i think. i would like to do is show that you know the price is the only industry specifically mentioned in the constitution. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy. to make you know i'm sorry and i'm this show we reveal the picture of what's actually going on and we go beyond identifying. rational debate real discussion critical issues facing the camera. ready to join the movement then welcome to the big picture. welcome back to the big picture i'm sam sacks in for tom hartman coming up in this half hour residents of the towns and villages affected by the fukushima nuclear disaster in japan were once told they would be able to return to their homes but

that may no longer be the case where government officials now telling those displaced from the nuclear fallout and what does the move say about the safety of nuclear power and america's the largest exporter of surveillance technology and practices in the world and that needs to change if there is any hope for supporting a healthy democracy here at home tumble explain why. attention residents of the small town of a coma in japan you may never be able to go back home again that's the message coming from the government officials in japan to those who had to be evacuated from their homes amid the ongoing fukushima nuclear crisis previous promise is that all one hundred sixty thousand evacuees will return home will not be kept as the cleanup effort around the crippled nuclear plant will be pulled back with officials acknowledge in that area. closest to the plant are just too contaminated to be

cleaned up instead that money for the cleanup will be handed out to evacuees to help them relocate tens of thousands of people have been living in temporary housing units rife with mental illness alcohol abuse and sickness and more than fifteen hundred people have died from illness related to their new conditions meanwhile efforts continue to remove remove enormous quantities of nuclear waste in and around the fukushima plant to estimated that the complete decommissioning of fukushima may take as long as thirty years to complete as the japanese deal with a nuclear nightmare nuclear woes continue here stateside as well last week operations at one of our nation's largest nuclear power plants the kone nuclear station in south carolina were shut down after radioactive leak was found the plant also had problems last month when one reactor was shut down after the water system that generates electricity began malfunctioning all this comes as c.n.n.

films releases a new documentary pandora's promise aimed at promoting nuclear power as a solution to global warming but is it really and don't these myriad of problems around the world related to nuclear power suggest otherwise joining me now is paul going to director of the reactor oversight project with beyond nuclear paul welcome back to the show thanks again sam so with this latest story about evacuees and when they might be able to return home the government has sort of backtracked on the promise that everyone will be overturned home they're now saying that at least for the next five years they're not going to be able to return home realistically will they ever be able to return home i think our concern is that in fact the evacuation zones are going to increase they're going to get larger and potentially affect more populations but i think that. the effort to contain. public concern and to offer a public relations about nuclear. power that was really what was behind the initial

promise that people could come back it was all a p.r. move on the part of the japanese government and tokyo electric power company well we've seen a series of these sort of failed promises or. statements that weren't true whether it was the radiation levels afterward just how precarious the situation is they're there to diverting a lot of money now to this sort of decommissioning process at the plant and what needs to be done there to declare this crisis over to the plant to be fully decommissioned and i guess they're giving a time scale of thirty years before that you get all this done what do they still need to do well you know i think first of all we have to address. a cleanup operation is really a misnomer when you're talking about a nuclear accident it's about trans contamination of all that radioactivity to somewhere else so decommissioning operation and we are seeing figures according to a former in our c chairman gregory yes co five hundred billion dollars as

a bottom line figure for the clean up this so-called clean up operation in decommissioning i mean really what are you going to do with all that nuclear waste once you get it in the can it is tepco really the best institution to be in charge is going this is a private energy company that hasn't ever dealt with anything like this before yet they're taking the lead here it's actually this is the same company that was called falsifying safety reports over a decades and now they're in charge of one of the most precarious nuclear operations that you could conceive trying to juggle this radioactive nightmare that sits up in the attic of this damaged reactor coming back to the united states i mentioned in the set up here this plant in south carolina the economy nuclear plant they discovered a small leak there we're sure that this isn't really a problem the plant's going to be back up and running here. how serious is this in

how common are these sort of problems around the country when it comes to nuclear power well i think it needs to be put in the context that we are at the back end of a degrading deteriorating industry this is an industry now that's more than fifty years old and we're seeing an uptick in the safety margins that were originally there or have are starting to wear away and at the same time the companies are trying to milk more money out of the operations or we're seeing less maintenance less oversight less inspections as you see more deterioration of the plant parts but at the same time they're getting a big boost here from c.n.n. which c.n.n. films just released of a movie a documentary last week the filmmaker goes to fukushima and basically the it's called pandora's promise and the conclusion here is that nuclear power isn't that bad that it's a viable alternative that should be pursued in this world of global warming. what

do you make of this of this of this message that's coming out a lot of money went into see in catering new nuclear and this unfortunately is a last ditch effort by the nuclear industry and their champions to reframe what was promised before is too cheap to meter now it's too expensive to matter what was promised before as the peaceful atom and now the quickest way to get to the bomb and now they're wrapping this cloak of climate change around one of the most expensive ways one of the most dubious ways to boil water and to meet the climate change in what little time we have left and it's remarkable you can look at this dead zone that's been created around the fukushima plant tens of thousands of people lost their home and say you could power still is the answer for the future you know just. thanks so much for think you know despite all of the evidence against nuclear power officials are continuing to push for more

nuclear power plants to be built across america in the years to come so why are disasters like fukushima are noble in three mile island being completely ignored in favor of pushing this dangerous and deadly form of energy well it's because of the privatization of power in america and recently tom talked about just how crazy that is. privatizing power is crazy and you only need to look at what's going on in japan right now to understand why and wednesday japanese regulators gave the privately owned tokyo electric power company tepco the go ahead to begin taking over thirteen hundred fuel rods out of a damaged reactor unit at the fukushima daiichi nuclear power plant the reactor in question was reactor number four and was badly damaged in earthquake in march of two thousand and eleven it's actually sinking into the ground right now by removing the radioactive fuel rods tepco is beginning to decommission reactor for

a process. it could take decades all of this is supposed to make everything safer for shima but many nuclear experts say that taking fuel rods out of the damaged reactor four could be even more dangerous than the leaks that have plagued that plant over the past few months in a recent piece for common dreams harvey wasserman warned that should the attempt failed the rods could be exposed to air and catch fire releasing horrific quantities of radiation into the atmosphere the pool could come crashing to the ground dumping the rods together in a pile that could fission and possibly explode resulting radioactive cloud would threaten the safety and health of all of us if such a fire breaks out radiation could continue to pump into our atmosphere for centuries this kind of end of the world scenario has the japanese and some of the media seriously thinking about changing who is in charge of the fukushima power plant privately owned tepco has made some boneheaded mistakes over the past two years just a few weeks ago for example plant workers overfilled the storage tank and then

toxic radioactive water into the surrounding area is a very real risk that tepco could screw up the fuel rod removal as well it should be a wake up call to everyone here in the united states the whole idea of privatizing our plants is crazy especially when you're talking about privatizing nuclear power plants let me explain energy is a natural monopoly and it's therefore an essential part of the commons just like you can only have one water line coming into your house you can only have one power line coming into your house that's a natural monopoly and when one private company controls a resource like water or power that company can charge whatever it wants for people to use that resource and that's a pretty dangerous power for any private company that's only answerable to its shareholders and not to we the people to. remember society doesn't just need power plants because they create power society needs power plants because electricity actually improves people's lives. allows businesses to run schools to stay open the

government to function ospital modern life would be impossible without it with this in mind the whole idea behind privatization of essential natural monopolies like this looks ridiculous the role of power plants as part of a commons is to serve the community the role of a private company like tepco for example is to make money is a fundamental contradiction here private companies have a built in incentive it's called the profit motive to charge as much as possible for providing the service that people need to survive a profit motive also incentivizes private companies like tepco to cut corners and throw safety out the window all in the name of making a buck but that's only half the issue when we decide to make energy a public good as opposed to something a company can make a profit off of that changes the type of decisions we make about power in society when we start to think of energy is something we use to improve people's lives

rather than just electricity when it becomes obvious that something is dangerous and threatening to public health as nuclear power is just stupid if we really want to make sure the kind of disaster that's going on in japan right now never happens here in the us the best thing we can do is let local and state governments who are answerable to the local people rather than far off stockholders new york city take over energy production. coming up with the new revelations about the n.s.a. spying activities coming out on a regular basis it's becoming clearer and clearer global surveillance has gone too far and given that the us is the leader in global surveillance is it up to the us to stop it.

we're not psyched to an active camp at guantanamo where patients are forced to in the aftermath of our strike never turned the world's attention to the place that sometimes go a lot of hard times. i would rather ask questions to people in positions of power instead of speaking on their behalf and that's why you can find my show larry king now right here on r.t. question.

plus there was a new alert animation scripts scare me a little. there is breaking news tonight and we are continuing to follow the breaking news. alexander's family cry tears of the war i. think. that they're. regarded as a court of war around. there's a story made for a movie is playing out in real life. welcome back tom is currently on tour promoting his new book the crush of twenty

sixteen the plot to destroy america and what we can do to stop it just an hour ago he was on c.n.n.'s crossfire to talk about obamacare there are some of the highlights. could you name one person who is truly interested in making constructive changes as senator durbin said it as president clinton said to this health care law to make it work better can you name one republican who's interested in making it work better fred upton is the judge's legislation that the house will vote on friday which will improve the situation of those people who have been damaged by this law it won't fix it because it's unfixable but it will patch the hole in the roof and that it gives us more time to repair the foundations or frankly to build new foundations for a better health care system of the country and it go ahead talk except that fred fred upton fundamentally opposes obamacare wait to see the actual ones about what about those legislatures if you're just provided you know you're there's a yes or that or you know there's no matter what is there is this is this extraordinary sturm and drang you know this already can't you know the president

clinton has said we should change dick durbin says we should change you know social . security came out nine hundred thirty five it's been amended hundreds of times what's their latest strategy though is tailgating a group funded by the koch brothers is sponsoring tailgate parties at college for college football games they give away pizza bear misinformation distortions about what young people's options are under the health care law this is a couple of republican billionaires telling college kids how to trade away their insurance options and their future economic security for pizza and bear stuff and you introduced the koch brothers as republicans one of them ran for president as a libertarian and these guys are libertarians more than republicans we have and republicans have supported in this country and this is the thing that baffles me since the founding really of the country the the the whigs in the federalist before you know the ancestors the republicans have supported the idea of public fire departments and ben franklin started the first one if your house is on fire we're

going to collectively pay into into making sure that if somebody's house on fire we're going to put it out we're going to save their house on our bodies just it's important well the libertarians would say neither right they want to privatized the fire departments and i think there's this whole area part obamacare thing this is an attempt to try to put our bodies out and then center and it's like the libertarian craziness just. his palace has risen person science church and dixon illinois is to fix in illinois taking the internet by storm this week after one intrepid google earth user discovered that from above it looks like a giant penis although it's hard to see how anyone could mistake the building shape or anything other than a palace church officials say they didn't intend for their house of worship to look

like a male member they claim that it was real. designed to protect the nearby trees and while that excuse sounds plausible it's hard to take seriously when you consider that the church's slogan is i kid you not rising up. but if in fact the good person hours of the christian science. church were duped i think i have a good idea of who the church is architect may have been rumor has it that it was the local flint michigan reporter who got a little frisky during a traffic broadcast in july take a look. and do this right here is a map of downtown saginaw and this construction is happening along north michigan and starting that hudson avenue and going all the way to with st ave driveways are down to single lane is still a shame and local business is a pain i. know

over the weekend the german owlet there spiegel reported on another edward snowden document they were field have the british spy agency g c h q was so determined to break into the network of a telecom company you know to be able to use all the phones on the network this spy told eventually that g.c. h.q. became obsessed with innocent employees at that company and even created fake linked in profiles to bait employees into coughing up their personal information as der spiegel reported the victims didn't notice that what they were looking at wasn't the original site but a fake profile with one invisible added feature a small piece of malware that turned their computers into tools for britain's g c h q intelligence service. and then the harvesting of personal information began

according to top secret intelligence documents this is what g c h q did to one tech guy who is working down in india a complex graph of his digital life depicts the man's name and red cross hairs and lists his work computers and those he uses privately as skype user name is listed as ours g.-mail account and his profile in a social networking site the british government hackers even gain access to the cookies on the unsuspecting victims computers as well as identifying ip addresses he uses to surf the web for work or personal use in short g c h q knew everything about the man's digital life making him in open book for its spots the method of spying tricking people into signing into a malware infested social networking website was developed by the n.s.a. this is the sort of stuff we and our allies are doing around the world targeting innocent people breaking open their private lives and extracting secrets for the

purpose of larger economic diplomatic or security espionage now there's a pretty heated debate going on about whether or not that's ok but it's certain that this world in which governments around the world are spying on each other citizens is a world where we all lose our top spy chiefs tell us that it's no big deal and that the u.s. must engage in these mass collection activities because hey everyone else is doing it especially the french. he's talking about french spying on our allies including the united states of america would you find that consistent with what you know as the director of national intelligence yes it is and i have to say of the rogers that some of this reminds me a lot of the classic movie casablanca my god there's gambling going on here you know it's the same kind of thing. well you were all spying each other throw in privacy in association rights of our citizens under the bus all the governments are

doing it so we have to do it too in other words our intelligence agencies are disregarding a life lesson that we're all told when we're four years old a lesson involving a bridge and everyone jumping off of it look we're the leaders in global spying so it's up to us to take the lead in putting an end to it too because again everyone loses here if we don't if we don't put into it you know that's the thing about the n.s.a. that's the thing the n.s.a. is created spying is no longer restricted to minorities political movements or counterculture it's everyone from the billionaire magnate to be an artist book club goer to joe the plumber both the fake one and whatever the real ones might exist out there it's simple we can't hope to bring democracy civil rights idealism to the world if we're the greatest export or of surveillance technology and practices if we don't learn this lesson soon then democracy right here at home will be the next

casualty and that's the subject of tonight's daily to. the president of brazil dilma rousseff spoke this morning at the united nations and delivered a powerful and of spying by the n.s.a. on behalf of the united states she said without respect for a nation's sovereignty there is no basis for proper relations among nations adding that brazil knows how to protect itself brazil does not provide shelter to terrorist groups we are a democratic country. the brazilian president is so outraged at american spine both on her country and on her personal emails and her personal life that she canceled a state dinner with president obama while most americans see this as a rift between brazil and the united states over the issue of our spying on the president highlighted the most important point of all elsewhere in her speech this morning she said without the right of privacy there is no real freedom of speech or

freedom of opinion and so there is no actual democracy this is not just true of international relations it's also true domestically here within the united states back before the kennedy administration largely put an end to it j. edgar hoover was infamous in political circles in washington d.c. for his spying on and blackmailing of both american politicians and activists like for example the reverend dr martin luther king jr even sent king tapes of an extramarital affair and suggested the king should consider committing suicide it was a shameful period in american history and most americans think it's behind us. but the n.s.a. or other intelligence agencies and even local police departments have put the practice of spying on average citizens in america on steroids as brazil's president points out without privacy there can be no functioning democracy democracy requires

opposing voices democracy requires a certain level of reasonable political conflict and it requires that government misdeeds be exposed that can only be done when whistleblowers and people committing acts of journalism can do so without being spied upon. perhaps a larger problem is that well over half some estimates run as much as as high as seventy percent of the n.s.a.'s budget has been outsourced to private corporation. yes these private corporations maintain an army of lobbyists here in washington d.c. who constantly push for more spy and thus more money for their clients with the privatization of intelligence operations that normal system of checks and balances that we keep government snooping under control as broken down. we need a new church commission to investigate the nature and scope of our government spying both on our citizens and on our allies like brazil. but even more than that

we need to go back to the advice that president dwight eisenhower gave us as he left the presidency in one thousand nine hundred sixty one. eisenhower warned about the rise of what he called the military industrial complex suggesting that private forces might in their search for profits override the protective mechanisms that keep government answerable to its people that military industrial complex has now become the military industrial spying private prison complex and it's a far greater threat to our democracy than probably was in vision by eisenhower. government is the protector of the commons. government is of by and for we the people. to do this government must be answerable to the people and when the functions of government are privatized. all of that breaks down. and the

government itself begins to be answerable to profit. it's time to reestablish the clear dividing lines between government functions and corporate functions between public space and private space a critically important place to start that is by ending the privatization within our national investigative and spying agencies. and that's the way it is tonight tuesday eleven twelve thirteen don't forget that tom's new book the crash of twenty sixteen is now available for purchase at all online retailers and at your local bookstore and overlooked as tom always says democracy begins with you get out there get active tag your it.

people are interested but he has something to say everybody has a story i'm up to a person want to sit next to an airport. in this. always in the waters about how that's whether it's a ballet dancer a ballplayer present things that are curious to me is it just things i think about . that we're not a. world . series technology innovation all the list of elements from around russia we've got the future covered. i'm. a side. i'm big corporation kind of can. do i'm the banker i think it's all been all about money and i'm a family pick for

a politician quite a lot and let's put it that. somehow. there's just too much. of a bias. that. wealthy british. time right free. markets why not. come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's cancer for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to cons a report. on

larry king now playing j.f.k. in the t.v. movie killing kennedy it's rob lowe what is it about me that i can bring to j.f.k. because otherwise it's just a saturday night live in person nation you know and as you can tell me why being successful they would go to groups you are born feeling empty and you are looking unconsciously or consciously to fill that we do thing on parks and rec called the fun run and the fun run is once we've done the scene and off we do one version where we get to do whatever we want and i mean say what ever we want plus i would like to play dr evil. the face of my ward larry i'd be good all next on larry king now.