i have a special. status jamal's murders has to several factors that make a treaty different from anything else the fact that he was said that this was a set up. fact that it happened in a consulate where these things don't usually happen i mean if you want john to murder a critic you hire an assassin or do it much more cleanly for it to happen inside the consulate for it to happen in a consulate in istanbul. turkey and saudi arabia on not on very good terms for it to happen someone who writes a column in the washington post that column which has damaged. and when someone is a conference of saudi arabia damaged is end of or to create to present himself as a reformer because. he was telling the world that this was not

a form of this was a brutal dictators and one column managed to defeat the millions of dollars of comment and someone was was being the brutality of the dismembering of of this. betrayed friend of ours. collectively it makes a difference the fact that he is a journalist the world of journalism has been on its feet since then saying this should not be tolerated there should be no cover up and that's why trump is under a lot of pressure not to not to be involved in a cover up or although he would love to. crown prince more than someone obviously denies any any allegation like that here but my point is israel has killed journalists. as we've seen them on camera and american citizens like rachel corrie have been killed by say other countries in the middle east israel it

can't just be that he was a great journalist and he wrote for the washington post some suggest because he's a journalist the world of journalism is what generates pressure on policymakers i mean look at the woodrow. was now by businesses by politicians from the investment conference in saudi arabia this would not have happened had it not been for the media the media is actually. waiting to see how these people are behaving and they are going to have to have a go at them and when we talk about israel israel is a is an occupation power and it's a brutal occupation or occupiers are brutal by nature they will not tolerate anyone seeking freedom from their occupation. but at the same time there is a creation of the western world. if the last colonial project that we have tell me about the man himself he was

a hero was previously close to the saudi royal family. and he was a good friend of osama bin laden's well as our beloved and was a good friend of so many people he was a good friend of the americans he was a good friend of the family context is very important here because when osama bin laden went to afghanistan and forth with the mujahideen that was an american war against the soviet union everybody welcomed it. so that that that's history but for a more recent part of our history we always insisted until the day he died and i had a discussion with him only hours before he disappeared he insisted he wasn't. an opposition member against the royal family he was just a critic of some of the policies adopted by the crown prince he was very anxious that the country was taking a turn into what is worse he was he was afraid or he was concerned

about its future that's why he wrote what he wrote of he was never a member of the opposition he worked for them he worked with faisal when he was head of intelligence he worked for him when he became a mess of the of so they will be in london. and then in washington i remember. once he was dispatched by his government to meeting in beirut in two thousand and five in which i was involved that brought together members of the leadership of hamas and very senior former members. of the u.s. administration and some british governments his government thought this was an important meeting and sent him to attend it with us so he was really very close do you think he felt immune to any kind of threats from. the present leadership in saudi arabia he knew if he went back to saudi arabia he would have been arrested and probably sent behind bars like the like some of his other friends

that's why the lingo decided not in the ritz girl to actually be worse yes not just that it's got them a couple of months earlier in september. economists scholars academics journalists who simply did not speak were arrested and sent to prison and now some of them are likely to be sentenced to death but he never but never occurred to him that he would be assassinated or even kidnapped. while living in washington or in the stumble that thought never came to or came to us whenever thought so that maybe it would do something that is it wants to take in you by some surprise the civil society reaction after all after nine eleven saudi u.k. and saudi u.s. relations weren't particularly affected there was no great effect of that there was no hasn't been impact on u.k.

saudi relations after we hear of the slaughter in yemen twenty million people in that in the world's worst humanitarian crisis we're surprised when you heard that say liam fox to his amazing minister would be going to a saudi investment conference i was expecting him to withdraw because of the pressure from the media on him now see saudi arabia the difference they're made to so the idea is that he started practicing politics and unprecedented thuggish way his war on yemen his campaign against carter. and his incarceration of his own cousins of his i'm caus his. siege of there well of. them believe there was a bad time some of those relatives were what about him i mean he gave he gave tom half a trillion dollars what about you know it's really is he so dear since one of them someone started running. started becoming

