the victims of what the drug war actually means are you could i mean certainly the. U. N. Will do drug report says 2 thirds of cocaine from. The u. S. Proxy the American Mission to binny cape verde gone immorally needs year to go and thats whats ending up here in britain its political vulnerability in countries that have been usually the victims of colonialism are often are the victim of u. S. Led war on terror violence guineabissau not so much violence in the us there is a us client stays and although as it has an experience the kind of violence or the similar states has it has been politically unstable since independence essentially for 45 years since line 74 and the effect of that on the ground as you go there looks like a tropical paradise on the one hand on the other hand you have the military and various elements of the state allowing themselves to be used and abused by south American Drug cartels theres also libya of course which is now increasingly. Pro which was. French United States about bombing so i mean quite apart from were trying to prevent drugs and i should say we invited all the commissioners the best is rule these nations who refute allegations that theyre in any way knowingly responsible for the drug trade i mean youre saying that Foreign Policy has been at the core of in the bling the drug trade us from policy and id argue u. K. Foreign poll scene and particularly us and again this is not just about trump people miss the point often trump is not the problem here champus often worse than it is to be sure in the last 34 years but these polls have been going on fairly consistently for decades of us Foreign Policy and many people who advocate a drug war no it doesnt work if youre if you aim at the drug war is to stop people taking drugs. Its fail on that fact alone and i think the us much prefers a reliable client stays and democracy made democracies do not want the way and us officials meddling in their country they dont hear as many one juror and no one ever does ask them what they want they often will say and i said its a main its in the book the us has cause carnage here for 2 reasons one because theres massive demand for the drugs in the us and drugs have to get into the country somehow and us Foreign Policy has supported the current government and the previoUs Government and many governments who are not governments well away from all the imperialism and the foreign power being projected using the drugs were you claim that the home. Its used to coerce local populations to crush political opposition and thats been going on says the beard and war there is no doubt that theres vast evidence in the eightys especially that various groups of the da and the Us Government is evidence of dismay saying this has vast evidence showing these were caned to get sickly poor africanamerican communities hooked on certain kinds of drugs crack cocaine especially to destroy the Civil Rights Group in dade and i mean theres an infamous quite i have in the book and im not the 1st one to use it from one of nixons advisors who said decades later that we need the drug war was mustnt working its am was the antiwar left and africanamericans and we could get the media and Public Opinion against both those groups in the 70s which some extent they did successfully the effect of that has been fee is that the drug war is always been about a war on the poor always has been the majority of people who are in prison or detention in the u. S. For drug offenses mostly minor nonviolent africanamericans latinos or poor whites and i think its important in the 2020 elections the 1st time ever that a lot of the Democratic Candidates openly talk about a their own drug use but more importantly changing the drug war ending the drug war legalizing cannabis reparations for those who have been impacted by the drug war no one in britain surely at the top was sitting here going drugs are going to help criminalize and coerce. Poor populations in the vulnerable to stop the movie the political autonomy whether there was a policy to allow the drugs in i wouldnt say but what i would say that the way drug laws are designed in the u. K. Is deliberately aimed to disenfranchise the poorest as well when the rate of incarceration for drug offenses is the highest in europe in the u. K. Here the rate of death from heroin overdoses is here mostly poor scotland and britain there is i think a real paucity of mature debate in the u. K. And thats mostly. The conservative government current government and often away the party there are some in the labor party and the tories are actually legacy from factor imitating reagan in the eightys differently and over the blair era gordon brown air out with some exceptions were pretty bad on drugs but in fairness to labor they pioneered private law and order. Prisons and as an act on the island so certainly there was a benefit and there is a benefit that you explore from keeping drugs illegal as regards the profits of private cars and theres many individuals who are very happy that the drug war continues that not just from i mean for example since chump one election a few years ago process of private Prison Companies went through the roof and they had reasons there because hes missed the field as prisons and immigration sent his more Mature Society does not demonize or prosecute those who use drugs and more