or so maybe but it's only a possible that it's a metaphor for people. and attack on journalism and a direct assault on the 1st amendment reaction paul is in for media freedom groups it's us for 30 years found 17 new charges against julian assange he's carrying up to 10 years in jail. an emotional 2 reason may cause the day and else things he'll step down as conservative party leader on june 7th. i do so with no ill will but with enormous and ensuring gratitude to attach the opportunity to serve the country. and president trump announces he's sending another 1500 troops to the middle east as tensions with iran mounts

but that number is much lower than recent reports suggested. if you were to follow r.t. on social media and never miss a break news that day stay with us now for the latest there from the world of politics on the big picture. on this week's show what is the candidate who gets the most votes actually becomes president how the electoral vote could become moot also in this half hour an update on iran's those sanctions tighten and tensions mount do we risk an accidental war but 1st why do americans pay a lot more for prescription drugs than people in other countries perry holland cook in washington this is the big picture on our team america.

44 states of filed a lawsuit accusing 20 pharmaceutical companies of a conspiracy to inflate prices for more than 100 generic drugs these are meds you may take to treat diabetes high cholesterol high blood pressure cancer or epilepsy in some cases a coordinated increases jacked up your cost more than a 1000 percent of the complaint was filed in u.s. district court in connecticut where state attorney general william tong said we have hard evidence that shows the generic drug industry perpetuated a multi-billion dollar fraud on the american people we have e-mails text messages telephone records and former company insiders that we believe will prove a multi-year conspiracy to fix prices and divide at market share for huge numbers of generic drugs americans pay far more for prescription drugs than people in other

countries why let's ask stephen shell or attorney and author of farmageddon nation betrayed big pharma big greed the inside story of one lawyers battle to stem the flood of dangerous medicines and protect public health steve tell us about it well the new book is much more up to date and in-depth it just came out recently in the last couple of months and it's actually doing pretty well it's called big pharma big greed. and obviously the title speaks for itself and it talks about very very specific information that. tracks the problems and the misconduct directly to the pharma companies involved to the universities like harvard university faculty and in some cases university of pennsylvania and elsewhere. with the faculty of some of these

universities are actually helping big pharma get away with some of the major misconduct that they're getting away with so if you really want to get upset read my blog and learn what's happening read that book i got it all right well you've teed up the obvious 1st question why do drugs cost less in canada and elsewhere than they cost here it's mainly because they have very effective lobbyists and very effective contributions for political candidates to get elected so that they can protect their turf at the expense of other regulating countries so for example you can buy most pharmaceuticals much cheaper in canada in european countries in india south africa we are by far in most instances the most expensive but it isn't a matter of a few cents it's a matter of double and triple and quadruple the cost and in addition what happens

is many of these drugs all though they have american companies listed as the seller other distributor were are made in foreign countries primarily you see them from india you see them and from. china. you see them from even small islands like malta and and we have almost no ability although we claim we do to regulate what goes into the bottle of these pills with these pills and drugs and what they do is because pharma has such major control over our regulatory bodies i mean you can see the perfect example of the way trump is fighting to name his own judges it's going to get much weaker spotlight away he's got to really do. to find judges that will go

along with is they call it conservative policies that isn't conservative these guys are kooks and you know they really are and i've come up with a name for trump by the way you know how he's always going people names. try mine out for the already and now i call him big snout clown joe biden has clown i remember what kind of clown i'm talking about but big snout look at him when he talks his mouth hurls and it looks like us now well i thought that was just very appropriate outspoken u.s. representative alexandria cortez cited an hiv drug as an example of how our system is broken listen to what she said. for some reason the conclusion that every single other western or rather developed country in the world has has come to we haven't been able to come to an australia out practice $8.00

a month in the united states it's almost $2000.00 a month because we have legislated a set of incentives and we have legislated a system that allows that to happen let's talk about big snow we understand that it cost millions and millions of dollars in research and development to make that very 1st pill no doubt but stephen if there is such a price disparity between what i wrote i can read and others away for a drug why are we effect of lee subsidizing health care elsewhere. that that's an interesting question and the point i want to make that right now though 1st is that a lot of these drugs the majority of them cost them very little to develop usually what happens is some small company develops them and then sells the interest to a major company who makes the big profit in the selling distribution so the true story of what the drugs cost is almost always not true if you believe the

