well you know as to. your thirst for action. i have to return to new york watching another lockdown edition of going underground coming out of the show as u.s. security forces prepared to retreat from portland after accusations of gassing beating and kidnapping protesters is the war against racial capitalism far from over we ask longtime protest organizer vice chair of the oregon democrats black caucus gregory. and his nasa launches its historic perseverance rover to mars to look for signs of life is it the end of us a gemini in unlocking the secrets of the universe after chinese attempts to make

history on the red planet we asked alan stern who is leading the 1st ever mission to explore pluto about how high the stakes are when it comes to space all this more coming up in this lockdown edition of going underground but 1st let's go to portland to gregory mchale he's the vice chair of the oregon democrats black caucus gregory what on earth is going on in portland we're seeing images all over the internet of tear gas of warfare not seen even in even in countries where are the u.n. is imposed sanctions on. yeah it's really appalling to see in the streets of berlin it's right downtown in the heart of our city and every night appears to look like a war zone we have troops in camouflage police deploying tear gas and flash bangs and it's absolute chaos down town portland and it's hard to see in a city that i love so much now you know the child was the boss of the department of homeland security says you're all violent and i casts on the streets of poland

apparently they're using george w. bush's 2002 homeland security act $20.00 to not change under president obama that allows the federal security security forces to attack what they presumably see as valid advocates yeah i mean i'm not a violent man i care if they have never committed violence at a protest much of what they say is violent an arche is actually graffiti. i know that many people are appalled to see that graffiti but i think that image is such as george floyd getting the life choked out of him or even the flash bangs and rylan that we've seen at these protests as much more appalling than any graffiti that my occur at a protest and i also think it is a very small amount of individuals who may do that graffiti and it does not make sense in a country those opposed to be a free country that they would be deploying indiscriminate weapons against entire

nonviolent crowds just because of the actions of some small amount of individuals while the nato nations are supposed to i don't know media in countries that washington may see as enemies the pictures of had to be on the internet mainly they're not headlining the news what have you witnessed and what have you heard from the street level actions of police involved in because we've been seeing what seem to be u.s. federal forces attacking protesters on the ground amidst clouds of tear gas. i think what you're seeing is accurate but i think that part of the story that is missed is that this happened because it's 50 days of protest before the federal officers came in and before it was federal officers to point here gas it was our own local police departments that were deploying tear gas and beating protesters and so it's just continued we've seen terror for years with mayors in america as

well as. the president himself not over what to do about pro test but rather who gets to beat up protesters who gets to detain them who gets to throw them in a unmarked bands who gets to deploy tear gas and so at some point the person deplane the tear gas might change but the tenor on the ground in. city of the protests i don't think it's going to end until we see justice for people like brianna taylor and george floyd in that many others that have been killed by police in portland while president jiang has previously been on the record as saying of course the black eyes mother movement began under obama not his presidency and he's saying that there would be no poor blood he would be burned it would be burned to the ground if it wasn't for those federal forces anything personally that said touch your mother demonstrations. yeah i mean the effects of this tear gas i think are

incredibly scary we were there in full protective gear trying to help people out of the gas you don't actually see it coming it just is in the air it's not like a cloud that you can run from there was no warning your skin begins to burn and then eventually your eyes you can completely not see can't breathe and it completely immobilizes you so it's not even a affective way for crowds to be dispersed but rather it makes you have to stop you can't see you can't run away with it which then exposes you to hits from baton send a rest in excedrin and i also think that there are long term effects as well as the short term effects of the tear gas that we don't yet know all of the details about you know for people around the world watching they probably don't know or call and is i suppose there have been never reports that it's one of their happiest most sought after places to live in the world to tell me just

a little bit about poland because i understand even that story isn't true because it mosques are racially racist past yeah absolutely parlin is a beautiful pristine city and there are a lot about it that i like and i think that we can see that many of our community members deeply care about our city and that's why we've been out protesting but portland and the state of oregon have a racist past or again it was not a slave state upon its inception but not because it did not. for any moral reasons but rather because it did the oregonian did not want black people living in the state whether they were slave or not and because of that blacks were excluded from the state of oregon for a very long time there are still deeds to people's houses that say that they cannot be sold to people that are black that is obviously not enforceable because of interpretations of the constitute. now but those deeds exist there's

