the moon, the the jailed hacker who exposed abusive conditions of the prison he's being held in is denied telephone access to his lawyer, his wife brands, an act of retaliation. bureau of prisons, lawyer telling them that he can only like to speak to them as they have come in port deadline. whereas she's not applying that requirement to any of the other tensions rise enough data stand where the taliban claims has taken control of a provincial capital in the country for the 1st time in 5 years. that's after the head of the government media department is killed during an attack. i guess to be here to do the work. so suck it up in the fun in the police has to happen. we need

to defend the police. us congresswoman cory bush is accused of hypocrisy, as it's revealed her security detail, cough taxpayer, some $70000.00. she's been calling to defend the police as murder rates across the u. s. solar and that's it for this. our stay tuned in for just another in just another 60 minutes for more of your world news headlines this week. show 1000000000 air space cowboys. are they advancing that technology that gets us back to the moon and on to mars? or are these joy rides? just a galactic traffic jam. but 1st, what's up down here on planet earth? will light up the hotspot. i'm holland cook and washington. this is the big picture on our t america. ah

. with coven resurgence, and washington's non stop noise. domestic issues tend to dominate news coverage, but there's a world of trouble brewing elsewhere. where let's ask long time pentagon official micro maloof and rt contributor with world wide contracts. michael closest hotspot 1st, cuba by mid ministration has recently announced the sanctions. yet we're going to try and make remittance to the folks back home a little easier. we're going to turn up their why fi so that they can hear what's going on elsewhere in the world. where do you see all this had it? it's a nonstarter. i think that cuba maintains the ultimate control. you got to go through the military that keeping a very close tabs on it. and they're also talking about how they can open up a, open up a counselor to allow people who want to leave to go. and, but i don't see that forthcoming simply because cuba,

the island needs the money that these folks are having money said to the in effect their financial hostages, if you will, for the cuban government. and so that would be like throwing the throwing, throwing the golden, the golden goose. why do that? i wish we could open up a consulate and start stepping out visas if only for baseball players, because tomorrow them we tried that with great flourish. secretary of state that kerry opened the u. s. embassy, and the next thing you know, are being bombarded with radiation and we've taken 2 steps back. yeah. well, that's still and knowing what caused it, and i don't rule out the possibility. it could have emanated from her own embassies because we have to electronically guard the so called bubble within the embassies, which is a secure area. and no one has addressed that issue. but yet,

we've heard everybody from the russians to the chinese, to the cubans who have been responsible that wait a minute. thanks, cathy, all over. sure. it's some kind of electromagnetic pulse of some kind. and the origins of which is unknown and remains that way. even, even when our best authorities are trying to put, put their mind to figuring it out, they can't. embassies here in washington are said to be bombed with all kinds of listening, surveillance of that sort. that to deadline afghanistan, our longest war ended with a pull out, some among the afghan forces found abrupt. why does it matter to us here? if the taliban are going to win a civil war there? well, 1st of all, they're not. secondly, you have rival, rival, militias that are beginning to form new warlords are coming on. and also tell a bond will not be able to control the activities of an al qaeda or an ice is,

which is growing. in f, dana, stan in a way that they could then launch a tax again against the united states or even europe. and now the russians are even a little concerned, even though they're talking to tele bob, because the color bond, i think, in their view to, even though they're outlaw officially, i don't think they can guarantee anything, even to, to russia. and that's a real security problem to the russians, because of the malicious terrorist militias moving into central asia and into the federation. and that, and the same with china, china thinks that can build a belt road initiative in the country and will be good. will tell a bond might like that because of the money that they might get, but these other rival militias may attack it along the way. it's not to mention cader or isis. so it's a problem for everybody in the region. there is no solution, and this is why it's really past due that the countries in the region could get together and come up with

a formula that'll work. and you might find that the government there is probably going to wind up being transitional, if not overthrown. because nobody is really going to be in charge. the government itself only controls the couple area. whenever. whenever you hear a newscaster on the legacy media or usa say taliban, they say it like they're reciting from edgar allen poe. but a minute ago, you didn't hesitate when you said they're not going to win. now, why is that keystone cops? you have rival groups that will be vying for power at the end within, within these militias. they, you have sheer, you have sunni's and they don't like each other, or they don't feel or they want to control their version of the turf. or they don't trust the government to protect them. and they may not like tell a bon b put all these together. it's a, it's a prescription for disaster. we are speaking with the former pentagon official, michael maloof, civil war in lebanon. it's quite a possibility. you have the prime minister who has resigned. he gave up,

