reason to believe the sun stands for. some of. the future for. the. protesters hit the streets calling for wall street to pay up but other cries falling on deaf ears over the u.s. deficit reaching a whopping two hundred twenty three billion dollars in february it seems that there's only more pain in store for u.s. taxpayers. and as u.s. workers continue to fight for their rights fox news seems to be battling perhaps with well let's just call it creative fiction. oh wait what was that palm trees and was gone from. and promoting democracy or regime change the case of one

u.s. contractor convicted in cuba is shedding light on how your tax dollars are being spent abroad and exposing the darker side of us meddling under the guise of human rights. good evening it's tuesday march eighth four pm here in washington d.c. i'm lucy catherine of and you're watching our t.v. now when someone screws you over it's pretty normal to want revenge right but a new campaign called making wall street pay is taking to the streets literally people are angry with big banks and they say the taxpayer money has been wasted and that was straight is to blame for sinking the american economy but will their shots fall on deaf ears and will those responsible for the financial mess ever be held accountable well joining me now from war is jordan as deval dorgan. as it would be

national people's action and then let me get to pronounce the action again as head of state as the rest of us write about that so let's let's talk about this issue let's talk about the financial situation here in washington we know that this month or not in this month in february the u.s. deficit for that month reach a staggering two hundred twenty three billion dollars obviously we're in a financial mess it doesn't take a genius to figure that out and yet when you look at the rhetoric coming out of washington by the politicians no one is asking the big corporations to pay it seems that somehow the taxpayers are going to have to make more sacrifices to get us out of this what's wrong with the picture well the picture there what's wrong with the picture is that the tax payers that are expected to foot the bill for this are ordinary taxpayers like yourself and myself who are you know. not of modest incomes whereas the big banks large corporations are continually pushing and getting bigger and bigger tax breaks and you know even though it's the financial industry as you say that it was at the at the root of the financial crisis that we that we that we

find ourselves and they're still posting record profits record paying themselves record bonuses. and meanwhile pushing for. for bigger and bigger tax cuts for themselves but not for us you know what we're saying is that this is not you know we're not in the middle of a budget crisis we're not in the middle of a spending crisis we're in the middle of a revenue crisis from spending less and less on on programs that help the working class and poor people in america we're spending less and less on teachers' salaries and less and less on police and essential services and you know meanwhile the banks have both the ability and the responsibility to make up the budget gap well i think we have a graphic of some of these band of these if as we like to call in the big banks that are are not exactly paying their fair share of what we have bank of america we have wealth fargo citi bank goldman sachs all of these companies have managed to sort of convince the regulators in washington. that having

a lower corporate tax rate is going to somehow trickle down to the rest of us right now and they talk about how maybe if we do this then suddenly there will be more job creation and you know to be fair it does seem like these banks these big companies have helped with job creation it's just that job creation has been in india mexico china and abroad so how do you account for the sort of the trickle down effect as clearly did not work so far and we have no reason to expect that to start working in the future bank of america last year got a six hundred sixty six million dollars tax rebate on top of the twenty two thousand and nine tax rebate of three point five billion dollars you know and you can see how that helped us in terms of job creation it did not help us in terms of talk ration in the united states. you know we. what we are calling for is a few things one that the banks need to stop fighting reforms that would actually keep people in their homes which would in turn stabilize the economy second were calling for the government to pass a financial speculation tax which would do

a couple of things one. it it's estimated this would generate up to one hundred fifty billion dollars annually in additional revenue that would solve the crisis second it would actually discourage the kind of wild speculation that caused this kind of this crisis that in the first place. and so those those though those are the main things that people that we talk to on a daily basis and you see taking to the streets in protest that's what that's what we're looking at let's be honest here i mean it's nice that i guess people can get motivated enough for a cause to take it out to the streets but you know three hundred people in front of john boehner itself i don't see them coming out and saying we're going to change our policies here i mean is it really going to do you any good well you know we still live in a democracy and you were up against some really powerful corporate interests with deep pockets pocketbooks that there are no problem spending to you know to finance this campaign or another. but at the end of the day this is still you know this is

still a democracy we believe in people power and you know every. everything in this country that that helps workers but helps ordinary people has been fought for by organized groups of citizens like ourselves and we do believe that we will win this at the end of the day because the majority of our side very well unfortunately it's not just corporate interests that you're fighting but media interest as well and i want to talk about a different story that we're going to be talking about in just a moment now the actions of wall street cred triggered the economic crisis making states struggle with budget gaps all over the united states but in fact state that's been in the news is obviously wisconsin and it has seen people rise up to resist having to pay for the mistakes that they did not make but as some stray showers have been raging on fox news who else has been trying to vilify the teachers and the students as chaotic animals and artie's of the sea a church in a takes a look at how the most trusted name in news has been in fact spinning the message

to get across its own political agenda let's take a look. these are some of the faces of the wisconsin protests mothers teachers and students but according to fox news the people protesting i'm sure i'll get a flurry of e-mails calling for me to apologize for naming them the exam bullies but they are and i won't apologize for it that's what they are in reality there was no bullying going on that was certainly the case when our team was on the ground in february as the protests were peaking even though people seventy seven what's going on in. the arctic. is actually not the music playing you know the waiting there might be. and they're right as workers that has remained the case for those who have closely followed events i know for a fact that there has been no violence whatsoever in wisconsin i mean you know i mean aside from people stepping on each other's toes accidentally there just hasn't

been police even issued a thank you statement to protesters for being peaceful but according to fox news channel the demonstrators have been an uncontrollable mob not a terribly civil or classy group of people profanity but garrity and pretty vile behavior these are nothing but an bullies not existing filings was taken to an extreme with the spin of the knowledge attack on a fox reporter that guy let me show you what you know who seem to have seen it coming that hey you get the demonstrators you did and they're the utter lack of civility civility and harassment of reporters there from a video posted online it became clear that nothing close to harassment had taken place but it was too late to stop the infamous fox bandits there pushing him there shoving him apparently one even hit him pushing it even further the so called bullies came out to protest in a cold snowy winter

a more violent protest in york featured by bill o'reilly. palm trees in the background turning the channel into a cartoon show the brazen nature of this propaganda what is sad and tragic is that ninety percent of parts viewers will have no idea that that was faked and they will think that it was true and if another field trip was to reverse polling numbers to support the party line up the channel sixty four percent in favor and naming teachers who had not seen a sick day at school or part of the fight for their own rights liars that is no excuse that is no excuse for lying to children but the ones doing the lying are actually the piece is an american t.v. screens since the show must go on and they keep told me she hates me because it makes her feel that situation no you're right marching hand in hand with the lies go on and on and on and r.t.e. new york. all right well i mean i have to say as an american it's really

disheartening to me because as amusing i guess as this story is you know we see that fox that starts with all the time when you're fighting a situation where washington doesn't seem to be listening when a wall street clearly isn't listening and when the mainstream media seems to be occurring the same exact message just over and over again pushing their own political agenda i mean how do you how do you when it seems like all of the forces are against us and. you know we win the same way that we all it for that we always have been since since you know listen of slavery to the civil rights movement we did win by persistence and by speaking truth to power and by by living you know by living our shared common american values you know the people that we're up against at the end of they are still a tiny much minority of the population when very large pocket not very large pocketbooks that's right and so it really is people power versus money power and we do believe that the people people will win and you know it's also you know there's

also the kind of wild card of the social media that the this is is taking more and more of a role in these things these days we're not everyone doesn't get all of their information through the mainstream media anymore you know hopefully someone will ford around a link to this program and of course then you will help us with that to be sure. and you know so it just takes a pretty cold heart to name the people that have been protesting against you know against these injustices or or or wicked people of any kind you know i'm just thinking about some of the faces that were with us yesterday protesting here in washington d.c. against bank of america and the office of the comptroller the currency has been aiding and abetting these things. and you know you're talking about teachers you're talking about nurses about farmers people that are doing this you know partly you know partly out of out of righteous anger but mostly out of love for their family. for their for their communities for this country and that's really the motivating

force behind this and we believe that it will live well that's that's a very optimistic message but i think at the end of day and fortunately it seems even washington is no longer willing to stand up for the remaining middle class the did have some of its labor labor rights protected that's slowly being stripped across the u.s. well i hope your optimism when i'm a little bit more cynical i was jordan asked about campaign director for the national people's action and still ahead of the top our reading democracy you threw us an id it turns a ride but our t.v. asks the state department what happened there we action we'll show you soon. plus look for julian assange and wiki leaks there was john young co-founder of krypton straight ahead come along for a tour of new york as secret one the u.s. government doesn't want you to know anything about. what drives the world but the growing use by politicians who makes decisions break through get through to

me who can you trust no one. is you know with the global reach see where are we heading state controlled capital city school. when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more. a charmer over here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture.

