today on our team internet site mega upload is going to make a boost in its legal battle against the u.s. justice system this time from the electronic frontier foundation unlikely cyber duo be able to pull the government's case against the company or question more. in the later caught in a legal limbo we can weeks founder julian assange remains bunkered up in the ecuadorian embassy awaiting word on his plea for political asylum and bring in the latest and ask about the international ramifications of the case. plus the american war you never heard of we all know about afghanistan and iraq and the operations in pakistan but south of the u.s. border a covert war that's terror in latin america apart and shed light on the conflict and tell you who's profiting from the chaos.

it's friday june twenty ninth four pm in washington d.c. i'm abby martin and you're watching our team. just days after the controversial bill sopa was shot down on the hill the u.s. government took down the popular mega hosting hosting site make a upload run by new zealander kim dotcom dot coms home was raided and he was arrested however new zealand courts have ruled that the raid was invalid and search warrants were too vague now hearing has begun in the u.s. to determine the legality of seizing millions of data from users of the site joining me now is andrew blake artie's web producer abbi hey andrew so tell us a little bit about the hearing that just happened today yeah actually the hearing is just finishing up for a number of ports are just coming in right across the river in alexandria they were talking to attorneys for ken dot com and mega upload to see how this whole thing is going to progress if it goes out of new zealand and into the u.s.

we've got to backtrack a couple of days really there was a big victory for megaupload and its users back on thursday when a judge in new zealand said that the authorities kind of botched this entire thing back january twentieth i believe is when there's already came in they raided conduct of his mansion they seized millions and billions of bytes and took all these hard drives and computers took all this crap brought it with them and the judge the other day said you know you can really really screw that up guys you've misused the war in state we're too broad but they were also to you you screwed up everything and the way this is going to impact the rest of this whole the whole thing is that in new zealand you can't extradite someone out to new zealand to the us unless they're punishable by jail sentence in both countries now if this judge in new zealand like sticks with their guns and says yeah that that didn't work i's sorry kim dotcom has no reason to go to jail in new zealand the court agrees that's

the case there is no extradition of course the u.s. might. poll of polls some wacky maneuver out of their sleeves bodegas well so it's just a botched raid pretty much entirely like hollywood like the motion picture association of america had been asking the f.b.i. to do something about this for at least a year we know going back to at least january twentieth eleven they had been urging the f.b.i. to take down megaupload and other websites they say are conspiring to do the business and then take you know a considerable amount of time to really prepare and build their case and get the proper. legal warrants and then screwed all our because if you're going to hide i know it's a very good question you would think that if you were the f.b.i. you would know what you were doing and that being said i'm sure my file discovered another inch thick here but yeah it's a really good question they had a year more than a year to put this together went into his house they took everything and it's been five months now

a sense this raid more than five months and it's gone nowhere kim is hanging out at his house is a mansion with his kids in his video games steve wozniak the co-founder of apple hung out with him the other day their friends now there's a report online there are e-mailing each other back and forth and they're like b.f.s. and in kim dotcom is now he's on twitter he's got a following on instagram. ain't too shabby of a place to be although not before i would any i'd rather go to the art of the ring this forest hang out and that guy seems like you know how to party do you see those guns he has and i mean obviously he's a smart guy you'd spend five months in the f.b.i. wants him more or less dead and look at him he's just hanging out i mean that doesn't hurt that the f.b.i. kind of screwed up everything but that's kind of what the judge in new zealand said this week. obviously asked australians or used to carry out this raid still you know stories carried it out but they did not do it how they should have done it it's kind of error on both parts but because it landed on the australian

