the french opposition leader reacts furiously to finding his name on a list of suspicious twitter accounts forcing him to claim that he is not irrational by. another one is a real from the shock of suicide of an anti immigration party politician who claimed she was raped by a muslim gang last year. i don't. include palestinians are killed and more than two hundred injured in the latest flare up on the israel gaza border soldiers opened fire after rioters hurled explosives and broke through the fence. the latest on that news stories you can head to on t.v. dot com stay with us now for the big picture.

on this week's show a growing number of cities and towns are banning plastic straws and water bottles and before you dismiss this as environmentalist alarmism listen to the numbers but first charlottesville one year later what happened then and what to expect this weekend and what does this say about us i'm hollande cook in washington this is the big picture on our team america. on the august eleven anniversary reverend al sharpton will preach at the largest black church in charlottesville he said it didn't hurt trump in the contemporary

sense many of the claimed moral outrage at the time and then found a way to accommodate him shortly thereafter but i think it hurt him historically we have to remind people what he said. with twenty twenty hindsight what happened there a year ago this weekend and where do we go from here let's ask activist and radio host david swanson author of among other books war is a lie david has long lived in charlottesville welcome. fags for having me david what happened a year ago in charlottesville was one of those new stories that just blocked out the sun seen live worldwide give us the back story this all started with civil war statues coming down. well it started with civil war statues not coming down and with the city council voting three to two not to take them down the mayor at the

time switched his vote on the day of the rally after the rally making it two to three but there is a state law in virginia that forbids taking down any war monuments good war bad war racist war lovely beautiful war whatever and so the statues remain for months since last year they were covered with giant black plastic now those have those covers have been taken off so the statues are doing just fine and nobody's talking about the fact that it's a war culture that keeps them there not a racist culture but you know we have seen. very minimal steps taken locally and nationally in response some positive but mostly even of the a lot of guns in this country and in this state the city as on the statues bows to the state legislators claim that guns cannot be banned from anywhere anytime and so finally three days before the anniversary of the of the fascist rallies they've

banned non gun weapons finally finally that's a good step but they have not banned guns and they are bringing in the lots of guns boss loads of armed police and soldiers and the helicopters that may crash again this is not helpful this has people worried this feeds into the violence rather than. diminishing or or seeking any sort of nonviolent solution this time around well you've alluded to the second amendment let's talk about the first strictly speaking weren't the protesters exercising free speach. well there's no first amendment rights to armed rallies threatening violence these were groups threatening violence coming in the last year they should have had guns and non gun weapons banned last year when i go in march nonviolently for peace and justice and

love and kindness i can't bring a poster on a wooden stick i have to have a hollow cardboard tube so i don't harm anyone with my nonviolent good wishes these people were allowed to bring any kind of weaponry and you know this this is this is what we're up against in this state and this country in addition of course we had a president. who said that there were good people on both sides and various comments before and after that were taken as encouragement that in fact to look legally like incitement to violence this is a clear grounds for impeachment and removal from office of donald trump and the you know the these incidents have been increasing on a small scale with numerous comments that he's encouraged to the actors and yet charlottesville has failed thus far even to demand trumps impeachment and removal there's no way the police have been militarized with all this tactical gear raise

the temperature over all. yes absolutely this is not the solution it's not just police it's soldiers it's heavily armed you know i can't go upstairs in this building i'm sitting in because it's an emergency control center this is not the atmosphere you want to create and it's this the it's this refusal to go after guns that feeds into it and is used to justify it i mean we've had cities in this country challenge states and the national government on their right to protect immigrants why they cannot challenge them on their right to protect people from gunfire is beyond me but they won't do it and so in response to their prediction of people bringing in guns legally they're bringing in ots of guns legally and good people stay home it doesn't allow massive creative nonviolence and it certainly doesn't allow understanding or reconciliation between those suffering struggling