now each year the u.s. gives more than forty million dollars to usa id this in hopes of spreading democracy abroad but the government really know where that money is going to the case of the american contractor who's been convicted of working to destabilize cuba's government joining me now for more on the story is lewis rimbaud he's a director of communications and human american alliance education fund thank you so much for joining us now let's talk about this case alan gross right american citizen a contractor contractor with u.s. eighty funding six years old he goes over to cuba a bunch of times on our tourist visa bring along with them all kinds of communications equipment satellite phones things that are specifically forbidden by the government to be brought in there and why is it that we're shocked that a contractor would get arrested for breaking the laws of another country. there is

a certain distance that the state department builds in. separate itself from its operations so the state department gives broad guidance according to. the official decision to usa id which is supposedly an independent organization and usa id hires a contracting company a big company does business all over the world but it's a private company possibly a front for a government agency but it's a private company and then that company hires a sub contractor which is really a micro operation himself and basically himself as we always do you run the world setting up sort of like contacts and so on and so the government can say but it's not us it's not like an agent with a commando outfit really thing like that this is an older man who think there is with this stuff and they pick them up and people look at it and say ah poor guy but

. he he had been around for some time and it's not like he could have been through totally innocent what was going on with the poly kimmage that's communicated is you know these things happen and if only the cubans had a heart if only they would recognize the humanitarian tragedy behind this man and his family without mentioning the cuban five and other humanitarian tragedy. families the broader issue that this raises is that we're essentially exporting our contracting our foreign policy and i guess the state department in the u.s. government's ability to say hey you know we're not really at fault here it's these other contractors that are joining that stuff meanwhile. it's not the only aspect of government as you know there are probably more. hired contractors in iraq and afghanistan and then there are soldiers which rather you don't seem to be able to track very well yes nor do we really. inc and even the work of intelligence is

being privatized and the work of operations not just intelligence is being privatized there is who knows what would combination a lot of forces behind this but there is also remember these days this. is this almost religious dedication to privatizing everything making in the state disappear and it's part of that everything has to be privatized to make a profit and you don't get employed to serve your country and make a profit by certain services well you know and at the end of the day they can just claim either ignorance or not really knowing what where this money is going or what its contractors are doing one of our reporters actually went to the state department and we asked the state department spokesman p.j. crowley about the case of alan gross and here's what he had to say. but then as a contractor receiving taxpayer money from us the idea if you're not aware of what you want you know no i didn't say that i brought it up. you know we of course have

oversight over. you know contractors around the world. but i've as to precisely what he was doing and its relationship to an existing contract i'll to first. while so you know here are trouble saying anything at all uncomfortable see have you know blackwater committing murders in iraq and getting away with it we have contractors doing. some person of work in cuba getting away with it but hey they're contractors we don't know what's going on we can't be held accountable i mean there's nothing wrong with this picture that's why it's just private enterprise at work it's not bad government whatever government does all some of this is this is part of the picture to always always always no matter what we the we're doing good it's for the good of those people in fact us the idea agency for international development sounds so mutual it sounds really like a nice ride and i like the red cross and the name itself u.s.

aid we're here to help they don't they don't lose some sanitize some acceptable you can embrace this kind of thing when it's happening all over the world is not just cuba you know it kind of activity was also going on in the middle east probably trying to head off what happened. they wanted to goon a different direction it's happening in venezuela it's happening in bolivia it's happening in africa it's happening all over the place that has a history of happening in eastern europe that are you know it's just it's a it's a difficult situation it really is and it's so difficult for me to sit there and watch for example here earlier clinton secretary of state beg for more money for propaganda efforts u.s. propaganda efforts abroad as she did last week in the senate foreign relations hearing when we clearly don't seem to be here at the track where this money is going and it's the first of democracy and really with the with the documentary that was aired on the today last night i'm not feeling well they had

a security is not sitting around waiting for things to happen and so it turns out to the people who are most involved with some of the best known dissident groups here in this confusing sort because they had a different one yesterday there was a third agent i was going to talk about two agents who had been infiltrating the dissident groups with yesterday and a young man told his story he was a he is an engineer in id information technology and he had a little illegal business going on the side with a buddy who king of. telecommunications equipment from regular people his body goes astray after a while he sends somebody over assuming that his friend of course long work and his friend says here's a deal we're going to provide you with equipment hardware you get software and came lng we're going to teach you how to do things we want you to hook up networks and