authorities this. nothing f.b.i. can do like that one of the big arguments here is that the u.s. has no reason to go in there and shut down this site the mega upload does not have any offices in the u.s. no one that works at mega headquarters work in the us in the company was based out of hong kong kim dot com from germany living in new zealand i mean obviously it sounds like it's a bit sketchy you mean no one's going to beat that but it was a religious the lobbying from this country to pressure the government to really overstep oh my god yeah you know like the motion picture association of america the m p a them and the recording industry association of america have been lobbying against any sort of web sites are going to be able to share copyrighted material or any material sense things like the mid ninety's and we were talking last week on our t.v. about the digital millennium copyright act going back to the clinton administration and what happens underneath there is there's a safe harbor provision that says if you own

a website and someone puts material on it that shouldn't be there just take it down someone is going to complain and then you follow through and make upload it said you know we we did this for you we did this for american authorities even though we didn't have to we did this time and time and time again and the f.b.i. still went in there took all their servers and now people have lost millions and millions of files you know megaupload was having fifty million people logging on every single day and those people you know some of them may or may not have had a legal material that they should have been sharing online but other people had personal photos videos documents that's why the electronic frontier foundation is so adamantly opposed to this whole very they're representing someone right now who's lost a lot of work because the f.b.i. took all this stuff and are now just sitting on it and it's been five months now and you know luckily for mega upload kim dot com the use of the site's been a very good week for them both in new zealand and in the u.s. so i mean it's been five months already nothing's really come out of this but it seems like things are really start to pick up now at least in and might have

a happy ending. and might that sort of i'm being optimistic but what about i mean this has been just days after sopa was shut down on the hill it's almost like the government was just saying you know we don't care we're going to do this anyway i mean they've been shut down t.v. shack was just links you know the material it doesn't even host anything copied and after this happened actually a bunch of sites within days of this general twentieth raid other websites of like megaupload voluntarily took themselves off the web because they just didn't want to deal with this they didn't want to half to fight to get their stuff back there was another case earlier this year where lobbyist managed to convince authorities in the us to take the website offline because they were alleging that they were sharing copyrighted material music blog went down for a year there were no charges ever nothing happened and the some guy just lost his website he couldn't use his u.r.l. that he was paying for he couldn't write what he wanted to he was saying was a first amendment thing you know i want to be able to write something and now i can't because you have charges that don't exist and m p a in the right

a long gone after people just just assuming assumptions and yes so it's really nothing new but under these things like the safe harbor provision of the copyright act it is long as you follow the rules things should be ok but if you have a lot of money and have a lot of influence in washington you know what that gave you so i mean what about all the different people like you so there's different stratas of make up load users who weren't doing anything that was legal you know they're all screwed they're all screwed and what's going to happen to all their material i mean it so this fight right now in washington representing is a third party who just wants their data back and what do you think about should the government be responsible for giving these people's data well it's the government should be responsible for giving it back the things the government should have had it to begin with i mean think about it the f.b.i. went and said hi website we don't like what you're doing now we can't exactly shut

you down but we're. anyways they went to a foreign government they asked them to go in steal this guy's stuff take it hold on to it just sit on it wait a couple of months make us some copies give it back to us and it's been half a year and nothing's happened nothing has happened at all with this so the government should at least you know an apology would be nice but in the meantime i guess they're sitting on all of this data and no one knows if they're going to get it back but you know this week we've seen a couple of victories in new zealand and the us things are shaping up to be a bit more on the positive side but as of right now yet everyone is scared me a pretty bad. move i mean it was a horrible move for the government the other night to save face and be like we really messing kind of have to do i don't i don't know if. you know the limb of the government over you know. something i will the i was actually i logged out there i tried to log on a couple of days ago you know it's weird i write about this stuff all the time i

never really think about it and a friend of mine passed away and i had stored some of his music to upload and he died last month i want to just share this music with my friends and i couldn't because the f.b.i. has that music that we've recorded in a radio station and mumble in new york in a basement they have these really really really bad m.p. threes sitting on a server somewhere in washington and i'm never going to get it back at this point so a lot of people use e's used the services like make up for legitimate reasons and yeah they're all screwed right now so hopefully today we're going to hear more about the ruling as the day progresses i guess i just finished an eastern district court in virginia but it's taken half a year that things are starting to materialize thank you so much for bringing an update andrew as andrew blake our producer thanks and now an update on a story been following since the very beginning we're going weeks founder julian assange remains in legal limbo held up in the ecuadorian embassy in london as he awaits a response to his request for political asylum there is