people that have resorted to racism and those suffering struggling people who recognize that racism is a major problem there but i'm actually out of time but i've got to ask it anyway and i hope there's a encouraging and quick answer to this has any good come of what happened that weekend most of it has come elsewhere a lot of cities have taken down racist war statues as if there are such things as non-racist or statues of a lot of cities have improved their rules in terms of preventing weapons at events even charlottesville has now after three hundred sixty two days bans non go on weapons from events that may or flipped is vote for what it's worth we got a new mayor for what that's worth i mean there are always silver linings but there's much work to be done thank you david swanson from charlottesville. the next voice you hear will be instantly recognizable around central virginia joe thomas is the longtime radio morning host on civil one

o seven five and w c h v twelve sixty and joe holds the dubious distinction of having been pepper sprayed by both sides as he covered what happened that unfortunate weekend joe welcome back a year later well thank you for having us holland and appreciate you bringing some perspective a year later to our reunion weekend here i remember when my mother called me and said she was watching the cable news and saw my head and immediately panic stricken about it we're ok here well i was there with you in charlottesville a week before hand and you were already telling your listeners about the pending arrival of as you called them the nights in white satin and not to make light of what eventually happened but what must the manager at home depot of thought when suddenly he sold out tiki torches did the charlottesville community under estimate what was about to happen well several of the businesses in charlottesville don't

sell said to an eloquent ills anymore several of us have taken to calling august eleventh citronella knocked and it's not to belittle the imagery but it certainly bears to point out that these are not serious people these are attention getters who are often manipulating crowds to their own aggrandize ation and. and unfortunately what we want to seeing is what i now refer to as marx brothers weekend not groucho or harpo but more like coral you had national socialists in the park and reparations all socialists on the street and they were kind of duking it out like they did in the mid thirty's in europe as to which kind of socialism was better and at the end you want it with with good people on both sides and the president was absolutely one hundred percent right. because i know some of the good people who are on both sides of it and i was there with them they were coming running up to me saying what's going on just get out of here and unfortunately

a want of being tragic for lieutenant cullen and trooper bates and heather higher it didn't need to be that way and unfortunately some of the law enforcement community bears the brunt of how that escalated that way well that weekend this story want wall to wall worldwide on cable news channels and admittedly you couldn't be watching because you were so in the middle of the story as it unfolded but what do you feel you're really had to be there to appreciate about what came down. well couple of takeaways i had number one the crowds were not nearly as big as they looked and if you talk to a lot of people they'll tell you carry torches and things like that are designed to make smaller crowds look bigger but even on august twelfth i was struck by how few people were actually in the park for david duke's a little rally there and i have a feeling we're going to cease more of the same up in lafayette square this weekend

is that you're not really going to see this kind of result that it looked a lot worse on camera than it was what you had were people who were just sort of getting a little chesty about it pushing people around yelling at each other but at the end of it the real escalation started when the virginia state police pushed the all right group the david duke crowd out onto the very same street where auntie four was waiting for them it was absolutely dumb striking i was standing with the former mayor of charlottesville dave norris we were standing right at the side of the park covering it and he looked at me and said what the heck are they doing there were six other exits to the park on the other side of the park they could have pushed the crowd out that way and sent them to their cars and probably that's all we would have talked about for august but they put them both together where the violence

ensued almost predictably you alluded a minute ago to the president's take on this here's what he said after things calm down what about the all left they came charging at the as you say the alter a do they have any semblance of guilt it's not. ask you this what about the fact they came charging that they came charging with clubs in their hands wing in clubs do they have any problem i think they do you know. that was a horrible horrible day. how did that play locally and in general with the conservatives who are your heavy listeners well with all of my listeners and i have many folks who from the other side of the political aisle if you will in how it played was that they felt like their message being anti white supremacy should have been sanctified and then i think as time wore on

they started to realize hold it maybe we didn't need to hit people with clubs we didn't need to pepper spray them and to their defense they were separated from the all right marchers the all right marchers broke their agreement with the charlottesville police to enter the park from one side so the breaching of agreements began very early in this affair thank you joe thomas morning. seven five and w c h b twelve sixty. coming up a growing number of cities and towns are banding plastic straws and water bottles and before you dismiss this as tree hugger hysteria listen to the numbers this is the big picture on our team america.