a lot of races history here not just of exclusion but then also the lack of infrastructure as black communities have flooded in there and because of that and then we see gentrification in disparate police scene that occurs in portland just as many cities in america. well what do you think you are a democrat of what nancy pelosi said that trump was turning it into a banal or a republic i mean i mean that and itself is a strange phrase to use arguably because it is redolent of us empire in your hemisphere with you he with the. trump is suggesting that your period they try that you live in a banana republic that's what this is these pictures show that all these federal forces in poland mean. well i think it's important to know that this is just a small part of portland the entire city is not under siege but i do fear about

what this could look like in other cities i do fear about what impact it can have on the election or even our ability to have an election as you know the city is definitely largely democrat and if cities are turned into war zones in the heart of their cities across the country come november it makes it a lot harder to especially at a time in which many places do not have mail in boating and so i do wary about the impacts but i do think that it is also still important to know 'd that this is not having a huge every day fact on every single person's life in portland but i do think that if elected officials both locally and at the national level such as nancy pelosi don't do more to protect cities from this sort of animation that we could be in a situation that might not necessarily be a banana banana republic but does look a lot like fascism well. they don't trump says the mail in voting

system means that you might not even have elections in november you didn't you did imply that handing lee and the trump. 10 wheelers means he has some kind of hero he was hit by can gas himself there is he to blame partly as well because you say the state security forces were there before the federal troops and and they too were not policing the demonstrations as they should. i think ted we are fully to blame because there are a lot of steps that could have been taken to prevent this sort of federal invasion as i said there were 50 some odd days of protests prior to dharma chum's invasion in those protests had nothing to do with dharma jobs had to do with our local police and those protests where tear gas in and be in and arrested just the same as the federal officers had been doing so what i would have said is that if ted

wheeler would have stood with his people from the beginning if he would have been al in the streets with his own people from the beginning we would have not been in this situation had he not been trying to demonize protesters himself using the same rhetoric that we had talked about earlier about there being violent and our kiss and outside agitators and trying to quell protests himself we would not be in this situation and if he had just simply listened to the demands of the community and how we wanted to reform in the fire and in reallocate funds from violent policing into our community at a time during a pandemic where our community needs those files if he had done all of those things we would have seen 50 something days of protest and thus the federal officers would have not come in so yes he did stand they get tear gassed one single day his own police department threatened to use tear gas and against those same protesters once

he had left that night and had also used tear gas and continue to use tear gas against protesters in conjunction with donald trump federal officers well u.n. permanent security council members china russia britain france then are raising this at the u.n. security council and your top law officer in your country bill maher he said your fellow activists are using tasers pellet guns all manner of ammunition against law enforcement that's that's the view of your top law officer in your country. i go with hesitate to think that he truly believes that and if he does he is having bad information. ask him to maybe attend these protests and see how peaceful they are we see things like people cooking their 247 and feeding in our houses community we see people just standing there are signs and chanting in so incredibly nonviolent protest that has been cracked down on i think so that images of chaos

can be seen in that bureau can then be used for damage charms reelection bid to say that this is the rylan democrats and this is what is coming if you vote for joe biden. but this is trump's america right now in the violence in the chaos that we're seeing is being ensued by his federal police force as well as local police forces well yes finally joe biden the contender democrat contender in november presumed contender hasn't even been to poland why should anyone in portland expect things to be different if joe biden is the president given the help on racial issues he's known of course for opposing the segregation of schools in his background and his past. i think joe biden definitely has a lot of work to do when it comes to race and that but the thing is i believe that he is willing to put in that where can i don't know i think we've seen 4 years of

donald trump in a way he is willing to do and i believe that his presidency is an existential crisis but again if the federal troops leave it doesn't matter if joe biden were to send them back or if donald trump which is send them back we will still see protests in cities across america because. of these protests the death of george floyd as well as the reminder of all the deaths that have occurred in portland or in play in cities across the country and those usually were happening at state and local levels and they happened during obama's presidency that and during times presidency so there's something very broken with our policing system and regardless of who the president is we have a lot of work as a nation to reconcile that greg mcalary stay safe thank you so much for being on the program. thank you i appreciate it thanks for having me after the break the man who is leading one of the for this to explorations in human history tells us just

how high the stakes are when it comes to a locating the secrets of the universe full this is all going on in part 2 of going underground. and some of the people because they copied them. that even such a bad puppy sending. i'm not anybody. on the field to find the next guy. to feed the dog she even done plenty of.

