as you gave, i'm in a subarus. johnson's pandemic response is one of the most important public health failures the united kingdom, has ever experienced to we speak to the man who's been tracking and tracing the government's failures from the very beginning. and from rendition enhanced interrogation techniques and targeted drone assassinations to president biden's illegal deportations of haitian asylum seekers. how our war on terror tools now used to terrorize americans? all of them all coming up in today's going underground. but 1st britain's own parliament disclaiming boris johnson stewardship over the corona virus. catastrophe here represents the worst public health response in history. so as the u. k. government guilty, not just of incompetence but corruption, murder, and cover up. joining me now from livable is one of britain's most renowned public health experts. livable universities. professor john ashton. john, thanks so much for coming that back on. is it even important? i mean, jeremy hunt, one of the chairs or the committee was implicated in ignoring a previous pandemic response of the health secretary such a java dot. the 1st comment after the report was really said he hadn't even read

the less than $150.00 pages a report and we have to wait for the big inquiry. that's what the government is saying, what, what's the point of this report? well, i think it's very important because basically because it has tried to kick the inquiry into the long grass and is where it was hoping really that it would have faded from memory by the time they get round to looking at it sometime next year. but this is a devastating report, and i think actually it's a credit to hunt this. he was chair of this because he, as you say, he did preside over a failure to act on the m, the exercise in 2016, which identified a lot of weaknesses. and it doesn't really avoid that. he brings out the major points about the lack of preparedness and the failure of non pharmaceutical interventions. you know, the lack of

a lack of testing capacity. and the impact on social care with tens of thousands of deaths in occur homes because of patients being discharged to come home from hospitals carrying the virus and the impact on, on specific communities and including the appalling m. a. facts about what happened with people with learning disabilities being given do not resist to take notice is when they were in hospital and you know, grossly unethical. and the only positive note in the reports is about the vaccine program. and i think actually they do pull their punches on that because at the present time, the u. k is falling behind the european union countries and vaccination, particularly the teenagers. and we do have a death rate still at the rate of a $130.00 a day about

a 1000 to wait and which is almost the highest in the developed world. as ladies and in a dandy, the whole, the deaf per capita rate in this country is one of the worst in the world. i'm so, i mean on, on your personal experience and reminders how you made it clear in march of 2020, that the government was making the failures outlined in this latest report an hour . in fact, i mean anyone normally watching a main b, b, c discussion program, fiona bruce, the presenter, appeared to try and shut you up on television in that headline said things like run t left wing public health, the man talks rubbish. that kind of thing. well, what do you think in retrospect about the fact or you were treated on say that maybe see about when you try to raise the issues actually now coming out of the report in the past few days, i was treated calling lee. i haven't had an apology. stephen barclay,

the government minister at the treasury, it was on the sky refused to apologize. in that question time program, i've time base afterwards he had over 20 minutes of the speaking time. i had about 14, but fiona bruce kept shutting me up and bringing him back in. and i feel completely vindicated to having been an inconvenient witness at that time. and all is the detail in this record this week is to be found or most, or is to be found in my book, blinded by corona, which detailed the 1st 6 months of the handling of the pandemic by the british government. now, as you know, the government ministers, some of whom are our apology, and some who aren't. and as you say, even barclay now chance for the dirty of lancaster. whatever that is, came was the 1st to come out being sent out by the government to defend the government. and you had been saying that i don't know,

they weren't looking at se asia, they weren't looking at these things. is it group think is it incompetent? is it murder, what, what, what has been going on a, and, you know, it is, and so show murder. i so many tens of thousands of people have died in the u. k, unnecessarily. because of incompetence and arrogance. not just by the government, but by the governments advisors. remember, we had an advisor deputy chief medical officer saying that am testing didn't matter in the u. k. it was only a matter of developing countries and that mask wearing would make it worse as social distance thing was not taken seriously. you know, the one meters to me says the academic advisors who said was okay to go ahead with the athletic home address matches and fields. and the children festival. people were only at the sporting events for