he was much of a prime minister in the 1st place, and he really refused, and he said ok with the president out who's there, who's christian? the sunni, the, the, the prime minister was sunni. the problem that we're seeing is the possibility that saudi arabia could move in and to fill that gap, unless there's some internal effort to try and take control. and if that husband, which in effect is running government, then that will introduce israel to come in and just take over because they're not going to stand for the government run by husband law to be in control. so that to poor tends to be a mess. and, and the military itself may think it might try something, but it's not in control either. husband is in control. iran, iraq, syria, lots of moving pieces on a tough neighborhood. what's going on over? well, they're all buying for influence and power and repositioning. and you've got outside

powers that want to play, who want to come in like russia, saudi arabia, u e u e z plan and increase, enroll in the not to mention the united states and france, france is trying to reassert itself, was love on you speak, holiday one time of france, now that is and, but they can't agree to onerous economic terms that nobody in lebanon will. and the, and the banks are, are basically corrupt everybody. all the politicians are correct. not even the chinese want to deal with lebanon, which says something because it's nobody to deal with. there's no government basically, and half the population right now is starving in lebanon. and i think it's really up to moscow to look at lebanon again because of it. because if there is in stability in lebanon, it's going to have a tremendous slop over into, into syria, where they've invested a lot already for stability. and syria itself may even be partition,

buying himself in the past has talked about partition for syria, i guess who's the commander in chief today. so, and we're doing something about it because we're maintaining troops in the north east, which is under kurdish control. and then you have turkey, but also is vine for influencing power. so it's even though we want to pivot eastward, if we care about stability in that region of any kind. if we pull out everything is going to go haywire. don't blink. speaking of commanders in the previous one had a couple of photo ops with kim jong own long time. no. see, is it a little too quiet? what's going on in north korea? you're pretty connected to it. well, i'm hearing that the administration wants to sit down and talk. but what are you going to talk about every but each size has their own definition of, of the nuclear zation. they each has their own version. and if you intend to put any pressure on on that can jump on,

then he will reassert himself with the increased pressures until he can get what he wants. if we were to pick up, for example on, on maneuvers military maneuvers with south korea, that will be a prescription for a crisis and we don't need another crisis. so we're, we're already instigating one with the chinese right now in the, in the east and south china seas. so that, and that means taiwan. and that also could drag in japan. japan would, has already announced that they will go to, ty, wants defense to which beijing said, well, if you do that, we'll just new kid. i only have about a minute left. so i need that kind of short the theoretical answer. but it's the obvious question. pandemic researching it is a worldwide pandemic. some countries are doing better than others. how do you see the potential for that influencing the balance of power? it's going to have a tremendous influence. some countries as you point out, are doing better than others, but we're seeming to go back into

a 4th reiteration of this thing and, and that could have a worldwide impact on, on economies. and i think and some countries are just overwhelmed and there's, there it could affect, it depends upon how well they're able to respond. it china seems to be resilient. they're like at 89 percent g d p right now, which is far higher than us. they could, they could be home in a long plus, they're working on the belt and road initiative that will actually assist china if they're virtually untouched by the virus. but we're once again infective because we don't like masks, or we don't like the vaccine shore or some individual right thing. yeah. those fewer whiners in china when it's lowering time. and obviously this government response to the pandemic played a big part in the up rest in cuba. so this is

a story to watch. michael maloof. thank you. as always for stepping into the big picture. my pleasure. thank you. america needs a war on waste, according to non part. as a nonprofit, washington watch dog, real clear policy spotlight in government spending and its waste of the day reports among examples. they posted it open the books dot com theorizing that the mechanics of walking fish will help address the substantial challenges in designing agile robots capable of traversing diverse environments. yale university already endowed over 30 b 1000000000 dollars 2nd only to harvard scores, 685410 of your tax dollars to study how fish move on land. the bio mechanics of amphibious fish fins. but wait,

there's more to dissuade young people smoking. the national institutes of health furnished $5000000.00 to fund help a hipster quit smoking parties. i'm not making this up be as government funded. soirees took place at bars and nightclubs, where the chic were urged to take a stand against tobacco corporations and get this the backup plan. if the stylish were still smoking, they got cash up to $100.00 to try harder. meanwhile, and i also has funded research about tobacco product marketing certainly useful in the effort to discourage smoking, but with it's $14600000000.00 endowment. does the university of pennsylvania really need $18400000.00 of your tax dollars? behold, waste of the day every day and open the books dot com coming up,

billionaires or joy riding to the edge of space. we've got company on mars and nasa is planning missions to the moon and venus strap in for an update. next. this is the big picture on our t america. ah, as we were saying and shipping all of our job to the factories that china was a bad idea. but the american people were ok with it, because although they're away cuz we're going down the stuff they were getting from china and the wal mart was cheaper than ever. okay, now the chickens have come home to roost. now, the china labor sink is finished. inflation kicking in for real

wages are going up, but not as fast as inflation. the other stuff. and then you need to talk to someone like you could pay more than that even me and i can offer job when i'm in a position where you may need what's going on for me. which mobile phone bill. and it isn't about what it was working for me, but it was easy. i got it now watches to know how do you think?