join me every thursday on the alec simon show and i'll be speaking to us from the world of politics small business i'm show business i'll see it end. and indeed this is the only. church secret indeed catholic priests accused of sexually abusing children can get away with it quite literally i like to call this the do a graphic solution so what the bishop needs to do then he finds out that the priest is is a perpetrator is simply moves him to a different spot were the previous standards not the highest ranks of the catholic church help conceal the accused priests from the police and justice center that it

has not as the end then i think that it is this that and. this. is. more than eight million tonnes of plastic is dumped in our oceans every year national geographic reports that right now there is a plastic garbage patch bigger than mexico in the pacific ocean how that happened packaging accounts for over forty percent of total plastic usage approximately five

hundred billion plastic bags are used worldwide each year that's more than a million every minute and a plastic bag has an average working life of fifteen minutes over the last ten years we have produced more plastic than during the whole of the last century chew on those numbers so now it's conscience versus convenience as plastic straws and bottles are in disfavor is it high time or hysteria let's ask dr riess holter eco stress physiologist who specializes in earth's life support systems he's the author of among other books shepherd in the sea the race to save our oceans reece welcome back to the big picture. thank you very much for having me those numbers are scary even if humans discontinue all single service plastic packaging today that stuff is

still going to be there for hundreds of years right yeah absolutely as a matter of fact everything that we have ever created plastic wise is here is on our planet it's a closed system and and i think the it's very important that the viewers understand that plastic is a petroleum based product and it's subsidized five point three trillion dollars a year to the wealthiest biggest polluters it makes no sense the plastics themselves hall and our poisons and having anything surrounded by poison whether it's a plastic bottle water bottle or a wrapper is. in essence it's harming our bodies right off the hop and then the the disposability this notion that we can just throw it

away it's killing everything in the ocean we now think that there's in excess of fifty one trillion pieces of plastics in the oceans and last month's you and i chatted earlier there was a pilot whale in that came ashore in thailand seventeen pounds of plastics including eighty garbage bags now just to put this into perspective these animals when they. inadvertently swallow the plastics looking for food it blocks the digestive systems meaning that they they. i go into a blood poisoning situation septicemia and it takes a long time for them to die all and it's

a horrid way to exit on our beautiful blue planet well and in terms of our body if you're ordering fish to those particulate pieces of plastic the shiny object floating around in the ocean unintentional fish food. yes they do and here also is something very important for people to be aware of plastic in the ocean breaks down into smaller pieces and then actually into microscopic pieces and all plastics are perfect sponges for d.d.t. for p.c. bees for phenols forth ali it's for mercury poisoning and when the fish eat it it the pollutants stick there and as it moves up the food chain it bio magnifies as much holland as over eight million times by the time it gets into a human being so a little bit of poison is is

a lot for our bodies were an apex predator it's just is there's nothing good of any of this so what we can all do is refuse plastics the most the biggest one of the biggest disposables are these plastic petroleum based straws each day in america we are going through five hundred million plastic straws that's over one hundred eighty two billion plastic straws in a calendar year these straws are getting into my sea turtles and into the ocean sea birds into the whales and it's a horrid death please refuse plastic. straw's hey applause to starbucks which has announced they're going to do away with single use plastic straws as have american and alaska airlines marriott hotels royal caribbean cruise

lines which is already out in the ocean among other companies tens of thousands of customers have signed petitions to get mcdonald's and subway and disney to do the same and the single serve plastic water bottles are being banned in a growing number of cities and towns and entertainment venues does that at least help absolutely every step is a step towards mount olympus and it's from miami beach to seattle to berkeley soon we believe san francisco to name but a few cities that are stamping all of this unnecessary waste. that we're swimming and groaning and some people eating and the animals dying from . for people watching tonight what is the most misunderstood aspect of this problem. the invention our lips we all have lips

there's not even one reason why you can't use your lips all and to. to hole into your drink there's no reason for us to be wasting this is a waste situation and the root of it is they said earlier is the five point three trillion dollars annually handed to the fossil fuel companies no brainer take it away take that away and the lawmakers also need to do their their duty which is to protect the people and the planet not the corporations dr reese holter thank you as always for stepping into the big picture. thank you. at age nine milo cress founded the bee straw free campaign it's