a burden on the west it is a clear burden on the west now term they don't want to see this because he was benefiting he was telling his constituency back in the in the united states that he was being able to bring in billions of dollars from the saudis so that was the justification for whatever they did now the atrocities in yemen are for everybody there to see the this option of harmony within the gulf area and seem to care about that there was drains away said britain will still continue selling arms to say that bus atrocity was seventy schoolchildren were killed often saying actually more british lives will be threatened if we don't sell the saudis weapons because terrorism factories threaten britain's streets if we don't. work with it is true governments have interests and governments pursue their interests and they convince their electorate that without this money you cannot have jobs this is

a sinister game they play but look at civil society the media human rights organizations n.g.o.s have increasingly being been putting pressure on western governments that this cannot continue like this when he said he would do the job in yemen in just a few days and it's been years now with the with the tall with the death on the rise the boycott against cutter and what it did to even western interests in the region. and now the as a nation in such a brutal manner of jamal fashionably so increasingly he his cover is being removed he's been exposed or have to wait i have to ask you of course this week has again been deadly in gaza the gaza division of the i.d.f. got

a letter of commendation for its actions in gaza your thoughts about what's happening there if you look at the way the israelis deal with the palestinians it's just another imperialist colonial power they want to maintain their occupation they don't learn from history anything of us is getting stronger. hamas is not. moments at the time of the time being because of the because of the boycotts because of the siege imposed on gaza but hamas is still there and its credibility has not been affected because that athenians look at hamas and look at the other but as seen in factions and they can see who is holding fast and who is not increasingly weak. i want our bus is almost finished it's almost as if to me thank you after the break award winning self-proclaimed activist on his story from prison to public good. to have going underground.

well i think it certainly makes sense for for moscow to think. in its contacts with the united states i just fear that dominant view in this city is that it is nearly impossible until the united states kind of settle this domestic divide the environment and he sees you know i hate to see this. as work toxic but that's exactly what it is and i think it's in a way. you know you're damned if you do it you're damned if you don't.

come to russia you know as if no one has ever heard of and never even heard about most. when. he's changed there are fees in the ratio of the level of the physiology that is at the level of the brain the

brain as a form of plasticity can we wire itself not just the brain but the rest of the body respond.

to. in. defeat. welcome back while there are many reports from the turkish media over the alleged killing of jamal khashoggi and those familiar with the case say it was organized by saudi arabia's intelligence services but in the u.k. g c h q's about surveillance under the water to resume was found to be illegal by the european court of human rights but before moscow resident snowden drop the mike

on a mess of ailments there was barack brown he served time for his efforts and was hounded by the f.b.i. he now joins me via skype from san antonio in texas thanks so much brant for coming on just start by telling us about the pursuance project which i understand you've launched in the past few weeks whisper so it has been the progress of her bout two years now ever since i was released from prison after my four year students involved stim to cell from having a bus to get some of these same issues in the u.k. right now going surveillance of what not so pursuance is a framework or what we call process democracy it allows individuals with notices or . relationships to congregate online in this ecosystem that we're overseeing and better do since it was the center of things we've been doing in the past ten years in digital activism and transparency activism it's made age. has changed things to just next to extent that it's not yet i think really been realised rather stood by

even most educated observers and we hoped you would change that over the next few years the story of how you ended up in jail is quite a long one just briefly i mean over here they'll be people with anonymous mosques on guy fawkes night in the vemma they raided your place for a document including ones on anonymous many others and you were put in jail what for sharing a link let alone holding those dogs. it was a rather it's a rich tapestry ok so was i was that the search warrants they delivered when they first read me listed a number of the illicit intelligence contracting firms that my group project d.m. had been investigating that's h.p. gary palin's or firms have been discovered to be engaging with the us government's assistance in some cases in a legal and indefensible attacks on journalists and activists in the us and brought up so my case because of that it was a blatant instance of

a tally ation for marc crowdsource research my general projects that obviously backfire on them and they had to drop a lot of the more controversial charges including as you said the linking charges which were the most controversial but also kind of illustrated how frightened certain states and state actors are of this new trend towards individuals building procedural structures online they can develop their own structures and ways we've been impossible twenty years ago and that's something that is i think it's evident that this is challenging to existing power structures around the world but of us authorities aim to frighten you surely people are going to be frightened by your example and think even sharing a link. can put them behind bars fairly that's always part of the of the intent when they go after whistleblowers sleeper's activists revolutionaries and try to very visibly. you know subject them to prison much much better than keep the