pharmaceutical company that's claims it's the manufacturer or distributor or seller the true story is basically hidden and that's one of the big problems here and our in addition reason drugs are so most difficult to buy at a reasonable price here is that our legislators and particularly the federal government and the f.d.a. no i blame the f.d.a. for a lot of our problems they have approved drugs with inadequate warnings and you have constantly you turn on television you'll see advertisements for lawyers constantly about some drug that is causing thousands of people serious injury and death why does that happen it's because the f.d.a. has failed miserably in protecting the public there's a woman who's head of the pharma division her name is janet woodcock the says the

most important thing we could do in my opinion is get her out of there and her team as soon as possible and get somebody in there who will protect the public janet woodcock remember that name i hear she may retire in september i go home and i pray at night that she does so well when you talk about them as the v.a. not doing their job i thought about this 737 max situation where they say the f a a the federal aviation administration has turned over to march of the regulatory in the testing on the back stopping to the airlines themselves is it analogous. it's analogous in a way yes they depend on the pharmaceutical companies too and actually the pharmaceutical companies pay the federal government to expedite their claims to have the drug approved so they the government makes money on expediting their drugs

more quickly without the guidelines of protection i used to manage radio stations and corporate counsel explained to us in no uncertain terms that if we discussed advertising rates with competing radio stations we were breaking the law this big pharma investigation turned up actual phone records and text messages between competing drug company execs messages as blatant as and this is a quote we are raising the price right now just letting you know stephen this is pretty damning stuff isn't it. what do you think airlines do the company puts out a new price whether it's united airlines or whatever and the next thing you know the rest of them seem to just copy it in time and this is something they do and it is a serious problem there used to be regulation and the other problem is most of the

4 of the generic companies. have deals with actual major manufacturers whether it's eli lilly pfizer j. and j. . and there have been times when they make a deal to not put their product generic product on the market. so that the big time companies can get away with selling selling their or name brand product longer at much higher prices and that is a big problem there is very little reasonable regulation and the reason is that the people guarding they have the foxes guarding here it's worse than for. we have bears and gorillas and everything guarding the hen house that eat this stuff and nobody protecting the public well you talk about the generic some 90 percent of prescription meds americans take are generics it's an industry congress established back in the eighty's the thinking being that once these patents on brand name drugs

expired the generic makers would compete to make drugs more affordable so the scheme that these suits allege is pretty heinous here in washington we smell money everywhere whereas on call sam dropped the ball on this. uncle sam has dropped the ball because he doesn't even know how to play ball and the biggest problem we have is we need to get honesty and integrity into the situation as soon as possible and donald trump. i don't know what happened to him you know one of the big problems i've become aware of is there are a lot of pesticides you've heard about. weed killers and now causing cancer and golf courses a full of pesticides in fact i have reason to suspect in this some good literature on it that pesticides particularly the ones used in past years cause parkinson's and neurologic diseases in the people who play golf to regularly

and. then again there was no regulation of that and i think maybe that's what happened to donald it's a fact that his brain well much golf yeah these are big plans nines on the campaign trail they talk about smaller government but we may have reached the point of too little regulation thank you attorney and author stephen sheller. coming up 5 united states presidents took office after losing the popular vote why there might not be sexed holland cook in washington this is the big picture on r t america.

has a tense situation in venezuela is still all over the news the problem in venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented but that socialism has been faced only templeman from the inside venezuela things were different we're going to announce sanctions against petroleum to venezuela associated. famously have a son of a moment too soon to move the tempest and that football battle to stay on the moon yet the keep the magic at the moment the focus of the who story isn't new nixon called in henry kissinger to tell him that it would not be tolerated that in latin america an alternative economic and social system could take hold and therefore the policy would be to make. the chilean economy scream so

one snowmaking the economy of venezuela screed. there's a cyclical nature to things there's t. globalization there's globalization there's lowering interest rates there's rising interest rates so when the interest rates rise. the impacts it is said will be instantaneous. 2 of our last 3 presidents lost the popular vote and 3 others did previously now 15 states and the district of columbia have acted to circumvent the electoral college by granting very electoral votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote the latest nevada brings the number to 197 of the 270 electoral votes

that ensure election the pact these states have entered into would take effect one off states have joined to add up to 270 good idea bad idea let's ask iconic new york radio and t.v. pundit steve malzberg a frequent contributor who joins us from our bustling new york bureau steve welcome . allo great to be here hey the argument for the electoral vote was that otherwise a handful of the most populous states would control the election but didn't the 2016 election demonstrate the disproportionate clout of less populous states. you know donald trump won 30 of the 50 states and if you take california out of the equation he would have won the popular vote by a 1000000 and a half folks if you take new york and california 2 bastions of. residence the big biggest populated states and democrat states to boot he would have won by

3000000 so without new york and california donald trump won the popular vote by 3000000 votes so this notion that my god hellery won the popular vote she lost all know she lost she lost 30 states 130 of them so i think it's working and it's working quite well founding fathers were geniuses and this is how they intended it to be again you know it's not a football game if you have less often yards but you win the game nobody says all but the other team and 3 times as much often doesn't matter the parameters are set and it's fair and square and the only reason you're seeing this movement is because hillary lost if hillary won the electoral college nobody would have said it's just . we lost so we have to change everything well you mention the founders the electoral vote concept came about in a very different america today we think of it as balancing big and small states or the coasts in the interior but in the seventy's and eighty's lines were already

being drawn between the north and the south because in a direct election northern voters without number the votes in the south where slaves could not vote wouldn't a national popular election better deliver one person one vote. no i mean i mean one person one vote yes but if you want the whole busy country to weigh in and be counted for i mean otherwise the red states by the way they just happen by coincidence to be red and republican rural states and small states wouldn't count and something to understand these people who are behind this and i've debated many of them on the air over the years and recently they don't just stop at this they don't want the senate to have the makeup it currently has because it's not fair why should california have 2 votes in a small red state or smaller state red or blue have 2 votes or 2 senators we should do it by the way we do the congress what we already have i mean the house so we

already have the house that does that this said it was set up in a different way they also want to stack the supreme court heck in california they're passing laws to keep donald trump off the ballot this is all the end defective sore losers and if they can't get their way through the the way it's been done for 200 plus years they get to change everything well in the interest of consistency $48.00 states use the winner take all method of awarding their electoral votes but maine and nebraska allocate them proportionally to the popular vote in the constitution does leave it to state legislatures to choose how presidential electors are chosen so if enough additional states join in this national popular vote pact no need to change the constitution that's it right. i know many people would disagree many scholars have written about this and a lot lot people who are much smarter than i am not a lawyer but i do play one sometimes on t.v. as you know and in fact they're looking to circumvent this group in these groups

are looking to circumvent by gaining enough states which i don't think they can by the way they're running out of democrat states who will sign on but if they did get to 270 you need 3 quarters of the states to change the constitution in any way shape or form this is trying to circumvent that so many believe it would 1st have to go to congress and of course that would go to the courts so just because they would do it doesn't mean they could get away with it and by the way how fair is this you you are in a state. that state isn't even going to care how the state votes in other words if the state votes for candidate a but nationally candidate b. won the popular vote that state is going to take their electoral votes and say vote for candidate b. even though the state vote if a candidate it's unlikely because it's they know it's a democrat state i'm going to go democrat but it could happen how fair representation is that thank you outspoken steve malzberg and are in and why

while the usa and iran both say we don't want war tensions mount when secretary of state might pump alun acting defense secretary patrick shanahan briefed the house and senate this past week they offered evidence that iran may be prepared to attack american military and diplomatic personnel in the region members of congress came away divided as to the threat what next let's ask john said levy's are geo political strategist and consultant to the u.s. state department john welcome back good to be back with you the pentagon is working on a plan to send 10000 troops to the region where we've already deployed an aircraft carrier and other military assets how close are we to some kind of miscalculation triggering a shooting war it depends on what the iranian government. in the middle east that's really what it comes down to the u.s. has sent as you correctly note bomber squadron to the middle east has sent an aircraft carrier the u.s.s. lincoln and now i think the number of troops is questionable i don't know if

they're going to be a precise figure there was 10000 there was 5000 in the media reports now maybe they're talking about 1500 but the larger issue is the u.s. is looking to work with our allies in the region to contain and to deter iran after learning from intelligence sources in late april that cut some silly money the head of the codes force in the iranian revolutionary guard corps was activating proxies to attack u.s. and allied interest throughout the middle east so you're comfortable that as all of this military brinksmanship is rolling out that there is some diplomacy going on in the background most of the diplomacy seems to be external it's a matter of coercive diplomacy with the united states is signaling to the iranian government that it will not tolerate any types of iranian inspired attacks against u.s. forces u.s. diplomats u.s. assets anything u.s. or allied in the region but it's looking to deter iran from doing so i don't think anyone in the white house is looking to initiate any type of