importantly focuses on the groups that should be punished which is the which is the big cuts hills theyre the ones making the money this is a half a trillion dollar Global Industry and the majority of people who are making money and not the farmers in colombia who are farming coca or the people i met in honduras its not them its the cartels its the reading your book is really will chap over the laws that for since it. Went i mean of course and since 911 the whole war on terror and the war on drugs has been fused in my view totally fallaciously to suggest that somehow we made way being the ways have to fight both wars because to destroy terrorism you have to also destroy drugs from the evidence to the evidence to show that groups like hezbollah and isis and al qaeda are soley funded through drugs or even partially theres no money to deceive as a Political Tool of the liberal would defeat in the yes and below there is certainly im not saying no these groups every use drugs to support their work im not saying that for example tell a bank clearly is making money from the opium trade in afghanistan the evidence that is clear. But the idea somehow that you need to massively increase your and Security Budget which is what the u. S. And u. K. Is doing a last 510 years to suggest somehow to fight terrorism again to destroy poppy fields in afghanistan or in limits your defense here is very proud of its record in destroying what weve im going to ask about but it didnt work by the way what about the Opioid Crisis and the difference because its no 135 day a day in the majority of opioids in the us 5 a day here yeah lou 11 off the hose was below 0 in britain the gruesome details whats different about the Opioid Epidemic than these other drugs would mostly opioids that people are dying of initially of course from legal but increasingly the people who are dying from this from fence and the Opioid Crisis is interesting because in many ways a lot of evidence that drugs that are currently illegal help a lot of people in dealing with their i. P. O. Addiction nor will believe its a disputed and im going to go down to the end here and. Ask about the fact that you mentioned the famous statistic that its easier in london to get a delivery cocaine than it is to get a delivered pizza that you talk about the fact that the war on drugs really is a bit like the seeking of the stopping of Climate Change will secure their cash and theyre the baby steps once a 5 that simply we think for example that changing a light bulbs that hire him to make us feel better about our green credentials will save the climate and drug situation the analogies the same anyone knows about drugs about issues of prosecutions drug use drug abuse its never been worse and i spent time in all these countries and saw people are producing drug using drugs abusing drugs the carnage is so clear and the drug war is a class war its a war against those who are the poorest of the poor and sick around the edges doesnt solve that i understand a countrys not going to legalize all drugs next week really stickley its probably going to be a. He likes a colombia that maybe not legalize as cocaine but does a test on a certain area and says bolivia did levy a deed and kicked out the u. S. And it was a success it wasnt perfect and obviously theres been a change of government there through a clue and who knows and its likely i suspected the current hard line regime there might change their policy to get in the us again to the point question just changing the laws change the conversation and i think a lot of them maybe still a profound hypocritical on the same few years. Mainstream media in the us in the u. K. Riling in support of the drug war against people use cocaine when the ease of cocaine in these industries is very very hot oh i hear it going underground show naught to be learned stein thank you thats it for the show will be back on wednesday as the trial of imprisoned wiki leaks founder Julian Assange engine arguably journalism all around the world continues a bullets crumples would love to mentor them he would just by social media are good for getting what you all of julius on interviews for this program on going on the Ground Troops have. Been the troubled 19 seventies a group of killers rampage through parts of Northern Ireland that was coordinated loyalist attacks to take the only population of tens of thousands were forced to flee their homes and what was striking to put these attacks was that the or you see the Police Actually took part in the attacks so instead of preventing it they were active participants in the burning of coal streets in belfast at the time more than a 100 innocent civilians with that as the review can seniors found out more i was surprised about the extent and its occurrence which the solution was involved in some of those cases the killers would lead to be named. Beginning i think it went to the very very top i think it is. The water where all the taste and you. Give the go ahead. You know. This is true. Too. This Information Campaign to undermine the Global Response to the corona virus as cases outside china spike in europe and asia. With the militant group. The idea. Being described as a far reaching and historic trial for journalism wiki leaks founder Julian Assange. Extradition hearing in london this monday where across it throughout the day