you know, if it's going to be d as belong to the one me to tell you the other way that you would need that because that quote, should the me what's up up there? plenty, let's get an update from the coal author along with j. l. pickering of a stack of books with stunning photos chronicling the u. s. a space program including hot off the press this week, picturing the space shuttle the early years. you can get it on amazon long time space journalist john disney. john, as richard branson and jeff bezos lived to tell about it, and eli and musk is the next space cowboy. i've wondered,

should we have retired the shuttle? was it technically and or economically obsolete beyond update? i think it just run its course hall and remember the shuttle was designed, believe it or not, in the early to mid seventies. that's almost 50 years ago. now it flew for 30 years and then a lot of good. one reason we developed the shuttle it was because we knew the ability to get up and down to orbit on a relatively routine basis with a cargo capability. and the shuttle provided that big sections of the space station were put up and assembled. and now we have the international space station, some temporary science, big laboratories were carried aboard the shuttle. but again, with a fully functioning space station that's not really needed anymore. and then after the 2 disasters challenger to columbia, the combination their naps and sort of stopped putting a lot of satellites on the shuttle and the voted and where to science. so you know,

over that period of time we lost 2 orbiter. is that about $2000000000.00? we lost 14 astronauts. and the real problem with the channel is this. yes, you could have upgraded it, continue to improve the onyx, give it a new cockpit and so forth. but it's not going to get you to the moon. you're not going to apply expansion on the moon around to mars. so that's why the focus changed really under the bush administration, that better continue to have to develop more of an interplanetary capability and leave lower the orbit operations more to the private sector. well i, when you and i were kids, there were only 2 players in the space race you ssr and usa in that order, chronologically, back to the future. private enterprise is joined in john is the technology that these billionaire joy rides are funding contributing to what nasa is up to or the

heavens getting crowded? i think it's real, it's a great question. and i think it's important to view these as 2 very separate baskets. i talked just a minute ago about how nasa would like to have the private sector take over low earth orbit operations that include getting our astronauts up and down the space station, which space x is doing. and it may involve this fledgling space tourism industry. could you see branson, musk and base those being involved in? but that's, that's a whole separate thing. what nasa is doing, nasa has a longer range view and a much longer range view in terms of the destination. we're going to talk about this in a minute. i know the art of this program is designed to get astronauts back to the moon and eventually possibly on to mars. so, branson in that crowd are not competing with, so they're really operating. and if you think of it in, in 2 separate realms with 2 separate goals,

but they're not stepping on each other. no, i don't think so. you know, they had to build their own facilities. well, now i'm not much didn't, he's using some facilities with the case, but brands and they built their own launch pads. hey, you know, we're wishing guys that we don't need to involve the government and the pride and the military support and all the government resources that are involved in a shuttle launch. and we'll just do this ourselves. and you know, i think it was very, they had to very successful operations recently as we know. i think it was a big step forward to what, what we're seeing here. people say, oh, big deal. allen shepherd did that 60 years ago. yes, he did. but at the, at the, at the tip of a huge government effort, these are 2 men who said, 3 men who said, you know, gosh, i think we can do this on our own. so and what they're doing, all of that, you're seeing the marketplace responding to the perceived demand for space tourism

business. and the word is they have people lined up, not you and me. unfortunately, they ask people lined up on the waiting list. so they see this as a very viable industry that they're trying to start. i've never been prouder to be amazon prime, john, the epidemic reminder us how tight lipped china is about what they're up to. but this past month, they launched 3 missions and 4 days. and we now have company on mars. i have heard other analysts surmise that we're ahead of them and that we're investing more meaningfully than they can afford to. what is your sense of how serious a space player china is? oh, generally serious, but it's a little bit like apples and oranges, i think to compare the programs. and here's what the us operates in a very transparent way with a civilian program largely with its basis being exploration and science. what the

chinese are doing, on the other hand, is largely driven by their own geo political interest and their military interest. they are developing as we have some capability to maybe attack satellites and orbit to use it as, as a recognizance, a platform and other capabilities. so the chinese look in space a little differently than we do. i think granted, there are parts of it that we exploit to our military. there's no question. i think people like to believe we have a little more esoteric purpose for being in space where the chinese they are out for the chinese. and the other big difference, of course, holland is despite what you mentioned, some analysts say that everything is controlled by one central office. there is no budget battle between the pentagon and ask their civilian president. you know, when chinese chinese leaders want to do something in space, they do it, and they fund it. we are speaking with the author and long time networks based

