we. haven't tonio in this is america's lawyer more than one million people united states and millions more across the globe suffer from rheumatoid arthritis this painful often debilitating disease is one that currently has no known cause making it nearly impossible to prevent or even predict who's most at risk drug companies make billions of dollars marketing treatments for sufferers with each medication carrying a certain amount of risk and while some drug companies have been honest about the risks to their drugs theory others have tried to cover up the dangers in order to score a bigger profit tonight we'll tell you about one of the latest arthritis drugs that's

killed hundreds of people and how that company behind the drug tried to cover up the truth and later in the show i'll talk to you about how an old dupont plant contaminated a river in virginia now they have to pay forty two million dollars to begin correcting their disaster so don't go anywhere america's lawyers starts now. rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic disease affecting more than one point three million americans and as much as one percent of the worldwide population the specific cause of rheumatoid arthritis isn't known and there's no known cure for the disease rheumatoid arthritis is one of the most common auto immune disorders and symptoms are triggered when a person is an odd body's attack this in no view joint fluid causes chronic inflammation act. ammar is

a suppressive medication used to treat the symptoms of moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis the medication was first approved by the f.d.a. in two thousand and ten the drugs been marketed to doctors as not increasing the risk of heart failure stroke or lung disease which competing drug makers admit rheumatoid arthritis medication usually does the problem is that temora absolutely does carry those risks and the manufacturer seriously misled the f.d.a. and doctors in order to sell its drug according to medical journalism organizations stat patients taking it to him are fifty percent more likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke than patients using enbrel or a competing drug in fact stat analyzed more than half a million reports of adverse events during treatment with rheumatoid arthritis drugs and found evidence that the risks of heart attacks strokes heart failure and other conditions were high or even higher for some patients treated with that

timmer than they were patients treating with competing drugs in other words out and out they out now lied to the f.d.a. and medical doctors about a ten resigned years the failure of that timmer to carry a proper warning is lead doctors to overly prescribe this medication to individuals who are susceptible to heart in lung injuries and it's led doctors the failed to monitor these patients more closely for potential harm drug makers roche and genentech the manufacturers of temora are now facing thousands of lawsuits plaintiff's attorneys claims that roche and genentech failed to properly test that temora before placing it on the market they failed to warn doctors and patients that the medication was just as likely to cause serious injuries as competing drugs they concealed evidence of the dangers of the drug from the government in the public and the drug makers misrepresented the safety of the medication and its marketing material and publication pretty much a grand slam. froggatt patients have

a right to be able to make informed choices about what medications they take but when you have a drug company that hides the real dangers of their drugs from doctors it becomes impossible for consumers to make an informed choice and make no mistake that's exactly what big pharma wants because second people the very time they start questioning the safety of a drug the profits of those big drug companies begin to fall. joining me to talk about this is attorney and dr john ristaino john let's start by talking about the condition itself rheumatoid arthritis this disease affects millions of people across the planet yet it still has a bit of a mystery as to how ill when it's going to strike somebody huge you might know it is that kind of a quick take on it. it is in fact it does affect predominantly

women and it's been estimated that approximately one to three percent of women in the united states are affected with this disease as has been mentioned there's no known cause it's in the classroom matic diseases and it's a form of auto immune disease meaning it's where the immune system of the body actually turns on the body itself and stead of attacking bacteria or virus or x. this agents it actually attacks the tissue within the joints of the body itself well there's some good medications out there but part of big pharma right now it seems like they're trying to capitalize on on a problem and really they're doing it with a drug like a temora and the only way i can look at these facts is to say they got a company that totally misrepresented the truth about the drug that they were selling to millions of people all over the globe what's your take. well they had

that apparently so the evidence is coming out now to showing that the risks of these very serious adverse events associated with the drug is at least equal to other class the other members of the class of drugs that are used the d.m.a. r.d.s. or disease modifying anti room addict drugs and these the other members of the class are recognised as carrying specific grist including cardiovascular events such as heart attack and stroke and a form of heart failure and including in that is a very serious condition that affects the pack reus inflammation the packers are pack three otitis and what has been analyzed now are the reports to the f.d.a. as adverse event data base and the reports being sent in by physicians and patients are showing that these serious adverse events with other drugs are also being seen

with this drug and even at higher levels just how does a company just get away with lying about its clinical zomi that's what happened here we had a company that said look we're different we know that rheumatoid arthritis treatments carry risks but we're different because ours doesn't how does a company just get away with that new case of that time of the company seemed to downplay the risk but they did that but they also told physicians that the risks were decreased with activity isn't that what they represented to the american public. exactly and looking at their clinical trials which were brode typically short in duration so if we're going to start getting adverse events with a particular drug then you want to be able to see drugs that are are powered enough to find these meaning there are enough people in this study and that the studies are conducted for. a long enough period of time and first of all it's important to

recognize that rheumatoid arthritis carries with it a in a hurry an increased risk of cardiovascular events now the manufacturer may say aha and this particular case a individual with a heart attack or stroke it might be due to the rheumatoid arthritis but when they're taking a medication that increases that risk that's putting that person at obviously an even higher risk of it and it's well known and it's reported from the clinical trials that it tamra increases the blood levels of all of the cholesterol is in our body meaning the low density lipoprotein known as bad cholesterol and total cholesterol levels and it's well known that cholesterol levels and elevated l.d.l. those are associated with heart attack and stroke john i don't get too much in the

weeds here let me let me stick to what what people need to know and that is the f.d.a. ok they see their read the f.d.a. here's this message from the manufacturer and that is that gee with everything's ok now the f.d.a. knows that they weren't told the truth what does the f.d.a. do now to correct the problem isn't it kind of publication campaign or they get into television are they trying to correct this big lie that's out there what's happening. well there's not much happening the f.d.a. has required the manufacturer to conduct post marketing approval studies meaning phase four studies but that something that many times is not done and can take many years to conduct and in the meantime there is not been a safety alert sent out to physicians they're not being told to evaluate the patients for and any of the signs or symptoms of these cardiovascular events that

we're seeing with the other drugs so the f.d.a. once again is falling down on the job. well i mean that you bring up the point there are things that can be done once a product is put on the market you can then say ok well we have to do some things now to correct our screw up to begin with when this is another major mess up by the f.d.a. where they're not doing their job there's no other way to put it they could look at the clinical they could see that the clinical were gamed they could have seen if they were missing they could see and if they were stents of enough do a lot of things they could they could look at the power aspect of the studies that were done but so here they are now messed up again the f.d.a. messes up again what and they have ways to correct it they can send out alert letters as you point out they can say they can start a post service kind of campaign one of the things can they do joan. there is that they have many things available to them as you just mentioned the public service

campaign can be important every patient has a right to know of the serious affects associate with the drugs that they're taking these adverse events that are being recognized with that temora are inherent in the entire class and the other drugs are warning out so the f.d.a. should be sending as we mentioned a safety alert to the doctors so when doctors are putting the patients on this to struggle they're now monitoring them for the early signs and symptoms of cardiovascular disease interstitial lung disease and pack three otitis all of which have been found to be increased when taking this drug ok now you're sitting here both as a medical doctor and as an attorney in both of those wearing both of those hats what is happening with the drug industry in general to where we it's almost weekly where we do a story just like this where we find out they just haven't told the truth

a drug manufacturer has again lied to consumers consumers have. because the company has lied and f.d.a. has dropped the ball because the company has lied what is this trend that we're seeing in about thirty seconds or so what your take on this on this trend. big pharma is going to continue to do this because of the monetary advantages for as long as they can we can go back to vioxx and in the clinical trials of vioxx they knew there was an increased risk of cardiovascular disease they hid from the f.d.a. and so it came out in the public as more and more people took these drugs it's exactly what we're seeing with a camera right now the reports to the f.d.a. itself is showing a markedly increased risk yeah and it seems to be what we have to live with i tell everybody unless a drug has been on the market for more than ten years why would you take a risk with a drug john thanks for joining me coming up dupont is saying forty two million

dollars to restore a virginia river poisoned by mercury from a plant that is used to home that's next. i'm tom hartman and i'll give you what the mainstream media can't tell its big picture we'll go deeper investigate and debate all so you can get the big picture. for decades the american middle class has been railroaded by washington politics. big body corporate has thrown down a lot of boys that's how it is in the news culture in this country now that's where i come in. i mean it's still on our to america i'll make sure you don't get railroaded you'll get the straight talk in the break. what's with all.

my. dupont is set to pave more than forty two million dollars to restore the south river and the wildlife along that river they've been poisoned one one of the former plants in waynesboro virginia was responsible for that high levels of mercury were detected in the one nine hundred seventy s. make it dangerous enough that you couldn't eat the fish in that area for many years

joining me to talk about this is john rocker sea news attorney with the environment america john my first question has to be how mercury poisoning in a river and the fish swimming in it could it could still be a problem since this is dangerous levels of mercury were discovered in one thousand nine hundred how how we still have to worry about this why are people longer still having to fight this problem what you know why isn't government done something about this mercury is what we know as a persistent bio cumulative toxin persistent meaning it it stays in the environment pretty much forever bio cumulative meaning it goes up the food chain from the insects to the fish to predators like eagles it bio accumulates there and so and it's also a heavy metal so it stays in the in the sediment for many many many decades this is a huge problem it's going to be very difficult to clean it up. you know i've

dealt with du pont in the ca litigation up in ohio all along the ohio river valley and here is my tell you going to tell me this is sounds familiar it's as if the company understands that they can externalize all of their risks they can simply put their garbage into somebody else's property you know that's the equivalent of one neighbor saying you know i really don't want to have to pay for sewage i think i'll dump it monday abers pool that's called externalizing risk you're just shifting the risk and in the in the taxpayer has to pay for this isn't that exactly what happened here i mean dupont says you know we're just going to take the ship the cheapest route will it taxpayers pay for it we're going to run the risk of harming the health of of citizens all in that area mercury's extremely dangerous causes all types of physical illnesses but they let this go on for decades what's your take i mean is this isn't this pure purely simply externalizing rich risk and

cost absolutely this a classic example of a polluter externalizing risks as you say and let's remember that this particular dumping episode all of this happened before our landmark environmental laws like superfund the clean air act the clean water act the safe drinking water act and so forth and so on these laws are designed to ensure that polluters cannot just shift to the risk and don't their pollution on the rest of us that's why it's so important that we enforce these laws and enforce the ability of ordinary citizens to go to court and get justice when those laws are broken. but let me ask about the justice look if i did this to my neighbor i said you know i got some kind of mercury business i don't want to have to deal with doing what i was for should do but i put it into my neighbor's aco for i could go to prison for that for decades they could throw me in prison now the truth is we know who made these decisions the

documents you're going to show it the all of the everything is going to lead us in the right direction of who is responsible for this what has the department of justice done if anything in regard to what's happened here where men talk about killing entire species along this river what's your take. well i'm an unaware of any criminal prosecutions in this matter the settlement that you referenced earlier does require dupont to pay more than forty two million dollars to start cleaning up this mess and i'm not suggesting that that is sufficient or enough to deter polluters from similar actions but i do believe it is an important step in the right direction by fish and wildlife services in the state of virginia and i don't get me wrong good job ok i'm glad that was accomplished but at one point don't we have to try don't we have to change cultural. tendencies but somebody's got to go

to jail when they hurt people somebody has to go to jail when they destroy our commons and they know they're not supposed to this is a company that made forty two million dollars while you and i have been having this conversation and so if you have a company that's a repeat polluter they were you know time and time again you see them doing the same thing at some point don't you say you know we got to have a perp walk for somebody so maybe the next generation will say you know i remember the story of uncle joe having to spend five years in prison for making this wrong decision maybe i should make that decision what is your take on that i know you are very successful in the area of environmental law thank you for what you do and even you've been so tied into it i want to know your take on it because that's mine i absolutely agree with you that there are cases where criminal penalties in addition to settlements for cleanup are warranted i think that the deterrence value that you

talk about is critical and we see this across all kinds of industries right you were just talking about the drug industry a couple of minutes ago we could talk about wall street and so forth and so on but certainly the pollution of our rivers are lakes our streams even the sources of our drinking water are serious enough threats to our. health and our natural heritage that for sure individuals culpable should be held accountable to the maximum extent of the law i agree with you there you know we've we see so many times i could name half a dozen cases i've been involved with where there's been big big companies dupont type companies dow chemical kind of companies where you see the media unwilling to jump in there and really tell the story because of political influence dupont has political influence with this representative or the senator or regulator the media won't pick up on the story because dupont may be

a huge advertiser for him and every night there appearing on the news and somebody else on the fiftieth floor he does the number count says gee whiz we can't run that story about dupont because they're not advertiser did you did you run into any of that with this story because i got to tell you something i did not know about to skase and this is the first information i have about this case and i'm a person this involved with environmental cases often what's your take. well i i can't comment on this particular case i'm unaware of any particular influence on media outlets to refuse to cover but i would say that oftentimes state local officials and media outlets are not necessarily jumping on a story about a big polluter that's threatening drinking water or threatening our the air that we breathe and that's why it's so important that citizens have the right to bring suits under the clean water act and under the clean air act to hold these big polluters accountable we in fact our state affiliate in texas environment texas

just had a case against exxon for thousands of violations of the clean air act at its huge refinery in texas there and at the end of the day after nearly a decade of litigation there's nearly a twenty million dollar penalty for exxon to pay as a result of its now thousands of violations there but as you point out that case did not necessarily get all of the media attention that it deserved early on so it's very important to take on these big polluters. yeah the media is more concerned with what kim carr deshon one to an award ceremony last night thank you for being out there you're very effective your organization is effective and i can just tell you without what you do we would be in a lot worse shape environmentally throughout this country thanks for being us i mean you're sure mike. while disney company is facing

a federal lawsuit for secretly collecting personal data from kids who are using one of their numerous gaming apps the lawsuit alleges disney shared that illegally with advertisers well they never once sought out the approval of parents george is now to talk about this is legal journalist trial lawyer magazine journalist in very good legal writer molly barrows molly what exactly does the lawsuit allege that does these doing this time i say this time because they've been in the news quite quite often when yes you're exactly right now actually not too long ago they were in trouble for something similar what they're doing now this lawsuit a federal class action lawsuit filed in california alleges that disney and the software companies that work with them on these gaming apps were illegally spying on these kids learning their habits gathering information and then turning around and selling it to third party advertisers and marketers who are trying to target these kids elsewhere on line or perhaps even their parents because you know a lot of times they're on their parents' digital devices is this kind of

a back door to the parents it's another word information is what disney was after now let's not limit the information to what the child has in a school lunch the information goes on to what where does mommy and daddy bank that's or what kind of core do they drive so this is nothing more than just a black hole that leaves right in to the parent's life the entire family's life i don't understand i mean you know if you look at this if we had a stalker but we just had some some character out there stalking your child trying to find out information about a child are there laws against that i mean there's. stalking louie yes it would be held accountable criminally even just for the intent of trying to deceive or pursue somebody in a predatory fashion show how is this different i'm not following it other than as a corporation isn't the difference you're correct in this lawsuit specifically is saying that they have violated the one thousand nine hundred nine children's online privacy protection act which basically says any company that markets technology like these gaming apps to children under the age of thirteen have to get parental

permission verifiable parental permission and basically they're saying that that's not what disney's doing nor the software companies that help them build these game apps and it's not just this one game out that was one in particular that was by far doing the majority of the stealing of the information according the lawsuit but it was more than forty gaming apps so they're collecting a lot of data and as you know that comes up in any number of lawsuits and accusations of companies stealing your information any time you download an app they want access to your photos your your contactless this and the other and as you know you can gather so much information about people spending habits and then target ads accordingly and so that's what they think that they're doing well i just want to obey the law. or move in to do some new used computer you know i started tracking information about disney were they investing were they putting their move their money what have they been up to in the intertainment business i go to prism i mean there is no difference here there are hurricane by way of moving into these

people's lives with a computer game for god and children especially because they're the easy ones to target and it seems innocent enough on the on the outside but again any time you download an app whether it's a child doing it or an adult at least the adult has enough awareness to say hey maybe i don't want to download this app or i don't want to do this because the m from a show that they want access to is not something i'm comfortable with the kids you know if they're not getting permission from their parents or looking over their shoulder yes i just want to get the palace pets and i just want to play so of course if there are parents advice are going to able to access all that information in this lawsuit just wants them to obey the law that maybe that law needs to be. they need to take another look at that children's online privacy protection act i think because it's come up before in other stories with daniel america's a lawyer i'd like to know how many times disney has had people prosecuted for going into their private business this is just this is just another double standard that we see so well off me of course defend themselves just to be on the ad to get the other side and they say that this is just

a misunderstanding of cop out which is that children's online protection app has a protection act again and they are looking forward to defending themselves in court oh gee we didn't know how could we understand that we only have what ten thousand lawyers work with us we'll finally tonight some good news for fliers fed up with the abusive practices from airline companies the u.s. court of appeals for the district of columbia ruled against the f.a.a. the dismissed the petition asking the agency to stop airline companies from shrinking seats space for passengers this came as airlines were seeking to reduce leg room and seat size which is being done so they could make more money per flight and once again ignore the best interest of passengers so an organization called fliers right petitioned the f.a.a. to create minimum seat standards which the f.a.a. flew out and said you don't have a case here well the f.a.a. said that testing and data doesn't show any danger to passengers to be packed into an airplane like dead sardines in

a can in the appellate court disagreed with the f.a.a. is take on that in a statement they said while we don't do not require much of the agency at this juncture we do require something and information critically relied upon by the agency that no one can see does not count very smart ruling hopefully this decision will help empower citizens to make airline businesses play fair and no longer let them do what they want to do for their own profits it's become an industry that is right at the edge of rank lawless conduct it's just a matter of time. that's all for knight be sure to check us out on our new web site it a dollar mall where you can actually talk to an attorney about any of the stories we cover on the show and find us on facebook at facebook dot com slash r t america my passion tony and this is america's lawyer where every week we tell you the stories that corporate media is ordered not to tell because their advertisers won't let

them just like this if they a story have a great night. our culture is awash in lives dominated by streams of never ending electronic hallucinations that birthed fiction until they are indistinguishable we have become the most diluted society on politics as

a species of endless and needless political theater politicians more than just celebrity are two ruling parties are in reality one part of corporate and those who attempt to puncture the. breathless universe of fake news just signed to push through the t.v. and exploitation of the deal little or are pushed so far to the margins of society including by a public broadcasting system that has sold its soul for corporate money that we might as well be mice squeaking against an apple and. we must. be.

long. well on target in washington d.c. and welcome to the big picture earlier this week wiki leaks released thousands of pages of secret cia documents dubbed vault seven these documents reveal among other things that the cia has the ability to hack into your smartphone you're telling. maybe even your car for more of the startling revelations from vault seven leaks i'm joined now by two people who know this topic better than anyone john kiriakou is a former cia agent as well as a whistleblower who went to prison for exposing that agency's illegal torture program he's also the author of the forthcoming book doing time like a spy out the cia taught me to survive and thrive in prison also joining me tonight is journalist and author james bamford who wrote the bestselling classic the shadow factory the ultra secret n.s.a.

from nine eleven to the eavesdropping on america among other books john james great it's a great honor actually to have both of you here when it's on once and and this is a topic into which i really wanted to do a deep dive so we're going to do it for the half hour. john if i can start out with you walk us through this what what has wiki leaks in fact revealed here what is the relevance of what's wiki leaks has told us definitively in my opinion that the cia can't hack our i phones they could hack our google android phones our samsung smart t.v.'s perhaps even our cars and this is. really in defiance of any logic american laws it struck me when i first read the documents how less than a year ago the f.b.i. was paying apparently millions of dollars to hackers to help them get into an i phone owned by the san bernadino. shooter when in fact the cia had already hacked

the i phone and was not even sharing that information with the f.b.i. one of the things that i think hasn't been addressed that i think is very important is with this this information is the cia spying on americans are they having our i phones and our android phones we just don't know now you said the can does that mean that they may i mean is i mean that they have the technical capability or the legal well they've. we had this technical capability at least since two thousand and thirteen according to wiki leaks so my guess is as soon as they figured out they could do it they implemented it i think we should assume that they've been doing this for years james this is these documents are mostly tactical in nature but. given recent revelations from the n.s.a. and the snowden documents and everything else. how solid do you think all this is how real you know how confident should we be that

a this is all real and these these are capabilities and b. that the cia wouldn't use them against people in the united states i know it is cia always used to say we're not we're barred from law doing domestic surveillance i seem to recall during the bush administration there were you know there was some wiggle room given to them but i frankly don't recall the details maybe i'm not even recalling it right if you could set me straight here right well they're not supposed to do any spying within the united states and you know it struck me about this just apart from the technical side which. is very detailed but the whole idea that all these things are leaking out so much so we've got. millions actually more than half a billion pages of documents have been lost in the last in our last few years. as an intercepted or. the n.s.a. in the cia have lost these. these pages now what was lost here what was

given to wiki leaks was details about how you hack into these phones and so forth now if if the security is so bad that at the cia who knows who else might have gotten this information if it's so easy to get that out of the building this information could be going to hackers or to criminal criminal gangs that are using this. material to hack foreign government right so you're building up these systems these tools in order to break into telephones and t.v. sets and other things now the cia says we can't we aren't using it domestically but if all this stuff is getting out how martin who worked for the number of contractors for n.s.a. and so forth was arrested last year for exfiltrate in taking out of the agency fifty terabytes half

a billion pages of material and some of that were tools also so you get all this stuff coming out of the intelligence community that could be used against us and. we're supposed to feel safe because of that and these are at least from what julian assange said these are actually weapons i mean these are potentially tools of war with the weapons or the kind of cyber. cyber weapons or what was used against iran the stocks and so forth these are more defined as tools tools for getting into telephones as opposed to weapons which destroy physical objects and that's what happened with stuxnet although the idea of hacking a car. that could indeed be a weapon that was being in an assassination sure if you can hack into

a car's. auto drive auto pilot feature and drive a car you know off the road into a tree off a cliff a bridge whatever and they're not having any record of it i would call that an assassination tool i remember a reporter in los angeles this car went out of. blanking on his name but ended up hitting a tree and killing him yeah well that was the reporter for rolling stone the. the articles on michael hastings i think of michael hastings. right he did all the fantastic reporting from iraq on. general what was name was who had to resign after that crystal crystal and this. is not to say that that was necessarily an assassination or that it was done by the cia or anything but that is that exactly. and that's that's that's pretty amazing. james to follow up here's

a clip from former cia director michael hayden talking about fault. there are there you want us to spy on you want us to have the ability to actually turn on that listening device inside the t.v. so i'm learning that person's intentions this is a wonderful capability so wonderful capability what's your response to general that it's ironic that michael hayden saying that since. the law in the first place in bugging americans on behalf of the bush administration during the after nine eleven and so forth one on for years. but yeah the problem is that you've got an agency here you've got. so many agencies that are involved in cyber now the n.s.a. is normalcy involved in cyber planning cyber. tools different

player using cyber tools to get in a lot of different places including places in the united states cyber command which is actually using cyber as weapons around the world in case of a war or even conflicts different places and now you've got the cia developing all these new tools and potential weapons. to use for cyber but you know where's the oversight on a lot of this you know very little oversight but we've got an awful lot of material that could be used against us or may be may be used against us now now that the and james i remember your first book puzzle palace. back in the eighty's. to my mind it was an extraordinary i think was really the first tell all book about the n.s.a. . the you know we always thought of the n.s.a. as the guys who were listening in and the cia is the guys who were talking to the

spies and running foreign intelligence but now the cia has their own military drone program i don't know if the n.s.a. does this is not telling the jones used a lot of a lot of what's on the drones are cameras but also signals intelligence another is ease dropping they do a lot of these dropping with the drones but they're run by the sea so are the are the lines between these two agencies getting blurred well this division of the lines is that n.s.a. uses all its cyber activity to go out and plant malware over a million places now according to one of the snowden documents. we're in a large. cross points and telecommunications world in order to try to scoop it all up. that's the n.s.a. the cyber command to launch cyber weapons to actually use the cyber as

a weapon to destroy things or break things whatever and the cia is to well the cyber command does it during a time of war supposedly or or we have authorized. actions the cia is used for covert operations us why the cia was used for the stuxnet operation against iran and where the n.s.a. goes for the big picture of the. whole networks and so forth the cia has been developing these individual hacking tools to get into individual phones that actually bypass the encryption. people think that you know if you have end encryption you're protected but if somebody actually can get something into your phone or into your computer that bypasses or that intercept communications before it gets encrypted now there's when you're typing on

a keyboard. yeah and if you type in a wireless keyboard and you have a bluetooth and you have something that picks up the bluetooth between the cube tween the keyboard and the computer then it's not encrypted you're just you know hitting the letters the way the person is going to read them through markable john you were in the cia how how different is the cia now from what you know of it from the agency that you left unrecognizable you know for so many years for many decades the role of the cia was very simple it was to recruit spies to steal secrets and then to analyze those secrets to provide the best possible information to the policymakers to then make the best possible policy now it's a paramilitary organization it's a cyber military organised. and they have their hands in everything and now when we think of cia and cia officers overseas we don't think of of

a james bond like character and a diplomatic cocktail party going after a russian or an iranian we think of drone operators we think of people working in cubicles writing malicious code and we think of what we're learning now from the likes of wiki leaks and it's a completely totally different place than it was even ten years ago it's a remarkable one other problem with that is that you know we've got all the drones over afghanistan iraq yemen and all these other places that are really sophisticated drones now i mean botting people on the ground following them and so forth now onesies conflicts wind down if they do which hopefully they will but once they wind down. they're going to be coming back to the united states and a lot of law enforcement organizations are going to want to use this in the united states is the same thing we've seen with all these weapons of war all exactly teams

are now right and these companies have that. financial capability or these these states now have the financial capability to buy it and the defense contractors are going to want to continue manufacturing more with john kiriakou and james bamford. the. the old according to just. walk up to my laurel come along from there are. you.

going to go to sleep you'll see the things like the trails of interest would be analyzed in this case but the bottom. line with the like you not i got. the phrase that this was going. to. limit. the mission of news with it is to go to the people tell their side of the story our stories are well sourced we don't hide anything from the public and i don't think the mainstream media in this country can say that i think the average gamer knows

that r.t. america has a different perspective so that we're not hearing one echo chamber that mainstream media is constantly spewing. we're not beholden to any corporate sponsor no one tells us what to cover how long the coverage or how to say it that's the beauty of archie america. we give both sides we hear from both sides and we question more that journalists are not letting anything get in your way to bring it home to the american people. and welcome back the big picture i'm talking about the fall seven cia hijacking legs. with cia whistle blower john kiriakou and journalist james bamford james you were you were just talking about how some of this stuff these these these weapons

of espionage coming back to the united states you know they're just like we've had tanks come back an armored personnel carriers and so forth and you have local police departments now getting some of these armored police armored personnel carriers that these drones that have been developed that are normally sophisticated because. they've been used in wars for now fifteen years or so. and things quiet down we start pulling back in the middle east. we've got all that. technology that is probably going to go to local police departments state police offices or the f.b.i. or and the problem is we don't have a legal infrastructure for regulating these things there's a lot of this for a number of regulation now on on eavesdropping because of all the driving scandals

but there hasn't been any c. and those you had on the overhead imagery and therefore there is no real focus on. on creating laws preventing that and so that's an area that i think congress should start looking into that is that is remarkable john i want to play a clip from joining us on just being taken here. developed giant often will be what appears to be the largest trojans and viruses in the world that attacks most of. the systems that journalists people in government politicians see. and average people use. didn't. lost control of it and then. appear to have covered up that fact so what does songe mean when he says the cia has lost control of these well tools once virus is out there once it's infected a computer or

a system it's out there and it's not in the cia's control anymore now by their very nature these are these are unclassified malicious programs right you can't classify it because your intent is to put it out there but say you're you want to infect the system in the middle east or the somewhere in the former soviet union once it's in that system you've utterly lost control of it and that's what's happened in cases like the stuff stuxnet virus for example and god knows what other what other malicious programs the cia has put out there hasn't the stock ever spend real weaponized a couple of times yes it has it comes back now every every eighteen months or twenty four months you know it was one of the problems the cia or the intelligence community. gave their word of honor to the president that these things will never

escape once we put them in the where they're going in iran and to attack the centrifuges and they did a sky escape and they attacked i think it was one hundred thousand computers in the air it didn't destroy him but it did affect them so these things you know the teligent community promises one thing in the new. next time you look at it there they've escaped so so james how should in your opinion and i want to get your opinion on this too john how should congress you know the lawmaking branch of government how should they be what kind of metrics what kind of corridors barriers what should they be putting in place with regard to oversight of the spectrum of technology. well i think the problem is that a lot of the people in congress don't have much of a technical background there and therefore. backgrounds that don't lend themselves to knowing much about cyber or how how this works and then there are that many of

them and then those that are in there i don't think have the intention of really protecting the public that much they're in there because a lot of their constituents happen to be defense contractors who are making a lot of money creating these things was much different back in the seventy's when frank church created basically the intelligence committee community or the intelligence committees and then his idea was to stand between the intelligence community and the public and now it's pretty much the intelligence committees there to protect the companies and the agencies from the public it's kind of regulatory capture john your thought guy grew with that i think that we have a serious problem where it comes to oversight you know frank church is gone otis pike is gone and the likes of mark warner and.

oregon ron wyden just can't stand up to what the earlier generation of oversight leadership just to say they're not try and there are other wyden has been so outspoken he's worked as hard as he can and same with mark warner they work as hard as they can but there's no institutional. will to really stand up to the cia on capitol hill you know when you look at dianne feinstein for example or richard burr they are literally nothing more than cheerleaders for the intelligence community that's not a einstein was hacked by the cia was something that was when she was investigating that's right and that's the only thing that turned her around and that really wasn't her anger her eye or wasn't directed necessarily at the cia as much as it was directed at john brennan because because it was brennan that ordered the hacking of the senate's computers and then you lied about it and then lied about it remarkable which all i think is more evidence of need for oversight even if it's

highly classified we never know about it and this is an ongoing theme you know everything that the cia tells us is a lie they say there's no torture program that's a lie they said that there were no secret prisons that was a lie they said that they weren't rendering prisoners to third countries to undergo torture that was a lie and now they want us there they said they weren't hacking to send its computers that was a lie now they want us to take their word for it that they're not using these these malicious weapons against americans and yet everything they say isn't a lie i mean those i grant you though these major issues we need a cia and we have it in a sure without a doubt but we need this the n.s.a. and the cia to be targeting our enemies abroad not to be collecting information on american citizens and that's what we consistently bump up against and to the extent that that gets done that should be the role the province of the f.b.i. presently have you know it all although i'm guessing that they're probably using the same tools and the so the james for the average person

who you know. probably most people are are not in a circle where they're bumping up against anybody who would cause the cia or the f.b.i. or anybody else to be seriously looking at them but still it's this kind of creepy feeling a and b. a lot of people actually. in the old you play the game you know six points of separation a lot of people know somebody or neighbors with somebody who might actually be the subject of something how do people avoid their their personal and private information getting hoovered up here. well speaking generally both the n.s.a. and the cia not just these recent leaks but particularly n.s.a. which has that enormous capability to suck up everything from the points that were communications link basically the major communications links. the problem is that they have these target lists and

a lot of the target lists have people on there that shouldn't be on there i mean there were. one million people on the target list at one point i mean that many terrorists no fly list they know of no fly lists and so forth so. you know the problem is that if you say the wrong word on the phone or you communicate at the wrong place. you may be put on the list and you won't know it until you're bumped off an airplane or sometimes you won't know it all you know your son or daughter applies for west point or annapolis or something and they get turned down because they've looked up on the list and you're on the list and you're not told that that's why they're not going there so there's a lot of things that. people don't realize that. they could be affected by this kind of what i want to one of the big revelations james was the signal confide that some of these encrypted products for personal communication that are probably

frankly used more by you know teenagers and law for adults having affairs and things like that rather than spying but that they're vulnerable as well is that is that very much the case yeah well the whole idea is to make virtually everything vulnerable you know on the positive side because of the snowden. leeks there was a very big. movement domestically to bring encrypts into center stage and everybody becoming aware that encryption is out there and you should use it plus at the same time it was made very user friendly it's much easier now for people to use encryption so. and to some degree these new leaks from wiki leaks of the. hacking tools kind of show that because they're they're going after the individual phones. and shows because they're they're not able to hack

entire network if it's an encrypted so they have to go after the individual phone so. i mean that's sort of the. bright side of the picture i guess for the moment john we have about a minute a half the documents talk about the u.s. consulate in frankfurt being a cia hacking headquarters and sensually what does that mean. there are three holy of holies that you're told about when you first go to the cia three things you can never talk about sources and methods liaison relationships and anything having to do with n.s.a. . i think this would fall under sources methods and because of my previous trouble with the cia i think i should not respond to that question james any thoughts on just well frank offer is always better big for the cia the n.s.a. they've always had a huge hub there for until it is because there's great. electronic infrastructure

there or is it because after world war two that's where they put a lot of the. where they built a lot of that intelligence infrastructure is there a sense actually germany couldn't say no yeah and i mean berlin had had a fair amount but it was frank. it was much easier to get to you know and it became west germany is exactly. remarkable james john thank you both for being here thank you fascinating conversation and that's the way it is tonight and don't forget democracy is not a spectator sport get out there get active your. economics

are. good. all the world's. you know the news companies merely players but what kind of part is r t america r t america how often are american personal. many ways landscape is just like the real news big news good actors bad actors

and in the end you could never. so look harkin all the world's all the world's all the world's a stage we are definitely a player. on newsnight and one party needs a record. rainfall in the state of texas and louisiana while floods devastate the gulf coast overnight and up to five million children in iraq are missing or orphaned. reports exclusively in a war torn country and fifteen turkish security officials indicted by a grand jury for attacking peaceful protesters in washington d.c. this may i mean the one hand sitting in for edge here in washington d.c. you're watching our team america. good evening we start tonight with the latest on tropical storm harvey the storm

continues to pour on residents of texas and louisiana record shattering rain fell on the cities of beaumont and port arthur in southeastern texas resulting in devastating flooding artie's trinity chavez has been closely following the catastrophe she brings us the details this tropical storm continues to batter the gulf coast region with torrential rains flooding and strong winds we do know at least ten refineries on the texas coast have shut down now we are learning the arc mechanical plant in crosby texas is at risk of an explosion because of the massive flooding families in the area have been evacuated as you mentioned earlier harvey made landfall again hitting louisiana and cities of beaumont and port arthur just in the last twenty four hours poor arthur and beaumont were pummeled with at least twenty inches of rain which brought flash floods that swamp the already packed local shelters forcing hundreds of residents who were in those shelters to higher ground a shelter at the bowers civic center was over one by floodwaters forcing people to

stand on chairs and tables let's take a look at some cell phone video that was captured by an evacuee. we came here to see. for slave ways to get away. to get away from being trapped in our house and we know being trapped. with a guy who want to out fatty who don't want no water coming in from every angle. the mayor of the poor arthur says that the whole city is under water and we have to keep in mind how polluted this water is there is everything from insects to garbage in there and many are also extremely worried about the damaging effects if there is an accidental toxic leak but officials say that they are working around the clock to get residents to safety so far thirteen thousand people have been rescued but the harris county sheriff's office has confirmed two more deaths north of houston bringing the death toll to at least nineteen family reported that they

have over two hundred thirty shelters operating with over thirty thousand people in them but most of them are at nearly capacity so the energy convention center has opened its doors and that shell will shelter about ten thousand people officials said that everyone will have a cot to sleep in but the lakewood seventeen thousand seat mega church has also opened its doors but officials say that they are still they need to rescue thousands more people out there around thirty percent of harris county is under water between thirty and forty thousand homes have been destroyed along with around five hundred thousand vehicles officials are using jet skis helicopters boats and big rigs to get to the stranded victims here's what the governor had to say at a press conference earlier today. there will be ongoing challenges both during the time that rain continues to fall as well as for approximately four days two weeks to come i mean bridges specifically flooding conditions that will continue to be

a challenge for people in the area. governor added that the number of national guard troops aiding in the distance the disaster had been increased from twelve thousand to fourteen thousand. and the venezuelan government announced it will donate five million dollars to victims of hurricane harvey foreign minister jorge r. riaz said the decision was approved by president nicolas maduro as well as local authorities and mayors the move comes as the u.s. imposes its latest round of sanctions on venezuela. the united nations security council unanimously condemned the latest north korean missile launch over japan meanwhile president donald trump will soon announce victor cha a former white house official and georgetown university professor as the new u.s. ambassador to sold r.t. correspondent actually banks has the details for us oh manella earlier this morning u.s. president donald trump tweeted the u.s.

has been talking to north korea and paying them extortion money for twenty five years talking is not the answer this tweet was in response to north korea the latest missile launch trying to not give any direction as to what the answer is however secretary of defense james mattis contradicted president trump's tweet during a meeting with his south korean counterpart saying the u.s. should not abandon diplomacy with north korea he also had this to say we're never other america we work together and the minister and i. will be provided for the protection of our nation relations and our improved what we are here to do. the white house put out a press release today saying quote president donald trump spoke today by telephone with prime minister shinzo our baby of japan the two leaders confirmed their continuing close cooperation of efforts on at ferd's to address north korea's

launch of an intermediate range ballistic missile that overflew japanese territory earlier this week chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman also responded saying quote . the facts have proven that pressure and sanctions cannot fundamentally solve the issue both china's and russia's ambassadors to the un oppose think on north korea and believe the best way to stop north korea from continuing to launch ballistic missiles as to implement the double for a strategy which would require north korea to suspend its missile launch as an exchange for the suspension of the joint us south korean military drills however the u.s. has rejected that proposal and a key halley u.s. ambassador to the united nations condemning north korea's actions and so did fifteen members of the security council we are all denouncing north korea's outrageous act against another u.n. member state japan we are all demanding north korea stop any future missile

launches we are all demanding north korea abandon its nuclear weapons. north korea has violated every single security council resolution and violated international law we are all calling on every nation to strickly fully and immediately implement all you south all security council sanctions on north korea the world is united against north korea there is no doubt about that. this latest most old task marks north korea's longest missile test close to one thousand six hundred seventy seven miles and reaching a height of three hundred forty one miles experts say north korea's missiles are getting stronger and could potentially reach the u.s. mainland soon p.r. yang says its actions are a necessary response to u.s. south korea military build up near its borders however the u.n. is urging north korea to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and

express a quote commitment to a peaceful diplomatic and political solution. thank you for that actually banks for more on this we're being joined now by foreign policy principal at trilogy advisors jonathan ladies john thanks for being here this evening as always japan and the u.s. have called an emergency un security council meeting following that missile launch on tuesday calling for an international embargo on oil exports of north korea but china and russia sit on this permanent panel right and they have veto powers they will definitely object to this so that measure is not i'm not going to pass what recourse does the u.s. and japan really have available to them when manila first of all let me just agree with you that the u.n. is more of a diplomatic step but it's not really going to provide the kind of tool kit that's necessary to give us the options that we need to achieve both denuclearization of north korea and old so behavior change by the regime those are the twin objectives

of the united states and the international community now it's going to have been largely because. china is going to have to be persuaded it's in its own interest to be able to change the behavior of the regime or it will be economic consequences for china or they'll be a significant beefing up of u.s. military assets throughout the pacific region what. apart from i mean that's that's punishment to china if they don't play along with us china has played an instrumental role in helping north korea develop its ballistic nuclear weapons going back several decades and china has basically sat out this entire process and made it largely a u.s. north korea process but it's not china has more influence in any of the country in the world in north korea if they want to avert any kind of calamity in the region they're going to have to play a much more significant role here and a much more constructive one that's really interesting to hear that china even to hear anybody say that china is actually taking part in why they become

a nuclear state so that's a that's an interesting piece of news i think for a lot of people but they're radically if some sort of oil man did come to fruition what sort of response might we see out of pyongyang over it my concern is that there have been prior economic sanctions on north korea and the regime really doesn't care i mean that's really the unfortunate part of the twenty six million citizens of north korea and there will be and is not the concern of the regime their concern is twofold one absolute preservation of the regime in power and secondly being able to eventually absorb south korea and reunify the korean peninsula under the kim regime and developing nuclear weapons as a deterrent against the united states from being able to prevent north korea's long term strategy so many say that this oil embargo is the last diplomatic card the last card that tokyo in washington have if that's true then now what if china doesn't play along like they said that they have and they said if the u.s.

strikes first they're going to side with north korea where do we go from here the oil ban is one very very tiny step the real punitive measures. against china for not playing a more constructive role would be secondary sanctions imposed by the united states on chinese companies and individuals who are doing business with north korea this would have a very deleterious effect on the chinese economy and keep in mind she jinping is looking to stay in power for another five perhaps ten years and there are a number of communist party activities this fall he needs to have as few problems on china's periphery as possible luckily they solved a crisis with india just the other day but they cannot afford to let north korea spin out of control and if the u.s. feels it has limited options it will be a lot more pressure on china to step up to the plate can president trying to play a larger and more direct role in how china u.s. relations are especially with business like with foxconn moving to the u.s. i think this should be a partnership again ideally china and the u.s.

would work together not in a way that would be inimical to china's long term interests has to be in china's interests and also that of the u.s. but frankly also japan and south korea the last thing china wants is for japan to develop its own nuclear weapons arsenal the memories of the rape of nanking a world war two as well as historical memories are still very pronounced in china but if japan feels it has no recourse it will develop its own nuclear arsenal and the u.s. will likely put nuclear weapons back in the south korean peninsula as they had up until the early one nine hundred ninety s. so it sounds like how we address china has to be more of the carrot last of the stick the carrot so i think we're finished all right thank you so much for your expertise john feder ladies. years of war in iraq are having a significant impact on the local population takes a closer exclusive look at how the war is affecting the children and that country. these children have seen more bloodshed and agony than most adults will in

a lifetime nearly ninety percent of children have lost a member of a family either they were kidnapped or killed and when they were escaping from the fight many of them have lost family members they were shot at from behind or in the falling on booby traps it has been a horrible experience. some of us had a couple. children were dropping down on the floor and. some of them my some of them feel when they see for a mess some of them feel when they see you know people that they are not comfortable with some of them and say know what for quite a long time until they could act up and up definitely they go all the extreme distress and also physically unfortunately many of them are wounded. many of

the hospitalist movies that come from that. the biggest number of civilians they have in the hospitals are children traumatized in mind and body but alive lucky by local standards though let's be frank stuck in orphanages and refugee camps in iraq in june believe given the sheer magnitude of the problem thousands and thousands of orphans and little. do you believe you can adequately help them we are helping those sold and we we see certainly we don't have enough resources they sold or not almost everywhere. but ultimately the support comes for family from government extended family that once we connect children. everybody's team to receive them and the support that the problem is making the connection all of these orphans iraq so many

a foreign children of isis fighters learn how big it is much better a foreign children were reunited with their families they will have problems here with documents in schools with health care they need their families love problems is putting it lightly in iraq tribal culture venerates blood feuds and revenge isis harmed millions there are those who would use these children who hate them for what their parents did. vulnerable for all abuse they are vulnerable for trafficking or for. any danger that children are exposed to in today's technology any. bad group. could get those children and harmed them some of these lost children a raped their assaulted abuse than the band and killed for their organs hated

for the sins of their fathers the un and uni sets do what they can to protect them but there are too many getting them out is a reward unto itself. we helped identify and reunite a number of these children yet it isn't straightforward uni set for example once these kids identities protected fearing stigma or exploitation we know we tell our to. if we do not allow the children. that we do not know how do we allow the. crisis is. to become our choice you can choose their

thesis for everyone to see and let their relatives recognize them pray that they find them themselves. desperate young refugees among the rocks millions. from iraq. and a grand jury has indicted nineteen people in connection with the may attack on protesters during a visit by the turkish president to the nation's capital fifteen of those individuals have been identified as turkish security officials the indictments include attacking peaceful demonstrators during a protest back on may sixteenth just outside of the home of the turkish ambassador here in washington d.c. for more on this and the latest on turkey u.s. relations we're being joined now by. he is the washington bureau chief for root out . now thanks for being here. as mentioned fifteen people have been indicted as part of early one security team they're now indicted on these crimes but does diplomatic

immunity apply here and what will this do to the relationship between washington and ankara well in their love there are two important points here the first one is a man named mostly in course he's. chief of security he was accompanying him in washington so i don't really trust this man as he does you know almost everybody he chooses from a cabinet minister to the police chief from even a university the to a newspaper editor clearly people he has to trust and so now in a couple of weeks time when he comes to the united states to attend the united nations general assembly he will have to replace mr close. he'll have to find a new man to be in charge of his ability for he will be input he will be put in prison appointed in the united states so he's not protected by diplomatic immunity

ok so there's already this fragile relationship between turkey and the u.s. especially when it comes to fighting isis turkey is not very happy about washington's decision to to arm the kurds in the region to fight isis but the kurds have demist demonstrated time and time and time again that they are the most effective local fighting force in killing isis many have suggested that turkey is complicit in allowing isis to funnel anything from laundering money to oil across its borders how is uncle addressing isis and this allegation. well you know to be honest it's very hard to imagine the us turkish foreign policies can can diverge counter at this point. the price the priority has long being. and the kurdish forces on home the united states has been most dependent to defeat

isis the united states has long said isis is the number one enemy for all of us we have to focus on that the turks disagree and you know surprisingly the united states. has done little in to sponsor to a turkey turkey has been doing apart from you know providing light i mean to the kurdish forces and continue to continuing to support them. i don't think the united states can afford to abandon the kurds at this point. because to be honest as you said it's the only the most effective fighting force in syria. the indictment and. you know the policy difference. we can say the most import. an issues that have strained relations between the united states and turkey over the last few years and having said that how do you see the trump administration working with early ones

administration in the coming years especially if these they say that they want to build a stronger relationship but at the same time turkey wants to join the e.u. right now the u.s. has strained relations with the e.u. as you know with uncle merkel as we've we've all seen the ice the relationship how is this going to play out between turkey and the u.s. then i don't think president on is as interested as previous. to join the united the european union union is already in a lot of trouble britain just exited the european union so. and at least the present at all and hasn't demonstrated that he's interested by the very actions that he has been doing that are against you values such as you know the. attacks on the kurdish villages in turkey that has been reported by this channel and. so i don't think that's the.

question for turkey's i think almost over be an issue then some more likely he'll be focused on trying to mend relationships with probably he might he definitely interested in that he chose the united states to visit that says not all right thank you so much for your expertise now magdala thank you. and just today the los angeles city council voted to eliminate columbus day from its official calendar that they will now be designated to commemorate indigenous aboriginal and native peoples italian american civic groups have opposed the move saying it erases part of their ethnic heritage. and the president was in springfield missouri today to push tax reform. president trump emphasized his vision including plans to bring back main street for today to launch your plans to bring back the main street by

reducing the crushing tax burden on our companies and on our workers. and for more on this we're being joined now by our political panel for the evening we have ted harvey is a former colorado state senator and also democratic strategist pamela hayes folks thanks for being with me this evening ok today president trump made a soft pitch on addressing tax reform while in missouri but again he was light on details largely speaking in platitudes he seemed to be applying pressure more on congress to move a plan into place ted i want to start with you what do you expect to see coming from a truck tax plan. well i agree that low. ted cruz i'm sorry. about . i agree that there was not a lot of details however the one issue that he was very specific on was lowering the corporate income tax from thirty five percent down to fifteen percent and that is a huge move in corporate income tax which i believe is important to move our economy

forward and to create jobs and and bring businesses back to the united states rather than having them go overseas so that one issue is in the speech that he gave i think was very specific and very important for the american economy and peril what's your read on all of this. my read this that he wants congress to propose some sort of play and because he doesn't have any clue as to what really needs is the big difference in corporate income tax dropping the thirty percent of fifteen percent. the average american worker really was the know what's going to happen for them and they want to see specifics and i don't think he gave any of those and you know the president touched on this tax plan in the midst of the hurricane harvey relief efforts in texas yesterday we saw

ted cruz make a pitch for relief funding for his own home state he was actually one of the senators who voted against fandy relief back in two thousand and thirteen pamela do you see anything off in the timing of what the president is doing and the hypocrisy that many people are accusing the texas senator of. well i think it is hypocrisy because whenever people are in the i think you should go to them and ted cruz just says a major major problem with this but i am a new yorker i saw what cindy did communities especially in new jersey and long island but i mean that that. turn my back on the people in texas and louisiana in the gulf. i think that's what we need to come together on this stop worrying about the me me. syndrome and i think i think

the congress will come to give the for the people of. ted your take on how we're handling hurricane harvey. well i want to applaud your panelists for not making this a political issue in the middle of a major crisis here in the united states this is a five hundred year storm that we have four hundred forty thousand americans that are essentially refugees here in the united states and it's not something we should make political so i applaud her for not taking it that way but i think what the president of the administration has done has been yeoman's work they had. all of their forces on the ground in texas days and days before the storm hit i think that the governors of both texas and alabama or mississippi have praised i'm sorry louisiana have praised the president in the administration for the work that they have been doing and and i think that the citizens of those states in the end are

going to get the relief that they need to be able to rebuild their homes and their communities and we're certainly hoping to not see this being politicized now one last topic i want to talk about real quickly hillary clinton is back in the news last week a portion of her new audio book was released where she called then candidate a creep and now miss week after guy is saying hillary clinton's e-mail scandal isn't a hot enough topic to the public for them to release their findings through a request panel i want to go over to you first you were an organizer for the clinton campaign is citing a lack of public interest a reasonable out in not releasing this information. i think that's one of the. they can use the. you know all this is about. ginning up you know more of the between emails we have the problems hillary clinton is not even though on the radar

except that she's going to have a great book that i think most people who won the know why the key is about e-mails they're concerned about. their houses floating away. the happenings all right folks thanks we got to leave it right there ted harvey and pamela hayes thank you so much this evening. thank you. and that's going to do it for tonight you can follow me on twitter at manila chan i am thinking for morning from washington and i'll see you back here tomorrow night. our culture is awash in lives dominated by streams of never ending electronic hallucinations that bird fiction until they are indistinguishable we have become

the most. societies on politics as a species of endless list political politicians more than just celebrity are two ruling parties are in reality one party corporate. those who attempt to. run universal to me just sign the push through the t.v. and exploitation to be a little more are pushed so far to the margins of society including by a public broadcasting system that has sold its soul for corporate money that we might as well be squeaky against an avalanche but we must.

no. not about.

all the future we go free. everyone in the world should experience for me and you'll get it on the open rolls. the old according to josh. welcome to modern world come along for the rock. on larry king now my conversation with rob mensa working with roughness in jersey's company would be like working with my own people i didn't feel like i was stepping into a room of a ball chosen. nothing against since i don't wear. prescription drugs like none other you know so we have a lot of people in our country and in our culture that are trying to cover something up i want to try to feel better and feel better i think. is often sensationalism is turned into

a headline and it's used for the benefit of people in the media and people in power is looked at is very one dimensional plus we have somebody who is just such a bold faced lie as trump is. diplomatic discourse is a few. place to time it's next on larry king now. welcome to larry king our special guest vic menso the grammy nominated rapper hailing from chicago illinois following the release of his twenty thirteen mixtape in the main taped vic emerged as one of music's most sought after and critically acclaimed bakst he's since been signed to jay z's rock nation record label and work closely with all of us like kanye west chance the rapper and. just today have

a few big revealing new full length album the autobiography is available now and you've been working on this for a long time how does it feel to finally have the world know it's around. very releasing the personal and. i almost feel like i made a lot of close friends in people that parts just and really are living with the album because its content is off in. so personally the things i wouldn't tell somebody unless i was close to them what made you do it was really my way of coping with everything i was talking about and been able to come to terms with the learn from it grow from it felt like i had to be transparent and confessional in order to move past so it's really cathartic very cathartic how did that how did the connection come with jay z's right nation

label i was lucky to find out there working with rock ness in jersey's company would be like working with my own people it didn't feel like i was stepping into room of vultures and suits nothing against suits i don't wear. it like i said you know it's a record label helmed by. arguably the greatest rapper so there's an understanding of artists there that i find to be you know very freeing in a corporate setting especially you recently said i really did make a conscious effort was to try to be understood i was leaving no stone unturned i feel like i had to be unapologetically me i had to be able to tell all my truths

the autobiography concept gave me license to. use literary tools like illusion in flashback in foreshadowing so there's times that might be in the middle of a chronological storyline but throw in. greece and i go back to to a memory from five six years earlier and it's not right back into the present day and look like a book so oftentimes it is in chronological order though you're very open about his struggles with depression drug dependency was that hard to sing about talk about off on actually easy to talk about easier to talk about than cleese a. rat subjects in a list of things because you know i'm talking about the things that are closest to

me to things that are that i've experienced firsthand and for me that was easier to pull reference simple. real emotion then you know maybe just make a song about partying we would you do pressures a young man i started to deal with mental health issues in high school in more so as i became eighteen nineteen twenty in step in in adolescence so these are things that have been close to me for a long time if you try to do treat it well you know i didn't for a long time and a lot of this album is about those paths that i went down trying to self medicate and when you see something on a song called rolling like a stone or is maybe on its exterior. he didn't this stick and like just excess and drug use but underneath the surface

is is something that i was trying to heal pain i was trying to heal by self medicating and i think a lot of people are doing this right now as you see we have an opioid epidemic in. a mean we've had america uses drugs and prescription drugs like none other you know so we've got a lot of people in our country and in our culture that are trying to cover something up and i want to try to feel better everybody's run feel better in the black community things like depression and legs are played down one hundred percent because. as black men there. is an idea of masculinity that oftentimes is misleading that we've been led to believe is how we have to act to assert ourselves you know i mean i'm not

going to go down a full history lesson you know but the traditional avenues for being a breadwinner and being a man in the black community was stripped from us and provided for your family and. and bringing home the bacon for your family is something that was there was often like out of reach for black men so we had to develop certain other ideas of masculinity that often are very hyper masculine very aggressive and leave no room for vulnerability and i believe that that leads us to a place where we're not able oftentimes to be open and be honest about things going on in our brain because we don't want to appear weak in youth you feel that if you if you give any sign of weakness that you'll be torn down do you think that will get better as the molds to give the more you're the product of an interim

marriage there's a lot more in the twenty years ago you think there's going to change i think is going to change if we change it and that's why i'm trying to take the steps that i take to just open up the conversation and de stigmatise so and things like that to help in the black community because it's not going to change if we just allow it to fester how long you've been sober i haven't been using drugs for year and a half maybe i'll just stop i had somebody in my life there was that was. selfless enough to look past the hurt that i caused him from a hard place and help me to be honest about what was going on in my life and. seek psychiatric help and start talking with their peers for real because i was in the same low i was like man i'm not going to talk to a therapist i'm not crazy you know. and.

somebody was able to the this woman in my life was able to you know help me go seek help me help myself as your success hoped i don't think success helps things like that at all i think a lot of times it can just magnify what's wrong. you know you see artists passing away to relief from drug addiction in suicide and from lincoln park has killed himself and you know success doesn't help those things to say whatever you have and magnify that was it underneath a magnifying glass what i was going to actually worse is just makes it better so if it's if there's issues the issues get bigger or you grew up in chicago the city that produced some of the greed artists in your john or what was special about chicago. you and. next a good place i think chicago is unique

from new york city in l.a. in there. you don't grow up with hollywood orse or stardom in reach really you know you not see in billboards for the newest netflix special and i'm not saying everybody that's in new york does which is see a puffy hop in that i'm a bax it's just like is very midwest is midwest it's authentic you know it's concrete and i feel the perspectives that come from chicago are often. guided by that with that kind of like i see real ism city a big shoulders or about the rap on chicago that it's a violent city president trump attacks the users example all the time people getting killed the mayor emanuel he won't obey a federal law that requires

a turn in the grounds. i mean look at that i think the violence in chicago is often sensationalize and it's turned into a headline and it's used for the benefit of people in the media and people in power. is looked at as very one dimensional without really observing the factors that have created this violence and observing the fact that you can live an entire life in lincoln park chicago another hear a gunshot but be in a different neighborhood and hear gunshots every night so you have these communities that are stripped of of everything they don't have organic food there's no produce the school systems are broken the schools are closed and the textbooks in the schools that are open are from the one nine hundred eighty s.

and you have these people in a toxic environment they grow up to do toxic things i think it makes perfect sense i don't think it's it's good in in any sense of the word but it makes sense and is by design done trump a-z. of disappointed good or is as expected. i think is as expected you know what i would say that he's clearly. he's clearly in office for you know his parson all going for it is financial gain and we don't know the full game yet but there's a lot of nepotism going on in it's it's hardly presidential but i had to come to terms with the fact that nobody getting into office. as the president of the united states is really like my candidate nobody's really representing me or my people so our win is not on net stated no obama do i don't really believe so i lived i

live five six blocks away from barack obama's home and so i watched my neighborhood not improve in my city not improve in the community not improve maybe get worse in the that obama was in office in iraq is i recognize he's the president of the united states but i don't think that obama's agenda was very often . you know to represent the people and do well by the people feel like he was often times very careful with what he said regarding race if you met with trump would you discuss these things with him. i don't have any interest in meeting with trump no no i mean you know i think that we have somebody that's just such a bold faced lie. as trump is. diplomatic discourse is. futile waste of time waste of time when we were turned

dish on secret talents the biggest response screen. in the game if you only knew the album is the autobiography will be right back don't put away. your watching and our team report. basically everything that you think you know about civil society have broken down. there's always going to be somebody else one step ahead of the game. we should not be on the normalising mind. we don't need people that think like this on our planet . this is an incredibly tense situation. here's what people have been

saying about redacted in the us and it's pull along awesome the only show i go out of my way to launch you know what it is that really packs a punch oh yeah john oliver of r t america is doing the same we are apparently better than food. and see people you've never heard of love back to the night not the president of the world bank hate. me seriously send us an e-mail i do not know if the russian state hacked into john podesta e-mails and gave them to wiki leaks but i do know barack obama's director of national intelligence has not provided. to support his claims. i also know he perjured himself in a senate hearing three months before the revelations provided by edward snowden he denied to be n.s.a. was carrying out wholesale surveillance of the u.s. . the hyperventilating. has once again proved to be an absolute government

claims that. you would have thought they would have learned something after serving as george w. bush's useful idiots in the lead up to date of iraq. it is vitally important that the press remain rooted in a fact based universe especially when we enter an era when truth and fiction are becoming interesting. but with mensa great guess great to have them with us how do you find music. a film music through musicians just people that impacted me like two pocking con men and kurt cobain and jimmy hendrix and prince david bowie and all these people that really made me feel away as a kid and i wanted to impact people the same way how did you break in spite of being me just stand true to myself and make music that was different from other

people who also in the album discuss the trials tribulations of growing up on the south side your mother was from upstate new york you write she's of german and irish descent my father was from gonna live in a two parent household i start to get old i'm kind of being hit back and forth like a ping pong ball because on one hand america views me as this general blanket term black and a whole mommy but i have african you still live with that. i'll still live with that but i think that i've been able to in adulthood turn it into a strength so as opposed to like us in. a sense of suffering and i'm able to have a perspective that's dualistic and can see in a city for what it is but also. look from when you bid for police haven't we. as you respond though in the early age that. police that's

where you start to listen and n.w.a. and i started identifying before that i didn't really i don't really understand certain things about rap music and. understand the aggression a lot of the sun and around time i'm twelve years old and i start realizing that i'm being treated differently than you know my white friends is just when this which went off in and out aggression came alive in i you already looking forward to making new music. and thinking about new music. just trying to put myself in some positions to learn from the world around me like i take a lot of enjoyment in going to places where i can help and people are struggling like flint michigan or stan iraq in all those things

influence what i do so i'm ready to get back out into the world and start talking to people again used to justin bieber and it got cancelled yeah you know why i think he was just exhausted i believe he does only work on on decently well and i read a statement that he made a couple days ago just saying that he wants to put his health. at the top of his priority list in our respect that any collaboration's in the near future if you like to collaborate i'd like to collaborate i don't know about collaboration in the near future i really just been focused on his arm right now but i do have some collaboration's that are in the pocket let go so it's going to be a big hit and i will play a game of if you only knew i just threw some stranger's fan encounter. a kid is a cargo saw me enter in my house last year and was

driving a delivery truck he got out the delivery truck somehow made it on to my next door neighbor's roof and in climbed over to my roof there's a fire law that you can't have a roof locked from the inside for some reason basis so he came into my house and then i come out of my bedroom maybe in my underwear and is just this dude standing here and he wants to rep for me. and i'm like. this way i got it you know doesn't the bed the. what's a superpower you wish you had. if i could choose one superpower i would choose the limitless ability like the movie where he takes the pill that makes him utilize all of his brain so i would have a subpar like super human intelligence or something just to be able to use that as an interesting guilty pleasure desperate seat of.

the moment you knew you made it up into for me as an ambitious person macon is a is a continuous pursuit but one one who was significant to me was performing at lollapalooza in scarborough as a music festival last summer because when i was a kid i hurt myself pretty barely sneaking in a lot of proposals or trying to sneak in. when you got to form their most under-rated aspect of chicago the late for that. scrubbing the chili pot at the at the organic deli down the street scene eggs if you weren't in music what do you think you'd be doing i think i'd probably be in tech oh yeah yeah or or journalism i thought of writing

a person you could switch places with for day. best piece of advice you ever got it was about writing music and it was from a guy named mike posner and he said to sell as much truth in every line as possible what was the worst piece of advice do drugs. biggest risk you've ever taken i guess it was a pretty big risk to. you know from my family's perspective to forgo gone down as occasional route and you know make make a real life out of revenues i school yeah i did someone from history you'd like to take to lunch alexander hamilton great did you see the show a bunch of times three times four times place we'd like to find you on your day off jamaican restaurant anywhere. see good talent karate some questions for vic mensa

from our social media t.j. so i've heard is there an artist you're dying to collaborate with. three thousand of our cast he also asked what was the most difficult song to write off the new album the most difficult song to write was. a song called. down for some ignorance i think just because. the subject matter was so close to me still that it was kind of like hard to be objective and step outside the world. joe gaily on the larry king no blog we see a lot of musicians jump in front of the camera do you have a desire to act i want to do i want to do a film about the current state of chicago because i feel like people have tried and it hasn't been right you want to direct a film or be in a film or work for him being a film are you thinking about work. i've been thinking about i've got some titles

women around and i can dawson on the larry king now blog what was kind us like to work with and your plans to work with them again kind a west is a. great collaborator he really has a strength for seeing the strengths in other people so that's something that i learned from him and the question was do i plan to work with him in the future yes is easy to work with nothing about chi is easy you know i think that's clear but that doesn't take away from the genius of his process chris on the larry king or bob i was at your lollapalooza said was chance the rapper what was it like to be out on the stage with him in your home city and any plans to work with chance on new music that was good i felt that that was. the necessary moment of unity for our city because it's often very divided in.

being picked apart by a lot of people and yes we've been talking about making new music what's special about his talent suneet as an artist see knowing i grew up with chance so i know him well as a person and i think that he's dedicated to so a lot of a lot of real things a lot of things that people are bringing into popular music my gear on the larry king no blog would you ever want to branch out of rap work with the north as from a different genre. one hundred percent you know a definitely do a lot of collaboration with people outside of rap i don't really see music so. bass like i've really collaborate more often with people that can finally k.j. i'm turned sixteen on twitter where you see yourself in ten years it's things i'm trying to build right now you know schools and go. ten years or so between albums

so. about ten albums nineteen albums in your major figure and i thank you you thank . big thanks to my guests nick mensa be sure to pick up a copy of the new album the auto biography it's available now as always you can find me on twitter at kings things and i'll see you next time.

i'm a trial lawyer i've spent countless hours poring through documents that tell the story about the ugly side of calls from. corporate media every users to talk about these car companies i'm going to paint a clear picture about how disturbing how cool corporate conduct is because mom these are stories that no one else can tell my parents or your host of america. question.

about your sudden passing i phone lee just learned you were a south and taken your last to bang turn. your act right up to you as we all knew it would i tell you i'm sorry finally i could so i write these last words in hopes to put to rest these things that i never got off my chest. i remember when we first met my life turned on each first. but then my feelings started to change you talked about war like it was a cave still some are fond of you those that didn't like to question our ark and i secretly promised to never be like it said one does not leave a funeral the same as one enters the mind it's consumed with death this one quite different i speak to you now because there are no other takers. to claim that mainstream media has met its make.

it. was like. i was more children from the formally i still hold city of mosul arrivers of baghdad all french are to use helping to find their relatives. for abuse they are vulnerable for profit. for. a new danger the children exposed to. also this hour a russian journalist working for the country's child one is the portal from ukraine as security services warn this will happen to anyone they deem to ukrainian. under germany's foreign minister says it's time to kick america's nuclear weapons out of his country issues one of seven.