coming up on r t the us has been pressuring foreign governments to not help n.s.a. whistleblower edward snowden but how would the u.s. react to extradition requests from other countries we'll tell you the answer to that coming up. and years after the end of the iraq war the nation still carries scars from that time one of those wounds is the increase that is in iraq birth defects and cancer cases or reports on the toxic legacy left behind and thanks to goldman sachs the cost of aluminum is going up the investment group is hoarding piles of the more of the commodity we'll tell you how that works later in tonight's show. it's monday july twenty second eight pm in washington d.c.

i'm meghan lopez and you are watching r.t. well in the weeks since the world learned about the unprecedented scale of surveillance programs the national security agency has engaged in over the years we've heard of the public outcry and we have seen the n.s.a. officials scramble to justify or to clarify these programs national security they cried an absolute must to prevent future nine eleven as they said and lawmakers for the most part have sat on the sidelines and agreed to all of these claims with a few notable exceptions like congressman just an amish of michigan and rush holt of new jersey were guard listen none of this criticism has seemed to slow the surveillance gathering if anything it is growing fuel bomb administration just quietly renewed the find an image that allows government agencies to collect phone records of millions of americans evidence of this collection was the very first disclosure released by the. guardian thanks to edward snowden the foreign

intelligence surveillance act must be renewed by the face of court every ninety days or parts of it it compels the nation's communication providers to hand over telephone metadata pertaining to millions of u.s. citizens deputy attorney general james cole says that spotting terrorism is like pulling a needle out of a haystack he insists that these programs helped create the haystack for the agencies to sort through but at the end of the day it's nearly impossible to speculate about how successful this program really is meanwhile the edward snowden case continues and the u.s. continues to try to block the travel plans of this man who leaked the n.s.a. surveillance information to the world american officials have demanded for his extradition threatening any country that offers the former government contractor asylum but the u.s. has a long history of refusing to extradite people to other countries so is this a case of do as i say not as i do political commentator sam sachs shows us some

examples currently pending before the united states senate is a bipartisan resolution calling on the russian government to hand edward snowden over to u.s. authorities the resolution says that russia's willingness to provide shelter to edward snowden is quote negatively impacting the u.s. russia relationship they were committed to taking actions including recommending a different location for the september twenty third team g twenty summit in st petersburg russia if edward snowden is handed over in a statement one of the co-sponsors of the resolution senator lindsey graham says on multiple fronts russia is becoming one of the bad actors in the world and then here was senator john mccain talking recently about russian president putin. he is a person who feels so involved in these days that he doesn't mind sticking to some right and i which is what he's doing in this noble case you see lawmakers in washington just can't understand what the heck is going on. here they're absolutely

enraged by the fact that russia an ally is it doing them a favor in handing over snowden a man who some in congress believe is some sort of terrorist traitor or something i mean to senators like john mccain and lindsey graham it would sort of be like if the united states was harboring a man who russia calls a terrorist ignoring calls for his extradition and ultimately granting him political asylum in the united states would do that right right. there why into two thousand and four read the headline u.s. asylum for chechen draws protest from russia quote the russian government will protest the u.s. decision to grant asylum to an exiled chechen leader considered a terrorist by the russian government. yep this is a commodity a man who russia alleges was involved in chechen terrorism he took refuge and applied for asylum in the united states in two thousand and two russia demanded he be turned over but a slew of top american government officials and members of congress ran to his

defense including one man in particular senator john mccain in a two thousand and three letter to then homeland security secretary tom ridge mccain wrote i have met with mr alcott of three occasions i have found him to be a proponent of peace and human rights in chechnya. was given asylum it was put up in an apartment here in downtown washington d.c. next to the national zoo today nine years later as the snowden saga unfolds a spokesperson for the russian interior ministry reminded the united states of the case of sakata same quote law agencies asked the us on many occasions to extradite wanted criminals through interpol channels but those requests were neither met nor even responded to the nation of ecuador can say the same thing they've been trying to get to banker brothers extradited back after being convicted of investment but the u.s. hasn't complied and the two brothers are living a cushy life in south florida and. remains to be seen whether or not the u.s.