a short time. you and to which climate there are, where if you ever meet with our scientific, i mean obviously using the same evidence and come to different conclusions. is that just the nature of scientific inquiry, or are these advisors allied to some people? call it a class war? this corona virus response, or they at to allied to big pharma. you mentioned jenny harris. of course, baroness dido harding married to a tori, m. p, head of an h. s. improvement. now, she seems to have disappeared from view and we had tens of billions more than the justice department budget, more than the home of his budget. more than that scientific research budget spent on tracking trace. what was going on and what should happen to these people? well, as you said, yeah, well, it is a so social murder, negligence, incompetence and arrogance. but the corruption of the issue of vast contracts, but billions of pounds to friends, to cronies, to people who've been met in the pub. and this kind of thing. you know, i'm sorry,

but democracy in this country is under threat when we have a government that behaves in this reckless fashion with, with public trust. will you say democracy when you talk about the success of the vaccine program and some people have made it clear that actually that's a legacy of socialist 90. 48 government in terms of any just planning that still retains a and some of what it was meant to be in the, in the forty's, even after all the privatization over the years are estrada said, you know, the reason why we got vaccination so good in this country and so well are, well we've done. it's greed and capitalism. he then and that was to back benches. he then kind of withdrew it. and then people said it was just a joke. what, what did you make of the fact that day he joked about the reason of vaccination rated, certainly in the early stages was annette. the envy of the world was green capitalism

. well, you know that competitiveness that is very important when it's tempered with social goals. seems to have been and bent in this last 12 months in different ways. and you remember late the jingoism, the nationalistic thing about being the 1st to vaccinate, even though it meant we finished up buying large quantities. alaska is anika vaccine, which turned out not to be suitable for the younger age groups. and actually we were short of defies of vaccine for quite a long time. which meant we weren't able to roll out the vaccine to the younger age groups as fast as we might have done. and so even though we got off to a head start due to the efforts of the scientists at different universities and medical schools, we've actually thrown us away and we fallen behind the other european countries. i was, i say the death rate is still running as about a 1000 a week despite the vaccination program. if you add up the people who still haven't

had to vaccines and particularly the teenagers and the children where we haven't even discussed vaccinating primary school, it's yes, there is still about 35 percent of the u. k. population. this has not had to vaccines taking a total population approach. that means the vaccine, the virus can continue to circulate. and we may yet guess another nasty variance of the virus turning up within hours of the report being released. and they just digital was tweeting that they're tracking trace app had gone down in some way. what would you say to any of the consultants who got some of this 37000000000 pounds a tracking trace budget watching this program? i mean is, did they just did they take the money in good faith or was it blood money? it is good money. i don't know whether they can look at themselves in the mirror

and you know, some of these people have become, well, see beyond your wildest dreams, almost overnight, in the last 12 months, on the back of the worst pandemic for a 100 years. how they can live with themselves. i just don't know. now, you've alluded to the sewing down a vaccination among certain demographics. what are the dangers this winter? are we going to face locked out? i hope we don't have the lock down, but it's a possibility that they're most likely scenario this winter is that the national health service is going to be under massive pressure. and they will be backing up with patience into the community. sick people having to be cur home because there isn't as for them and they on a chest. and you know, it said that the n h s didn't fall over last year. but actually, there are millions of people who have not had the treatment that they needed to

have over the last 18 months because the hospital service had to be diverted to the cove. it. and many people will have died because they didn't get that cancer treatment in time. so in the since the n h s did fall over because the n h s didn't have the resilience. and after longstanding issue of not having invested properly in the community and in public health and in home care and in general practice. and that distortion goes back many decades with our infatuation with hospitals rather than building up the health services from the grass roots from the neighborhood and community. yeah, something interesting, right at the beginning the excel center has previously used for selling arms to countries were staffed by soldiers to think there was an idea that we should put into the public imagination. the idea of militarization will save us rather than the health service. well, you know, the new agency that's replaced public health,