the flick some for the c.e.o. say to the deflection board after you say. that is a god that i got off the miniature for. a long long while and then you. can not only. handle one person and they've done a move 100 gandhi the new law alone going to. the peace prize keep you know do you mark you join you.

be think it. has to come down to force continue to perseverence of humanity to want to get a generation of robotic explorers to the red planet. welcome back well in the past few days while we've been on lockdown other people have been going to outer space joining me now from boulder in colorado is alan stern who's been working on a project to the farthest reaches of space allan thanks so much for joining us just tell us 1st about the launch on thursday and what the mission is. yeah nasa launched its latest mars rover in the one twit perfectly and the spacecraft has already made contact with the earth and seems to be in good health and is on the on course landings in february and this is really different because this rover is going to cache samples around surface of mars for another mission to come pick up

in return to the earth later in the twenty's and how long is it ok for all of. well it's probably going to be most of the decade because the return mission hasn't yet been started so they'll get that underway i think now that this is their launch and what's it like as a scientist working these things out on such make timespans i mean i know you work with jeff bezos blue origin here he was testifying in congress there are you you work with so many different private companies but you're working on time scale a 10 year is 20 is longer. yes some of the missions stay for a long time they take a long time to get funded and then we have to design and build them and then fly them across these enormous distances the solar system so it's all about delayed gratification and of course the usual questions of nasser's mean asked since if inception is it worth it what's the point maybe you better remind some of our audience about the side effects of what seems like as are tearing expeditions to

far off places well to the contrary of course the development of space and space exploration as probably changed our world countless ways me take your i phone. your smartphone whatever it might be that space technology take that g.d.s. that you use for a location for mapping for knowing where you are now space technology and then look at the entire tech economy which is fueled by the inspiration of children who want to grow up and be engineers scientists largely because. they get hooked on tech through seeing space missions that inspire you see arguably one could say that it was a pride of the united states the space program by nasa do you think people are less inclined towards it because of all the private funds seeping in there it's less about the united states and more about these private companies and people are with

more suspicions of private companies being involved in space than the us as a nation well i think the introduction of private space flight has been a tremendous boon for innovation in for driving costs down and that lets us get more done and most of these private companies are after all currently in the united states we're just beginning to see a european wave of private space flight launch companies eccentric and i can't wait to see that's wow but i mean are there dangers in that there were some reports that when the space shuttle tragically blew up it was because of private outroar saying of space flight i mean on this mission that you're working on presumably it's all government funding there's no private elements to it. well the new horizons mission is a nasa mission it's fairly funded by nasa which is a arm of our federal government and why do you think that congress has been reluctant to sign off on money that trump wanted to go i think i understand trumper

made a request for $25200000.00 for nasa the house not liking any is monday in political . parties and issues on the hill that tell you scientists don't really concern yourself with but vaguely understand they're going to impact your missions yeah well actually in our country space exploration is is supported by both major parties and they're arguing about the last 10 percent of nasa budget not the basic 98 percent and in fact both presidential candidates have come out and endorsed continue tuman exploration continue robotic exploration studies of the earth are so important that we do from space and i think the level of disagreement is down at that it's tails i'd like to see a higher budget but we'll have to see how that turns out and just your mind is also i guess why it's important to actually go to these places rather than use radio telescopes arrays of telescopes here on earth or even space telescopes yeah well

it's simple he telescopes even the very largest ones really can't produce the kind of detail that we need in order to understand these worlds and it's only by going there and bringing the cameras up close that we can understand it yalit gee if we can sample their atmospheres and we can search for signs of underwater underground oceans and evidence for astrobiology for a life that may have arisen elsewhere in the city sustained yes i do is as laid dividends it has paid dividends before this kind of going to the place rather than using telescopes. absolutely and you know probably the biggest did it is the inspiration that it gives its. really human beings are best only human beings explore only human beings create new knowledge and i think space exploration is probably the best example of that in our time because some animals are going to

