coming up on r t the man who revealed the n.s.a.'s expanding surveillance program is on the move from china to russia it's anyone's guess now we're edward snowden in and where it where is and where he is headed we'll take a look at this whistle blower's global tracks ahead. a growing a growing number of people are supporting edward snowden he now faces espionage charges back in the u.s. but why are countries refusing to comply with u.s. demands for his extradition that story coming up. and it's not only the u.s. justice system that is in hot pursuit of snowden the media is following this man of mystery and his international track as well but how well are journalists covering this story and are they taking a side we'll take a look in tonight's show. it's

monday june twenty fourth eight pm in washington d.c. i'm maggie lopez and you are watching r t well on the run admitted n.s.a. leaker edward snowden is fighting for freedom flying from country to country in an attempt to avoid extradition to the u.s. on saturday night word came that the thirty year old had boarded a plane headed toward moscow with plans to quickly leave for a third destination his current whereabouts are unknown as is his final destination the plane headed towards cuba that snowden was supposed to be on landed have at it just about an hour ago the u.s. has requested for the extradition of snowden from china russia and hong kong but why are these nations and others choosing to go along with america's demands for a whiner a look at the international implications political commentator sam sachs explains. last week the department of justice was working closely with officials in hong kong

their plan to have edward snowden arrested and brought back to the united states to face espionage charges today we know that plan didn't work out and we've now seen other governments around the world appear unwilling to do the bidding of the united states into a rest snowden and we have an idea as to why now let's begin in hong kong which allowed snowden to leave over the weekend and a press release on sunday the government of hong kong said requests from the u.s. to arrest snowden quote did not fully comply with legal requirements under hong kong law but hong kong also included this curious statement in that same press release suggesting there is another reason why they let snowden go it said the hong kong government has formally written to the u.s. government requesting clarification on early reports that the hacking of computer systems in hong kong by u.s. government agencies the hong kong government will continue to follow up on the matter so as to protect the legal rights of the people of hong kong as in if you

wanted us to comply with the arrest warrant well maybe you should have been secretly hacking us the new york times reports that china which was also subject to u.s. hacking made the ultimate call to let snowden leave on kong the dust up over the u.s. granting asylum to chinese dissident chen guangcheng last year well that could have been a motive a motivating factor in that decision to now on to russia which says it couldn't arrest snowden since he never officially entered russian territory and remained in the airport as a traveller but you might remember snowden revealed last week that the n.s.a. spied on former russian president dmitri medvedev during the g. twenty summit in two thousand and nine so there's that and then there's cuba but here which has been mentioned as a possible layover destination for snowden on his trip to asylum maybe an economic embargo of. more than fifty years in repeated attempts to assassinate their head of

state might influence cuba's decision to look the other way if snowden winds up there and finally there's ecuador. that is the reported destination for snowden in a country that has already granted political asylum to wiki leaks founder julian assange watch now listen to what ecuador's foreign minister ricardo patino said today about how the u.s. might react to his country granting snowden asylum. it's necessary to note that the united states as a sovereign government has received various extradition requests on the half of the ecuadorian government for individuals particularly bankers in ecuador that have been charged in our country and according to their laws have made decisions in many cases not extraditing those who have committed crimes against millions of ecuadorians but sr is referring to the as a us brothers who are convicted of investment and who the ecuadorian government has blamed for crashing their economy in the one nine hundred ninety s. costing ecuador more than eight billion dollars there is a us brothers are living

a cushy lifestyle in coral gables florida as the united states ignores ecuador's calls for extradition. so what's happening here is the united states wants other nations to grant extradition that the united states itself has been unwilling to grant in the past and the u.s. wants other nations that it spied on and nations it's attempted to destabilize in the past to now do it a favor when it comes to arresting snowden. many officials and pundits in the united states have said these governments won't arrest snowden just because they hate the united states or because they hate freedom but the reality is much more complicated and much more inconvenient for the united states and it has to do with blowback and a rapidly decreasing american hegemony all around the world and washington same sex are to. let's take a moment now to recap how edward snowden got to this point late last week. found out that federal prosecutors in for ginia have filed charges against the former

n.s.a. contractor those charges include theft of government property giving national defense information to someone without a security clearance and revealing classified information about communications intelligence one person who has felt before force of the u.s. justice system as a result of his walsall blowing is the man behind the pentagon papers daniel ellsberg he spoke with big picture host tom hartman just a short time ago and he says that edward snowden made a smart choice when he fled the u.s. take a look i think he would be in much the same so as bradley manning if not in the same cell or clinical and he could be under the direction defense authorization act he could be in military detention but even if not he would be in a jail cell somewhere as incommunicado as bradley manning has been for the last three years so i think he was very wise to make his displeasure outside of this country and i think that we should be listening to what he has to say because we're