england at the so called security health security agency. they've got power military uniforms. why would that be? i wonder? but i think it must be based on the american public health service where they were military uniforms on a friday. and just very briefly, barnes jones and can't depend on the nurses, the porters, the lowest paid in the n, h s. despite the de facto pay cut issued by the government to come through this with all the pressures you outlined. i worked on a friday in liverpool vaccination with a fantastic group of nurses through a drawn from all parts of the national health service in liverpool. many of them were working on intensive care over the last year, dealing with dying patients from cove it. they are an amazing group of nurses, amazing group of health workers, and they will, they will turn out and it's their last breath if they,

if they need to. they are amazing people that many of all and h s staff are exhausted. many of them are suffering from post traumatic stress because of the things they've seen and been through over the last 18 months. and you know, we are risking at the breakdown of this of our house service because we're neglect of the health and safety a well being of our own staff. professor john ashton, thank you. after the break land of the free or kingdom of the president is american democracy, one of the nearly 1000000 victims of the war on terror. all the small coming up in part 2 of going underground. ah

ah mm oh look forward to talking to you. oh, that technology should work for people. a robot must obey the orders given by human beings except when that shorter is it conflict with the 1st law show your identification. we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. and the point obviously is to great trust, rather than fear. i am very shy with artificial intelligence,

real summoning with a robot must protect its own existence with a welcome back to day. moscow hosts international jokes on afghanistan in the aftermath of nato's defeat. after the international criminal courts, new british trop judge, cancelled investigations into alleged u. s. war crimes. the so does the i. c c's decision to de prioritize, war crimes, give cod launched to washington breaking international law. joining me now as professor karen greenberg, author of new book, subtle tools, the dismantling of american democracy from the war on terror to donald trump. professor karen greenberg, thanks for coming on going underground, given the extraordinary rendition water boarding rhone strikes, we saw joe biden's drone strike killing 7 of cob,

over the afghan withdrawal. subtlety isn't the 1st thing that comes to mind. what are these subtle tools in the title of your new book? ok, yes, that's one of the things there. not some things are not so subtle, but my idea is that all the policies that you've mentioned, whether it's drone tag rendition to torture, et cetera, were what we saw. but always just as important, if not more important, was how they were done. and the tools that were used to create these policies until the united states recognizes these tools and addresses, those were still vulnerable to the kinds of accesses from laws and norms that we encountered and suffered in the wake of the task at $911.00. because so might say that the way before 911, these tools are being used in the assassination strikes. i don't know che guevara, that assassination. these things happened all the time. why after 911, did they even need to have some structural basis in which they could attack

people, individual nations in the way that we've seen since 911. because because so much of what had been done often in the covert here and within, you know, agencies that were had those kinds of power is where broadened across government. so wanted to settle tools, i talk about it and perhaps to your point, the least subtle. with secrecy, the way in which secrecy was used in the war on terror to n. yes, it had been used before in the vietnam war for example, and many other times to do things in the name of the american people that they did not know about reached new levels in terms of its implementation. it's, it's implementation, but it's also, it made into law, the department of justice declared legal the use of enhancing irrigation techniques, which war torture. so the use of secrecy as, as

a parent to mimic shift in terms of how frequently, how often, and how broadly across the government it was used is a different level than what happened before. so it's not a brand new tool. it was just a tool that, that many more were agreed to use given the trauma of 911 to use the phrase and on the interrogation. one of your 1st subtle jewels is the degradation of language. i don't suppose langley is full of people reading, dairy, and french post structuralist. why is the degradation of language so important as a tool used by the united states? move joshua complex? take to me, this is the most interesting of all the tools. perhaps it is one that feeds the other tools that i mentioned, the abuse of language and in particular the use of language is in precise, is what allowed 4 major transformations within the culture of governance, governance in the united states. so for example,

the authorization for the use of military force from 2001 which really was about the use of troops in afghanistan was, did not name an enemy, did not have a time limit, did not name or refer to the end hostilities. and did not have a geographical limit. this is encountered distinction to prior authorization for the use of force and prior declarations of war in u. s. history. and what that enabled that in precision, in language that refuse a book to be specific did, was to enable the united states and each successive president to use the authorization in countries around the world. if he, if, basically with the idea that this was related somehow to terrorism, and even though we've pulled out of afghanistan now the 2001 authorization that authorized that invasion, and the sending of troops to afghanistan still persists. so is a tool that president do not want to get rid of even joe biden,

who has shown his intention and desire to really bring to an end this period of the war on terror that was started with the attacks of $911.00. now we know that joe and mike, bon pedro said non hostile or hostile, non state intelligence agency referring to wiki leaks. subsequently, we've now heard about cia plaza, kidnap julian assad, gum bottles in london. people involved in the songs case and people certainly what journalists said, why didn't we realize that he was actually giving a sort of code in his press conference. you talk about the way enemy belligerence mean and then the competence of the biden administration or they, they changed the bomber administration, changed some of the terms, the bush administration. so obama came into office, very cognizant of the, of the kinds of excess is that the smoke is about. and from the very beginning, he tried to address secrecy. he tried to make rough uh,

procedures go back to sort of respecting a normal vetting of issues and potential policies and to clarify some of the language. however, even the best intentions under obama went awry in this particular respect. in part because it was some of these were useful tools, secrecy being one of them, but also, and also language degradation of language and you referred to earlier assassination . you know, these persisted as, as a way of redefining assassination during the drone killer and chief, i mean, this is a, the road to hell, paved with good intentions if you think that when the drawn strikes. and so they just became very, very useful tools that nobody had wanted to give up on. and my point of the book is that leaving them on the table is what gave you extra powers to donald trump, who was somebody who from the beginning made it clear,

he did not respect process. he saw how process could get away. he did not respect norms, he was willing to push aside laws when it suited him. and so let me just give some examples. and 1st of all, see took secrecy to new levels, levels that hadn't existed even in the early days of the war on terror. he refused to have notes taken at some very significant in meetings as john ball and report. he refused to have documents created to begin with, not just notes on meetings, but elsewhere. for example, at the border where the separation of families was not documented. and so we uniting families knew we knew what our hard challenge was going to stop, stop for a 2nd. we have in this book, it's very clear how you explain on 911 legislation and degradation of language. all these other tools are then somehow brought home to your southern board. yeah, exactly. there's so much that goes on in terms of immigration policy and the southern border that are the tools that we use. one of the i just and taking

secrecy to new levels by destroying evidence. so there is an evidence there that listen this, it happened in the past that happened in a number of cases in the warren care, but here it became an over policy. that was, it was part of a pattern. and so other things at the board that were also interesting, you want to talk about the degradation of language, the intention of the decision to criminalize a visa over stays. and to criminalize in undocumented status meant the ratio of the distinction between criminal and non criminal immigrants or migrants. and so that was a way in which language was again degraded. there was no legal distinction and you could be deported if you were a visa overstay. or if you had committed a criminal act. i mean, this is by the actually not using subtle tools because overseas, what he's illegally devoted 4000 nations in violation of re act o u n. refugee convention. whereas trump was trying to do things by the law or

using subtle tools. i don't think trump was trying to do things by the law. i think trump was saying, look, i can do this, i'm president and president after the war on terror. have gotten away with an awful lot and i'm just going to take it one step further in the ways i want to in the ways i want to do it, for example, and not having a distinction between the white house and the department of justice when it comes to biden, and i can talk about this last one in particular. i think he recognizes very clearly what some of these tools are. that doesn't mean he's going to be able to fix things entirely. i think the southern border is weird. why, why do i mean anyone watching the tv of the scenes on this other border, bygone us history on this? and then we saw these horrific scenes on the southern border and it's much worse, isn't it? yeah, the scenes on the southern border, this is the biggest challenge for a president by bigger than afghanistan, bigger than a number of other issues. and they haven't been able to sort it out yet. they have

not, you know, they've tried everything. they tried emptying the camps. they've tried, you know, it was it with democrats. you're saying they have good intentions, but they are unable to get what they want. when it's republicans, you're saying, i mean, is this a piece? it's a piece of scholarship, but i mean, you seem to be right, but yeah, i mean, whereas i wouldn't show them a grad things were worse. trump never invaded any other countries. i think it's a continuum. and i think that the presidency since 911 has suffered tremendously in terms of checks and balances. and the presidency has been empowered in ways that certainly the founding fathers didn't have in mind. and that in prior periods, in american history has been pushed back against both for republicans and democrats . i think all the presidents now are in this era where the presidency, that congressional restraints on the presidency and judicial restraint on the

presidency. our at an all time low. and that changed dramatically after the war on terror in part because of the, the, the subtle tools and the courts allowing imprecise language rather than insisting on precise language. it's as well law is based on congress not doing its duty in terms of demanding that transparency rather than secrecy and demanding its role in oversight of different agencies that had to do with national security. and that this re definition of the presidency based on these subtle tools, had led to a period which i will call the 21st century democrats and republicans alike of accountability. that is a road to an unhealthy continuing and maybe institutionalizing in ways we can't fix an unhealthy democracy. so for example, when you have, when you have a president, when you have presidents that authorize the use of torture and, and, and a number of people that write the law, rewrite the law, help implement it,

etc. and there is no accounting for it. and a report that's written by the senate is kept basically under wraps and some copies of it destroyed. and that is not accountability. and so i think these are the tools that allow on accountability to happen, imprecise language, bureaucratic dysfunction in a way that bleeds the distinctions between different departments, for example, department of justice and department of homeland security to speak to your southern border issue. so it is not just a democratic republican thing, it really has to do with changes in the culture of governance. and while i do think that obama and biden have expressed verbally, i want to fix this, as opposed to donald trump saying, you know, not wanting to fix it. let me say that president bush, at the end of his presidency, there were things he wanted to finish. one of them was he was to close one tunnel which was outside the law outside of norms. and when she relied on any of these

subtle tools, and he was very clear that he released more than 500 individuals from guantanamo. and he probably said that he would like to seek guantanamo post. so it's not a blanket, you know, good, bad, or indifferent, but my issue is the transformation of the presidency. and i think everybody who, who has that office should be mindful of what these tools are and, and it's very hard to give up powers, particularly when some of them are secret, particularly when there's a precedent for using them or whether or not it's been better to the courts or congress and so, you know, my issue is the culture of governance and not, and i'm, yes, i would like to think that president biden will be able to dispense with some of these tools, but it's early in the presidency. so we will say, professor garen greenback, thank you. and subtle tools is out now that's of sure, we'll be back on top of that until then. keep in touch my social media and let us know if you think washington's war on terror continues to violence

with ah, with the poor america i've gone poor, and they've been vastly more numerous. and the billing our class have gotten more a 1000000000 area to a great extent, but the government reports in the aggregate. so they always take a foreign billionaire and they put them together. they say to put those 2 together, we don't see any inflation. well, this worked for about 20 years and people were fooled by this, and anyone who complain was considered to be anti american. well, now, because of the mis allocation of breast for so long in the ricochet boomerang

a verse coming back into the system. we now have catastrophic system failure headlining this, our patients in england are reportedly having to wait up to 50 hours for a bed in accident and emergency wards. as the pandemic puts fresh pressure on hospitals, every step of the way that mismanaged the crisis aside from the vaccine rollout, re personally of any faith in the current government. german police will, in the countries border with poland, is at risk of collapse and they'd rising flows of migrants crossing into the you from better. bruce brussels isn't moving to tackle the influx. lo, still relying on sanctions and refusing to even talk to many major police homes underway in southeastern, from softer a man is beheaded. officers have identified a suspect on board that he may be armed and dangerous.