well back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour iceland wants someone to pay for its economic collapse probably decided to put on trial and could 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 in tonight's daily take well to india and. add to do with protecting our nation and what does all this have to do with profit is it. in screwed news me here the former prime minister of iceland who was in court today facing charges related to iceland's economic meltdown hard to 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 them by the way and eventually cost 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 or to a recent report commissioned by iceland's parliament hard to end his government quote lacked both the power and the courage to set reasonable limits to the financial system and what was 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 helgason public affairs icelandic television a go 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 bankers. it was very difficult to say whether you just heard failed politician and when are you

actually guilty of doing something that's criminal and bess up to this court to decide this is this is being a very divisive issue in iceland it's about fifty percent of the youth population who wanted there but a fifty percent of the populace don't look these this quarter the world so if he's getting it 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 all of the horrible ethics or is the charge against him that he was just an absolutely totally mind bogglingly in carpet a 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 they should have acted on many many instances when he used the charts for birds. it

is the the idea of this parliamentary report you you mentioned word that more people will be put to courts. to get governors of the central bank and more government ministers these people happen so finally parties they're up there alone and you have to say that he has done it so simply because of that he's he's he's in the eyes of all of the way in iceland he's a bit of a marketer at the moment because he was a conservative prime minister of practice the problem is that for the conservative party which has sort of dominated icelandic politics for a long time but they've had a thrashing after the crash and already had to leave their own trail his supporters say this is full of political this is a political trial those who are against him say no this is not a political trial we are trying to sort of make a reckoning for this this this horrible tragedy if he's not sitting in the dark with a with a couple of banks tears it seems like it's

a political trial i mean it wire the wire the banks there's not that standing there with them and i did or they are being prosecuted by a criminal court actually a lot of the banks are being it investigated by a special prosecutor this is a special court bet has never been convenient in our history it's certain it's like . it's a court which will be the parliament is actually the ones that accuse a simple problem or so of the 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 just delaying their opponent they've done it in denmark with some instances. so we'll have to see but this is not a kangaroo court or an we are big or big judges from the high court are actually sitting there so this is a. lot of parcel restaurant or anything how this is fascinating what sort of potential and one of these is increasing. he's facing some years in prison but i have to tell you that i have

a feeling that you will be acquitted what is interesting is this whole thing is that a lot of people repeat call to testify government ministers employees bankers and this is interesting but what will 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 fog. a lot of incompetence look you would be impervious. they might convict him on of minor charges but i don't even think that do you think that is it's sort of to say it's become too politicized maybe this is not a good we have do we need more people who have been there in the dark we. could this case serve as a model for other nations or of you heard of any inquiry so many other 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 do that in the i go to greece

a lot of that i know they would look to do that at the arias as well but you know the they did a good job and i went because they basically just thrashed the governing party and they will keep all of it in iceland we didn't do that you still have a lot of people around in politics sort of template for the press. and that that might have something to do with why he would present your convicted when when i was on your program and when i was in iceland a month or so ago you were talking about having been in greece recently. you're very knowledgeable about them that situation there papademos is in now he used to be a we used to be a banker and he was not a like that he replaced part of dreyer's who was the elected prime minister as soon as the elected prime minister called for a referendum iceland has had two referendums now about whether or not to pay back the bankers. 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's toure's we have about a minute opus the greeks i don't think they will pull out of the euro because it's that sort of spiral away from the european union but it's it's it's it's obviously the euro across the really the country and i don't think that can call on for a very long time in iceland it's a complicated situation this was a savings accounts the banks founded the britain and holland we were told to not repay them our president was instrumental in that and in the end i think everybody's very happy with the. current helgason thanks so much for being with us the structure maybe we should be taking notes over here and put pushing greenspan on trial for their crimes against the economy afterall can begin right after bush's war crimes trial and it's.

your take my take is your chance to send in your questions comments rants observations about anything we talk about here in the big picture or during my radio show our first comments and i comes from michael on our message boards at tom hartman dot com he says tom i was in your program every day enjoy your show i was watching c m d c and they had on meredith whitney 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 there down south 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 the caption reads oklahoma city of those is resurgence and 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 and the 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 been 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 k.b.'s corpus trial with jury not spying on citizens an invasion of privacy. or those american values. that some of the american values that we haven't seen as punishing those who commit fraud upon millions the banks there's not

a single bank stress gone to jail so what is the political platform this year is it going to be religious values family values or american values thanks fratta. 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 and into the election and frankly i think it's going to be even more. with you and 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 banks troops 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 work runs and our final comment of the night comes from powell on the tom hartman facebook page all of this about rush limbaugh's comments i guess free speech is now a fallacy to those who disagree with what was said rush is nothing more than a conservative which 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. it'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 in the journalism and badly done rance and my guess is just this is my personal guess as a talk show host as you know having some small insights that 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 the 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 step in 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 talk machine and their ability to message is one of the topics i talk about in my book cracking the code. which is all about political communication so we're going to send you our graph copy so you can learn more about it thanks for your note that's it for my take your take tonight if you'd like your comments and questions heard on this segment of a picture or 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 apartment or in the chat room on the message boards or through the blog at thom hartmann dot com you can also leave a message on our rant line by three six fifty three zero six agreed disagree sound off its all welcome remember that your comments may be used on the ear. coming up in tonight's daily take how america can take a page out of india's economic playbook and protect our nation not profit as.