a military attack on iran but you deter by making sure that they understand that there is overwhelming military force in case they badly miscalculate well in just under a week iran has quadrupled its nuclear enrichment capacity by cornering iran's do we risk pushing them toward developing nukes. my own sense and speaking with people who know the iranian nuclear program far better than i do is that iran has never let up in its pursuit of nuclear weapons and in fact one of the things that we've discovered is that technically they were in quote unquote compliance with the j c p a way but that's because that agreement only covered the declared facilities that the iranian government has at its disposal not the ones that we suspected that are hidden where the. u.n. inspectors are not permitted access there only the iranians can verify their own nuclear weapons activities or deny that any are taking place and look at where we are now just several weeks into this latest quarter and quote crisis the iranian

government big very clear they can move back towards a nuclear weapons development program in a matter of weeks months at the longest this is not a 10 year program they're ready to roll whenever they need to be sure and back when that j p c o a deal was struck it ran like many others expected hillary clinton to be president so mr trump's style sure is a curveball he seems to want to keep everybody guessing is that working there after 2 plus years of tweets have world leaders figured out that he's more bark than bite i think it depends on which leader is with which countries and governments they're running and what issues we're dealing with when it comes to iran there clearly is a lot of mixed signals being out of the white house so on the one hand the president makes very clear he doesn't want to start a war he doesn't want the u.s. to enter into another major military engagement especially in the middle east after afghanistan and iraq the wars that he condemned in his presidential campaign on the

other hand he says that if the iranian government provokes or attacks the u.s. government or u.s. assets in the middle east it's the quote unquote official end of iran leaving it to the supreme leader ali khamenei and custom still in money and the supreme council the assembly of experts to try to figure out what the u.s. will possibly do next but it's deliberate to keep them off balance well to that point candidate trump campaigned against what he called these stupid wars and what we're hearing now sounds reminiscent of what we're we were told before the 2003 iraq invasion and we could count on less international support this time how would he sell this war to war wary americans well i don't know that a member. and so weary of war i think what americans are tired of is the united states entering into military conflicts and not winning them decisively quickly this is the way wars have historically been won by the u.s.

by russia or any other country now we have 1015 year wars seemingly without end i think that's the political problem in the united states but i would also say holland this is a difference here with the what's happening with iran right now and what happened with iraq it was a very different international environment it was shortly after the september 11th attacks and the fear in the u.s. government was that a rogue regime with weapons of mass destruction could conduct a terrorist attack far more catastrophic than what took place on september 11th this is different the u.s. once a run to stop looking to rebuild the persian empire from afghanistan to the mediterranean coast to focus on its own internal dynamics to repair its own economy and to be a peaceful normal neighbor in the middle east if the iranian government militarily attacks the u.s. our allies in the region and continues to be the world's leading sponsor of international terrorism they will have a price to pay well next year is also the election year that they are as it is here

president trump ran against war would a hard line iranian parliamentary gang be actually bolstered by conflict. i have a hard time believing that the iranians are looking to trigger a military conflict either it would not be a fair fight they would be destroyed now we don't want to see a military conflict and we don't want to see endless quote unquote post-war situation in iran a far larger country than iraq or afghanistan so no one serious is talking about anything along those lines but the fear is a miscalculation that the supreme leader that major general could steal the money or someone else in iran will provoke the u.s. accidental. and advertently and trigger a robust muscular response and then if iran feels it has to retaliate in kind then you have an escalation that i think nobody would like to see happen in the region at the brink thank you john so the levy's pleasure to be here and thank you for

watching the big picture i'm morial day let's remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom and salute all who served and made it home and to vietnam vets welcome home. cook in washington question or. if you will not obey the voice. to do all these months and. then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you. and then the white people. and the point must pretend to black people if they get rid of whites only the problems will go away. within the. presence of the.

people being tortured to death the elderly people in the. face why. are we. going to make things in dreams it's all slick and a lot of them. are. true that. they need to be asking for a. civil war in south africa. rather . and be in the code of europe and the. what politicians do. they put themselves on the line. to get accepted or rejected.

so when you want to be president. or somehow want to be. the 2 going to be pros this is what the 43 in the morning can't be good. i'm interested always in the waters of our. max kaiser this is the kaiser report tripped us bring us air and it's just bleeding right into our lives we can hear the lawn mowers outside in their.