today on our t.v. we're following breaking news out of london wiki leaks founder julian assange has taken refuge in ecuadorian embassy and is now asking for political asylum and that south american country will have the latest developments next. there's no benefit for us to be picking sones secretly providing assistance in encouraging civil strife in an effort to effect regime change in syria and while the mass media strays from the facts ron paul isn't afraid to confront the syrian conflict head on so who is really provoking the civil unrest will fact check the cable news reports . and while the mainstream media squares off with russia by sea and

a swell is taking to the air unveiling its very first grow straight ahead we'll have more on the game of drones racing to rule the sky. it's tuesday june nineteenth five pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wahl and you're watching our t.v. . or we begin this hour with breaking news out of london ecuador's foreign minister says wiki leaks founder julian assange onj is seeking political asylum at its embassy in london and a statement released from the embassy of ecuador parts of it read quote as a signatory to the united nations universal dekker declaration of human rights with an obligation to review all applications for asylum we have immediately passed his application on to the relevant department in quito and while the department assesses mr assad as application mr sonner will remain at the embassy under the

protection of the ecuadorian government goes on to say that although the government is considering mr assad his application it will not interfere in the judicial process of either the u.k. or so. in now all of this comes just one week after the supreme court of the u.k. rejected a bed by a saunders attorney to reopen extradition into the case joining me now for more on this developing case is jasmine radek national security and human rights director for the government accountability project she's also also the author of this book the whistleblower and the american taliban welcome to the show jazz lead so i guess first off want to get your reaction to this news doesn't come as a surprise i think at first blush it comes as no surprise to most people but actually. it's a smart move by a songe and it shouldn't be a huge surprise if people recall julian the songe interviewed ecuador's president.

on r t. and so it has been a friendly country towards him and as you noted since they are a signatory to the un declaration for human rights say do you have an obligation to review it and i do believe that we have a part of the exchange between us and korea oh let's take a listen. why did you want us to release all the cables. then we know that those who don't know anything have nothing to fear we have nothing to hide your wiki leaks have made us stronger as the main accusations made by the american embassy. excessive nationalism in defense of the sovereignty of the ecuadorian government so we see they're. kind of standing behind a songes actions and they do have a relationship that dates back a couple of years yes and. you know as we know assad has been under house arrest

for two years and now he is in the embassy in london what's interesting to me is that under the u.s. standards for granting asylum. a song would need them he has a valid fear of persecution for his political opinions and a real fear that the government to which he would be extradited would not be able to itself or prevent a third party government from interfering and persecuting him and the united states has launched a worldwide manhunt against him so interestingly under the standards the u.s. uses i mean this is a a mess that we've created on our own by going after him with such with such vigor and such hatred and such. kill list i mean a worldwide manhunt you know i don't know if he's on the kill list the none of us

know but i think he certainly under american standards would fit the criteria and for now it seems like this is some kind of a last ditch effort to prevent being extradited to sweden and ultimately finding his way to the united states if that were in fact to happen what would that mean for have well if united states as you have been covering so much has been leading an unprecedented war against who so blowers and charging them under the very heavy handed espionage act and six of those people including bradley manning who is alleged to have leaked a series of cables to wiki leaks are all facing this these charges that are meant to go after spies not whistleblowers and so i think the u.s. would try very hard to bring espionage act charges against a staunch but that would have horrible implications for u.s.

media in terms of also facing prosecution under the espionage act because so many in the mainstream media both domestically and abroad have reprinted in part or in whole things from wiki leaks and that's the thing he hasn't even been formally charged yet but some say that the attack on assad is also an attack on a whistleblower is. absolutely you know i think it is and he has not been formally charged sweden just want him for questioning unfortunately i mean i have seen whistleblowers have to face pretextual allegations of all sorts including criminality and espionage so i understand why he may think that sweden is trying to get him over there for all teary or reasons and i don't think it would fare well in the climate right now in the u.s. where there has been no holds barred in going after people who are trying to get

information out there people who are trying to tell the truth and reveal information the government in the u.s. might find embarrassing. or controversial or illegal and julian assange and is certainly at the forefront of that and that's exactly what he has become this very controversial figure some people love him some people hate have those that are opposed to him say that he put lives in danger by releasing that information but that's very interesting because he actually i haven't actually heard a very clear assertion of that by anybody who is willing to provide their name part of the espionage act is an intent to harm the u.s. or benefit a foreign nation and significantly that is a factor that has been missing from all of these. lower prosecutions and so while people have made generalized statements that oh he's put our troops at risk i have

