welcome back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour iceland wants someone to pay for its economic collapse poorly decided to put on trial and put this affect other nations decisions also if you think the meat of the future will be one hundred percent all natural and everything you know might be wrong and is united steely take what to india and not have to do with protecting our nation

and what does all of this have to do with proper disease. in screwed news meeting here hard at the former prime minister of iceland who was in court today facing charges related to iceland's economic meltdown party is being charged with negligence for failing to prevent his nation's banks from going under in two thousand and eight taking the entire nation down with him by the way and eventually costing him his job in two thousand and nine and today he is the only world leader so far to be charged with crimes related to the global financial crisis according to a recent report commissioned by iceland's parliament are to end his government quote lacked both the power and the courage to set reasonable limits to the financial system end quote. is that really a crime and what might a conviction of a world leader mean for others whose fingerprints are all over the financial panic

of two thousand and eight joining me now from iceland is able helgerson public affairs host icelandic television it all welcome thank you tom it's great to see you just do prosecutors have a case here or is is is he simply being made the scapegoat for the banks hers was very difficult to say whether you just a. failed politician and when are you actually guilty of something that's criminal and up to this court to decide this is this is being a very divisive issue in iceland it's about fifty percent of the you population who wanted there but if it's the percent of the populace don't look nice this quarter. is getting if this is tough go it is the is the essence of the charge not that he took a bribe or he he looked the other way when the banks were doing something bad because his brother in law was making some money or he was or you know those kind of things

that are clearly if either in the realm of criminality or in the realm of of the horrible ethics or is the charge against him that he was just an absolutely totally mind bogglingly incompetent politician should have seen this coming and therefore deserve some sort of punishment yes that the charges basically they should have seen this coming and that he should have acted on many many instances which is the choice for the. is the idea of this parliamentary report you you mentioned was that more people will be put to courts. to keep governors of the central bank and more government ministers this develop happen so finally hurley's they're up there along and you have to say that he has garnered some sympathy because of it he's east in the eyes of all of the great united and he's a bit of a martyr at the moment because he was a conservative prime minister of practice the prime minister for the conservative party which has sort of dominated icelandic politics for a long time but they got

a thrashing after the crash and already had to leave their own trail his supporters say this is political it's a political trial those who are against him say no this is not a political ploy we're trying to sort of make a reckoning for this this this horrible crash if he's not sitting in the dark with work with a couple of bankers it seems like it's a portable trial i mean it wire the wire the banks are is not standing there with him and i did all there being prosecuted by their criminal court actually a lot of the banks there's a big and it investigated a special prosecutor this is a special court that has never been convenient in our history and so it's like. it's a court which the parliament is actually on that accuses a problem it's like impeachment here in the united states when they went after bill clinton. but we've never done that in iceland before it's in our constitution is to just lay bare dormant eternity in denmark with some instances. so we'll have to see

but this is not a kangaroo court or in the bigger judges from the high courts are actually sitting there so this is a. lot of parcel russia rather anything how this is fascinating what sort of potential planet penalises in facing. he's facing some years in prison but i have to tell you that i have a feeling that he will be acquitted what is interesting is this whole thing is that a lot of people are be called to testify a government ministers m.p.'s bankers and this is interesting what these people say under oath during this trial so you're guessing that it what it's going to do is reveal the complicity of a variety of people and he's looking like a fall guy a lot of incompetence look you would be. used for going on in the end they might convict him on a minor charge but i think even think but yeah do you think that is it's sort of

the state's become too politicized maybe this is not a good we have to be more people who have been there in the book. could this case serve as a model for other nations or if you heard of any increase in any of the nations who are thinking of trying their leaders are investigating their leaders for at the very least negligence leading up to the two thousand a crisis. i'm sure the greeks would love to burn in that i go to greece a lot that i know they would look at the irish as well you know the big they do a good job and i would because they basically just thrashed the company tortie and they were all kicked out of tolerance in iceland we didn't do that we still have a lot of people around in politics are sort of to blame for the press. and that that might have something to do with why he doesn't get convicted when when i was on your program in when i was in iceland a month or so ago you were talking about having been in greece recently. you're