journalists, john disney, who's been pretty fun, us all along on the perseverance rover and that the ingenuity helicopter john, give us a mars update. yeah, things are going really smooth and smoothly on ours, and that's good. good. i think that we haven't heard any news from there because the new things are proceeding as plan of the perseverance rover itself. very soon, maybe by the time this eric is going to have taken it's buried. first, sample soil sample it will use, this is arm to dig that sample up, deposit it in a little container, and then put it back in its own internal laboratory for some analysis. and then that sample really package it up and dropped off along the way. for future rovers a future over hopefully to find pick up and bring back to earth. how cool would that be? now we're seeing the, the little helicopter pal there, the sperry, a drone, as also performing very well. and what it's doing is serving. it's israel,

as a scout, it looks ahead for where we go next. this is, i think, what some of the people at the jet propulsion laboratory are excited about right now. and they have perseverance in what they call a thinking while driving mode. and what that means is essentially they say to, to the rover, we want you to go over there, but it's up to you to figure out how to get there. so perseverance, it's using all the sensors and cameras to map out its own safe route, past any rocks or, or travail or anything, any problem to get to where it's going. so things are going very well on ours. i know that everybody's excited about how is progressing. it takes the whole time, but it's when you mentioned the chinese have a, have a more over up there to i don't think they'll run into each other. let's hope not. i. the technology is so cool and there's a lot to see at nasa dot gov. john. you mentioned artemus,

who in greek mythology was apollo, sister and nasa is readying the artemus moon shot which would land the 1st woman. and the 1st person of color on the moon as i understand the plan, the moon could become away point for future mars missions. i got about a minute and change left john. what's the status of artemus? ottoman is proceeding along pretty much on track. the booster has been stacked in the vehicle assembly building your ryan space capsule will be installed shortly. and really nasa is planning to try and have as 1st unmanned launch on crude launch of this system. this order this system by the end of the year. now of course things slip and that seems a little optimistic, me, but i would think in the next 6 to 7 months, you're going to see the biggest launch that nasa has ever done since the saturn fives. and it will send this

a ryan spacecraft around the moon and back door for astronaut to be on board for maybe another 2 years. and then yes, 2024 is the landing goal to put the couple of americans back there. again, as i've told you many times, holland, it's just you have domestic, maybe 20252026. but it's on track and i think it is going to happen. yeah, i remember you calling that plan ambitious. and i remember where i was the day we lost the 2 shuttles, and you were and shocked eye witness on site there. so a better safe than sorry, and we'd rather get it right then get a quick spaced journalist and author, john busy. thank you. as always for stepping into the big picture. and thank you for watching the big picture. we're going to be back same time next week. if you're watching real time, we're on direct tv channel 321 or on the dish dish at 280. you can set the d, v r,

if you can, you tube dot com slash r t. america is our live feed and for years of my humble work is archived. youtube dot com slash the big picture, our t and all of the above. and much more is on our free, portable tv app in the app store, or google play, or at portable dot tv on any device. and the newest member of our vast past they're speaking of space, is william shatner. and i'm proud to be in his company. i'm hollan cook at holland cook on twitter, or if you follow me, i'll follow you. thanks for watching and question more. ah, the ah

ah. so long ago humor was the domain of social critique and a means for us to laugh at ourselves. and the comic was the person who had the guts and skilled to say, what all of us might have been thinking. this is no longer the case. it would see now, humor is just another political weapon. and you know, it's not very funny. the british and american government sivilton being accused of destroying lives in their own interest. while you see in this, these techniques is the state devising message to end to essentially destroy personality of an individual lifetime. means this is how one doctors, theories were allegedly used in psychological warfare against the prisoners deemed a danger to the state. that was the foundation for the method of psychological

interrogation, psychological torture, disseminated within the us intelligence community, and worldwide among allies for the next 30 years. been to the victim say they still live with the consequences today. the max ties, remember man like 3 years ago, every year since then i've been saying that, yeah, of course wages in america going down, but prices from stuff important from china going down more so the quality of life in america doesn't seem like it's getting worse because the flat screen tv and closer. so cheap. and then i said, you know what, some day that's going to reverse. ok, let's check in with stacy max. we have gone through the looking glass.

remember when the red queen said to alice that you have to run faster and faster just to stay in the same place. she said, in fact, my dear here, we must run as fast as we can just to stay in place. and if you wish to go anywhere, you must run twice as fast as that. so 50 years of the out. we're looking at the headlines today. and it looks like were straight back to where we started and the 1970 stagflation. right? because people made heroic efforts to spend inflation 8 their lunch, says wall street dot com. the big shift from durable goods to services is underway . this is all in the latest data coming out of government agencies. real, inflation adjusted personal income without transfer payments, personal income including income from interest did.