will hand over recently arrested former cia agent robert seldon over to italy where he's wanted to serve prison time on kidnapping conviction. though whether the united states should or shouldn't have ignored extradition requests or granted asylum isn't the issue the issue is they did just recognizing the extradition requests go beyond the confines of cultural relativism so as the united states pressures try to russia could organise weyland of other nations are noted it should be remembered that a precedent has already been set on this issue of extradition it is the united states. and washington. are too we are just learning this week about an internal pakistani government assessment that raises serious questions about u.s. drone strikes in the country a secret document obtained by the bureau of investigative journalism shows that hundreds of pakistani civilians died in these drone strikes between two thousand and six and two thousand and nine the confidential twelve page summary paper was

prepared by government officials in pakistan's federally administered tribal areas in here's what it discovered the cia conducted seventy five a separate drone strikes between those three years of killing seven hundred forty six people in the process one hundred forty seven of them were confirmed that civilian casualties and other civilians ninety four were killed. this document clearly goes against the obama administration narrative that only fifty to sixty civilians have died over the years and this document is as damning to pakistan as it is to the us that's because the country's government and its military have privately support of these strikes and they knew about the high number of civilian casualties over the years now it is worth mentioning and bringing up again that anyone who was a military aged male is considered to be an enemy combatant whether or not they really are one arguably the civilian. casualty rate could be much higher than this

report indicates as a result of that but despite all of this the majority of the american public supports the use of drone strikes fifty six percent approve and only twenty six percent disapprove. let's head over to iraq now which is a country that is still dealing with the aftermath of a decade long war violence and bombings still occur on the near daily basis in that country a suicide bomber killed at least twenty five people just today when it attacked an iraqi army convoy in the northern city of mosul and beyond the bloodshed a new generation of children is being born with major birth defects the family say that it is a result of the toxic chemicals used during operation iraqi freedom party correspondent lucy caffein office in iraq and brings us the story of some of those families. hundred sixty kilometers south of baghdad the sacred shiite city is known for its holy shrines and is surrounded by one of the largest cemeteries in the world some

of the heaviest fighting of the iraq war took place amid these graves its legacy still haunts the residents it was born with severe birth defects he's only eight months old but the doctors don't expect him to live past his first birthday. i felt these they were know what the noose around out of his office and they want to have taxi. but for his mother layla there's no escaping the reality. her son has a nervous system disorder and his muscles are slowly wasting away. it's a recurring nightmare for you and her husband three of their children were also born with congenital deformity is none of them survived and while they don't have proof they believe the radioactive ammunition used by american forces during the war is to blame the rule isn't over yet there maritime grow corn fields

suffering from the consequences of spiraling numbers of birth defects and high miscarriage rates have also been recorded in pollute more american and british forces used heavy munitions at the start of the war but our visit to knowledge of revealed that the phenomenon may be far more widespread in iraq than previously known dr sundin's and as one of the few scientists who's been documenting cancer and birth defects here and she says as in the midst of a growing health catastrophe. after the iraq war and rates of cancer leukemia and birth defects are all dramatically nunchaku the areas affected by fighting so the biggest increases we believe it's because of weapons lead depleted uranium and hospitals here cancer is more common than the flu. depleted uranium or do you cut through armor like one. hot knife through butter more than four hundred tons of it is estimated to have been used in the two iraq wars the vast majority by u.s. forces the pentagon did not respond to our request for comment but the military

generally denies any link between exposure and cancer or birth defects it also says weapons are only used to penetrate enemy tanks but a new report funded by the norwegian government. was used against civilian targets in populated areas including not jobs in two thousand and three it notes a lack of transparency by coalition forces over the use of depleted uranium but describes one incident in najaf where a bradley armored fighting vehicle for three hundred five d.-u. rounds in a single engagement. the heavy fighting may be over but in nearly every street we visited in this neighborhood multiple cases of cancer and children with deformities no one knows what's making people here sick the families want answers and they want help. is old enough for school but has to be cared for as if he's a toddler he can't walk he can't speak he can't even go to the bathroom on his own use of spread there is healthy but the family has two other children one severely