very knowledgeable about him that situation there papademos is in now or he used to be a he used to be a banker and he was not elected he replaced pop and various who was the elected prime minister as soon as before the election prime minister called for a referendum iceland has had two referendums now about whether or not to pay back the gangster's. which greece was not allowed. eighty think endings in to happen with a referendum or anything like that in greece and do you think that they're going to pull out of the euro and be what's the status of iceland's repaying the bank as we have about a minute but this reeks i don't think they will pull out of the euro because it's that then they will sort of spiral away from the european union but it's it's it's it's obviously the euro craft of running the country and i don't think that and go on for a long time in iceland it's a complicated situation this was a perp the savings accounts the banks founded in britain and poland we will get not

repay then our president was instrumental in that and in the end i think everybody's very happy with it. ok it'll helgason thanks so much for being with us tonight strays or maybe we should be taking notes over here pushing greenspan on trial for their crimes against the economy i trowe can begin right after bush's war crimes trial and it's. here take my take is your chance to send in your questions comments rants observations about anything we talk about here on the big picture or during my radio show our first comments and i comes from michael on our message boards it's on carbon dot com he says tom i was your program every day enjoy your show i was watching c m e c and they had on meredith which was an economic advisor and she was saying right to work states are doing much better than other states and oklahoma is the model is this true or is this just more b.s.

coming from the right well it's b.s. coming from the right as the new york times pointed out about four years ago oklahoma is doing great i mean look at their downtown it rivals venice italy but at the same as the same new york times article shows the reason is really simple over the past decade they've discovered a hell of a lot of oil in oklahoma and with oil prices at an all time high they're getting rich caption reads oklahoma city of those is resurgence to the escalating price of crude oil and gas oil derricks can be seen all over town including on the grounds of the state capitol it has nothing whatsoever to do with right for work right to work for less nothing and next comment of the night comes from an anonymous caller on our viewer rant line here's what he had to say about the republican platform. hi hartman fans and thank everyone for the in a citizen here i'm thinking about all these republican rants about family values

and religious values what happened to american values american values like a b.s. corpus trial with jury not spying on citizens an invasion of privacy. or those american values. that some of the other american values that we haven't seen as punishing those who commit fraud upon millions the banks there's not a single bank streets come to jail so what is the political platform this year is akin to the religious ideas family values or american values thanks a lot done. it's thanks for your call it's going to be really interesting to see how this plays out over the course of the next year in the election and frankly i think it's going to be even more i'm. with you in doubting we're going to see much of this in the campaign frankly i think therefore it's going to be even more interesting to see if president obama is reelected if he gets a democratic house and senate will he start going after these pictures will and is

there any possibility that anybody and frankly i think is going to be a court in spain if it happens but the anybody goes after george w. bush for his war crimes and our final comment of the night comes from powell on the tom hartman facebook page palos said this about rush limbaugh's comments i guess free speech is now a fallacy to those who disagree with what was such a rush is nothing more than a conservative witch in today's salem media well sort of you know my take on this is that rush at first thought he was being cute actually there was a there was a news story i believe it was on c.n.n.'s news it might have been world net daily but it was one of the right wing websites that basically laid out what became russia's talking points saying that this woman was testifying that she wanted to have contraceptives because she wanted to have sex all this kind of stuff and it was really badly done journalism it was a major analysis and badly done rance and my guess is that this is my personal guess as a talk show host as you know having some small insights it was that limbaugh didn't

do his homework he never read her testimony he didn't know what she actually said and he had read this this rant on this route where right wing site which was probably echoed in dozens or maybe even hundreds of other ones of this is right wing echo chamber and he stepped in it and then he decided to double down and stop it and they doubled down again and now he's really stuck so we'll see how this all plays out in any case right wing the right wing talkers sheen and their ability to message is one of the topics that i talk about in my book cracking the code. which is all about political communication so we're going to send in our graph copy so you can learn more about it thanks for your note that's it for my take your take tonight and we'd like your comments and questions for it on the segment a big picture like a chance to get one of my books listen up we want to know your to send us your comments by visiting the tom hartman facebook page by a twitter at tom underscore hartman or in the chat room on the message boards or

through the blog at tom hartman dot com you can also leave a message on our rant line at two to three six fifty three zero six agree disagree sound off its all welcome to remember that your comments may be used on the air. coming up in tonight's daily take how america can take a page out of india's economic playbook and protect our nation proposition. we just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old on a loop through. i confess and i am an get a sense that i was traveling to us and. that he was kind of the jester that. i'm very proud of the world without you see its place.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for langley you think you understand it and then glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything is or you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture.