a. the british police requested a songe hand himself over to authorities so that they may be may be the exodus and process to sweden however sonde rejected the request and remain safely behind the walls of the embassy spokesperson for his defense fund susan ben came out with the statement today. asylum assessments take priority over extradition claims. the issues faced by mr sanchez are serious is life and liberty and the life and liberty of so it is ation and those associated with it state. the united states government has instigated a grand jury against julian ascension other founders or managers of wiki leaks. eyestrain diplomats have described this investigation as being unprecedented scale in nature and nature just to refresh your memory about why assad has been extradited in the first place he's been called to sweden for question over

allegations of sexual abuse but let me remind you in sweden consensual sex without a condom falls into this umbrella and that not rape or anything else is what is being pursued here what's more no charges have actually been placed against him as of now it's only the questions that sweden swedish authorities want answered so what is the big deal most sweden has close relations with the u.s. the american government isn't actively pursuing a songe for his role and releasing hundreds of thousands of cost classified military documents as well as the collateral murder documentary many say that sending a son to sweden is essentially handing over the u.s. a country eager for his blood the former senior executive of the n.s.a. thomas drake spoke with r.t. about the political implications of this asylum plea for ecuador the u.s. and julian assange take a look. it's critical to state that he has not been charged with anything you know he faces grave danger in terms of his personal well being. and so he's safest right

now inside the ecuadorian embassy in london for clearly being very careful in terms of that his comes the formal application for political asylum and probably considering all the options i also just based on public reporting has been tremendous pressure being put on the ecuadorian government by the united states not to grant him asylum i believe he is the world's number one whistleblower and i certainly then if i were them having been a whistleblower myself here in the united states of america one of the things that's critical understand is that you know the powers that be don't like whistleblowers and in the post nine eleven security world they generally go after them with a very heavy hand and that i was charge of the espionage act and it's clear based on public reporting that they are looking for ways in which they can charge him under the espionage act the difference is i was a u.s. citizen i faced thirty five years in prison he's not a u.s.

citizen and there's been calls in his case for the death penalty one of the interesting dynamics that i saw its parents is you end up becoming a caricature and you're painted in a certain way you know i was paid as a traitor and a turncoat and one who betrayed my country. and the focus becomes the person and not the message and this is one of the classic techniques in dealing with whistleblowers is you find everything you can to to pull it apart basically you engage in the politics of personal destruction and you avoid the more uncomfortable discussions regarding the actual messages are being brought brought out or brought forth or even what was revealed or disclosed there's been tremendous pressure being put on the ecuadorian government by the united states not to grant him asylum and there's probably certain political levers that they're been exercising the high. the scenes and attempt influence the ecuadorian government i can't speak to all the details and you know other connections and other organizations that ecuador is

a part of the times it's clear that there is significant political pressure being placed on him back channel. not to grant asylum and that there could be penalties for doing so. that was thomas drake former senior executive for the n.s.a. and we'll continue to follow this case as it develops a stay tuned everyone knows that the u.s. is waging a war in afghanistan iraq pakistan and many other countries around the arab world but a lot don't know that the u.s. is also waging war and latin america last saturday d.h. shot and killed a drug suspect in a remote area of honduras this happened only weeks after hundreds of police advised by the da called for innocent civilians traveling by boat it's all part of an aggressive drug enforcement strategy called operation and bill in which a team of dea agents along with six u.s. state department helicopters are working with the honduran police to fight the drug war the u.s. tonight is responsibility for the latter but the incident has raised concerns about

