today on r t cotton legal limbo wiki leaks founder julian assange remains bunkered at the ecuadorian embassy awaiting word on his plea for political asylum or bring you the latest and ask about the international ramifications of the case. the individual mandate has been ruled unconstitutional justices have just gutted wolf the centerpiece provisions of the obama health care law of mayhem and misinformation two words that describe the made for t.v. divac whole known as the us health care debate and it wasn't only the media out of wrong we'll take a look at the coverage and sort through the details of the law but the host of the young turks. plus what's worth eighteen million dollars each cost three thousand dollars per hour to offer it only stops crime a small fraction of the time the u.s.

drone program of course if those numbers made your head spin just wait till you hear the rest of the details to tell you why the drone program may be flying high but america's reputation is at a tailspin. it's friday june twenty ninth five pm in washington d.c. i'm abby martin you're watching our team an update on a story we've been following since the very beginning we're going to founder julian assange remains in legal limbo holed up in the ecuadorian embassy in london as he awaits a response to his request for political asylum on thursday the british police requested that a songe hand him self over to authorities so that they may bring the extradition process to sweden however rejected the request and remain safely behind the walls of the embassy for now the spokesperson for his defense fund susan ben came out today with this statement. asylum assessments take priority over extradition

claims. the issues faced by mr ascension 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 he's been extradited in the first place he's been called to sweden for questioning over allegations of sexual abuse let me remind you in sweden consensual sex without a condom falls under this umbrella and that not rape or anything else is what is being pursued what's more no charges have actually been placed against him right now it's only questions that swedish authorities want answered so what's the big deal while sweden has close relations with the u.s.

the american government has been actively pursuing a songe for his role in releasing thousands of cross-eyed military documents as well as the collateral murder documentary many say no to sending a son to sweden is essentially handing him over to the u.s. a country eager for his blood the former senior executive of the n.s.a. thomas drake spoke with our team about the political implications of this the silent plea for ecuador the u.s. and julia songe 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 didn't file with 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 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 the experience that 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 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 behind. scenes an 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 but arms it's clear that there is significant political pressure being placed on them back channel. not to grant asylum and that there could be penalties for doing so i was thomas drake former senior executive for the n.s.a. and we'll continue to follow the story as it develops. right was the story that dominated news headlines for months and yesterday it finally reached the peak

fordable health care act better known as obamacare was upheld by the u.s. supreme court but not for even the reason that the administration officials had predicted the ruling was easily one of the most important decisions in recent history and will fact every american in some way democrats are touting this is a major victory for their party and president obama says it's a win win situation for every american hack even republican presidential candidate mitt romney is getting a boost from the ruling take a look at this money has been pouring in this campaign web site from people opposed to obamacare over four million so far and counting the most important thing to know is that it's coming from small donations average americans who are furious at yesterday's ruling the political pundits are still filling the screens of media outlets spinning and dissecting the story and every which way while this was undoubtedly a huge victory for president obama is he winning the battle while losing the war to

break all of this down jank ugur from the young turks joins me now thanks for coming on huge fan i wanted to get your opinion you know president obama himself how is it that the president's watching c.n.n. for his news should he be getting a direct feed from the supreme court i mean the person who's actually making the policy. i'm not that surprised by that to be honest i don't think that there are any fancier than that you know we always see the tom cruise movies and you think somebody's going to drop from the ceiling done that on them then and a note to the president oh they just turn on the t.v. so. you know and the trick there was so of course read the very large ruling as quickly as possible find out what the answer was i'm really curious as to what the president's reaction was in that seven minutes where he thought he had lost and there was a great reporting on that i'm not sure they had a great back up plan good point let's take a look at some of the confusion from the corporate media outlets the

individual mandate has been ruled unconstitutional justices have just got it both the centerpiece provision of the obama health care law if in fact that's the final word on the individual mandate there could be a little bit more complicated bargaining complaining that formation we're getting into putting information as they say there's been some confusion out there are conflicting reports coming in from inside the supreme court so let's let's hold off on drawing any final conclusions are still trying to figure this out be cautious with this we're trying to do the best we can right now as we sort through it and we need a lower third actually may not be correct may take several minutes as a reading through this again i we are reading now that the entire law has been held . quite quite the confusion coming from there let's take a look at how jean schmidt reacted to this information.