a partnership with the eco cycle and milo's mission is to get stores and restaurants to use fewer plastic straws so if when you buy a beverage you are asked if you want a straw thank milo who joins us from where he lives in vermont milo welcome to the big picture thank you it's great to be here your web site reports a staggering number we use five hundred million straws per day how did you come up with that number. well it's an estimate that i came up with because i couldn't see anything else online the time when i was nine years old i decided to do some research on how many straws we use every day in the united states and so i contacted some strong manufacturers and the number that they gave me as an estimate for the size of the united. way was five hundred million straws per day which as you said is staggering and i think that it's something that

we can do something about and for the past eight years it's been something that i've tried to do something about and i think i've been really successful now to be clear you're not anti straw you just want people to opt in rather than automatically receiving a straw they might not use right absolutely my goal is to encourage restaurants to offer strauss instead of serving one with every drink garden and now you're well known for raising our consciousness about plastic straws clearly though plastic shopping bags and bottled water and styrofoam cups are also ending up in landfills too right absolutely but i think by focusing on straws you can make one simple change in your life and once you've done that you see how easy it is to change other thing that's why initially i tell people to focus on straws focus on how you can reduce the number of strides you use and then from there it's easier to explain and it stars have been called a gateway plastic meaning once you stop using straws you can look around the other

plastics and you like you can help produce a gateway plastic you've been at this since age nine and you just turned seventeen so you've been at this for half your life are you encouraged that we are now more conscious about plastic. i am very encouraged and these recent developments are very exciting i hope they don't become standard the restaurant's opera strands instead of serving one with every drink automatically similar to the way it became standard for grocery stores to offer suppers the choice between paper and plastic bags years ago and i think we're really moving towards that that excites quite i've been seeing you interviewed on t.v. since you were age nine and i know that interviewers can't resist asking what you want to be when your grow up now that you're getting there what career path will you pursue that's a really good question i'm so passionate not only about the environment but also

about the sciences and i hope to find a job that incorporates both of those things i like to go into the field of artificial intelligence but i see a lot of ways that artificial intelligence technologies can benefit the environment ecosystem and that's something that i'd really like to explore milo cress bees straw free dot org thank you not only for your time tonight but thank you for what your doing. and thank you for watching that is the big picture if you missed any part of this week's show or if you would like to share it thanks in advance you can where you'll find all our shows at youtube dot com slash the big picture artie watch any time anywhere on any t.v. ice and if you see us somewhere else you can also find our t america and direct t.v. channel three two one dish channel two eighty and on the free pluto t.v. app channel one three two i'm holland cook in washington back next week and on

twitter in the meantime at holland cook question more.

very building never great was founded on the rape in the murder. nothing changed so we said all response to these situations that we're dealing with. people get shot every day she is just people killing each other blood through killing children. so it was just no way that people are going to just sit back and allow children to be shot down law enforcement. this country doesn't work for us it doesn't function for us. this is can't be happening in america we call from the streets we've got to deal with why this is a reason i have to ride like this is the reason.

i am asked azure this is a cause or a party i know the secret of good television is never sleep and never sleep. so this is apparently the secret to keeping the population happy with the situation at hand the economic situation at hand that is rigged as the atlantic said as we covered in the last episode is to have potemkin villages essentially you have a potemkin regulator in the united kingdom and you have potemkin money operating around the world which is called the u.s. dollar standard if we are to believe these headlines today so actually this is from last week and remember we're doing the summer solution series where we're looking

at the big picture items because it is the summer and we're sitting back and relaxing and looking at the bigger stories and looking out the window because i saw some of them black flak jackets with a r fifteen is coming this way so i just keep note of that ok but here's a tweet from last week with sky news and they said the financial conduct authority says royal bank of scotland senior managers will not be disciplined for misconduct over the treatment of small firms and the bank's global restructuring group as the city regulators powers do not apply so apparently the united kingdom has this regulator called the financial conduct authority and that was established after the financial crisis and they made you know while they were having all those inquiries to distract the population they said oh population voters all those who have basically your taxes have financed the rescue of all these banks.