not heard a specifically tailored claim about how that has happened and ecuador in fact said that his revelations benefited their country. all right i just want to get into what exactly he is under scrutiny for why he doesn't want to go to sweden he is being he is facing charges of basically sex charges can sexual sex between two people are charges have even been fired and he's just facing questioning so but they seems like that is not the main issue at core here he's not trying to avoid the questioning he's really just trying to avoid extradition to the u.s.s. my read my read on that as well i think questioning given the extraordinary circumstances here could be done via skype the e-mail in a number of different ways mean it wouldn't be orthodox but it would be

a way to do that i think he. you know i correctly views this as a likely pretextual attempt to get him into sweden which has a horrible history of caving to the united states and extraditing people including those seeking political asylum in fact extradited people who are seeking asylum xed it took them and ran and turned them over to the cia to be rendered to egypt to be torture the european commission on human rights eventually found in favor of those individuals but i understand why you were not at all be confident that he would be treated fairly in sweden and that politics wouldn't come to bear in his case so he is now turning to the ecuadorian embassy how long do you think it would take to get that answer. that i don't know the answer to that question in terms of how long they take to normally turn around their applications and obviously there's

a very high profile one and highly political politically sensitize. political but with the size i should say tripping over my words there but you know again it is accurately characterized as a last ditch attempt but i think it's a perfectly valid one and how common is it for these kinds of asylum requests to be granted i don't know what ecuador statistics are on that in the united states if someone generally meets the criteria that i discussed earlier we tend to be inclined to grant asylum. this is a very unusual case because he is not someone who is being trampled in. a dictatorial country and among a group of people he is a class of one individual person against whom our country has declared

a worldwide manhunt. which is something you would think might be appropriate for someone like osama bin laden but not someone like julian a son where there you were grier disagree with wiki leaks and in terms of being accepted by accurate or what motivation is there for ecuador to to grant him this asylum well i could do worse actually obligated to because it is a signatory of the universal declaration of human rights and as ecuador's president has said the leaks disclosures have actually been helpful to them and ecuador has not been quiet about some of the does taste and you being offended by the u.s. request to set up military bases in ecuador for example obviously be and states would not offer reciprocal coming of. grantor reciprocal kind of request from

ecuador or any other nation really. as you had mentioned before obama an obama administration has. engaged in this unprecedented crackdown on whistleblowers so you know we're seeing what's happening with bradley manning. and other whistleblowers so was that kind of a preview of what a sonder would face if he makes his way over here i think a science with face the living hell that people like thomas drake and john kiriakou jeff sterling. steven kim what they're going through what tom went through and what what these other folks including bradley manning are going through right now manning was tortured by our country that doesn't bode well for the treatment of julian the signs i don't think he can reasonably anticipate any kind of fair judicial process here we are we have been acting outrageously in terms of

the victory all with which we've been going after so-called beakers who are really whistleblowers making disclosures in the public interest all right jasmine thank you so much for keeping us updated on this developing story that was just one radek national security and human rights director for the government accountability projects. we turn now to a media ship storm over russian vessels that were believed to be headed for syria at least that's what reports would have you think. u.s. is tracking this russian military cargo ship as it makes its way to syria carrying weapons ammunition and troops does attack helicopters that are now off the coast of the united kingdom coming from russia headed to syria but they're held there right now it almost reminds me you know of sort of a cuban missile crisis kind of moment major combat elements larry i'm told air

assault division combined arms division the marines from the black sea fleet are on their way to syria right now. but russia's defense ministry has refuted reports that any of its landing craft are headed to syria this as media coverage claimed a ship allegedly carrying helicopters to the conflict torn country was stopped off the coast of scotland republican presidential candidate ron paul who has consistently condemned military intervention oversea as has dubbed such attacks and accusations as a war propaganda he is talking about on the house floor today there is no benefit for us to be picking sides secretly providing assistance in encouraging civil strife in an effort to effect regime change in syria falsely charging the russians with supplying military helicopters to a song is an unnecessary publication falsely blaming the assad government for a so-called massacre perpetrated by a violent warring faction rebel faction is nothing more then war propaganda

well for more on this art has alexi ski has the details. russian ship bound for allegedly bound for syria named al yet was stopped at the coast of scotland by the request of the british government its insurance was canceled and despite that this has not been confirmed by the russian defense ministry nor by anyone else the western media have already came up with allegations and headlines that this ship was carrying helicopters to syria to assad's regime in the conflict zone definitely this is not the first time that the western media has come up with such allegations because we've heard about two russian ships of the black sea fleet which are ready to sail towards syria now c.n.n. and n.b.c. and many other stations came up with with their reports last week believing that these ships were already on their way to syria and. many conservatives in the

west especially that russia would be aiding regime in the conflict now russia has been firmly denying all such accusations saying that it's not being taking any sides and that the fact that those two ships will be probably sailing to syria it's only to protect the russian base in the town of the only one of the only russian bases remaining in that region which is has a very serious strategic importance for most of the western media again especially in the u.s. made a huge story out of it that the russia is supplying assad's regime with weaponry but it's as i said not the first time we were just heard another story that some media reported that military exercise involving iran syria china will be held somewhere in syria in the next couple of weeks these reports were also turned into a mask you syria by the media saying that russia is playing a dangerous game in the syrian backyard but this also has already been denounced by the russian defense ministry which said that no such games are possible in

a conflict zone which syria so much in the is at the moment so this is definitely an all out information was not something we are completely not. we just have to wait and see what's there stories and what all this insatiable that was the media produced as i've said russia has been denying any involvement in supplying the assad regime with weaponry and firmly stands on its position that it's not so you know decides and that it's not doing anything wrong from the international board to view those are two correspondent alexy. well signs that an international race to dominate the skies with drones and as well has unveiled its first unmanned aircraft president hugo chavez announced the country made the drone in partnership with iran russia and china here it is thirteen feet long and ten feet wide this drone reportedly can soar at three thousand feet for ninety minutes at a time it doesn't carry any weapons but can go on night flights and take photographs

and video so that's just the first to be unveiled by venezuela but they don't have anything on the u.s. is massive a drone program the u.s. is the largest producer and most frequent user of the unmanned aircraft with a fleet of over seven thousand drones and the u.s. just unveiled the yet another one of them take a look there's a monster of a drone was recently revealed recently in california it's a broad area maritime surveillance drone or bams as it's called it has a wingspan of more than one hundred thirty feet and can soar at eleven miles high for thirty hours at a time but what really makes this drone different is that it allows the navy to monitor and track ships in the open sea something other drones have difficulty doing. so clearly other countries have a lot of catching up to do about what other nations are wanting to mimic the u.s. as drone program code we see an international race to rule the skies retired u.s.

army colonel douglas macgregor joined me earlier and i asked him if there is a global rush to create drones here to take. without question the unmanned aircraft industry is booming the united states is going to boom internationally it's a critical countermeasure frankly speaking if you're dealing with us and that's why you see so many nations that have from time to time not had the best relations with us invest heavily in them the good news for the united states is that the principal competitors the chinese and the russians have turned to have enormous difficulty reverse engineering our work so everyone is a long distance behind the united states in terms of its capabilities as you pointed out so well this one is the first i'm on that first drawn out of venice wella that they just unveiled so can we expect more from them in other countries in the near future is going to take a while for them to catch on i think it's caught on it's

a question is technology how much of it can they get their hands on and how rapidly can they develop and field these things and the answer is turned out to be not very quickly so we're going to see more of it particularly with people like chavez sure we know that the drug cartels in mexico already fly them so you know there's utility in this technology for criminality as well as nation states and we're going to see more of it but your viewers need to keep in mind these capabilities are not difficult to defeat the one that you just described the broad area maritime surveillance system that's different at eleven miles and thirty hours in durance and so forth but the one that mr chavez says is very easily defeated and that's the standard in most places these days you can you can either interrupt or destroy the optics you can interfere with the signal and these things are very short duration they're very fragile so the bottom line is that for the. moment our lead is profound it's likely to remain profound for some time to come right and you know we just saw the photo from that drown in venice wella but the state department

spokesperson said quote the venezuelans make lots of extravagant claims and so did the iranians. plying their book on in venezuela or fifth rate powers and quite frankly neither are in a position to present any real threat to the united states venezuela's threat to the united states is not drones it's his conduct to vittie to islamize terrorist group city hosts in the country his backing of the illegal drugs and human trafficking into the united states he's very involved with that so in that sense mr chavez is a threat but again these are not existential threats. and that's why this particular drone is not a major leap forward militarily for them and we are seeing the use of drones on the pakistani afghani border now we're seeing more countries racing to make their own what you say about drones are the the warfare of the future well drones are not

very different from machine guns before world war one machine guns if you had them you were victorious if you didn't you aust and you took terrible losses the japanese discovered that the british found that there were colonial warfare and so they won world war one came along the british lost enormous numbers of people to german machine gun fire so i think that's what you're seeing and these drones are actually more lethal in terms of the reconnaissance and surveillance information they provide in the munitions they can fire that said we are going to see armed drones and they're going to be used by the way against u.s. forces in the future we're going to have to adjust the way we do business and wanted to talk a little bit more about drones and why what makes them so special yes they are unmanned about what what makes them more dear will make them so different from any other aircraft well you understand. something that whenever you use something that's not manned that means that the person is not at risk and that's very attractive particularly inside the united states the body of the american