so far i've heard him say is very eloquently put and shows much better judgment than those of his colleagues who went along with his clearly unconstitutional proctors they were all participating in now if snowden is convicted under the espionage act he could face life imprisonment or even the death sentence but that's if the u.s. can get to towns on him so what's next for edward snowden well i was right earlier by john holzman president of john c. holzman enterprises and former cia analyst ray mcgovern to talk about the fate this leaker could face i started off by asking ray of snowden's decision to run was a wise one. well from his point of view i would say that is it excellent decision he has lots of examples to look at look at what happened to bradley manning eight eight full months of torture at the hands of the u.s. marines i mean that's that's something that i wouldn't look forward to the prospect that some people have juiced that he could have gone through channels well just

look at the channels they were all over the sunday t.v. shows and those channels are pretty pretty arrogant and pretty much oppressive so when he talks about having a personal hand in this architecture of oppression i mean shows the man has a conscience it shows that when he swore an oath to defend and protect the constitution united states hugo's all enemies foreign and domestic well you know he means to abide by that oath but at the same time doesn't solidify the government argot argument the government narrative that he broke the law well you know there's a gradation of was breaking ok now you have a security from a spy we all did a little security products we site now we want that that's how you get access to classified information but there are ethicists call supervening values you know one of those is the constitution united states and an express leave the fourth amendment that supervening value supersedes and renders it in operative in my view

a case a promise to keep secrets you promise to keep secrets not of crimes but of the legitimate national security information now and john talked about the idea of shopping around for countries to grant asylum i mean is that what edward snowden is doing here and is it legal under international law. well again i don't think really international laws operative here i mean let's go back to the facts of the head of the intelligence community want to ask bluntly the just the other week is the united states spying on its own citizens said no mr snowden snapped and said well actually they are it seems to me that this is what's motivating him and i think why this is really dividing the country if you look at polling so far is that he's quoting the founders back to these people he's doing this for reasons that don't seem to have anything to do with money or aggrandizement or fame or frankly even much of an agenda and so while he shops for

countries and seems to be heading perhaps to ecuador the reality is that i don't think this is going to go away this story has legs precisely because we seem to have bumped into an honest man now snowden had a ticket for a flight heading to cuba on an aero fight flight one hundred fifty he was scheduled to sit in seat seventeen a but it was in fact empty i think we actually might have an image of that empty seat now that c. was empty however our t. correspondent you are piskun off was on that flight here's how he describes the scene onboard. so for mr snowden has not been seen i personally haven't seen him point but definitely something out of the ordinary is happening just judging by the security use of well of course the amount of media is really astonishing clearly i think it's it doesn't feel for journalists who are also on this flight now for a talk about some of the international implications of

a person jumping from country to country like that well the more interesting realities here are the fact that the united states of america is acting like well on the one hand like a great big bully. warning all these countries don't give any insight or you don't let him come to your country and then he and acting like a sort of poking like a two year old you know i'm so embarrassed this is terrible and what a reveals to me is what i would call the metaphor here and metaphor is that with all the billions of dollars that general alexander and all those people have you know to snoop to make sure they know where a fellow like snowden is who well they're just as clever people just as clever people in the embassy in ecuador. and elsewhere around cooperating with wiki leaks so for those people are out wishing. the vast complex here the

architecture of oppression and i think most americans when they realize what's going on since we're usually for the end of dog i think will be very satisfied if if edward snowden comes out of that. bathroom on a plane and shows were told oppressions isn't free now john in his on camera interview with the guardian's glenn greenwald snowden said that he is not running away from the u.s. justice system but that he believes he can do more good from outside of jail than he can do from within it do you think that that justification stands two weeks after he made that statement. yeah i do because i mean at the moment while there's the furer about this we have no idea how many more implications and leaks he has to go about what's going on here he's selectively been leaking things as we go as it goes i think there's a lot more to come the n.s.a. basically data mined on conversations both of foreigners as they admitted but also of american citizens and i imagine there's more to come i think the nightmare for

the security complex in america is if ten percent of the people that they hire as contractors have libertarian tendencies and then ten percent of those people actively do something about it i don't think edward snowden is an isolated case i think this is the reality when the government takes a cruise too much power without thinking through the realities of what goes on i think all you need are ten to fifteen percent of the people who are disturbed to do something and i think they're going to be a lot more edward snowden's in the future and so as president obama said rather lamely we have a real discussion in the country about the balance between security and liberty and that's what needs to happen that's why this story has legs and that's the fundamental question frankly of all governments right now and edward snowden. take flight from the u.s. justice system where he leaks founder julian assange has been holed up in the ecuadorian embassy in london for over a year so he spoke with r.t. about the case of edward snowden take a look at. the current you could. start.

so he. compared. legal. or printing. money to be the executors. it would. be very. popular and important. earlier you had mentioned that edward snowden had no other outlets to possibly to go through in order to leak this information to get this kind of truth out now i know lawmakers as several of lawmakers are arguing otherwise do you care to explain

that that same a little further yes it's very simple there is no there is no whistleblower protection for people the national security apparatus including contractors of our government pure and simple we have tried to get this through congress is. actually every time we try to get that through would trying for fifteen years now there is no whistleblower protection and finally john what should we make of the edward snowden's flight to these countries is there any one lesson that we can learn from all of this. well i think there is so i mean i think you know mr snowden seems to know his founders and benjamin franklin pretty much got it right if you're willing to give up your liberty to have security you should have neither and i think this really does go back to first principles about the united states and why it was founded i'm an unabashed american patriot and frankly this is been the argument at the base of the country since its beginning and rather than side with a bunch of people who basically lied to us in effect the line stance who's watching

the waters these are people who told us several weeks ago they weren't spying on americans who it turned out were spying on americans and now their defense is trust me frankly that doesn't that doesn't pass muster and it should in a country like the united states or any other country indeed so i think snowden's argument is really the argument of the age edward snowden is the person being charged under the espionage act under the obama administration that would john that was john holzman president of the john c. holzman enterprises and former cia analyst ray mcgovern thank you so much for joining us. also think sat down for an on camera interview with glenn greenwald very little has come out from edward snowden himself he held a brief question and answer session on the guardian's website last week but he has since disappeared one organization that does claim to have contact with the whistleblower is wiki leaks artie's own on a saucy a chair and i had the chance to sit down with wiki leaks spokesperson christian her

off and son just a short time ago for his overall impressions of this case and what he likes involvement in it glenn greenwald who published snowden's documents on the n.s.a. has been facing criticism of his own now where the media and some politicians say to him well listen maybe you should be charged as well and this kind of approach is obviously not foreign to wiki leaks do you think it's normal in a sense that not only is the whistleblower being chased but also the journalist who helped bring this information into the light well as. it's outrageous i think glenn greenwald was asked yesterday by a. rather prominent journalist whether he was and aiding and abetting a felon and i think it's an outrageous question by one journalist to another but i'm not surprised i mean. that journalists would say it would. basically pick up the talking points of the administration and not to do the job properly we certainly haven't seen the likes and the magnitude of

a scandal such as the n.s.a. scandal and several years to say the least why do you think it is that the media instead of focusing on what the obama administration was was doing on what was revealed by these documents this tremendous violation of privacy of millions of people why does it is it that they're following every single detail about snowden but not really talking about the substance of this huge privacy scandal should we be surprised or was this really something that we should've gotten used to by now well it's not surprising that. the focus should be. on the now today on this sort of the cat and mouse story but it's absurd but that has to be a chains and others said this is a test no of proper journalism it doesn't surprise me the should be this focus on the. snowden private issues as it is with private affairs or

is where abouts and travelled instead on the credibly important revelations that he has given us we should change that well certainly for now we're seeing that edward snowden is able to get away unlike bradley manning unlike julian assange who continues to be in a complicated situation do you think we are basically seeing some kind of shift when it comes to the way other countries are dealing with the u.s. i mean the fact that the u.s. is basically left alone to chase down this whistleblower all over the world what does that tell us. i believe we're now seeing a big shift and a title change. it started in two thousand and ten. with the explosion. from us. and no with the information from snowden. i feel that there's a title change and you see that there's a change in the edit she was of other governments and other nations and for

a reason because what has snowden has been reviewing is of course that. the. dragnet surveillance on. on the internet or phone records it doesn't just apply to you as it is so this is not just a metaphor to the u.s. citizen citizens but also the entire world and all the governments they are concerned they have concerns and they should be now they have lost leave the prison scandal the n.s.a. scandal is this just the tip of the iceberg should we be waiting for more files to be yet to be revealed by edward snowden what we've already heard quite a bit and it is a shocking revelation but yes we should expect more. still ahead here on r t the mainstream media is doing extensive coverage of the edward snowden saga so how are they doing well discuss that and more after the break.