deformed the other with a hole in her spine like many of the couples in this city are simply too afraid to have another baby and they're left feeling totally abandoned no one cares about what's happening to the other families in this area even our own government doesn't do anything to help what can we do because our fate it's a fate that many and not just suffer in silence. their lives in the decades since the u.s. led invasion all across the country their memories are honored in cemeteries like this one that that may be the most visible reminder of the human cost of the war but if the living victims of that war talk. still paying the price. summer is in full swing with states across the country crushing heat records on a near daily basis perhaps nothing is better or more welcome to someone kannan that hundred degree temperatures than

a cool can of pop but once you start down that one dollar soda big banks are profiting in a major way get ready for this number and try not to spit out the contents of that can everywhere goldman sachs has collected five billion dollars over the past three years for simply storing aluminum used to make cans and other products so why is this a big deal well new york times investigation discovered that goldman sachs is creating an artificial shortage of aluminum by buying warehouses that store the commodity and then delaying the shipping process by up to eighteen months but i was joined earlier by prime interest has bob english to break this all down and i asked him how goldman sachs has been able to manipulate aluminum prices. here's how it basically works we have futures markets and some of those are based in london some of those are based in chicago where you can bet on the price the future price of a commodity in the case of aluminum the biggest market is in london so that's why

we're talking about the london metal exchange here goldman sachs has to decided to be become a big player and they actually take physical delivery and supply of this aluminum so they've created twenty seven warehouses in detroit whereby they can just shuffle this aluminum around here is where it gets really shifty is that by these exchange laws so london metal metal association they have to ship a certain amount out every day three thousand tons ok instead of doing that because there isn't a demand for that they just move it around their warehouse literally on forklifts and then they charge a storage fee on top of that so that's how they're making their five billion dollars and if you think that it's only a tenth of a cent penny on every call can but you know there's nothing like that i can but it's almost like high frequency trading and i hope i don't get to afford here but in stocks trading you know you have computers that are just shaving off one tenth of a penny at a time from stock prices that you were you know in our four one k.'s my take and it adds up of over time it's like superman to the money laundering scheme the head so

how is this thing going on for and is it really and that you need to aluminum or even goldman sachs you know goldman sachs was an early player in the commodity field and this happened through a company they acquired called aaron and they got special exemptions from the government from the futures regulators in the u.s. to avoid speculation was in other words they were not bonafide hedgers they were speculators and they got exemptions that said they could just control as much as they wanted and goldman was an early player they didn't actually become become a bank until we had the financial panic of two thousand and eight so magically overnight their bank know they have access to all this free federal reserve money and they become an even bigger player and that's when j.p. morgan really started getting big into the commodities market too and they they get . did in crude at one point during the financial panic crude have gone from one hundred forty five dollars per barrel all the way down to thirty barrels thirty dollars per barrel so j.p. morgan bought up a bunch of ships dumped all this crude oil they just said it in the ocean and

waited for the price to rise very interesting so it's obviously not unique to alone or to goldman sachs but another player that is involved in this is the london metal exchange we talked about and it's so interesting because they are regulating the detroit industry where this is happening and as i understand it they also have they get part of the pie when it comes to the money can you explain this a little more detail and why they are the ones regulating it well first there is a distinction made between london and the city of london the city of london is a square mile blog where all the big financial deals are done in london and that's where the l m a resides and it's actually not even known to the in the city of london anymore it was sold off to a group in hong kong so we have the usual players on the board of directors from j.p. morgan goldman sachs but to answer your question the london metal exchange gets about one percent of these storage costs and that's how they're profiting in this goldman sachs game so if goldman sachs is making money london metal exchange's making money