population is not supportive of these overseas interventions the electorate has largely walked away from the interventions in iraq and afghanistan every single day that passes more people want us out so if you're trying to stay and keep these things going you want to attack without the risk of losing people and that's the what makes the drone if you will so attractive and that exact that's exactly yet proponents of john say that by are able to pinpoint their targets and because of that prevent massive loss of collateral dads. what do you make of that argument well the collateral damage is who is up for debate i mean obviously we've launched strikes and we've killed more than we set out to more people have died and more damage has been done that we had desired or sought but look at this whole issue right now is problematic inside the united states we say we're killing all of these dangerous people and yet more and more dangerous people seem to emerge in other

words when you make a dent by sort of targeting people from a distance and killing them so i think we are we're actually cultivating lots of enemies as opposed to necessarily eliminating the ball and the second point is who are these people we don't really know you and i can't talk about it we're not privileged to that kind of information do these people represent an immediate threat to the united states and its interests i don't know but i have suspicions that in many cases if these people were not killed it wouldn't make a great deal of difference to us our problems in the united states had to do with our failure to secure our borders our failures to deal with immigration both legal and illegal we don't really control it we have too many people in our states we don't know who they are don't know where they came from we don't track them these are these are far more important than anything going on in afghanistan or pakistan and by the way we've done enormous damage. in pakistan not so much in terms of killing people but we've contributed to the instability in that country and we've cultivated real resistance and hostility to us that was retired u.s.

army colonel douglas macgregor. well better watch what you do because big brother could be watching you cities across the country are installing high tech street lights that watch you and even talk back to keep you in line telling people to leave the area or pick up their letter now opponents of this technology say it's all of the name of safety and security but is this big brother on steroids artie's honest aasia churkin explores. watched observed surveillance in everyday reality for americans i'd be interested to see any kind of stuff from statistics on what crimes are actually being pro prevented and how measurably we're actually any safer than we than we we were before we had cameras on every street corner. the windy city of chicago is a record holder of security cameras in the us a tens of thousands we will put up with anything and we have people putting chips into their dogs and cats to see if

they're lost people talk about doing it to their kids and you know what we're living in a surveillance state does a line ever get drawn and when is enough surveillance enough i don't know if you notice that pigeon but that is actually a drone while birds are yet to start spying on humans or so we think are you ready for the voice communications and new horizons for big brother's watchful eye opening words like these streetlights with a twist about to be installed in chicago a myriad of security features specifically the myriad of features these lights have included video cameras and the ability to talk back through concealed placement speakers as well as count people for police and even record conversations critics say this is a hijacking of what's left of privacy in the u.s. state department meanwhile is putting out videos shank's come to america the security isn't that bad well yes it is i've been going to many areas that are supposedly third world nothing compared to this a somewhat richer place the u.s.

seems to have more than an extra buck to spend the devices start at three thousand dollars apiece there's unlimited funds basically from the impoverished taxpayers to have homeland security grants to every city for street lights that have microphones that listen to you and record big brother's new right hand could soon be coming to a city near you many homeland security and emergency management features are also available there's not a need to control. every behavior to know where you are at every meeting or at every minute or who you're meeting with or who you're having a love affair with who cares it's your business right but in the surveillance society in the eight hundred eighty four big brother needs to know everything while security efficiency is the official reason for all the surveillance margin says the success of this is aimed at solving a problem that doesn't really exist the world doesn't need for instant auto flushing toilets you know there was

a time when people were able to use the loo and flush it themselves and it went away and the and the earth continue to turn on its axis for some the earth will continue turning regardless of their every move watched analyzed and recorded as long as i'm doing now you can watch for others it's overkill we have an overabundance of. people watching other people it's not going to have any power unless it also spits out a ticket and says you have to pay this for now the only thing americans are paying with is their freedom and right to privacy and this is forty chicago illinois. the illinois shows coming up in just a half an hour let's check in with a lot to see what's on today's agenda lona what you have going on over there. well it's a really busy day today what can i say to talk about julian assigned for going to talk about the g. twenty and syria as well as the media's pretty ridiculous coverage of kind of cold war style lack of eye contact between president obama and putin and then on top of

that we're going to move on to the n.s.a. saying that they can't tell two senators how many americans they have spied on because they're afraid that that might actually violate the privacy of those americans arguments get more ridiculous and the government every day and then despite all this probably a lot of people don't know there's a massive environmental conference that's going on in brazil right now and so we'll talk about why it is that these kinds of issues have been put on the back burner a lot to talk about that's coming up in just a half. thanks for that update alona but that's going to do it now for the news for more of the stories we covered you can check out our you tube channel it's youtube dot com slash artsy america you can also see what our web tim is up to the that our web site is r t dot com slash usa to find stories that we didn't have time to get to on the air you can also follow me on twitter at liz wall the alona show is up in just a half an hour but we will right be right back here at seven.