wonder about me basically the big geopolitical stories involving space are about space forces don't troubling the start militarization of space worries in nature a nation press about china going to the dark side of the moon for the 1st time of course china and the u.a.e. going to mars what what do you make of these militarization stories i presume there's nothing military about this mission. there's absolutely nothing military about what nasa does in terms of science missions like new horizons but you know the militarization of stay started in the 1950 s. and sixty's and. early as the early 2000 the chinese and other countries were conducting any satellite weapons tests and it's unfortunate that space is militarized but like every other domain for seats away and it's just another place as human beings operate and it's

a place where we need to have our defenses at least yeah russia had to deny that it was involved in some kind of satellite warfare in the past few days but can you understand why people are going to be suspicious of missions like this and certainly realize that some of your future funding could to be siphoned off to more military escapades rather than your pure scientific research or not very worried about that because to the contrary although that space is the militarized for decades the nasa budget has been stable if not growing over that time and i think that the public civilian space program and now the entre of commercial companies are are really showing that that's the way that humans need to become a multi planet species expand into the solar system for economic good for new knowledge for inspiration and frankly. in some respects because it's what

we do it's it's how human beings set ourselves apart from all the other species on the earth we are explorers will you mention those private private entities but as i said you work for jeff bezos a space company for a while you've done a lot of private work actually the public all are really is more and more worried about these causing monopoly companies. having dominance over markets here on planet earth and presumably the natural worry is that they're going to start trying to monopolize space who knows stop mining from enrolled in space why this emphasis and why your approval of private corporations who are being called out here on earth in congress for abusing their positions allegedly why do you want them to go into space. well let me say to begin that i don't know of any instance of. the united states congress that using private companies abusing their position in space

that may be true on the earth and it may be true with for example the internet i don't know of any such instances space and what private space investment is doing is creating tremendous weight of innovation like we saw when computers went from rare and expensive to routine and inexpensive because of the developer the p.c. we're seeing developing a small innovative satellite systems low cost reusable launch all of this is helping us explore do more science and expand humans into the cosmos in ways we couldn't when it was a little government monopoly space program. yeah you know that the pure science was done a publicly funded universities the pure innovation fanny's are being done to show that it is public funding that has created core research you mentioned the technology of an i phone it's not me is private companies or anything a private company siphoned off whole that public taxpayer money funded research and

try to privately capitalize off. here i have to disagree with you and i'll give you a specific example private companies are now launching large numbers of satellites to study the earth the climate climate change and nasa the premier space agency on the planet is behind datasets from those companies because they can't get it any other way because they're the private companies are producing valuable datasets to the scientific community that the government satellites are not producing and i think they're voting with their feet and showing that this wave of innovation and this explosion of new applications for space is corvee. have a lot of money just vinyl and then the kuyper belt itself i mean people will know that one day pluto is a planet the next it is and why is there being so much confusion and will this mission clear up what is going on at that far end of the solar system that seems to from year to year decade to decade change the textbooks have to change. well in

fact new horizons as you really written the textbooks will scratch on those most distant part of the solar system the 1st exploration of the pluto system the 1st exploration of the quaker belt a vast array of discoveries including possibility that pluto even harder dast ocean larger than the earth's oceans and you know we're learning so much through through ground based telescopes and space missions their view of what a planet is has changed at 1st we thought there were only the 9 and then we discovered so many more in our own solar system and other solar systems around faraway stars the strong words got a little bit afraid of that thought that the numbers were too big we should legislate by voting what is and what isn't a planet but the real experts the people in my field and planetary science never really paid attention to that you can see that in the scientific literature at

scientific meetings where planets like cluedo are referred to as planets by the experts every single day and i think the astronomers are a little bit still licking their wounds from that state. when he come back on about this mission if we get the images thank you so much that that for this long television going on the ground what the next show on wednesday with legendary often winning film director all of fav and faith faith. the world is driven by a dream shaped by. the

cares thinks. we dare to ask. join me every thursday on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking together for the world of politics sports business i'm show business i'll see you then.

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