so what do you think about you know the two main television networks here totally dropping the ball here. well my favorite part was the mystery action and he was excited and it was actually sweet to see her then realize she was wrong . so now on to c.n.n. and fox says look i actually don't think that it's that big a deal and i so hate to be a spoiler on this but in the beginning of the season they do say that the commerce clause cannot hold up hold the mandate so if you're reading that first and you want to get on the air and they need to not panic and of course they should have taken their time and read the whole decision i get it mistakes happen though i think the reaction to it is actually more interesting because c.n.n. to their credit has basically profusely apologized sorry for getting on fox news is

going on as if they never got anything wrong at all because that's what x. news does that what did we say it was are going to do it smooth what do you think about it doesn't it damage that to go with this kind of being first rather than being right mentality for news networks when people are looking them for credible information. but i already knew they were credible most americans think oh so yeah most trusted name in news really i mean here are the guys you don't talk about systemic problems in the media there's much bigger problems here the guys who never challenge the politicians who don't tell you that basically our campaign contributions are legalized bribery our politicians are all corrupt they take those legalized bribes you know that the super pacs seventy one percent the money into them comes from people that have given over five hundred thousand dollars in donations you know how insanely rich you have to be to give half a million dollars to a politician and those aren't contributions there are broad and c.n.n.

never calls that out they have these politicians on as if they actually represent the american people when they represent the people who bribed them so to me that's a million times bigger problem than c.n.n. red is the core thing wrong in the first place and that's why they have no credibility to begin with that's why nobody is surprised but that's a great point it does seem like they have the debate framed without really undermining you know the rhetoric and people still unfortunately really look to these networks for their information but let's talk about the legislation really quickly what do you think about obamacare. well i'm doing a split on the legislation i don't agree with the mandate it's a conservative idea that came out of the most conservative think tank in the country heritage foundation is richard nixon was in favor of a george h.w. bush mitt romney orrin hatch the list goes on it's deeply unpopular in the country because it's a dumb conservative idea if it is the only provision in the bill that is unpopular when you break the bill down piece by piece and you ask the american people hey do

you like this provision you like this provision they don't say it's in obamacare they just say are you in favor of it almost every person outside of the mandate wins by overwhelming margins in fact all those provisions when if you ask republicans a majority of republicans agree we should cover preexisting conditions kids under the age of twenty six should be able to go under that in the list goes on and on they actually like what's in the bill me the reason i don't like it as much is because i don't think it went far enough and by the way a third of independents say that they don't like the bill because it doesn't not because it does too much because it didn't do enough because why we're still under the thumb of private insurance we have no option that is public or government run or you know what i would have preferred medicare for all and we're stuck paying the bills for the insurance from our insurance companies so it's mixed feelings but overall like yeah it's better than the status quo so i'm glad that the supreme court did rule it and did rule it constitutional i mean is this really the best we

can do though to pretty much force people into buying health insurance from these industries no no it's not the best we can do at all and in fact that's the great irony that a lot of people are missing chief justice roberts by voting with the quote unquote liberals actually made a pro corporate ruling because corporations cherry commerce literally said if you don't invalidate the whole law. for the love of god keep the man did why because it mandates that you buy from private insurance which of course companies that are part of the chamber of commerce those appropriate decision like i said i don't like that portion of the bill. having said that you know we could do worse we are doing worse you know republicans love as they would all the wode but in health care we're number thirty seven so if we're going to get some coverage that's a little bit better than covering the present thing commissions thirty million people more covered you know i don't love it but i'm willing to take it as a first step and see see where we go with it isn't far behind most other industrialized countries who took this long ago jake i wanted to ask your opinion

just on you know the republican hate machine against obamacare it seems like a lot of people like you just broke down don't even know really why they reject it so much we want to take a look at this cartoon really quickly and it says the day our constitution died a little mean going around the internet why do you think that people detest this so much i mean you think they even know why or is it just because obama put it there. it's a million percent because obama put it through and the democrats did it it's not just president obama they would hate it under any democrat you know there's a good argument to be made that they hate it more under obama but i would say that's marginal it's because the republicans their talk show hosts their media like fox news and their politicians are all a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate america and they put out all this propaganda to brainwash their people i mean so we got people talking about oh my god are god's

children is dead why because some more people are going to get health insurance what does that have to do with any big i mean it's not a structural changes not anything like that is just a policy and in fact is a former state g.o.p. head in michigan that's now calling for an armed rebellion he says oh my god they're putting the gun to our head because of this and we have to grab our guns etc now first of all of a muslim had done that he'd already being at guantanamo bay and a republican does it my guess is he won't get arrested even they won't even have the rest of the republicans denounce him or anything like that is a radical radical party and they say outrageous things like our constitution has been you know perverted etc because what we pass health care coverage for some more american. interest i mean i already know speculated that and sharon's industry pretty much wrote the bill but what do you get this going to do for romney already massive donations are coming into his campaign and he's saying that he's going to repeal obamacare i mean do you think that's going to help him. no and he sees that

that totally depends on how president obama plays the politics of it honestly because if president obama as this is nature in the power runs from the issue whenever a challenge is nine out of ten times president obama's team is all by god the republicans are we have to run for the then they will lose on that issue and perhaps overall because romney will go on the office and will be relentless and with no defense everybody will assume that romney is right but if president obama goes on the office and says wait a minute eighty two percent of the tree is in favor of covering preexisting conditions if this guy romney wins we will not have preexisting conditions cover so this guy's against eighty two percent of the country he should take on that debate if he does he could actually win as i told you it's not just the preexisting conditions almost every provision in the bill is actually very popular with the country now luckily during the campaign president obama has been much more

aggressive than he has been during the rest of his term so there is some chance he will do that and it's up to him how this gets framed. interesting point there janke but i want to go back to your last point that you said a little bit ago how you said this is a good step in the right direction i mean seriously what are the chances of this expanding or or getting any better i mean it's pretty much set in stone that this is the way it's going to be the insurance mandate i mean is there really a chance for us to everyone's saying like oh you know that's a step in the right direction for universal health care or a single pair i mean it really is going to happen. ido it totally depends on how the politics of the situation plays out so i agree with you that there aren't cost controls so when the insurance premiums go up then people will turn around and go oh my god i can't believe obamacare made my insurance more expensive which is actually not the case they just didn't control it your insurance companies are what's making your insurance more expensive but there are provisions in the bill for example they have to spend eighty percent of the money that they've been on

your actual insurance in the past there was no limit on that so you know that there will be one point one billion dollars worth of money going back to american families for about twelve to thirteen million dollars families they will receive on . average one hundred fifty one dollars back in rebates because of their now these years companies are going bankrupt or anything like that is still make a big profit but at least it gets us some of the money back so i am encouraged by provisions like that it is possible to expand provisions like that in enough time that we can head in the right direction it is also possible that there will be demagoguing around the rising cost prices and then instead of going forward with ackwards and it all may get worse and the power of the insurance companies will get larger and larger and the fact that we don't have campaign finance reform leads me to worry that the latter might be the case because money always wins and so so i'm worried but i'd rather have this than nothing because the bad old ways i know are

already broken thank you so much for breaking it all down for us and giving your perspective that change you hear from the young turks. well they're back the occupy d.c. movement has officially returned that fierce and square here in washington last night they started putting up new tents and a banner that says occupy d.c. here to stay the reoccupation comes days after the protesters decided to pack up leave and operate out of an office space occupy d.c. started last october but in february the u.s. park police began strictly enforcing regulations that prohibit camping they said the demonstrators could maintain tents in the park but couldn't actually camp in them they occupy has been backed into macpherson square comes right in time for the occupy convention protesters are planning to rally at the end of penance and will in philadelphia the next few days events start tomorrow and run through july fourth which is independence day here in the u.s. about fifteen hundred protesters are expected to take part in marches and other activities at the city's annual independence day festivities so this is

a sign of the occupy movement is trying to regroup and can gain traction ahead of the fall elections only time will tell not one but one thing is for sure occupy wall street has covered it caused a shift and created a crucial discourse about social and economic injustice in this country the spirit of dissent is alive and well and the occupy movement is far from over. report on the story of drones almost every day because we feel that the issue of flying robots in the skies of america is an important one so this is our daily drone story for today department of homeland security has already spent two hundred forty million dollars on a drone program for border patrol that according to internal audit is remarkably in effect it each predator drone costs eighteen million dollars it costs three thousand dollars per hour to fly and for every four thousand eight hundred illegal workers caught is two hundred forty million dollars spent. so is this whole program

worth it to discuss more trevor ten activists with the electronic frontier foundation joins me now. thanks for coming on our trip or sorry so what do you think about the cost breakdown of this program well it's pretty clear that the homeland security has been pushing these drones congress has been giving them money and yet we have yet to see results about why they're effective or why they should even have them you know that like you said they cost almost three thousand dollars per hour fly they've barely been effective is something like twenty nine percent of the missions are considered success and yet they want to continue to spend this money they want to loan these out to other agencies but other agencies don't have to pay them back and it's just yet another problem. in regards to how these drones are being used what kind of privacy protections they have and even if they're safe and effective we have no idea yet they are

continually being pushed upon us agencies and it looks like they're going to continue this program and even expanded into local government agencies so it's really concerning well through this audit this internal audit shows i mean how much the costs are happening for not really any effective strategy in actually catching a legal immigrant to the border why do you think it is that they are using drones at the border if it is such an effective way to do this. well we know the drone industry has spent millions of dollars lobbying congress to push the f.a.a. to start mandating or to mandate the f.a.a. authorize drone use for federal agencies and local law enforcement agencies that's because you know that the wars are winding down overseas and these drone manufacturers of making lots of money selling to the u.s. government and now they need somewhere else to sell this equipment and the best place to do that now is on the american american soil. and beyond the border patrol

sorry no go ahead sorry well beyond the border control control program they have running they're also running a separate program which is aimed at local law enforcement agencies around the country not just on the border and they want to facilitate accelerate the use of drones they're buying drones actually for local law enforcement agencies so drones that cost half a million dollars local agencies the local towns the never even heard of are getting you know free drones that are costing hundreds of thousands of dollars and yet we have no idea who's flying them or what kind of safety procedures they're using or what they're using the drones for so the problems keep multiplying yet there doesn't seem to be any worry in the government that they should try to solve them but trevor that they're saying that they're not going to use them for spying they're just going to use them for you know police operations should we trust that . well you know unfortunately a lot of times police operations means mass surveillance and spying i mean we've

seen that with the n.y.p.d. they've been involved in a massive surveillance operation targeting pretty much every muslim in the tri state area so when they say they want to use these drones to capture criminals a lot of times what that ends up what ends up happening is that end up spying on a multitude of people and even when they are targeting the bad guys there's a lot of huge chance that because these cameras can basically see entire cities in some instances that they can capture other footage as well and ordinary americans may get caught up in the caught up as collateral damage. interesting points trevor and what do you think about just all in where you know that there are drones in miami the police are using these small little drones as a hummingbird drone i mean there's all drones of different shapes and sizes is this just an inevitable future this dystopia korea ality i mean is this just another novel or do you think that we have

a chance really to put privacy provisions in and some sort of legislation like rand paul is trying to propose. right there is definitely a potential that this could get out of hand really fast i mean the f.a.a. itself estimated that there may be as many as thirty thousand drones flying in the u.s. by the end of the decade which is basically one in every town but right now it's not too late to stop this kind of pervasive drone surveillance where police would be able to use it for virtually any purpose right now privacy law doesn't really prevent them from using them for surveillance purposes without a warrant but thankfully rand paul and others have proposed laws in congress that would limit the use of drones and that would force police to get a warrant if they want to spy on a certain person which is how it should be and hopefully that bill will. make its way through congress but even if it doesn't people should be approaching their local city councils and their municipal governments and especially in towns that are we know already have drawing phones and forcing them to pass binding ordinances

or laws that really lay out the rules of how police can use them and how they can't because right now it's a blank slate and we're not sure how they're going to use them but we can stop this before it actually gets out of control. trevor started calling him a last name what do you think about the recent event where a drone was actually overtaken its g.p.s. is overtaken by just some people want to college in austin i mean what do you think about that. yeah this is kind of an under reported story that's been snowballing for over a year now the these drones are very very vulnerable to hacks homeland security actually dared these college researchers to hack their drone and this is this is like an industrial strength u.s. surveillance drone this isn't just like one of the three hundred dollar ones you can buy online and they did it with with under

a thousand dollars worth of computer programs and it's very it was very easy for them we've seen examples of this before even in iraq iraqi insurgents hacked into the video feed of mil of the military drones using twenty six dollars off the shelf software and they could actually see what the pilots could see there's also an incident in the in iran where they somehow jam and the g.p.s. and guided us a top secret u.s. drone down to where there was no damage and they could essentially use all the u.s. technology. that was that this drone is capable of so there have been many incidents over the last few years where hacking these drones. it's really become a reality that it's possible and it's not really being talked about and that should be one of the primary safety concerns given that these are going to be flying all of the u.s. skies and they could be potentially hijacked by anybody and drones could be used as weapons i mean if someone overtakes the g.p.s.

and directs them into an area. it is an interesting and very scary thought for people and they should be worried about that but i wanted to get your take also on the drone that crashed. what do you think about that i mean do you think that this is also something that people should be concerned about is the possibility of these drones crashing in domestic areas in this country. oh yeah a couple weeks ago in maryland a drone that was over forty feet long military drone that was being tested crashed in a river in maryland luckily there was no people around so nobody got hurt but this is going to end up becoming a reality there's already over sixty military bases the test drones these days in the in the u.s. alone and states are vying for other test sites right now with the f.a.a. because again they are mandated to start issuing these drone licenses as long as police agencies or anybody can claim that they can use them safely and again we

don't really know what those safety standards are there was an incident in debt and very even where a pilot almost crashed into a drone that was flying in its airspace and so you know these kind of incidents are going to become more prevalent and unfortunately eventually somebody is probably going to get hurt or die from a drone crash just like you mentioned in south korea this is already happened a few weeks ago the g.p.s. device in one of the their drones was jammed by an unknown source and it ended up crashing and killing one person injuring two others only is that really is something to consider trevor and also just to ask you know is is the privacy concerns really worth the risk here and all the other things that you're mentioning thanks so much for joining us that was trevor tim activists of the electronic frontier foundation now does it for now for more of the stories we covered go to argue to channel you tube dot com slash r t america or check on our web site r t dot com slash usa you also follow me on twitter.