another division opens up in the u.s. this time over judoon a song with some rights groups and even a twenty twenty presidential contender offering support others though are demanding a swift extradition and trial of the now arrested whistleblower. we are going back to united states quickly as possible hope mr response which was the message that we're getting that the american people are getting by what's happened here today is you know be quiet so the line otherwise there will be consequences approves arms exports to saudi arabia despite having a place that's according to german media reports. the broad show of saddam's military announce his support for transparent elections with international observers asking for a transition period and the new constitution as well. divisibility dot com for more

on those headlines and others to right now it's the latest from the world of politics and more on the big picture. on this week's show wiki leaks founder julian assange expelled likely to be extradited and undaunted is sure in all those i'm on trial but first venezuela we hear about and calculable inflation and widespread blackouts what's it really like there as the winds of war are whirling around as a stakeholder and. the threat of american intervention and in israel a fifth term for benjamin netanyahu is b.b. there donald trump. cook in washington this is the big picture art merik.

what in the world is the usa up to let's ask attorney and political activist kevin zeese welcome. last night you were among the protesters outside the venezuelan embassy and inside and who controls that building now venezuela controls that we actually slept in the embassy people misleading n.b.c. for a few days now and we talked of it as well and staff they are actually there they own the building it's a venezuelan government building in the virginia venezuela government is the government of president maduro he was elected with sixty eight percent of the vote a year ago totally legitimate election hundred fifty plus election observers internationally all reached the same conclusion it was a fair election he was democratically elected so much has the keys not quite oh material has the keys we keep hearing how chaotic things are on the streets and venezuela you've just been there recently how does that square with what you've

witnessed well we're not just being told lies about ben as well there are just partial truths we're told outright lies about that as well i mean we are hearing false that after a false that we arrived during the electricity crisis caused by united states as a u.s. attack on the grid a cyber attack or a cyber attack electronic attack and a physical attack multiple attacks and as they were fixing it they kept attacking it so people were in the dark part mostly lights were starting to come back we got there but there was no people looting there was no chaos in the streets people understood that the electric attack was done by united states in order to create chaos as an excuse to come into it as well so they've worked together to solve that crisis and work together to solve it the food crisis we saw nobody hungry but as well has a food distribution called the clap program that gets food to six million homes that's to about twenty million venezuelans each month as a box of food with all the food basics and his sells for fifteen cents each month.

they were to go twice a month and that would leave us with food probably soar into homelessness then as well as actually built two and a half million homes in the last few years for its poorest people to have million homes with three to four people and house hold that's ten million people out of a population of thirty million we didn't do that in puerto rico you know united states every night united states there's not a crisis there's an economic problem in venezuela because the oil prices have dropped and because of the u.s. course of measures the the economic war so it's a there's definitely challenges but they're working through them they're doing that they would do much better if the u.s. didn't steal its resources right i mean u.s. stolen billions of dollars of venezuela's assets and they're using that money they're putting actually u.s. is putting a billion dollars into funding terrorist activities and then as well as whale oil in venezuela well this week at the united nations vice president pants called on the u.n. to revoke their credentials of venezuela's ambassador yeah and this week secretary

of state mike pompei o told the senate foreign relations committee i don't think there's any doubt that the dural regime represents a threat to the united states of america it is clearly a true threat to the united states kev and how is venezuela a threat to the usa it's a threat in one way because it's declare its independence from the united states it's an independent and sovereign nation and the united states is not like to have that example in its own backyard and so that's the threat that other nations will follow suit it's also a threat because it controls the number one oil reserves diamond reserves and gold reserves the fifth largest gas reserves and minerals that are essential for it like look to electric equipment and for weapons the us wants to have a government that supports united states controlling all those resources well let's hear what vice president pence had to say. with all due respect mr ambassador you shouldn't be here you should return to venezuela

and tell nicolas maduro that it's time is up. it's time for him to go. well that's embarrassing and about nato how does nato figure into what's happening in venezuela i'm glad you bring that up but michael pence embarrassed the united states with those comments and he really is just lying to the security council the security council rejected his recommendations nato is involved because colombia which borders on as well is now a partner in nato they're trying to bring brazil another border the venezuela into nato that's not part of the north atlantic area so it's an unusual extension of nato and it's not a coincidence that they border venezuela with those two borders and with the water the u.s. has been as well virtually surrounded well as nations lined up behind either a majority or quite oh iran's is with a team of dura over the elite iranian military force is a terrorist organization the secretary pompei also told senators there is no doubt