u.s. involvement in the region we know that the u.s. has handed a lot of countries around the world but you know there are currently a ton of bases in latin america and there's still more developing so should the u.s. be interfering with these countries to fight the drug war talk more about this now i'm joined by adrian keene professor at american university thanks so much for coming in so let's take a look really quickly at the violence happening in hundreds right now some say that it's the most dangerous country in the world. and eighty six deaths per one hundred thousand and also the homicide rate has just grown astronomically it's doubled in the last five years so why is this well in particular it's jump since the coup in two thousand and nine which the u.s. supported by basically by funding and approving fraudulent and violent elections carried out by the same military that carried out the coup and and then continuing the farce of recognizing

a government that the hundreds themselves didn't recognize and it took several years for other countries to recognize and continuing to fund the military and the police force that carried out the coup and that have there's been no reckoning. or for that act of violence and usurpation of democracy in honduras and could it be argued the u.s. military should be there because of this via astronomical violence exploding there oh well what the u.s. should have done is to not support a coup in the first place that created the atmosphere for impunity and the kind of violence that we're seeing now what the u.s. has done is poor money into institutions that themselves in fact are at the lead of drug trafficking in honduras the military and the police are famously corrupt in honduras and they're not getting any better by massive infusions of u.s. taxpayer dollars in fact they're just getting more powerful let's take a look at the bases that are developing in the region right now if we could just

see that. i don't know if we have it ready but but there's a ton of bases that are developing right now here we go we're looking at it right now those i mean how long has the u.s. really been involved i mean they're developing new bases all the time how long has the us been involved in this region oh i mean the u.s. has been involved in latin america for centuries i mean you know if you're going into the drug war yeah i mean in terms of the drug war we you know we've seen in particular we've seen in the example of colombia with plan colombia the escalation of the kind of model for the drug war that we're seeing now implemented in honduras and of course we're also hearing that the afghanistan and iraq models are being applied in honduras where we're hearing that celebrated by the new york times which is sent embedded reporters in with the u.s. military in honduras and of course before rock we heard about the el salvador and honduras options being exported to iraq that is the sort of the cia trained torture

model in those countries that worked in the one nine hundred eighty s. being used in iraq and now it's being sent back to honduras and the result is the kind of massacres that we saw on the miskito region over the past two months do you think that the u.s. is using the drug war to just expand itself militarily in the region and just grow more influence absolutely that's one of the things that the u.s. is using to expand itself militarily it's also you know it's also using its support for coups in throughout latin america the most recent coup of course being in paraguay which is another country where u.s. would like to expand its military influence since it currently does not have bases in the southern cone that have the reach that it would like to have and so you know we're going to see the u.s. supporting that coup just as it supported the coup in honduras and there have been several military bases open in honduras since the coup so there's

a direct relationship there are community. a lot of people don't realize that this is happening i mean when you hear the drug war you think of taking out cartels in mexico and you know all these kind of things you don't really think about the u.s. actually having its military dea agents killing people in latin america right well it's not even it's military it's you know law enforcement so it's like having a hundred police officer coming to the united states and carrying out assassinations in the u.s. i mean imagine how ludicrous that would be that's what's happening in honduras in latin america you know people haven't heard about it because because the u.s. is marketing it as a solution as bringing security when in fact what it's doing is bringing the opposite of security it's bringing terror to latin america and throughout latin america and you know there have been there was a letter from ninety four congress people that was signed a few months ago asking for an end to u.s. military and police aid to honduras including training there was a letter signed by four hundred academics that led by honduran academics asking for

the same thing and they've basically been ignored by the state department and the obama administration when you think about the drug war just in general i mean this is a war you've been waging pretty much since nixon and it just seems like there's no solution really to the drug war there's always going to drugs you know and hearing things like this that the u.s. is really entrenched in itself in latin america but at the same time banks profit immensely off the money that's funneled and well it's a race to the drug war is a way to criminalize black people in the united states and it's a way to militarize latin america provides a justification for both of those things. it puts people in our whole hemisphere in danger and we do see profit for a very few people including militaries in particular who end up controlling the drugs because they have such power and there's so much cash going into them so you