you just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old and since you know lived through. i think i meant to get that i love crap because he is sick and. he was kind of a yesterday. i'm very proud of the world without you see its place. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lack of sleep you think you understand it and then a limp something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize that

everything you thought you knew 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. with you you can hear your right. to make. sure. you. imagine going to your local burger joint one hundred years from now that we have traveled there might be different you might use a jet pack or a flying car the way you order might be different communicate telepathically or have a computer tell you what you're on before but despite all these changes you'd expect one thing would remain the same right to meet right. if you think you're nice and juicy hamburger will still be made from cows in a slaughterhouse but 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 mosques that akina versity in the netherlands dr post welcome. are you great to very well thank you thank you for joining us so

where's the beef. there yet. it's getting here in the lab and eat we're going to make into our groups themselves. ok so. somehow 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 that somebody would want to eat. worl. you have to think about why we are actually doing this there are a great many nice and still you start thinking about alternatives. for the environment or actually we will supply of meat which is not going to be sufficient so you need a background you can think about really alternatives there may seem grocery store. eventually this this product and it's the stem cell product is neat as for me no it

it's just grown outside of a cow or a pick. but the components are exactly the same go wings the product intention is also exactly the same so how do you you know meat is not how do you have muscles without flex in them or do you have machines that stretch them and things while you're growing up well actually ease the cells are quite amazing they do a lot of work just like themselves. so if you do it right you can culture in the right . they organize the titian and they start even contract in ocean beach and they start construction so they do some of that work themselves and that's how they sort of beef up have have any begins or vegetarians weighed in on the sun whether or not they would consider in this kind of me. probably not.

maybe someday but you know i was seeing a couple of hundred vegetarians in germany the other week and you know it's really a very small for consumers. number so and you know they start they probably are better off just eating. better for environment for. so if the own vegetables i'm really happy with ok dr post thanks so much for being with us tonight ok ok. now everything you know about in-vitro meat production this right. it's the good the bad of the very very. slowly

ugly the good. ten thousand g.m. vehicle on its more than ten thousand current and former g.m. vehicle owners are calling on the company to 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 in 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 for complex issues yeah right anyhow it's nice to see how more and more americans are becoming aware of the problems of corporate greed play in our society and our government. 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 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 when it was eventually arrested with the t.s.a. agents finally realized they made its flight mistake this inside we rework our airport security system to make it about common sense rather than about public humiliation rose. and a 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 but i think it's 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 your intolerance ignorance and frankly bigotry that 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 until 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 them caught markets to record highs farmers and mills defaulted on deliveries as prices jumped causing the 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 bankers in the financial times are say 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 doing 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 it 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 if prices shoot up a lot of domestic manufacturers will get wiped out so to prevent that india is cutting off cotton exports essentially keeping all this cotton for themselves. this will create a surplus of cotton within the nation prices will go down for domestic textile manufacturers and consumers within india and their economy will be wounded by a shortage india basically said that cotton is a strategic commodity and the sixty three measures like banning exports need to be taken for the nation's well being which brings us to the united states and our

strategic commodity oil with the price of gas climbing above four dollars a gallon for gas 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 imported in to the united states so what's happening is with most of our domestic petroleum products being shipped put in tankers 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're just buying it to take the oil off the market where it is 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 and 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 that all your own 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 a 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 which is profits 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 player who are denying climate change are as of the things that the oil company wants plus another one hundred fifty million dollars they spent on lobbying here on capitol hill i think those well companies can afford to take a slight hit to their profits tree especially for the well being of the rest of the united states of america it's time for us to stop having the big 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. as the big picture for tonight for more information on the stories we covered visit our website the thom hartmann dot com free speech or in our team dot com also check out our two you tube channels there are links of tom hartman dot com entire shows also available for free video podcast on i tunes and you can visit camargo dot com download the audio podcast of our daily radio show which will be moving in three to six pm starting everything today so mark your calendars and we have a free time more of an i phone and i pad app at the app store you can send us feedback at twitter at tom underscore arbonne on facebook at tom underscore our than our blogs message boards and telephone comment line at target dot com. and don't forget to mark receive begins with you when you show up and get active get out there get active today get your it will suit him or.

just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old until the truth. i confess and i am going to get a friend that i was driving because he is a pretty thing. but he was kind of yesterday. i'm very proud of the world without it's place. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for langley you think you understand it and then you've lived something else and you hear see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm charming welcome to the big picture.