publicized by the world's most famous journalist julian sands, currently facing a trial in london with the future of free speech itself hanging in the balance. one man who has been a champion of the we helix founder and a vital, impressive voice on afghanistan is the author an activist target. his new book, the 40 year war in afghanistan, a chronicle foretold, is out now, and he joins me from london. thank you. so much charter coming back on, i mean, a lot of people say that the julian sans trial is about free speech. if you read your book and i know you, you name check him in here, you might think it's not really about free speech. it's about a slow motion assassination, given that most journalists ignored the kinds of things you were writing. over the past decade or more, about why british troops would die for nothing in afghanistan. a lot of my critique of fear from the storm war, including a debate with les right, government minister or no fritz, which is in the book. these were all published to luggage. and as we were cutting the book together, number of people said it is amazing. the gotten used to publish old stuff and i was myself surprised, but that was on ellen, ross preacher. and you can make greatest to him, of course, but i do feel allowed thinking about it long term. but he was probably the most objective and it could guardian his hand certainly. and 2nd one was if you compare that to the guardian today, kind of, it's a huge, huge difference. and it's ironic that lee left ember guardian. what was left with roto roote as fine i and isn't it? well, people could watch our interview with alan ross per genera, and he actually fired me many years ago. we do, i just say it's rarely, but do you think, i mean, the reason why most journalists have not been more obsessed by the assange case, which clearly across the global south and, and increasingly, many people in nato countries are more and more concerned about his, the allegations of his torture and is continuing incarceration, more journalists on more than because they wouldn't use the freedom of the press that they were given. in any case when it comes to was like afghan, it's done. it's absolutely true. afghanistan was designated as the good by the western governments and where journalist stick appendages. and so that's how they covered it. you know, the stories which made it were not the stories revealed by children assigned to and we keep leaks in 2010. the run papers published by wickedly showed the war was just completely unwinnable. and it was useful for other things for, for munich, using us as a base to clean a fill the money for increasing the drug trade. but it has nothing to do with freedom more democracy or women's liberation, or anything like that, as we now discover, to the 20 year occupation collab students. and they, i mean, that showed it didn't even have mass support, which they always used to compare a well, if they were so happy, why did the army of 300000 guns collapse within a week refused to fight? so it's, it's been a disaster story. and i've been writing about it for, for, you know, 40 years because the, the american occupation and the nato occupation, so called operation enduring freedom, enjoyed for 20 years. prior to that, there was a soviet hope to be sure from 9 to december 1979. and in between the 2, there was a fierce faction. fighting between these slamming fractions which destroyed a gobble. gobble was not destroyed by the russians. gobble was bombed and destroyed, or large chunks of, bit by different fractions. would fought with the us against the russians. fighting each other and they sent back to point that the pakistani into services intelligence and the pakistani miller create a set of taliban and propelled them into our with the complete back of the united states, the agencies, it state department, pentagon, et cetera. the white usa usa, moscow, occupation of afghanistan, but also draw us to the idea that actually what we think about us fund it would lead to $911.00 happened before the russian invasion of afghanistan, jimmy carter set in dream events that would lead up to 911 absolutely right. basically what happened in and from this time is in 1978 the show of iran, or the pressure on the government, the republican government in afghanistan, led by mamma and said, there are too many commies in your army and air force. the see, i provided the shop with lists. these were at dinner with the news. don't act on it . when this news was leaked in signed, lee afghan army and air force officers belonging to the true factions of the people democratic party i missed on met. and they organized me good, i suppose, described as a preemptive coal. and that a pre emptive go in april 1978 was portrayed as a revolution. they tried to make it into a revolution. but they miscalculated on a number of things. and they had promised that now of honest on the democratic, in every sense of the word way. if that was the case and you were really going to do that, which would have been a huge step forward. the 1st thing you need to do was to combo constituent assembly and decide on a new constitution. because the last constitution, serious constitution, a 19 banned in 1918, 1919 biking, a model that was a pretty decent constitution to be honest. and his wife, clean sarabia, had put into it the right of women to vote. so had that constitution been carried screw on this town would have been the 1st country to give women the right to vote . all women before britain before the united states, before any european country, so that regime was toppled by the british. so the 1st government to come in sin samantha, with progressive aims and pretensions was the p. d. b, a government after the go. bay length is preemptive. go and 78 had a right that constitution improved it. some under constituent assembly campaign for elections, or knows they might have one. i don't know with order but not doing back affectively operating and