so sometimes you know what you know and sometimes you know you don't know and sometimes as the firesign theater says everything you know is wrong and going to kill you you're you're right. it's. sure. you. imagine going to your local burger joint hundred years you know the way a traveler might be different you know he's a jet actor a flying car and we order might be different communicate telepathically or have a computer tell you what you're angry for but despite all these changes you'd expect one thing would remain the same right but meat right. if you think you're

nice and juicy hamburger will still be made from cows a slaughterhouse that everything you know about the hamburger of the future is wrong joining me now is dr mark post professor of physiology and the chairman of the dutch society of physiology at gnostic university in the netherlands dr post welcome. are you great to very well thank you thank you for joining us so where's the beef. it's not there yet. it's getting in the lab and indeed we're going to make it out of stem cells. ok so. some of our meat made in a lab sounds gross i mean it just doesn't sound appealing how do you how do you how do you overcome that how do you make it seem like something somebody would want to eat. you have to think about why we are actually doing this there are

really really nice ins to start thinking about a real turn of events. for the environment or actually the world supply of meat which is not going to be sufficient so you need background to think about really alternatives that may seem gross at the start. eventually this this product this stem cell product is meat and as we know it it's just grown outside of a cow or a ate. the components are exactly the same and we go towards their product intention is also exactly the same so how do you you know meat is muscles how do you have muscles without flights in them or do you have machines that stretch them and things while you're growing up well actually easy cells are quite amazing they do a lot of work just by themselves. so if you do it right if you culture them right.

they organize the tissue and they start even contracting in the petri dish and they start and stretch so they do some of that work themselves and that's how they sort of be for themselves not have had any begins or vegetarians weighed in on the sun whether or not they would consider in this kind of me. probably not. and maybe someday but you know i was seeing a couple of hundred twenty kerry in germany the other week and you know it's really a very small for consumers. number so you know each day. they probably are better or it's used eating. better for environment for the. rules so if they just be on the evils i'm really happy with ok dr post thanks so much for being with us that

i. think are now everything you know about in vitro meat production is right. it's the good the bad of the very very. slowly of late the good. ten thousand g.m. vehicle owners more than ten thousand current and former g.m. vehicle owners are following on the company's stop funding and supporting the heartland institute the now infamous think tank that wants to make global warming denying a part of school curriculum since two thousand and ten g.m. has contributed thirty thousand dollars to heartland and reaction to the petition by customers g.m.'s director of policy greg martin said that the hard way is this institute gives careful and considerate thought to complex policy issues yeah right

now it's nice to see how more and more americans are becoming aware of the problems of corporate greed in our society and our government g.m. could be one corporation it decides to listen to the customer and not the bottom line. so bad the t.s.a. it was another rough p.r. week for the t.s.a. on wednesday t.s.a. agents said louis airport in hawaii forced a woman to prove that her breast pump was real by making her use it in the women's restroom after publicly humiliating the woman the t.s.a. apologized for what they called a big misunderstanding and then on saturday t.s.a. officials at j.f.k. airport in new york a lot of woman to go through security with a dagger in her bag even though they had confiscated a bottle of liquid that was in the same bag and was eventually arrested with the t.s.a. agents finally realized they made a slight mistake this is a time we rework our airport security system to make it about common sense rather than about public humiliation rose. and the very very ugly kirk cameron

in an interview with piers morgan hollywood teen heartthrob turned radical conservative kirk cameron made some startling remarks about homosexuality what he said about homosexuality but here it is cnn's piers morgan i think it's it's detrimental and ultimately destructive to so many of the foundations of civilization and then when asked about the possibility of having a gay son here's how he said he would react if you say well. i wouldn't say that's great son as long as you're happy i'm going to say you know there's there's all sorts of issues that we need to wrestle through in our life and just because you feel one way doesn't mean we should act on everything that we feel something to be intolerance ignorance and frankly bigotry to cameron displays are the only things destructive to our civilization and very clearly.