and so on and technically none of this is that legal right even if it is considered stacking the cards in your favor or some would call it overreaching no it's technically legal but it gets down to a concept called regulatory arbitrage we have rules and regulations in the us and a lot of those rules and regulations do not exist in london or the city of london or even hong kong so there is an arbitrage game to be played and definitely goldman sachs is playing that out right no so it is a conflict of interest is what you are arguing i think it's a conflict of interest because we're i have no problem with speculators per se it's when these speculators are financed by the federal reserve they're given free money to play with basically i mean we had a near a zero interest rate policy by brant ben bernanke you for five years so they get. all this money to play with and then they go to the federal reserve and they demand exemptions to play with this money in the commodities markets it's a recipe for disaster that was prime interest host bob english. well over the

weekend civil rights leaders rallied alongside demonstrators in more than one hundred cities across the u.s. demanding justice for the family of trayvon martin from new york to los angeles the chant no justice no peace filled the summer air many are demanding for a civil lawsuit as well as the end to the so-called stand your ground laws and similar legislations that are practice in some twenty two states and even president obama has jumped into the debate saying that trayvon martin could have been him thirty five years ago artie's guyin attended the rally in d.c. and she brings us more. for people who took to the streets all across america and here in d.c. it's a black and white and they think had trayvon martin being white he would have been a white people president obama the civil rights activist here it's obvious that george zimmerman followed trayvon martin because it was black the president america's first black president spoke from the heart on friday when you recall some of the instances when he had been looked upon with suspicion for no apparent reason

just because why many many americans were following the zimmerman trial it's obvious the racial disparities in the application of criminal laws in america remain under stand your ground laws the defense doesn't even have to prove that their client is an angel it's enough to prove reasonable doubt that the defendant acted in self-defense and they are free to go so in this case in the case of george zimmerman you have a clash of different issues great civil rights vigilantism garlands of self-defense laws these people see a clash between the law and justice a very recent example also in the state of florida black woman a mother of three was sentenced to twenty years in jail because she fired a bullet at a wall to scare off for us it was but. nobody was injured and the woman is in jail for twenty years while george zimmerman walks free so you see the basis of the people outraged we've seen protests in dozens of cities in because throughout the week following the verdict in the george zimmerman page people took to the streets

demonstrating at courthouses and police stations throughout the country demanding justice for trayvon martin dozens of people were arrested most of the arrests were made on charges of a lawful assembly in some places like in san bernardino protests turned violent on friday the president tried to put out the fire of protest by basically saying as much as you don't like the verdict don't blame the judge and the jury blames the existing law although president obama called for the nation not to politicize the conflict but his opponents as well as his supporters have done exactly that and from just the black and white issue it is now left and right into democrats versus republicans and it is once again divided and. so as our team you can. well not too long ago we told you about a woman named amy a mare who became the first person in the state of utah trying to prosecute under its new agag law she was being pursued for filming a slaughterhouse from

a public street her case garnered so much attention that it was later dismissed but the ag gag law is still on the books and a lawsuit looks at the looks to change all of that the animal legal defense fund peta professor james mcwilliams daniel hof counterpunch and journalist will potter have all come together to bring a constitutional challenge to the law they argue that it pits journalists and whistleblowers against the state that it encroaches on the public's right to know and that it hinders independent regulation of these industries was joined earlier by jeff kerik is a general counsel at peta and i asked him about his thoughts on utah's ag gag law but wall is clearly overbroad it violates the first amendment. by discriminating against the content and viewpoint of speech and it violates the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment because it's clearly designed to attack and silence animal welfare advocates consumer advocates people who seek to expose and

animal abuse that happens behind closed doors on factory farms at the same time however we're not seeing these agag laws be reduced or twenty one anyway if anything they're growing right so what chances does your lawsuit really have to gain steam and how has it been supported or not supported well we've actually gained great traction in many legislatures around the country and having these get gag bills defeated in many legislatures and so we're hopeful that will continue but utah's is one of the worst it is it effectively makes illegal undercover investigations which are critical to exposing these abuses it's critical for consumers to know what happens to pigs chickens and cows behind the scenes before those animals end up on their plate and. very strong chance we believe it's clearly against the constitution and as you pointed out of the opening amy meyer who is one of our co-plaintiff has been charged under this law that was the first time