very young democratic way industrialized ordinary people, including in the countryside, certain beach and that is when the counter and his national security adviser. he said, we're preparing a back track and is started. our main groups in on is gone to all the stakes. and that is when they hired, been lucky that in the british journalists and american journals can be forgiven for not understanding the slightest idea about african history and how britain destroyed women's rights were there obviously, people in the biden cabinet and around biden's people, maybe people here going women's rights, women's rights, and you say in the book, just bringing up this a bit forward. it rape. widespread rape in discriminative in killing that child killing. this accompanied the ice f obligate occupation of afghanistan. yeah, it, it, and you know, they have not provided any figures on when i'm in this allegation in public on television radio, in writing they denied they asked me for my group, where's your i see the closest reports coming out of the stock from women's organization. some of which one in particular is not gain on the occupation. and they've told me that actually rape went down during that time period. and it is now up again because the northern alliance with whom the west was in cahoots, or no better marginally, even worse on this question than ever. so their allies carried on the other question i raised is, could you give us statistics on the number of brothels that are being set up in a tron is don to accommodate the nato armies and help operation enduring freedom. mean, harmony, sex workers have to endure working in brussels in a planet stand because the reports from bosnia during the you, gustavo, and other places, despite horrendous, never did, we get a single reply. and this is a story which really needs to be investigated now that it's possible to, to find out what happened and where are those even in the past few days, the 10s of indians are killed by a drone strike. in the end of the occupation, the bending it says, no one will be prosecuted is a in the book that and i suppose one could say that what you were talking about there was facilitated by the international monetary fund in a way, indirectly. what do you mean by the i m f being partly responsible for the creation of what will become 911? i 1st political islam when you create a system in which you take away the safety net from large numbers of people in clinical. so many of them in muslim countries, but not exclusive, want to leave them with. you, leave them with nothing. you create an emptiness in the society and in situations like this for just preachers can be very effective, saying no one does anything for us on the god. and the only way you will do it is by doing a, b, c, p, or whatever their motive sign or whatever their enemies all the time. and so this entire economic policy framed by the global economic institutions, mtv, the, you know, i mean, emptied and gave them no control. they didn't know want to do. and the action is, is, is virtually the same. of course, in some countries like pakistan, these groups are deliberately created from above in order to fight against the soviet union or in order to do what the united states want to be done in relation to setting up with government, etc, etc. but in most cases, the traction to small minorities as to be said, are these is linked to the economic crisis and things concrete, when nothing is done with them, they live in miserable conditions, no system functioning of system, no functioning education system. and at the same time, they see an elite in their concrete is belonging to the same religion getting richer and reach, reach, having living in a bubble world. but within this bubble world, private jets fly them from one part of the country to the other. that shouldn't go to top schools, which exist in that country, but i'm not available to an over whelming majority of the population. i sometimes wonder how come the it isn't larger, this tag, i'll stop you there more from diag after this break plus is time running for the native american known as the usa, longest serving political prisoner leonard peltier. we ask his lawyer about his chances for freedom and the dog legacy of the f. b, i is counted democracy activities well as a more and we have in part to have going underground ah, look forward to talking to you all. that technology should work for people. a robot must obey the orders given by human beings, except where such order that conflict with the 1st law show your identification. we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. and the point obviously, is to create trust rather than fear. like to take on various jobs with artificial intelligence. real. somebody with a robot must protect its own existence with a bugger back. i'm still your target, the legendary activists and also of the 40 year war in afghanistan. a chronicle foretold. right now, there are definitely clinton, knight forces, acc, yes, tom or, of course leader, the name of body here, appointing people who supported the was after 911 like afghanistan. you, you draw contradictions in this book between the fact that tony blair believed in nation building at the same time was destroying britain at home, in the sense of privatizing of the nation itself. just tell me about destroying social democrat democracy norms from 945 was here at home while trying to create them abroad. well, it's the new liberal consensus created by fracture. and very good. i mean, there was a real continued fracture and major blair brown cameron, all of them effectively hanging on to that consensus. and blair and mendelson actually boasting, we're going to privatize more than sheet. well that's your philosophy. how can you build in a conquering, anywhere in the world except by handing over money, do unscrupulous grot, local politicians and landlords, and hoping to do something. and of course, they make the money themselves. they build mansions for themselves, or, you know, option. it would have taken $5000.00 to build a small house with 2 or 3 bedrooms of mount breaks to house in afghan fan. why did they do it? they didn't do it because of the idea of doing it. had been outlawed and banished, more or less in the west, it serves on what the cost of the wars is, estimated it trivial trillions. ingredients when they couldn't build anything for the ordinary people. well finally, just on, i mean, julian assange famously said that the afghan war was a recycling mechanism of a taxpayer dollars into the arms companies and mercenaries, and all those companies lobbied for it on k street and their profit. you, you wish to say that it is optimism in the sense that you seem to suggest it a young population average age 18 in a 40000000 population country. you believe it around pakistan, china and russia will replace the nature powers. i mean, why are you so confident that nature nations won't again, go back into afghanistan? say, it didn't remind you so much of vietnam, the defeat this here. it was the, the, the, my, the in khartoum. it reminded you in the 19th century, i will be provoked, but the thing is this, that the world has changed. china to bias a very big place now in any serious, true political thinking in that region. the 1st concrete has been by the new taliban leaders was trying, but we still haven't had a detail the sound talks, but it's fairly clear that 2 things are discussed and that everyone is done shouldn't be used as a base by j groups against any concrete and secondly, discussions on coming into china, belton roads initiative, and having some infrastructure developed. and that, that when the war against of con, is done, started iran back later because of its own rivalries with the bomb and herod was a hotspot of opposition to the taliban government. compare it with this time. as the taliban entered headers, there was no opposition. so the indications are and more than implications. we know that since 2015, 2016. the iranians have been in discussions with them. without any doubt, they are suggesting that the guns go for a constitution, they would suggest the iranian model is better. well, that is better than nothing. i will ground you back and, and they're suggesting backs between the 2 countries and no more battles and rivalries, etc. so it's the changed world and iran's big change row. they have no illusions now. i'm the united states at long last china's change pro. russia is not backing into the last phase, didn't back the water was happening in it's gone. so this big shift i think offers some, i'm not too low for that. you know, there's a gloomy side to me, but the, i am more than i've been time tally. thank you. well, another street fighting man known around the world is the u. s. s. longest serving political prisoner de facto leonard peltier champion by everyone from nelson mandela to some commandant mark was to rage against the machine 45 years ago. today, the legendary native american activists woke up in the us after being extradited from canada on now withdrawn testimony linking him to the murder of 2 f. b i. agents is arguably discredited. trial is now viewed in the context of the api, wider, co enjoy pro initiative the name to stifle dissent and protests within the united states. now $77.00 and in ill health peltier is looking to you as president and mass incarceration architect joe biden, for clemency than had built his lawyer. kevin shop joins me now from nashville, tennessee, as you'd say, judge a judge sharp, thank you so much for going on before i get into this, and i would advise people to look up his case on the internet. if people don't know, leonard peltier is, how is the health of leonard peltier? well, you know, leonard, ac is 77 years old. he has multiple health issues. on top of that, you've got raging, covered throughout the bureau. prison system it's in is really touching, go with leonard's health, and he's got some serious issues that, that really cannot be dealt with within the bureau. prison system. we need to get in the, you are appointed a federal judge by a bama embargo obama. he couldn't, free peltier is m f b i direct was james comi, quite a famous f b i, director of bill clinton couldn't under lewis free was the f b i, director than except now it's all jane got biden's own interior secretary, deb holland, who said before appointed her appointment that your client should be freed? surely he can be free now. right, well, i ought to go back, you know, could they have freed him? they could, they didn't have the political will to do it. we know what you said at the top of the shower. this is all a whole loper from the hoover s b i and the co intel pro f b i. that doesn't exist except to the extent that you've still got leonard peltier in prison. you need to get lenard out for all of the reasons that had to do with his now completely discredited trial and expiration from canada. but you really also the government needs to do this so that they can break from that old coover f b i, you know what you're saying would be completely denied. i know you're a full, the federal judgement denied by the f b i a by the, i don't know the supreme court. what are you talking about a political trial justice in your country is not political as the whole point. well, well, look, even even the u. s. attorney that prosecuted the case now says they don't know who shot these agents. they do know it wasn't leonard peltier. they know that much. and so, you know, jane reynolds, who was the us attorney on the case reported by appointed by jimmy carter, came out with a letter in july to president by that says it is time to release leonard peltier. that's the current or the, or the former us attorney. on the case, i mean peltier, a convicted of killing jack cola ronald williams to lie 1st said, it says i know the witnesses have withdrawn their claims at that time, ballistics forensics are all and you, you maintain the vindicating him, we will actually, um, since people may know some of the case of killing the murder of these 2 f. b i agents is some of the affidavits were withdrawn because they were kind of tortured by the f. b. i. the witnesses tied to chairs. the u. s. government does not claim anymore that he shot these ages. they don't know who killed the agent, and his co defendants were acquitted based on self defense, what the government ended up doing. once it was discovered that they had sculpt, tory ballistics evidence that they did not turn over. he was originally convicted of shooting to agent, then it was determined or revealed that they had exculpatory ballistics evidence. once that came out, you could no longer say that leonard peltier shot, anybody because they knew that he had. and so they changed their theory to one of the aiding and abetting. so then the question becomes, who did the ated a bet because his co defendants were acquitted based on self defense. so when the assistant us attorney who tried the case was asked by steve crawford 60 minutes, who did the bed. he said, i don't know, maybe himself. well, that's legally impossible. there was no crime. it is co defendants were quoted based on self defense. and you cannot aid and abet yourself. and i know, well, i suspect he, we thought he was being cute and funny and flippant with that answer. but this is somebody's life. this is a criminal justice system in this country that has to mean we have a constitution that has to mean something an f 40 for years for aiding and abetting himself. though he didn't shoot the gun that killed you correctly, i mean to legally impossible to aid and abet yourself. you either did it or you didn't do it at. they know he didn't do it, which is why i never the, which is why this goes back to co intel pro, as you're saying, because it's, it's a case that means something, it's symbolic, that's your contention. how would you explain to christopher ray, who actually said to the senate judiciary committee in march the f b, i is not systematically racist. i raised some eyebrows given the f. b. i involvement or accusations about involvement in assassinations and black leaders. obviously. how would you explain to christopher ray, the head of the f b i who presumably will be telling biden about whether to release your client. what co until pro even was. well it's, it's back to where we were before, which is the government needs this as much as leonard peltier needs to go home and spend the remaining days of his life, which are probably not many back at the, at the up at his chippewa reservation in north dakota, but the government needs this because there is no question that co intel pro existed there is no question that co until pro, systematically violated the rights of us citizen. nobody questions anymore. of course it happened. what we question now, and what the f b i to look at the federal government to look at is does that still exists? and if it doesn't, well then let's break from that. you've still got a prisoner there. there are multiple prisoners though, who were victims of that, you still have one in prison. we now the violations that happen. we now know the threats and the intimidation against witnesses to testify against him. we now know that ballistics test proving he didn't shoot anyone were with hell. we now know that there was a racist jure, admitted prejudiced jerk booth stayed on the jury. we know all those thing, all constitutional violations, less in this and let him go. ha, and dr. real with finally find the very, very briefly what will it mean as regards a accepting the history of genocide, of native american people's in the americas. if he does die in prison and if he could, he could get a plea deal, but he refuses to do a plea deal. he wants clemency rather than a bleed deal. what would it mean to be to complete? he'll come to think of it. well, he didn't commit it, he's never going to admit that he cra, committed a crime. he did not commit if he was going to do that, he wouldn't spent the last 45 years in prison. what it means up to release leonard peltier is that we can kind we can finally start to deal with the issues of our tortured relationship with the native american community. what they need to do is say, let's release lender, let's admit the mistakes of the past. let's start to try and heal. ready that relationship touch kevin shaw. thank you. thank you. that's ever the show will be back on monday when we speak to a man detained for 14 years of the you as a defacto infamous torture camp in ocoee by cuba. one time a seal open today, despite vows from washington to shut it down until then you can just my social media and get in touch to let us know if you think biden should drug clemency to leonard peltier. ah, scientific knowledge has never been so readily available to everyone across the globe, but overwhelmed by information. can we distinguish the real science from the one being imposed upon us? we're living in a world where there are many people who have a vested interest in finding information, finding scientific evidence, and discrediting even the notion that science could provide the truth about the natural world in the pursuit of business goals. large corporations are challenged strongly by scientific evidence. if you're emotionally invested and free markets, then climate change is a serious emotional threat. because dealing with it means we have to change our approach to business industries or on the war bond attempting to debunk legitimate science by producing new evidence in science, lighting science. that's how ignorance is manufactured, their attention only seeking to be rail science, rolling, using sy against that shell. join me every 1st day on the alex salmon show. i'll be speaking together for the world of politics. school business. i'm sure business. i'll see you then. mm. ah, on you german 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