murderer specs that is absolutely intent we use we have to make sure that doesn't work obviously another great thing about my case is that it didn't work and rather than silence me by voice in ways that quite frankly i was not competent enough to achieve myself do you see any particular reason then why mainstream media as it's called is not more aware of championing say stories like mass surveillance i mean theresa may have just been found in breach of articulate of the year and prevent european convention on human rights of a mass of valence it's not made such a big deal of in the elite me here over there here having worked with the media being and having been a part of the media for most of my adult life i was a freelancer having been the subject of media coverage it's increasingly my belief is that a lot of this is structural a lot of it has to deal to go in the us in the us media culture with really a moral and just sort of vapid mentality that a great number of editors and producers and writers have is and even good

journalists even journalists who really care about these issues they face challenges they have to have a newspaper they have to have some advance and even when that event comes you know it's reported on in a few publications well that doesn't really take doesn't doesn't really cause any any long term pressure on these institutions in the first place so unless there are sustained attention of the sort that would also rounds out other issues that brown's other important things without that the state attention nothing is really accomplished and that's what route was really my concern bill back to eleven years ago and it's why i first got involved in activism in some ways experimental methods in the first place i felt that if we could simply harness citizens who want to stand these issues want to understand them and put them in a situation. where they themselves it's the states. then we would see fundamental changes across the board on all issues but you're working on geopolitical issues we had cables obviously from wiki leaks no one ever mentions snowden in moscow these

days much julian assange because in arbitrary detention here in london. even if pursuance reveals some startling connections in geopolitics do you think it will be picked up this time around you know it's always hard to say there's always an arbitrary arbitrariness to what gets picked up on you know i'm constantly surprised at what the american people for instance what they end up caring about what they clean up is missing it's always a crapshoot and so you have somebody uncertain factors whenever whenever something like this comes out you know that the revealing of leaks the obtaining of information that's always just a small part of the battle the real battle is convincing the public that there is a reason for the big and so changing that that's that's a big part of of ensuring that when things come out when we learn more about the d.c.h. we have made but the j.c.h. going back years years of involving some of these same abuses in d.c. h.q. documents were among those that snowden actually revealed years ago and it's going

green while pointed out one of those documents illustrated the ways that the burial lists that mission now for british citizens and u.s. citizens involved in the entire legal anonymous but just a hack attack of people cell phones these things came out then didn't make an impact then it's hard to say whether or not these things are going to all made in some real response by the public or by officeholders in the u.k. it's just hard to say the former head of g c h who was on this show and obviously said the actions were all benign as you'd expect him to form a weekly leaks pardon of the guardian is now revealed and i don't want to obviously we don't want to frighten whistleblowers they reveal that for decades the british secret services have been infiltrating peace activists the anti-apartheid movement ale b.g. now to be activists green activists just endless number of organizations so what can people do to evade that kind of secret service seve length of

a more arguably a more sinister kind with fake i.d.'s and so on. the most exciting thing to me about that c.h.p. you are history about if you're the implication in the u.k. is that as the guardian noted the vast majority of these groups were left wing groups and as extraordinarily over overreact to left wing groups even those i don't really do much much value to to the left or right or anybody else. people have to be aware of that this is a cat and mouse game that will always occur regardless of how much better we get we get online security and that sort of thing there is always human intelligence there's always vectors for them simple as oceans and that's what pursuits project we have a number of tools in place whereby users depending on their needs security was this be used by people facing even much even worse oppression and defects in the u.s. and u.k. making sure that they have the ability to understand what the what the history of

these practices are and reacts to how they evolve while so always remembering that you were never hundred percent safe if you're engaged in trying to change things meaning of political associations we've now heard that the atlantic council has been involved in this facebook push to shut down what they call in authentic facebook pages you seem remarkably optimistic after all you've been through do you think that in a sense that means the end of facebook rather than the end of what they judge is authentic well we're seeing the culmination for the coming at a number of issues here obviously the internet has a long history of being free and an unknown soldier and as the culture changes for these companies to take a stronger hand that's what isn't true and even the government to get stronger hand you know a facebook of course is a right but. you know even as it expands it becomes something more it's a utility it's still not even till it's my argument so they certainly have the

right to do whatever they want i would i would invite people who are serious about their internet use and but they're still looks to consider. other options pursuance again allows people to do that within their own organizations within their own entity that they create on our platform and that's one way of solving the problem but it's not to have a sort of core solution there's always going to be these these issues always in a beat these conflicts between you know letting letting things go right on their own letting it go systems and and thousands of letters bloom on the one hand and keeping people feeling as if they're safe or well informed on the other and facebook engineer facebook is not going to solve that problem if there are progressive politicians around the world who are interested some of them saying the facebook is a utility and groups like that should be under democratic control is the pursuance going to help politicians who ask for your help when the creating new policies should they be elected to office we're already working with some office holders and

some previous office holders we're going to young's daughter of the icelandic pirate party who was a major wiki leaks volunteer and she's on our board rector's she'll be there as we have some a local soldiers in the u.s. that are going to be working with us but also to we're also happy to buy them assistance in structuring these things figuring out how to harness their constituents out the people that that want to help with these issues and this goes for n.g.o.s nonprofits all kinds of existing institutions that are against mass surveillance buying its police states drug war you know civil rights abuses all of these groups agree that i think that they can use this to solve that big big problem the point for century which is how do you get this this huge constituency out there how do you get this this these huge numbers of well there who agree with you and want to help but they're not giving up but not being given the up and has to do so that's the major problem trying to solve across the board and i think this pursuance will use will make it easier and should i just ask you given that your

media seems obsessed by one particular issue how did russia hack your elections that seems to be the main. sure in cable news in your country why didn't they they pay more attention to that question than this battle for democracy youth in to be have planning whatever whatever a major issue comes up that has partisan elements. and we're pretty complex you're going to see a lot of poor coverage from the u.s. that's not unique to this situation i don't know of any well informed servers who have claimed that bush actually hacked the election there were certainly some some claims early on that perhaps certain servers have been hacked those claims are dismissed to my knowledge i think the key issue that's been concentrated on is what relationship to trump but ocracy has with the putin kleptocracy and beyond that what certain groups some of these companies like a magenta leather gun palance or what role they may have had in what i think are not entirely new methods of disrupting elections or putting us information they're

sort of they're sort of taking advantage of the ability of the internet to mass to do on a large scale what used to be do it on a small scale and that's and that's not unique to the celeste election it's not unique to russian operations the u.s. a lot of the same knowledge of procedures that we've seen been used on twitter some of these were created and developed by the u.s. some of these companies including the ones that we exposed back in two thousand and eleven the the the really ironic thing is that the obama spawn ministration came after me so viciously for exposing a persona management bot nets you know propaganda networks using software to do mass produced propaganda on a on a very meaningful scale including including perpetrated by some of the same companies that later came up in connection with the trump because it's an election so they seem to have shot themselves in the foot by about it rather than hang it sums up what we were saying they just reacted as i normally do it was

a blower and try to get as much of prison time as possible and that has proven not to be have been a group about you know their letter for the farewell contributors are you. good episodes and you will be back for a brand new season on wednesday january night till then we can tell just by social media you see. my son doing drugs my nephew was still in drugs my sister just with doing drugs it was like an epidemic of drug abuse america's public enemy number one in the united states is drug abuse we started going after the users in the prison population who are we started treating sick people people who are addicted to these drugs like criminals while i was on the hill. then the war on drugs was a mistake there are countless numbers of people who are in prison for.

sins for minor minor offenders in the drug trade it's a lot watching your children grow up and miss you in waves and say bye daddy as you're walking out of a business it's just it doesn't get easier. join me every thursday on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to guest of the world of politics sport i'm showbusiness i'll see that. i had a great education a good job and a family that loved me. i never had to worry about how i would eat some where i would sleep. i'm facing christmas alone out on the streets of london well you look to be a little bit cold on. the floor you like going up those you know just not in the still give up food for the homeless.

because you don't really feel like a human being you know. and then. the guy just came over to me and gave me a job this book. let me. read you the thing.

with the imminent departure of u.s. defense secretary james mattis fears grow that notorious blackwater is making a comeback for a full page ad is published in its name warning that we all coming to. us congress has criticised a cooperation deal between the associated press and china's ation live news agency saying beijing might exploited for propaganda. and another draws to an end to media outlets lionel says his personal look back at the winners and losers. the initial screech clamor of revolution the truth hurts.