know i think the drug war is is really a way it's a mechanism of social control and it also supports undemocratic regimes. let's hear really quickly from the president of ecuador your government close the u.s. base at mt top. ten you tell me why you decided to close this base. said that he you know as it would to you except having a foreign base set up in your country julian. in any case if the matter is as simple as i once said it's not a problem to set up a us base in it could do but if we can give the go ahead as long as we all grow into a mission set up in a military base. there is no one issue they should agree. so why do you think that the us feels the need to penetrate all these regions with the military and just set

up all the strategic things i mean we just heard from him he said yeah let us set up a base in miami then if you're going to come and try to do it here u.s. government is protecting us corporate interests throughout latin america and throughout the world there's you know there's resources traction going on in honduras that the u.s. has you know great economic interests in and also it's not just honduras you know when we're talking about the region hundred this has been a key strategic point for much of latin america that is for u.s. operations military operations and much of latin america so with the base in monto removed and in ecuador there was a much greater need for honduras to remain a military stronghold for the united states so that the united states could act threateningly towards country was like venezuela for example so you know it's the u.s. still acting like an empire and you know and trying to cloak it in

a legal istic framework and as if it were a defense of security rather than creating terror and insecurity so do you think that the u.s. shouldn't be there to help at all i mean with such instability poverty and such high and murder going on all the time is there anything the u.s. could do to help without interfering either the u.s. could fix its own democracy so that it actually is by the people and for the people and not by the corporations and for the corporations and at that point we would be able to act in solidarity with the people in honduras who have been working so hard to have their own. to have their own democracy and to be able to fix their own problems we have been actively preventing them from fixing their problems and what we really need to do is step back and stop feeding the monster as the as the rector of the university whose son was killed by police called it. what other mechanisms are we using for the drug war in these regions i mean are we using drones are we using any other sort of military machinery and just expect that's

a good question actually there is there is in it's looking like drones are going to be increasingly used in this war and we see a lot of evidence to that effect we see drones being purchased for her for this purpose and also we see the kind of mapping projects that are particularly useful for for drones for unmanned. drones to be. to be to be able to target populations and so mapping projects being funded by the military so drones will be more easily able to operate in regions that are primarily regions that are indigenous or are present and where there is a potential for resistance movements against the kind of large scale extraction extractive projects that the united states is sponsoring very tightly together with

its with with the u.s. military and almost some sort of when you're describing this you're talking about the middle east right now i mean afghanistan and iraq the same kind of operations going on i mean when people hear the cold are killing people i mean what is there a lot of. the u.s. is violating by going over there and just taking people out what the d.a. claims is that i mean the law is that the da da agents can only kill people in self-defense and so every time they kill people they're claiming that it was in self-defense but their claims are really unbelievable for example you know the first time they're in a helicopter and somebody fires or they think somebody fires on them with a gun while they're in a helicopter and they respond with a barrage of gunfire and kill four people in a passenger canoe. for indigenous people who are traveling back home it's really you know just impossible to believe that this is actually self-defense but they're

claiming that every time and and no it's not legal for the da to be to be otherwise taking people out and you know even if it's legal for them to be killing people in self-defense i think we have to ask if it's ethical for them to be there doing this and leading these kinds of operations in the first place because what we heard from the people in our west the town where the four indigenous people were killed was that a following the murders the dea agents landed and from everybody in town it was clear that they were leading the operations not just acting in a sort of a dead visor you stand back fashion very interesting i think a lot of people would be upset to learn that was actually going over there and doing things like this thank you so much for coming and that was adrian pyne professor at american university and that does it for now for more on the stories we covered go to our you tube channel youtube dot com slash r t america or check on our website or to dot com slash usa and also follow me on twitter at abby martin we'll see you back here and a half hour. call

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