this is al jazeera america live in new york city. i'm del walters with a look at today's top stories. transit workers in san francisco on strike right now. a bart union official say both sides agree on health care and pension, but remain far apart on pay conditions. bart workers walked off for nearly five days in july. the new homeland security head will be announced today. he served as a counter terrorism advisor during the president's first term. saudi arabia is reducing to

take its rotating seat on the un security council. saying the council is quote incapable of resolving world conflicts failing in its duty towards jair. there is a manhunt for two florida prisoners freed by using fake documents including a phony emotion from a prosecutor, and forged signature from a judge those are your headlines, "consider this" is next. ♪

the u.s. government back to work after a 16-day shut down, d.c. looks for a path forward. "consider this," the government what? how does the republican party heal itself? what's next for obamacare, and are there any rewinners from the whole mess? after wikileaks released a massive amount of information on the web. what has changed. julian assange is holed up. the author of a new book tells us why cookies to comfortable chairs could cause humans worlds of trouble. hello. welcome to "consider this." we begin with the debt ceiling. the government open for business thursday after a 16-day shutdown, but as courteney healey reports the fight over

government spending and obamacare is far from over. >> reporter: vice president joe biden delivered morning muffins at the environmental protection agency thursday, while some politicians expressed relief learned. >> you'll see a more mainstream conservative republican party. i don't think we'll have the same kind of brinks manship on january 15th and february 7th. >> reporter: others vowed to continue the fight to stot obamacare. >> i'm not going away, and this issue is not going away. i'm going to use every opportunity on the senate floor to get a vote straight up or down on this issue. >> reporter: president obama seized the opportunity to blame republicans and tee party conservatives for the government shutdown and fiscal crisis. >> some of the same folks that pushed for the shutdown and threatened default claim their actions were needed to get america back on the right track. to make sure we're strong.

probably nothing has done more damage to america's credibility in the world, our standing with other countries, than the spectacle that we've seen these past several weeks. >> reporter: standard and poor's reports that the government shutdown cost the economy at least $24 billion and cuts projected fourth quarter growth rate from 3% to 2.4%. they announced civilian furloughs cost the defense department $600 million saying the groundhog's day approach to budgets must stop. >> we can't continue to do this to our people, having them live under a cloud of uncertainty. >> it keeps the government open until mid-january and raises the debt ceiling until early february. the house has only 23 days left in session this year. for more on this i'm joined by patrick hedger with freedom works which describes itself as a grassroots service center dedicated for activists fighting for lower taxes, less government

and more freedom and by tom dougherty a republican strategist to george pataki. i want to start with you, tom. we had a 16-day government shutdown and a few days on the edge of default before congress backed away from the edge of the cliff. the headlines read losing a lot to get little and baynier gop in disarray. the conventional wisdom is the republican party especially the tea party was the big loser in the whole debacle. "usa today" rejected that and had the tea party and senator ted cruz among the winners. how do you see all this? >> i don't know where "usa today" gets their information, but clearly the losers are the conservative presidential candidates going forward. ted cruz and rand paul and quite possibly marco rubio. i don't think the book was written on him yet. a lot was expected of him going into the year. they could never win this country. that's the problem right now.

you know, groups like freedom works and the tea party are very interested in running this right wing agenda that may win in certain parts of the country, but it doesn't win in the country as a whole. it's really killing the republican party at this point. >> patrick, how do you sfond to that? >> unfortunately, i couldn't hear my colleague, but, you know, new yorkers like chuck shumer and peter king call the pea party dead for years now, and to say that we shot ourselves in the foot with the tactics employed here are simply not true. tea party isn't about political exbead yens but standing on principal, and that's what this fight is all about. as time goes on and the disastrous effects of this law beyond the glitches in the obamacare website. if you get down to the economics of this law takes a toll on the american people. >> i think they're going to respect the tee party for taking a hard-line stance and not using their pain and suffering under this law for political gain. >> to your point, though, the question is whether the tea party did shoot themselves in

the foot because in effect the polls are blaming the gop disproportionately for the shutdown of the government for risking default and you have the whole issue that the shutdown and the debt ceiling debate sucked up all the media oxygen at a time when obamacare, which you oppose so strongly, the rollout has been by most accounts pretty close to a disaster. >> that's a telltale sign of more things to come as we get closer to the 2014 elections. >> didn't you lose focus by doing all this instead of focusing on something you opposed so strongly? >> absolutely not. we wanted to take care of this law and fight the principal battle and nip it in the bud before it had disastrous impacts on the american people. maybe it stands for more. we were sent to washington to fight a political battle and make sure americans weren't subject theed to law and that's what this fight was all about. now as the law continues to go

on, we'll see more of these glitches much i think the website glichls are merely cosmetic compared to the have. >> carl rove called out the leaders of the movement to defund obamacare on thursday. according to rove, he said the tea party republicans acted as if more moderate republicans were in effect the enemy. he said they alienated colleagues who disagreed by insisting their obamacare supporters and the defunders' outside allies raise the threat of primary challenges. they became content to sit in judgment of plans offered by the house leadership turning thumbs down on anything not in conformity with the now discredited tactic to defund obamacare. i assume you agree with rove? >> why would freedom works, the things that they belief, why are they working so hard to accomplish one goal, and that's elect more democrats around the country? that's all they're going to do. when you look at today when

they're going out today, groups like, you know, the tea party people down in mississippi are going after a that had cochrane who has been a solid conservative republican out of mississippi. he's not conservative enough. it's outrageous. what tear doing is they're going to cost -- they have over the last two-cycles cost us united states senate seats in five states, nevada, colorado, delaware, missouri, indiana. those are five seats where we can change public policy and do many of the things in a cost-cutting measures we all agree on. you can't go into a political fight with no way of wins a political fight. that's a losing battle. >> to tom and carl rove's point brandon wrote today in an e-mail that one of our producers received and here's a quote. we lost this walths to defund obamacare because rhinosaurs and establishment republicans like john mccain started to attack

real conservatives like you and me, ted cruz and mike lee. they're afraid of us. they know they're going extinct. in the end we will win. it sure sounds like tea party is trying to create an internal war in the republican party and doesn't tom have a point? some of the tea party candidates seats? >> no. i disagree with that assertion, and i have to take things that karl rove says in the wake of the 2012 elections with a grain of salt. looking at the tactics we're employing here, what happened here is that progressives in this country declared war on us. they declared war on the american people by forcing this law down their throat. what conservatives aim to do was defund this law and make sure that it doesn't have economic impacts that we fear on the american people. when we started to tear apart the law, progressive republicans like john mccain and john cornyn started to try to tear down us. instead of standing with us and

fighting a united front against obamacare and holding the president accountable and bringing him to the negotiating table, they capitulated. the republican party had success when we run principaled campaigns on issues like the affordable care act and the bailouts. that's why we won big in 2010. if we want to capitulate to the middle and run moderate candidates, we'll lose. that's what 2012 was. >> you won big this districts heavily republican. the way the country has been distributed in districts has favored some of these congressmen. won strongly in congress, but they haven't regained the senate or the white house. >> that's because we put health care capitulators like mitt romney at the top of the ticket and john mccain. >> let's talk about john mccain. here's what he had to say about the shutdown today. >> we're not going through the shutdown again because people have been too traumatized by it.

there's too much damage. >> tom, are you as optimistic as senator mccain? >> you know, i think that certainly my party, i think, has learned a valuable lesson, and if the tea party and groups like freedom works want to continue to go down the road, they just empower the democrats and keep electing democrats like i said. they've lost us five united states senate seats over the last four years. that's a difference in the direction of that we need to take this country. if they're happy about electing democrats, they should continue doing what they're doing, but to put a guy like thad cochrane on notice, a solid conservative from mississippi, because he hadded common sense to say we can't shut down the federal government and p put the full fate and debt of the united states at risk. if that's out of touch, i think freedom works is really out of touch. >> patrick, what do you say to senator mccain's optimism about january? >> just responding to that previous comment, if you look at

the record, the electoral results, the centrist big government republicans lost the house of representatives in congress in 2006. they lost again in 2008, and they lost the white house in 2008 and lost the while against in 2012. the only electoral victories we see is when the conservatives and republicans stand on principle and fight no matter against unpopular laws the american people don't want. the polls show that obamacare is supremely unpopular with the american people. to capitulate to the democrats on that, i don't view that z a wise political or economic solution. >> in that context what do you think about what happens in january and february, as optimistic as senator mccain is there won't be a shoutdown? >> we hope there's not a shutdown. we'll, again, offer a plan that continues to fund the -- hopefully fund the government levels agreed to, but, you know, give the american people the favoritism that has been shown to business -- big business or

big on obamacare to prevent economic harm. >> the tea party is happy with senator marco rubio. he was on fox news this morning and had this to say about obamacare. fight. the one thing i want people to understand they should not feel depressed about this or discouraged about the long term of this. we will prevail on this issue. it's just a matter of time. >> tom, most republicans -- both tea partiers and other republicans agree with senator rubio in that he's not popular among them. happen. >> it's not popular with me or any republican and many independents around the country. however, it would have been a lot smarter to the american people to say, we're not going to shut down the government, but notice. we go out and talk to every tv and radio station around the country. we're not going to default on the american credit.

we're going to let you know today, october 1st, obamacare goes into effect. we'll check back with you in a year from now. in a year from now, november of 2014, due to that poorly drafted piece of legislation and the bad effects it had, we would have overwhelming elections in a republican column. yet, we took away from all of the mistakes in the first few weeks of obamacare, and we made it our problem. that was a bad tactical decision. >> patrick, the democratic party agree with tom. president obama's former chief of staff bill dailey told them he should be grateful for the tea party. >> every time he gets in trouble, they come to his rescue. the person people have a great concern about spending, but these people pick obamacare to have the fight over. >> i'll ask that question, patrick. did the pea party mess this up and become the president's best friend? >> the constituents that elected

conservative members of congress at the tea party caucus didn't send them to wash to use obamacare for their own political gain. they sent them there to fight the law and that's what they did. this law will be more unpopular interests. our ultimate interests is ensuring the american people don't have to suffer under economic consequences. to speak to the daley's point, i don't agree that conservative members of congress are somehow the president's best friend. i think republican leadership like mitch mcconnell and john boehner, they're the president's best friends when they go into negotiations with the president's allies in the senate and give them everything they want and ask for nothing in return. question. how many times is the house of representatives voted to repeal and defund obamacare? they have done it at least 40 times. sometimes you got to figure, you know what? in order to change the law, we need to win the presidency. sometimes winning elections does matter. they've had vote after vote.

they have failed. wouldn't you at some point say we need to move on from battle and fight another day when we have the votes to do it? >> when republican leadership insisting on hand-picking people like mitt romney who is a surrender on health care, no, that's not an option. if we're able to go through this political process and find people willing to stand firm on this law and not capitulate on the health care or economic priorities, then i think we have a chance of destroying this thing. >> couple of quick questions about some of the big players here. how does this leave speaker john boehner? "usa today" and "the wall street journal" agreed that other than the american people, he was the biggest loser, but he seems to have been just assist strong in his position as speaker. patrick? >> well, listen, i think this is just what has happened here, and i think -- it's not my job to, you know, select who is going to be -- who should be the new leader of republican party, if any. i think the american people will have a vote of no confidence in

2014. >> including the speaker of the house despite the fact he was alive with the tea partiers. >> when you look at the results of this the speaker of the house and leadership in the senate went to the table and demanded -- they went to the negotiating table and came away with nothing and gave the president everything he wanted. i don't think that's effective government. >> all right. patrick, tom, appreciate you being with us tonight. >> thank you. >> it will be interesting to see how the republican party comes together in the months ahead, and already there's been a conference committee that's gotten together today to start to talk about the budget. let's hope they can figure it out and come up with a real budget. coming up wikileaks founder is avoiding prosecution, angst-ridden and abandoned by many of his closest followers. is he still relevant and did all the work make any difference?

he's been called a menace to society and a national security threat. on the other hand, some say he's a focus of the new film. what does he have to show for it good to see you benjamin, you're essay is subtitled he's a cartoon, a mellow man yak and a crucial historical figure. let's start with the end of that, crucial historical figure. >> for me that's the best point, before julian assange had a big

sense that their military and agencies that served them did some things behind a shroud of secrecy they would never know. what he did with the assistance of bradley manning help to publicize the leaks that bradley and manning sprooied was to show what was happens behind that sort of shroud of secrecy. in case after case in iraq where, you know, the american military was simply not acknowledging how many civilian deaths it was causing in afghanistan where the military was, you know, basically lying about attacks on schools, for instance, you know, dead civilians that it was murdering, in the case of american intelligence contractors who were supplying their technology to foreign dictators.

what assange showed what was happening on the other side of the shroud of secrecy was in some cases quite alarming. i think that is in subtle but important ways change the ways that americans see the national security state and see the problems of secrecy. important. >> while lifting that shroud and exposing some abuses, didn't he also create serious problems and possibly the deaths of some people? >> absolutely. i think the deaths allegation is something that hasn't been proven but there was a deep call louseness to how assange behaved in a strictness that he put code. we're talking about the problem of redaction s. in the massive document dumps there were the names of many, many people who supplied the american military and intelligence agencies with intelligence, people who were collaborators with america in afghanistan, in iraq, in other

places around the globe. there was a lot of, i think, very legitimate fear that those people would be put at risk once their involvement was exposed to the world as part of the enormous document dumps that assange helped produce and was prevalued upon many, many times to redact the names and block out the names of people that did them harm. in some cases he did that, but only after an extraordinary amount of pressure. in many other cases he did it. there's certainly a strong case to be made there. >> moving on to other parts of the subtitle, you called him a cartoon and megalo maniac, that led to people abandoned him off on his own now. >> it's incredible to see how isolated he's become, if you read the history of wikileaks, basically what you see is four

years of his own allies abandoning him. he sort of cycles through, you know, separate generations of allies and assistants and people at the core of wikileaks. right now wikileaks is, you know, part of this is simply a product of as sange's own legal problems in switzerland. to see what they did between 2008 and 2011, the frequency and the real deep impact of the lease that they published, and then to see what's happened since. there's been a dramatic diminishment of the role. >> he got back in the public consciousness again with edward snowden's leaks. you say in the piece you ask why in 480,000 people have notice den's security clearance, why have there been no other leaks. isn't it a good thing that there

leaks? where do you draw the line? >> i don't think so. i mean, you know, look. it seems to me that if you're talking about genuinely morally alarming thing that the american military and american services are doing, it's surprising to me that more people did not sort of speak up and do the things that edward snowden and chelsea manning did. again, you know -- >> that where you draw the line? it has to be sort of calling attention to very alarming things as opposed to -- these were massive document dumps with names of people who helped the united states and all sorts of other things that warrant what you describe. is that where you draw the line? >> yeah, i think that's a fair place to start. i mean, these are incredibly complex issues. it seems like there is a basic moral imperative that, you know,

somebody who looks at secret documents and sees that their government is doing things that are objectionable, ab hour rent and being told to the public. there is a basic, moral obligation that they have to do something with that information, to not simply sit at their computer and note it and move on. you know, when you read the chat logs where chelsea manning is confronting some of this stuff and trying to make sense of it, it's really very moving. there's a very genuine feeling that something terrible is going on. you know, that she is seeing, you know, crimes being committed and not -- and the public not informed. you know what? i think that that is something that we ought to cheer. that is a kind of morally important thing to have people

be able to do. >> let's get back to assange and his situation, he's in the ecuadorian embassy in london where he hopes to get asylum in ecuador or somewhere else. let's listen to him talking about the prospect of leaving his life. >> this embassy, is a bit of a prison in some way, but i have good people here. where would i go to? i would end up in the outside world where you are. what is happening to the outside world? the west is becoming a place where the best and the brightest who keep the government -- hold the government to account are ending up in aasylum or exile in other countries. when you see that with dictatorships in latin america and the soviet union, and it's time it's stopped. >> he faces criminal charges possibly in sweden if he leaves

the embassy without safe passage to somewhere else. there are arguments about whether the united states might want to arrest him. he certainly sounds fairly paranoid, doesn't he, benjamin? >> absolutely. one way to read wikileaks and it's the way i read the wikileaks story is that assange's own difference and peculiar later and sense of alienation both enables wikileaks to become what it was, but also has sort of sabotaged himself and the organization. these sexual assault charges in sweden are not charges but allegations are something that i think he could have handled much, much better. he accused western intelligence agencies of being complicit in making up charges against him when the charges themselves seem to me pretty credible. so, yeah, there is a real element of paranoia that runs through the public statements

not just recently but from pretty early on. i think that that has done a lot to undermine his cause, which i think is a worthy one, and to alienate a lot of people who have been friends to him and future. >> you call him an irrelevant resistible hollywood subject, but he doesn't trust hollywood. "the fifth estate" comes out on friday. it sounds like the assangeen. >> this is the biggest leak of information in history. >> they're all standing alongside you. >> this is going to change everything. >> he's not a journalist. he's a threat to national security. >> this is all about survival. >> lives are at stake. >> what about the lives of the civilians in these conflicts? >> if we had someone like you, the berlin wall would have come down years before. >> very dramatic, benjamin. certainly hollywood playing it

back there. movie. he called it cowardly. what did you think about it? >> i thought it showed him in a decent light. it certainty emphasized some of his paranoia and selfishness. those are hard things for any movie to avoid. there are so many accounts of people that left wikileaks because of exactly those problems of assange personally. on the plus side of the ledger, it made a pretty strong case that he had sort of changed the world and that, you know, the kind of revelations that he managed to put forth have shifted the way people see the united states and global power. one thing we see in the reaction to edward snowden is there's more of a receptive audience for the idea that american secrecy is a problematic force in the world than five or six years ago

when we had the first round of much less well documented but the first round of suggestions that the nsa was spying on american citizens. >> we've been monitoring the social media on this. let's see what she's found. >> antonio, we took a look at the wikileaks twitter feed, and this is what we found. been, the feed was riddled with criticism of the movie. assange has released talking points about everything wrong with it. he has a rival movie out. if the movie portrays him as such a visionary, why does he hate it so much? >> because it also portrays him as a maniac, and i think that to him that has come to matter more than being seen as a vision ary. there's a way his personal brand and his defense has gun to

interference with his political politics. that's the moment when you watch his relationship with english intellectual society. there was a time in 2010 and 2011 when he was really a hero society. that's support is just altogether disappeared because he's very difficult to deal with. so, you know, you see both those sides in the movie. >> a quick last word. where will he be five years from now? >> it's hard to imagine, you know. i can't imagine that this state lasts for much longer, but in another way it's just hard to see what state would want to take him on and take on all the baggage. maybe he's in limbo five years from now. >> all right. benjamin great to have you here. really fascinating topic. appreciate your time. >> later on the princess of thailand graces our studio.

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(vo) tonight: faultlines chases the flames as they spread throughout the west. >> there's a thick, acrid smoke smell in the air and we're following a strike team now to the top of the mountains where the fire line begins. (vo) it's a war being fought by air and on land costing millions of dollars every year. >> you will make an individual decision to build a home there, but what's the cost to the rest of us? (vo) what's going wrong with the war on wildfires and what are the true costs of putting them out?

today's data dive looks at the changing world of pregnancy. egg donation doubled to 18,000, and women who receive donated eggs get better results than ever. in 2010, 24.4% of women had an ideal outcome, a single, full-term baby born at a healthy weight. that's a 6 percentage point point from 2000. the average ages of donors 28 years old and recipients 44 didn't change over the time frame. 37% of births were twins but three-quarters were mature weighing less than 5 1/2 pounds.

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can any nation thrive without equal justice for all? u.s. the absence in third world countries are serious problems preventing development and prolonging poverty. now a thai princess and former criminal prosecutor laurjed a campaign to make the rule of law and equal justice goals for the 193 states that belong to the united nations. the princess is also behind thailand's campaign for acceptance of the rules on the

worldwide. i had a chance to speak with her royal highness on wednesday. like you, i'm a lawyer. i have a law degree from a third world country. i group up in venezuela, and all countries have laws. my experience is the respect for laws in these countries and the enforcement of laws. is that how you see it so people know where you stand? >> in the whole world there are so many legal systems, and in each legal system they are decided to be suitable for certain countries. but i think the basic principle on the law somehow should be jointly together and i'm here today to talk about the issue on the rule of law. the rule of law with an academy deem ya context and the u.n. context has been discussed for a

very long time. i think it is very important because like you mentioned, in every country people have to live by the law. to understand this lawful and the educations to the rule of law, which especially are the basis of every human being's life is very important. >> what inspired you to do this? was it your work as a criminal prosecutor? >> it is also as my background, my education background, as well as my role as a prosecutor as well as a diplomat. i can see that the issue of rule of law is very important for every country, and it is very important for every country to "consider this" issue very seriously. >> you're the force behind the bangkok dialogue on the rule of law. it's an international conference that will take place next month in thailand. what do you hope to accomplish?