there is a connection between al qaeda and iran to which republican senator rand paul said not so fast i can tell you explicitly you have not been given power or authority by congress to have war with iran same question i asked about the venezuela how is iran's now a threat to the usa again iran has in the same things done as well it declared its independence from the united states in one thousand nine hundred eighty nine with their revolution after decades of the us dominating iran and stealing its oil assets large large of the profits the oil assets venezuela i mean iran declares independence i think there are two things that are in common with iran and venezuela one we're being lied to iran did not buy the nuclear deal everybody knows the only country to buy the nuclear deal was united states iran has lived up to his agreement and we should be lifting sanctions and second both countries recognize

popular movements make a difference because in both countries popular movements we. jek to us domination and declared it has i guess is one third thing both countries want peace with united states despite the way the us treats the united states i found the people of venezuela and iran so friendly they were so bad i was there in both countries as it were so please your we love americans i said what do you mean we want you to go back and tell the truth we know your country being lied to and they're right we are being lied they don't treat you like the ugly american we're not at all you know it was really amazing how welcome we were by in both countries we felt totally safe in both countries we saw in those civil unrest in the country we saw no poverty we visit a wide range of neighborhoods in both is unusual we want to both iran and venezuela i've never been in iran before i was only in venezuela once before this for the election as an observer a year ago so i like so my travels these places all the time but i have traveled there and now it was eye opening to see how much we are lied to well fourth thing that both of these situations have in common is obviously you know it's

a good point i guess you could make that point hey i was solid bin laden's son is said to be among the al qaeda leaders regrouping in iran how susceptible do you think war wary americans are today to the hawks invoking osama and nine eleven is that old news or does that still have appeal here you know united states is very good at ginning up false excuses for war but a war with iran or that is will be a tremendous mistake first iran is twice the size of iraq and as well as six times the size of iraq venezuela has a militia civilian militia two million people armed and trained they start doing that when the minute trump starts saying we're going to invade they start building the militia they have troops of two hundred thousand militia two that's bigger than the us army and iran also has a well tested militia they were attacked by iraq in the one nine hundred eighty s. thing there revolutionary guard is trained the revolutionary guard helped to syria defeat the us in syria with russia and with the syrian government so i think going

to war in either place would be a. admire it be a trap be another waste we have spent eight trillion dollars on neverending wars since two thousand and one we should have dealt with osama bin laden in a criminal court international criminal court prosecute him put him away for life and that would be the end of if we could prove the case and that that's what that's the right approach instead of these never ending wars that irene our treasury and our resources. dateline israel where this week in germany netanyahu want a fifth term as prime minister after a campaign that featured president trump side by side with them on the billboards there what is trump's appeal to israelis his appeal there really is that it means the u.s. protection and this is true not just for trumpet for previous presidents we give billions of dollars a year to israel without that money they could not be conducting the ongoing human rights violations against the palestinian people we protect them in the un when

most of the un is against them without us support iran israel would not be able to be doing what it's doing every day to the palestinian people and unfortunately probably to steal more land more ethnic cleansing and he has to do it because he got little by a slim margin without the really extreme conservative parties in israel he would not be prime minister so now he's in debt to them he's going to push to not this be hard to push you know he is inclined that way anyway he's going to push to abuse the palestinian people even more it's a very dangerous election a very dangerous direction israel's going it's a sad country through its whole existence it's been bludgeoned with threat of war the threat of military action because they are constantly ethnic cleansing they're constantly stealing land and they're constantly have the whole world saying stop stop committing war crimes and you and israel just keep doing it and united states keep protecting and funding it it's we have a government that stands up to israel and tells them to abate international law attorney and political activist kevin zeese thank you for stepping into the big

picture thank you very much. coming up is journalism on trial which is the big picture or treat america. i've been saying the numbers mean something they've matter to us with over one trillion dollars in debt more than ten white collar crime families each day. eighty five percent approval will be loans to the old rich eight point six percent world market rose thirty percent some with four hundred to five hundred three first record per second and this one rose to twenty thousand dollars. china's building

two point one billion dollars a i industrial park but don't let the numbers overrule. the only number you need to remember in one one business should you know bored to miss one and only boom but. there are millions of people in america and around the world who are better educated than ray dahlia but in order to succeed on wall street you need to have a complete lack of empathy this has been driven in study after study after study re dahlia has no consideration about the effect is having out society and the rock the ruination of the lives that is contributing to my being a leech on the system with as hedge fund best lack of empathy and play there that takes a certain kind of myopia and stupidity to work yourself into that state. what

politicians do something to. me put it. so when you want to express. something wanted. to go right to the press this is what the korean people. interested in the was. after seven years of asylum in the ecuadorian embassy in london wiki leaks founder julian assange seems headed to trial in the usa what's in store for a songe let's ask someone who himself served four years in prison among other