india is taking drastic economic measures to save their nation and we need to do the same thing here in the united states as the times of india is reporting today the government there has banned all exports of cotton and so further notice considering that india is the world's second largest producer and exporter of cotton in the world this is a b.f.d. and global investors are lighting their hair on fire as the financial times rose today india's last export ban declared in two thousand and ten helps on cotton markets to record highs farmers and mills defaulted on deliveries as prices jumped causing losses or poor results for global commodity merchants but india doesn't care because they view their economy differently than we do in the united states they put the best interests of their citizens above the best interests of global

markets so they could care less about what the banks through in the financial times are so let me show you what's going on here. two thousand and eleven was a rough year for indian cotton crops as diseases of climate change cut into their crop yields creating a shortage moved a lot of that cotton out of the market on top of that china which is india's largest cotton importer is due is demanding more and more of that cotton more than normal so what the indian government is trying to prevent is a cotton shortage within their own nation that could cause prices to shoot up for indian textile manufacturers people who make clothing textiles are a crucial sector of the indian economy second only to agriculture and employ thirty eight million people just in that one country it prices shoot up a lot of domestic manufacturers will get wiped out so to prevent that india is cutting off exports essentially keeping all this cotton for themselves and so

create a surplus of cotton within the nation prices will go down for domestic textile manufacturers and consumers within india and their economy won't be wounded by a shortage any of basically said that cotton is a strategic commodity and thus extreme measures like banning exports need to be taken for the nation's wellbeing which brings us to the united states and our strategic commodity oil with the price of gas climbing above four dollars a gallon forecast maybe hit five dollars by election time maybe we should take india's advice and consider our own export ban on petroleum products last year for the first time in sixty two years the us became a net exporter of petroleum products we export it out of the united states more than we implored in to the united states. so what's happening is we've most of our domestic petroleum products being shipped put into anchors and shipped off to europe south america asia we're seeing a shortage here in the united states which is driving the prices up at least that's

one reason the prices are going up another is that over seventy percent of the oil in the united states right now has been taken off the market and locked down by banks like j.p. morgan goldman sachs who have no intention ever of using it they just bought in it to take the oil off the market rate a shortage drive up the price so when they sell it back into the market they can do so at a profit this practice is called speculation and it's the second major driver of higher gasoline prices right now the first being just the exports so imagine if we as a nation said that for the good of our domestic economy we're going to ban petroleum exports we're going to keep this oil here in the united states suddenly we have a surplus of oil products and prices would plunge there'd be no need for a keystone x.l. pipeline no need to drill in anwar no need to punch more holes in the gulf of mexico so we could all go and gasoline we have right here ready to go but it would

lower prices at the pump more americans would have more money in their pockets to spend in stores instead of the gas stations those further stimulating the economy this would be a win win for everybody and it's good economic policy and only one group would be harmed by it and that's the multibillion dollar trans national oil corporations like exxon mobil shell koch industries and b.p. but considering that the five largest oil corporations in the world made over a half trillion dollars five hundred billion dollars in profits over the last five years and has profits. but collecting twenty billion dollars in subsidies from taxpayers like you and me and spending twenty million dollars in campaign contributions most of it going to republicans plot al gore denying climate change all these other things if you will accompany ones plus another one hundred fifty million dollars they spent on lobbying here on capitol hill i think those oil companies can afford to take

a slight hit to their profit stream especially for the well being of the rest of the united states of america it's time for us to stop having the people oil companies determine our nation's trade and energy policy and look at what other national governments that haven't been bought off by corporate interests are doing to boost their economies it should be about protecting our nation instead of protecting obscene profits for the oil industry. that's the big picture for tonight for more information on the stories we covered visit our website the tom hartman dot com free speech dot org and also check out our two you tube channels there are links to tom hartman dot com entire shows also available for free video podcast and i tunes and you can visit on our dot com download the audio podcast of our daily radio show which will be moving three to six pm starting everything today so mark your calendars and we have a free time on our when i phone and i pad app at the app store you can send us feedback at twitter at tom underscore our on facebook at tom underscore our in our

blogs message boards and telephone comment line at tom arbonne dot com. and don't forget democracy begins with you if you show up and get active get out there get active today to your it to see them or. just put a picture of the needle nose like nine years old on so it's a little truth. i make sense and i am going to get a sense that i was crap because he is sick and. he was kind of the jester. i'm very proud of the world with its place.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for like you think you understand it and then he lives something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture.