welcome to the ilona show we'll get the real headlines with none of the mercy corps live in washington d.c. now it's an everyman speak more about joining us on his plea to ecuador for political asylum now first we're going to get in on the ground report from marty's laura smith who's currently in london and then will host a panel talking about what this entire episode means in light of the obama administration's very aggressive war on whistleblowers and the freedom of the press then believe it or not yesterday the first ever congressional hearing was held to address the issue of solitary confinement within our prisons and jails that's despite the fact that an estimated eighty thousand inmates are held in long term

solitary so we're going to speak to one of the foremost experts in the field who studies the effects of our prison system and who gave members of congress his take in the hearing yesterday all of that and more theater night including a dose of happy hour but first take a look at the mainstream media decided to miss. all right so today starting at about ten am there was a big announcement that came from the white house in regards to this whole fast and furious hold eric holder in contempt scandal that's being discussed on the hill. the attorney general requested that the white house make vailable executive privilege basically to prevent them from needing to turn in the documents that were subpoenaed president obama we have just learned has the service executive privilege over the documents sought by that house committee the president is asserting executive privilege over certain documents if they really want to pursue what

happened and what made france didn't through its go when it was started to begin which happened in those six under the bush administration if this was innocent if there was nothing in these documents. that he would have turned them over president obama to the rescue of eric holder right president has only served himself into this mess until now in this way you go to this extraordinary length of bringing in executive privilege to say we don't have to ever turn over those documents and it just raises a huge number of questions and invoked executive privilege during the lewinsky probe there's there been instances of executive privilege off the top of your head how rare is this oh not at all in when you're dealing with congress any time you have the executive department asserting executive privilege or the executive branch asserting executive privilege and that's a big deal he said this is not about getting documents it's about politics is that what's going on here. clearly just the way it appears. now we haven't gone

to in depth into this story because believe me the mainstream media literally will not give it a rest but there is one point that i agree with al sharpton on what is the currently what's going on is it really getting us any closer in to figuring out the details of who knew what who approved what in this entire fast and furious program now it is something that started during the bush administration so republicans are being a little disingenuous by going after eric holder only for about oh where the justice department changed its mind went from saying that everything was cool to the program was fundamentally flawed but then again the fact of the obama administration will just this. close all the documents that's ridiculous as well so we get back to my main point here it's a this this development today i think raises a lot of questions and yet clicking through the different channels looking at the different ways in which fox and m s n b c portray it you really get a good picture of everybody misses the big picture fox news is going nuts because they think this president has something to hide but they don't mention the fact

that other presidents before him have also used executive privilege and s n b c keeps harping on the point that other presidents before obama have also use this executive privilege because they want to normalize the situation so everybody's out for their particular party their particular ideology on the story and it's been obvious from the very start but what i would like to see is somebody focus on the idea of executive privilege in and of itself should the president be able to say that some conversations some deliberations should be made available especially if it's a public taxpayer funded program that they found to be faulty whatever happened to the notion of transparency to checks and balances making sure that we don't have one man ruling over all without a new restrictions and i think we often fall into the same repeating trend in this country when a politician is abusing his authority whichever political party needs to defend that particular politician well they just point to precedent oh i forgot to ask congress to vote on declaring war will guess what the other guy did it to now that's not an excuse and we all know it but the partisan hacks out there refuse to

step back try to think about what's better for all of us for the country as a whole now i would argue that's transparency checks on power but these days nobody wants to check that power because both parties want secrecy to prevail why do you think there's a bipartisan group of congress members going after the administration over the leaks why do you think we have a national security state that keeps expanding the courts are complicit and letting the state secrets privilege be used time and time again since the war on terror began and the mainstream media well in distracting from the real issue going crazy when it suits their partisan line they're just as guilty and so all i'm asking for . a little bit of discussion a few questions to be asked about what we think the executive should and should be able to do you know how i feel about him playing judge jury and executioner but not too many other people like to touch that subject but if you're going to cover the eric holder fast and furious controversy day in and day out then i say now's the time take the opportunity let's ask what our values really are but that's something

of the mainstream media chooses to miss. right so yesterday we found out that we could leaks founder julian assange without the ecuadorian embassy in london seeking political asylum now as he's stated time and time again he fears that if he's extradited to sweden an extradition to the u.s. will follow or reports tell us that there's been a grand jury convened in alexandria virginia to try and build a case against a songe with british talk origins already saying that he's violated the terms of his bail and will be subject to arrest well ecuador say yes to granting him for the protection and if so how to get out of the country well joining me from london is our chief correspondent laura smith laura what are we been hearing from the ecuadorian embassy from the official so far. well. we heard a statement from that came out of the ecuadorian embassy behind me from the ecuadorian

ambassador and it was pretty noncommittal really old and old she evidently hasn't decided yet has decided yet what they're going to do about this request for asylum she talked encouraging me about the ecuadorian tradition of supporting human rights but then she also said that i had no intention of interfering in the legal processes of eyes of the u.k. or of sweden she wants to find she says a just and fair solution to this but obviously one hasn't been found yet we also heard from inside we understand that this is being discussed extensively and keep. and the foreign minister issued a statement to the public saying that he was sympathetic to judy in a soldier's plight essentially but stopping short of granting a request form before what we hear from inside the embassy is that you in a sense has been offered a warm welcome and that there have been a series of meetings and discussions joel has left itself open to discussions with

the u.k. government on how to resolve the situation as well but you know the british government wants to arrest and join a sign and so i'm just curious what exactly has to happen let's say that could or does decide it wants for granted political asylum how do they get him from the embassy to the airport and out of the country and what's to stop british police from arresting him on the way there. will nothing essentially and we just can't work out how he would get from the embassy to ecuador to the airport and from that to ecuador we have been hearing that while whilst he's inside the embassy he has immunity essentially it's a safe haven the british police can go on embassy territory of another country unless they're granted permission by the ambassador of that country so while he's still inside he's safe but the moment he leaves regardless of whether he's been granted political asylum or not he is subject to arrest he cannot be given diplomatic diplomatic immunity here without being awarded it by the british foreign

office who of course very unlikely to award it to him because they want to see him arrested so it's really impossible to see how he could get out of this building and to the airport and of course the reason that they are able to arrest him is because he has breached the terms of his bail he's supposed to spend the night are his registered address and obviously his residence dressed is not the ecuadorian embassy he spent last night here and here it looks like he'll be spending tonight here as well aren't i guess what does have to keep watching to see how much longer all of this goes on laura thanks so much for filling us in. all right so let's keep on the topic of joining us on why he chose ecuador how u.s. response could be perceived not to mention what would ultimately ultimately mean if you were extradited to the u.s. and charged under the espionage act and then let's also put this into context not forget that the white house is currently embroiled in it's only going scandal and can't seem to make up its mind on how to play it so here to discuss this with me is

just one radek national security and human rights director for the government accountability project the nation's leading whistleblower organization and kevin zeese serving member of the steering committee of the bradley manning support network and he's also an organizer of occupy washington d.c. and co-director of it's our economy i want to thank you both for joining me tonight and so you know i guess let's just start with why ecuador right what do you think of this decision because on one hand you have a lot of groups saying that well if you want to talk about freedom of the press this isn't exactly a flying example but at the same time ecuador has also supported wiki leaks right they got rid of a u.s. base that kicked out a u.s. official over some of the wiki leaks cables that came out and so does that mean i understand why at first blush people may think this was a strange choice but actually. interviewed. on his program which was aired by our t.v. and they have had a friendly relationship and the president of ecuador said that we had actually been

very helpful to the country and applauded what we had done and earlier back in two thousand and ten when this whole thing first erupted high level official at ecuador had invited. to take up residence in ecuador even though he kind of backtracked from that in general ecuador has been a friendly country and supportive of what is ecuador going to become less friendly i guess to to the united states you know the way the kuranda claim to go but we do have an extradition agreement at the same time i guess where there. biggest trading partner but. well we've all seen the recent moves at the base of the ambassador what do you think i think that you know first off associated press reporter that when julian interviewed the president for tea there was conversation about this and that this may have been developed during that was an arid on the interview but before afterwards somebody reported that without providing their name and in the

details that this was already agreed to and discussed at the meeting so maybe there's more there already i think there's been standing up to the united states i mean they're taking your clothes in a base is a gigantic move tom the u.s. is trying to increase its military presence in latin america surrounding that as well as best they can because that's a big challenge the united states as well as bolivia and so they've been taking a pretty strong stand against united states i think the on the press issue the press freedom issue it's one of those situations where you're going when all the darker government to try to become a more a people's government and right now the media is controlled by all of our actions that's going to cause some conflicts in that transition period so i'm not sure that i would put them as an anti free press country in that category so i think it's a very from my perspective legal perspective he was running out of choices you know there was not really much of an appeal left in europe there was the european quarter was going to people do pretty much says no almost all the time has to be a very rare circumstance they say yes and so he was going to be put to good sweden put into pretrial detention held in detention and you know who knows after that to

that he could be in detention for years you know the kinds of charges he's facing to your sense could ever before your sense he could and his for years and then you have an extra united states and you never have a chance to defend himself so this was really his moment if he's going to try to break this trap this really looks like kind of a charade of a prosecution a charade of a process in england to get to this point was five hundred days under house arrest then in pretrial detention as we then actually know he says he had to break that charade well you know on that point it's interesting because he was able to speak and join us and his mother was there in london so we have a clip because they asked her you know is it little a. premature for him to start running desperately seeking political asylum because he hasn't yet been charged in sweden here's what he had to say. he hasn't been charged he has made the big question despite asking the swedish government to do so as the last two years continues of course. given a good pieces of these human and legal rights in the swedish the two years.

excusal to what he said to police procedures and prosecutorial standards that he could go to sleep but he would be child treasure why uncharged not question it would not have the opportunity did it ridiculous. how long can something like this play out because i imagine the brits aren't going to want to be super co-op but i think it will be our for for quite a long time there have been people who have sought refuge in the embassies and stayed there between five years and fifteen years until sanity prevailed so he could technically be holed up in the ecuador embassy for a long time and one of the joneses there who are in embassies in an apartment building and it's a flat of offices it's the diplomats office maybe three or four more offices so it's not going to vary a lot of room for all because i don't really have showers so it's not very common

sort of the you know she's right the case and in hungary a card was you know being in the u.s. embassy seeking asylum for fifteen years before allowed to leave on the other hand you can see the situation in china just recently when you had that situation where the person is now in charge in the united states and the u.s. and china agreed to negotiate to let the person you know seek asylum and come united states and go to school and that worked out so it can be negotiated was no guarantee that if we were given political asylum their community. and the u.k. about whether they'll recognize us i'm allowed to leave the country is there any chance of some speculated to that maybe the. is a bit of a strategy on a scientist part where is it will give him bargaining power with the swedish government who say ok i will leave the door in embassy as long as you promise that when i do arrive in sweden i won't be extradited to the u.s. it could give him more bargaining power and the problem with sweden is that despite them being a progressive country in many respects they have notoriously secretive pretrial

proceedings and a lot of people rightly suspect that this is all pretext to all to get into a sweden so that he can be handed over to the united states which sweden has a history of doing all right i want to i want to remind you. as you can see the police if you leave them as you saw in the room yeah well that's the only reason we can use a more but i want to move on to what's going on here at home in light of the way that the obama administration is kind of handling its own leaks scandal that's going on right now we've seen or we've heard both the president and attorney general eric holder use it times the example of their very aggressive prosecution and war that's been waged against leakers and whistleblowers as a reason to say that this is how serious we are about this these high level leaks can't be coming from the white house but now the same time there's a new piece in the new york times it says that well when it comes to these

investigations against the whistleblowers it wasn't the president that ordered it directly and so i mean that kind of trying to play both sides here i don't get actually playing both sides to me i represent a number of these people and eric holder i'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt that he's too smart now to realize that people are complaining about the crackdown on whistleblowers they're not talking about he's like oh i'm getting grief from the right and now i'm getting grief from the left everyone's complaining about leaks you know i mean he knows damn well that we've been complaining about the crackdown on the leaker. who are actually whistleblowers and what they've been doing is been leaking for a political game they are trying to play and there is a big difference yet to be made there too so i want to also there's a news story that came out today is that we found out that the national security archives declassified some documents from post nine eleven right and they show not only that the bush administration or the cia thought they could have got bin laden

before but then they didn't really have a whole lot of support from the administration they show the of course their intelligence failures that there were a lot of warnings out there and. information that directly contradicts what dick cheney was pushing to try to tie nine eleven to iraq dick cheney was lying to us and told her i should i'm going to you know i'm sure how important are our leaks right i mean how many then they will not know about how many lives could have been saved could this war have been averted or should we know in the sense that that's the real situation is because you know president obama in his campaign talked about an open white house you know transparency in government that's what we all want that you know when you look at one of the arguments in occupy is transparency one know what's going on in our name and that's a president promised and he didn't deliver he delivered the opposite he delivered on the restriction is close over the years as leaks thank goodness we can leave thing goes with i think it is for bradley manning if what he is accused of actually did what he would save lives is transparency what cost lives secrets that is the

bottom line about this the issue of whistleblowers the more information we have about that and get the truth out we wouldn't be in this were we when we would be talking about syria we would have been in libya we would be talking about iran we wouldn't be in afghanistan we wouldn't have been in iraq all those wars based on lies and that's we have to face up to lies or the problem secrecy problems transparency is the antidote and the tough part about you know getting documents like this via for a request which is a great power and great words that we have but slowly and years later i have to wrap it up in fortune but i want to thank you both for joining me thank you you thank. i was out to take a quick break but coming up next yesterday was the first ever congressional hearing about a widespread left practice that many say tantamount to torture i have all the details that.

well it's estimated that out of the approximately two point three million inmates in u.s. prisons and jails eighty thousand are in long term solitary confinement and in fact the u.s. has not only the largest known incarceration system in the world we also leave the world in solitary confinement now despite all that yesterday it was the first time we saw a congressional hearing dedicated to the issue the facts of solitary confinement been widely studied by just about everyone except the bureau of prisons and so yesterday we got a rare glimpse of congress questioning the emotional physical psychological effects

of what some of called the most pressing domestic human rights problem so that we can any closer to coming up with a solution on joining me to discuss this is craig haney a professor of psychology at the university of california santa cruz craig thanks for joining us tonight i know that you were at this hearing yesterday and it's great and i know that dick durbin was thanking you for all the research you've done in this area but why did it take so long why was this the first ever hearing dedicated to it. i have no idea. obviously we're gratified that the senator's interest in this issue gratified that he. thought it was important for us to spend a couple of hours talking about. the hearing and show his you were powerful again the testimony i thought was extraordinary. and the sooner seem to be extremely informed. extremely sympathetic. but i can answer to your

very important for me question about why it's taken so long we've been doing it for many years and it's it's it is a human rights issue it's a serious serious problem in the united states and the congress has finally finally gotten around to looking carefully at it well you know at least you said that they seemed they were very well informed which unfortunately we don't see all the time when it comes to congressional hearings and so there i want to get into you know from some of the research i was doing today from what i was reading the one person who is testifying that represented the bureau of prisons apparently was referring to a report saying that there are no negative effects from solitary confinement or a port that's been widely debunked and so how is it that we keep things like that out of these hearings you know in if everybody has widely debunked as not trail. well the the gentleman to whom you are referring is actually the director of your first right and i mean. i must tell you that i was personally very disappointed at

the position she took. ward appeared to be a total lack of understanding not just of the literature on the negative effects of terri confinement but even some of the basic facts about the bure first ones which she runs in the operation of the ministry to my actual more eighty x. the central systems supermax prison. was in many ways the focus of senator durbin's questions and i thought the answers that he gave were. accurate in many respects and lacks candor in others and one of the things that senator durbin did was they have he went and toured one of these prisons in wars urging his fellow senators to do the same thing i know that you've toured a lot of prisons out there you know how how bad is it. confinement units are terrible. prisoners are kept twenty three hours

a day in cells that are oftentimes the size of a king size bed. that's where they live there they sleep there they desecrate their that's where their lives are lived. they get out of their cells one hour a day but oftentimes they're taken to what is euphemistically called yard but those yards consist of cages or in the case of california spoken by a. concrete enclosed area that blocks any view that they have of the outside world they're not allowed to touch other human beings with affection they get no contact who's it's and what has happened in the united states over the last thirty years as not only has this practice become much more widespread and cited. in the in the neighborhood of eighty thousand people who are being kept this way but what has also changed is the sheer length of time that people spend in these

units in telecom day for example there are roughly a thousand prisoners who were ousted in a supermax unit there half of them have been in solitary confinement for ten years or more one hundred of them have been in solitary confinement for twenty years or more. we know that even short term solitary confinement can have a significant negative psychological impact on people ten or twenty years of this kind of life significantly transforms a person's psychological makeup with a how is it going got to this point where in the last thirty years it's been it's been used so much more frequently and it's become this common practice. well there are a lot of possible explanations for i'll give you mine you alluded in your introduction to the topic to the fact that the united states is the world's leader in the sheer rate at which we incarcerate our citizens this is a dubious honor and we've held it for

a long time for twenty or so years. i think part of the reliance down solitary confinement is in response to the drastic levels of overcrowding which existed in us prisons for so long at a time when the prison system itself has given up its commitment to rehabilitation and also at a time when a significantly high higher percentage of mentally ill persons are coming into the prison system in part because of what's happened to the larger mental health system in our society and it's essential dismantling so that the criminal justice system has in many ways become the default placement for the mentally ill in our society that combination overcrowded prisons lack of a mandate to rehabilitate which means relatively few programs and a high concentration of mentally ill have left prison administrators. sitting atop

a very volatile situation and solitary on time now and i think that's great let me just let you off for one moment because i'm running out of time if you could just very quickly in about thirty seconds tell me are there any positive solutions offered at the hearing yesterday yes i thought senator durbin was was very effective in encouraging the bureau of prisons to look for alternatives reduce the number of people in solitary confinement shortly amounts of time that were there and improve the conditions that existed inside iraq let's hope that those actually come to fruition and become a reality right thanks so much for joining us tonight. thanks for having. us next after the break as you said i read it and then the drone crash coming to a backyard near you and might be more likely than the think. wealthy british style. that's not on the telephone.

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