charges hacking barrett brown as an activist an award winning journalist and author of among other books the forthcoming my glorious defeats hacktivist narcissist anonymous a memoir he joins us from dallas barrett welcome. thank you for having me and twenty eighteen this film was nominated for two academy awards. do you have the papers. yet. if you go to everest base. that would leak out of the pentagon. request price argument sort of. the time said seven thousand pages each feeling of the white house has been lying about the vietnam war for thirty years. meryl streep played katharine graham tom hanks played ben bradley as the post published the pentagon papers beret if they

were heroes why is assigned you a villain. because the process change the public has changed some extent but the press say it just once or do you can point to and say this is this is how the press operates this is the personalities involved but there is a large segment of the nihilist on the right word but. cowardice my might be more about the appropriate these are people who have over the last twenty years just like the press in the us has failed in the past here and there sometimes attack early they have not actually had also kind of a skewed you know one of not a full success when we look at it the iraq war the afghanistan war the unquestioning ongoing pecial warfare engaged elsewhere that we tend to forget about a couple days. there's nothing they can point to and say this is what we're for this is why we get paid what we get paid and that has just in my lifetime in my career which is spent i guess the last fifteen eighteen years or something it's

gotten worse and. some of them some of the worst some of the worst spell years are still largely unknown they still they involved a lot of the companies the intelligence contracting firms here in the u.s. that did manage. to agree we're still kind of figuring out to undermine the last election by data mining facebook putting out very sophisticated propaganda output based on very sophisticated data mining and put firms like a machine a lot of pallets or archimedes' these are all farms that. groups like mine back into those eleven warning about very specifically. and. the more you look at it. there's very little there that the press can honestly cogently point to and say we don't need to be reformed we don't need to be. set upon from the outside and made to change the way we do things a reaction to the a songe arrest was swift edward snowden tweeting the weakness of the u.s.

charge against a science fair shocking. the allegation he tried and failed to help crack a password during their world famous reporting has been public for nearly a decade it is the count obama's d.o.j. refused to charge saying it endangered journalism so while talking heads on cable argue whether science was a journalist or a publisher i'm reminded of the old gag that freedom of the press belongs to anybody who can afford one and when the founders wrote the first amendment they could not imagine the internet but despite all the misinformation and downright this information online barrett isn't wiki leaks the ultimate expression of what the founders were after. i would say that it could be definitely was something that brought a lot of people like me into activism and just journalism itself in his career ism spot a lot of us it may have veered from its regional mission but that's you know it's

an institution it's not a person you know that's had become separate i would say that the press the people who are out there right now in this country on the news networks on the cable access cable networks trying to find what journalism is are the least equipped to do so i know that doctrine they can point to and say this is why assad is not a journalist that would be fantastic but the fact is that there are people among them like adrian sharon who was the new york times for a while you were staffer for a long time so was the new york magazine who in two thousand and eleven tried to buy stolen e-mails from your the f.b.i. informant anonymous hacker that had been turned a few months prior that i used to work with. try to encourage me and other anonymous because back then to docs u.s. marines in quantico these are things that came up in documents the discovery files in the german trial in my case when i was sentenced. and the f.b.i. the prosecutor and the reason they didn't prosecute him the key reason there may be

other reasons but the most plain reason is that he was useful to the f.b.i. he was someone who opposed anonymous post project p.m.i. group he openly attacked me and like separate articles all of which were. got to a point where they were kind of beyond any kind of just negative porting it got to a real personal strange level. and so if someone like adrian sharon is not i would not only not prosecute the d.o.j. and chelsea manning is and i am for the things i did then we have a problem we have we have the picking and choosing we have the d.o.j. weaponized in these legislation and if the press can't figure that out if they can't figure out things that i've been reported about say adrian chan or john cook who was the first editor of the intercept people like that who have got less credible less civically oriented than what chelsea manning was doing then they're also they're also not equipped to do this i've seen myself a bird's us daughter journalist attacked as not a journalist by the press and then a few months a few years later when the national magazine award they are not ready to make these

decisions and if they can decide because they're journalist who else is a journalist i mean presumably i can't possibly i can say that this person is not a journalist the protections afforded to journalists in this country do not. extend to him he should be prescribe that's where we're going to the d.o.j. is going to do this or the washington post is going to do this for the average joe hack freelancer is going to do this or perhaps an emergence cohesive civic. mechanism of the sort that become possible the last ten years maybe that will come out and do this but either way it's going to get messy so when the press go off the rails of a lazy is this consequence of all the cutbacks there have been a newsgathering are they dumbed down to are dwindling attention span what stuff fundamental mistake the press is made in a generation. i tend to veer way toward some of the more common you know the more wholesale you know it's because of corporate media because of money it's because of

intelligence you know control i tend to based on my experiences which have been pretty. pretty vast and you know unfortunately best really with the press it is that it's laziness it is cowardice it's look it's the same thing that if you look at you know footage from the late sixty's if the anti-war movement the right of all rights movement you look at what people used to do in the west there has been an egg there's been until a tear is affecting the west in the last sixty you know fifty sixty years whereas my generation and probably the i guess the one perceiving me and the one to come there's something wrong with all of us there's something that we have a deficit that other generations throughout human history do not have and you know there's any number of factors we can talk about that might prevent that but obviously that affects the press as well and then beyond that there is these other factors where it's not a it's not a meritocracy in any sense it probably less so than a lot of industries there's a lot of really incompetent figures that have somehow managed to warm their way into the producer editorial roles freelancer roles columnist roles thomas friedman

a guy who won the pulitzer prize in two thousand and two after having first praised putin as a democratic reform or said that the taliban were gone now and you know in the afghanistan war the afghan civilians don't mind being bombed someone who prays the chinese praise the saudi arabians praise this guy who just killed his friend this is somebody who has never been right it's not that he's been wrong couple times it's just flipped a coin would have given you a better sense just as well with charles krauthammer who now is thankfully dead of the military engagements in the last twenty years and what's going to happen with these people don't know what they're doing and the others don't care well throwing gas on the flames president trump is coined the term fake news he rails against journalists as the enemy of the people how do you expect the american people will view julian song. the american people. you know it's kind of hard to describe them as that in particular thing other than that

they are not a cohesive unit capable of overseeing a republic i don't think it really matters how the american people see him. because they're basing this on not just you know not just poor firsthand abuse but poor third hand use altered through very mediocre commentaries but i can tell you how i see him as someone who's never spoken to him directly but has interacted with him and directly over and over again and has had some conflicts with him very publicly last few years and who frankly got into this overhead and went to prison in large part over wiki leaks over the striper e-mails and they could be gary e-mails what about post both the post on wiki leaks now he is somebody who proves you know something very important which is that an individual can come out at this point this day and age in a way that made it impossible twenty thirty years ago and establish something new that's that's capable of confronting criminalise institutions that might seem otherwise intractable. he was a flawed figure which is about no more than the us of the world deserves he was

and remains a isolated figure someone who did not take good counsel and rewarded bad counsel if it was loyally. delivered because last a lot of very very capable people to me several have left like we're going to go on his daughter naomi colvin and join my pursuance so it's organization board directors in recent years he's somebody who you know but we shouldn't expect the world you don't expect someone to both figure out this leaking formula and be the ones and just do it and take all these risks and set up these organizations and then deal with the adversarial dishonest and criminal retaliation by the u.s. u.k. the five eyes whatever that russia has is try to engage them on whatever these other governments have tried to engage him on and then come through it like a shining star this is a guy who was not going to be able to he was was going to be that guy he was not going to be the bonaparte was twenty first century right but he was something and he remains something it's very important that is rights be respected because

regardless of what any. of these people in the press. you know i don't know how they got this point where they decide to make these determinations but regardless of what they say the pret the d.o.j. will absolutely use this case like this in general baron i'm under a minute but i must ask you did four years behind bars if convicted how do you think songs will fare in prison. probably not much better than fair in the embassy when he had internet access visits from pamela anderson he may perhaps grow into that role as i did i think going to prison was something that i needed to do like a lot of you know militant revolutionaries in to do. and maybe maybe he'll build prosper in that environment in a way didn't prosper in the embassy or anywhere else. he has the opportunity and the rest of us have the opportunity. in this movement to make something of this it's not about an individual's how he fares it's not about if he. feels himself in

the cell tomorrow or if he goes on live the happy life with pamela anderson it's about what we're here for and if you're a revolutionary as it claims to be then it's his role now to do what a revolutionary. is intended to do right and that should be it not anything else at brown thank you for your candor and your perspective on this i appreciate your time . and thank you for watching the big picture holland cook in washington question more. after the previous stage of my career was over everyone wondered what i was going to do next. different clubs on one hand it is logical to go from fields where everything is familiar on the other i wanted a new challenge and a fresh perspective i'm used to surprising. if you think.

i'm going to talk about football not the or else you can think i was going to the. by the way what is it that's like here. it is finally how often julian assange was arrested within the dorrian embassy in london is widely expected he will be extradited to the united states to stand trial expected charges for espionage this is truly a dark day for journalists and journals. oh .

everybody time once again for the big guys a report lovely place hey max we're going to follow up on that ray dahlias story you mentioned re dahlia is a multimillion billionaire he's i guess he basically finances all of connecticut and they're bankrupt states he's a connecticut hedge fund guy he just donated two hundred million dollars the largest donation ever to connecticut for their education.