you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't. welcome back according to the un convention relating to the status of refugees and its nine hundred sixty seven amendment if edward snowden wants to be considered a refugee he must prove two things first that he has a well founded fear of persecution based on his political opinions and second that

his crime was either non serious or politically charged now on the first point snowden may be able to prove that he is being persecuted by the verbal assaults that he has received from one u.s. lawmaker after another so he could potentially be granted asylum meanwhile going greenwald the guardian reporter who broke the n.s.a. surveillance story is also feeling the heat take a look. to the extent that you have aided and abetted snowden even in his current movements why shouldn't you mr green will be charged with a crime i think it's pretty extraordinary that anybody who would call themselves a journalist would publicly muse about whether or not other journalists should be charged with felonies for more on the media coverage of edward snowden and glenn greenwald i was joined by erik wemple he's a media critic at the washington post and he started off by giving me his overall impressions well i think the media you know has taken some criticism from snowden and other people for trivializing snowden's past and sort of getting distracted but

i think actually it's been a pretty good vessel for a serious debate about privacy if you know for about three weeks now all the called the op ed pages and the television airwaves the filled up with a lot of back and forth is this a huge privacy problem is it not it's been going back and forth is you traitor is a hero those are awfully simplistic terms but there's been a lot of substantive discussion going on here remember a time at least in the past several years where privacy has gotten more thorough screening in the public now talk about the idea of different outlets covering this obviously there are certain republican allies are certain democratic outlets is there any ones that you could say are really hitting the mark are not hitting the mark well it's interesting that. since this issue since privacy is sort of a bipartisan issue there's a there's a there's there's a strain on the left on the left side of the political spectrum that doesn't like what's happening there's also a strain there's

a libertarian strain on the right that doesn't like him so it's been a sort of a. kind of a fantastic mishmash on that front you have you know sort of like media organizations that are traditionally conservative the what the obama administration has been doing and the federal government's been doing and you have on the left there doing the same so it's been just just just sort of mind boggling and head spinning to watch as these. organizations they all oftentimes say in the same things have you seen any cases of media bias are our has it been pretty even keel well i think the main issue of bias here is the one that sort of came up with a sort of surfaced yesterday and i quote the david gregory going greenwald clip yesterday in which you sort of saw as a lot of people interpreted kind of a bias against going greenwald he's been an activist he has been very outspoken very opinionated in his feelings about the government and privacy in the national security so they kind of think that going green was an activist and therefore that

he sort of hedges his views. snowden and the n.s.a. and everything and that he's not perhaps the most objective person to be present in the news so i guess that if there's a bias question is what and certainly one of the foremost and that was the next topic i was on talk to you about is glenn greenwald and this kind of back and forth that he has with the meet the press meet the press is david gregory right now some lawmakers have said that he should be prosecuted for aiding and abetting the enemy because they say he's not a journalist because it expressed opinions so my first question is what qualifies as a journalist well i think that you know we're always sort of. renovating our opinion of just just what a journalist i think certainly in this case is going greenwald more than qualified he's presented the public documents. to the american public in context. disagree with him but his facts have been basically more or less on target he has presented documents which have not been debunked which have not been declared false

so i mean i think that he has done the journalist's job of bringing forth information that we wouldn't have heard otherwise that was erik wemple media critic at the washington post. with president obama's affordable care act coming up in the fall concerns are growing over how it will turn out well what about the costly health care system that we have now for an in-depth look at that cost lori harf a nest of the resident dot net. you might have heard by now that the health care industry spends more money than

any other to buy politicians both in washington and you might already know that doctors rate in profit from prescribing pills so much that seventy percent of americans are on at least one prescription drug but you might not know this dirty little secret of the health care industry patients undergo surgery they don't need it tens of thousands of times every year the usa today where do you have government records and medical databases found the practice of odd unnecessary surgeries is rampant in the us in fact they could account for ten to twenty percent of all operations in some specialties patients often undergo pacemaker implants knee replacement hysterectomy gallbladder removal and other procedures when they have no medical reason to do so on a frequent basis one study from two thousand and eleven looked into more than one

hundred thousand cardio further defense related procedures and found that twenty two point five percent of them had no justification whatsoever another study found that seventeen percent of those particular spinal procedures were completely unwarranted about ten percent of all spinal fusions paid for by medicare and twenty eleven were not necessary and twelve percent of all n.g.o.s classical. features did not need to happen so why does this haven't you as the report points to three categories for the unnecessary surgery the incompetent the indifferent and the immoral. many doctors are just not well trained or competent even though we treat them like gods oftentimes then there are some that are more businessmen than the medical professionals who look at cases that could go either way and say well i

have enough to justify the surgery so i'm going to do it and then there are the flat out croaks who are just blatantly in it for the money and there is a ton of it to be made in the health care industry these days. surgeons bill medicare medicaid and insurance companies huge amounts of dollars for these surgeries that don't need to happen the total amount that the shysters take of our american tax and insurance dollars is enormous and criminal but when you live in a country with a crooked for profit health care system whose montra is greed is good can you blame them and with the money centric state of our country today unnecessary surgeries for profit is kind of just what the doctor ordered tonight let's talk about that by following me on twitter as the resident.

that does it for me for tonight i'm making lopez follow me on twitter and make an underscore lopez have a great night. lol are all of. the celebs. a lot. coming. in.