anybody's been charged and during agag law which shows the seriousness of these kinds of actions she simply filmed a downed kalle from a public roadway and for her troubles a charge with a crime that's how serious and how an american these ag statutes are all talk about looking back to your lawsuit in just a second but let's focus on amy mary for just a second as you had mentioned she just filmed on the streets but really it could be used in so many other instances i mean to play devil's advocate could this agony could these people that go in that sneak in and grab these footage expose interesting secret service or anything like that that could that could arguably hurt the end of story now this has nothing to do with this and it was clear during the legislative session that the sponsors of the bill some of whom are in the factory farming industry themselves and who are clearly doing the bidding of industry front groups who are the ones who drafted these bills are all about silencing peta and other animal protection advocates in fact peter was specifically

targeted on the floor of the utah legislature for this this has nothing to do with trade secrets there's no trade secret in stopping a chicken like a football which we've found in our investigation there's no trade secret to sexually abusing pigs with hurting mccain's there's no trade secret to smashing piglets heads on a concrete floor which are other investigations have shown what the investigations are about is exposing illegal conduct and taking it to law enforcement and regulatory authorities who have the job of enforcing these laws pure and simple so we had any merit case that was eventually dismissed again because the popularity that that case kind of garnered do you think that that will in the future be the exception to this role or do you think that we'll see. the other kind of people frightened possibly to kind of scare and then eventually dismiss the case well clearly the intent behind these laws is to scare people into an action to scare

them from speaking up and we're saying once and for all we're not going to have any part of that this is the united states of america still and these kinds of undercover investigations have been a critical part of journalism and advancing our society and sinclair and the jungle and his undercover investigation of slaughterhouses was a seminal moment in this nation's history and the egg and the egg was and cruelty to animals behind the doors of factory farms is a stain on this country and the only way it's going to be removed is through the disinfecting bright light of undercover investigation that was jeff heard general counsel at peta. well thanks to decades of medical advancement the quality of life for the average american has improved one of the greatest examples of this is vaccines that have eradicated once widespread diseases like polio and malaria from the u.s. but there's also a series of upcoming advancement in pills that have questionable uses and also

questionable reliability for more on what's coming next the residents. were conditioned to take a pill for every one of our problems and we love it it's so easy to make things that way a recent study shows that seventy percent of americans take at least one prescription drug and over half of us use it over the counter supplement. we take pills for everything and filmmakers want to keep cashing in so they keep making more new. case and point researchers are working toward

a new pill to replace exercise. researchers at the scripps research institute implored us recently reported that a compound they created and injected into obese life increased activation of a protein that partially controls circadian rhythms and biological clocks the injected mice blocks of weight improved their cholesterol profiles and used more oxygen throughout the day in other words they experienced the same kind of result you'd see from exercise and so not everyone is talking sightedly about how we might be able to just take a pill in the future instead of exercising that is don't even the results are say there is no way you can replace all the benefits from x. or size with the pill but that's not stopping them from trying to get us to buy a new pill anyway some other doubling examples bernthal currently in

test phase it's a pill you take that contains a small radio transmitter that transmits your passwords to computers so it's designed to save you from all that torture of having to remember your password. there's a new pill called her solution which is formulated to help women be more interested in sex there's a pill called helio care which helps maintain your skin's ability to protect against the sun because slathering on the sunscreen just takes too much effort so it's putting on bug spray planked well don't worry there's a pill to keep miskito that day too. in the us we're conditioned to take pills for just about everything. pharmaceutical companies rake in hundreds of billions of dollars and they spend nineteen times more on advertising than they do want to research just to keep us popping those and the over the counter supplement industry

has absolutely exploded. our pill culture is the ultimate expression of our wanting a quick fix and our laziness as well as the greed of our industry but the bottom line is the only real people to blame for this culture are the people putting the pills in their mouth. tonight let's talk about that following me on twitter at the resident. that's going to do it for me for tonight but for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com america and check out our web site artie dot com slash usa don't forget to follow me on twitter at meghan underscore lopez and tune in for larry king at now with a special guest credit ancestor and the host of fox news is on the record for now

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