what do you think can be done? i know you have a lot of world leaders that will be there. what do you hope will happen? >> thailand has attached a great importance on the issue of rule of law, crime prevention and criminal justice, which we all know that it's very important to peace, security and human rights. i'm looking forward that this event will be a forum that high level political leaders, academia as well as a stable society to come together to discuss, share their best practices, their experience in this field. bringing up thailand as you do, the global excessive invehicles had thailand at 37, but the heritage foundation that comes up with a -- it has its index of its own ranked thailand althout 61st.

it said a well-functioning legal framework is not in place in thailand and the judiciary is vulnerable to political interference. the legal process is slow, and judgmenting can be affected through extra legal means in the absence of effective enforcement measures corruption is deeply rooted in society. another group, transparency international ranked thailand 88th in the global perceptions of corruption index. what are you doing at home to try to improve those? i would not say that thailand was like every country in the world. each country has its own flaw, but it is very important to accept its own flaw and trying to correct it as best as possible. that is why we're organizing this forum. thailand feels confident to come forward and accept the fact and try to make it better. >> there's one other case that's gotten a lot of news internationally because it

involved the grandson of one of the co-founders of red bull. he ran over a policeman in his ferrari and killed him, but he managed to avoid prosecution so far and left the country and is in singapore. some critics say there's not equal justice in thailand, that the rich can pretty much do whatever they want. >> i would not quite agree on that, but i could not really comment because i don't know the details and the nature of the case. of course, the judiciary and the legal system is working on that way. >> your grandfather , longest serving monarch in the world. he's been king of thailand for almost 60 years now. actually, almost 70 years. there's a law in thailand that does not allow criticism of the royal family. he himself has said that he should be open to criticism. he doesn't seem to have a problem with that. why is that law still in place?

>> well, i'm not making it the law in the first place, so it's very hard for me to define law. each law will be reviewed and will need to be improved to be compatible with time and i understand yo asians. talking about criticism, i think everybody has their own criticism on many, many things. when criticizing about something, maybe the truth and the ealthough would be very important. >> clearly, you're making a huge effort to improve matters not only at home but around the world. another big effort you made is to focus on female prisoners and women in prison systems around the world are growing at very -- are growing very quickly. there? you were the force behind these bangkok rules that are trying to ensure better treatment for women around the world.

>> this is an issue very close to my heart, because like i said earlier, my background is law. i've been working in prosecution for quite a while, five to six years, and i experienced that firsthand, that the hardship of these women in prison that need to be improved. by improving it's maybe not through the criminal justice system only but through raci raise awareness and look at the problems and help. i think this is a very important issue to bring the justice to the world, to the society as well as helping those who committed a crime to be reintegrated into society as a good citizen. >> the fact that you've managed to get these bangkok rules passed is a great achievement on its own. i do want to ask you one personal question before we go.

as i said, your grandfather is the king of thailand and your father is the ground prince and you're the eldest child. the laws of succession in thailand only have a male lineage, but there are efforts to change that so a woman could become queen of thailand. if those laws change, could you one day be the queen? >> well, i'm not a fortune teller and can't tell the future. thailand. >> you're doing very much in thailand as the ambassador in vienna and you're doing a lot not just for thailand in your efforts to help female prisoners. we thank you very much for being here today. let me see if i can get it right the second time. i got it right the first time, didn't i? >> thank you so much. we appreciate you being here. the show may be over but the

>> welcome to aljazeera america, i'm greg walters and these are the stories we're following for you. the way forward after the government shutdown, lawmakers trying to get back to the budget. the president set the new head for the department of homeland security. and the influx of syrian refugees coming into lebanon is pushing a fragile economy to the breaking point. the federal government should be fully reopened today. this just two days after a deal was reached