so on and then they started bringing in the equipment so more you can see in the pictures it's parabolic antenna that are come with surfboards little sort of body or words and he goes to talk to state security and says i may be running an illegal business but i'm not ready to. to go against a state of this what i want to know so become state security agents and they follow this whole process is not enough time this is we have these targets of mr gross so what this comes this is so these days couple of days after mr gross is guilty and you are no sentence yet he has been found guilty of the things he was doing and it happens that he had been selling this much is known he had been selling. satellite communications you know any networks money to are related. and here's a story a whole different thing of. the cia operations. happening

constantly in cuba mr grose was not there while he was one of the car just one of many and it seems that you know rather well for the coming weeks i'm sure more and more details are going to come out about this case and so late on a previously unseen activities of the u.s. government abroad i was with us from both directions communication for the cuban american alliance education and. now he's not julian assange in fact she shies away from the word dissidents because he's heard it all too many times before especially lately but alas the co-founder of krypton dot org john young has been exposing government secrets on his website for from new york city for about fifteen years now and r.t. his loyalists are also not work a seedy cripps the streets of new york city. a winter's day rendezvous with an unusual tour guide and cryptic critic we are here with john young he started the website or he got to the game about ten years before wiki leaks did write releasing

classified and secret documents of governments from all over the world on his site and another thing that he does is he goes all over photographing what you call sensitive sites right here where we're near some right now he bought a graph from and puts him on his website for the world to see and he's going to tag along and he's going to show us new york city through his eyes we begin outside the federal courthouse where terrorism suspects are tried otos john is published in places like this as well as the police in judicial headquarters known as the ring of steel where he's taking us now and led the f.b.i. to visit him and critics to say he's putting national security at risk in the country as it should there's a risk to our society and this is the truth all the troops are killed and notice all the barriers here john says post nine eleven america has amounted to a build up of secrecy seen all over areas like this in what he calls security theater. since if. you don't there's an officer around every

corner that wants to know what we're doing they claim they're under threat they said well the trip john opposes the fortress looking buildup like this secured entrance outside the prosecutor's offices and he also thinks in this particular case it's a decoys i know that the prosecutor's office. john is an architect by trade so he reads buildings like books and the biggest name he sees coming out of this area is the money being made these are huge producers they call them government operation but they're hugely completion and they've got huge contract. which is just down the street this federal building houses the f.b.i. and there's an underground driveway for the purpose of a parking lot that john has discovered it's not. all is for medieval as it seems. despite all of these discoveries there is one place john hasn't found the cia office next stop well street at first purportedly the world's largest repository of

gold yes even more than fort knox house mostly for other countries behind this wall of the new york federal reserve eight feet of concrete there's nothing for someone to get it but much gold and filming around the financial center of arguably the world we are met with skepticism the third officer of the day. nonetheless the tour goes on wall street brings a cobblestone pavement to make it look more and more security if you get into it you see that a lot of security officials because not much financial action truly happens here anymore john says the point of seeing the security firsthand though is to question more should we really be pointing just more money into the building operation which i'm trying to sleep the hyperbole about through it all the. information is out there go look lauren lyster r.t. new york. now today all over the world people are celebrating international women's

day but for many women here in america it seems to be one step forward two steps back while women may have reached a new political heights of working women are still kept back and kept down by a lack of a portable childcare and paid maternity leave and that's just the tip of the iceberg now if you correspondent killing ford has more on how this superpower is leaving its women behind bars kind of just know. the rhetoric is familiar specially word of a group of the always with a difference in every election but this year your voice your pool will be the southern state and forging a new future for but the reality stands in stark contrast for all the talk of female empowerment women in america are losing ground two thousand and nine was a record year for women in congress but it only seventeen percent leave us still trails countries like a rapper twenty five percent of the parliament must be female the u.s. is one of five countries with no guaranteed maternity leave benefits women can

legally be fired for becoming pregnant the standard is two weeks of paid leave after giving birth compared to three months to a year in other countries. any birds three children were born in guatemala where women are guaranteed three months paid maternity leave and free preschool but here in d.c. she enjoys neither all men who are earning minimum wage or anything close to right . there are not empowered there's a big gap you have mothers who are professionals but good salaries can pay you know fifteen hundred dollars a month per child for child care a lot of mothers have to pay. for chile all of what their salary would be in order to get child care and irony bird struggled with as a woman fighting for women's rights it's a human rights violation really for women. and for children to. being able to. to work to support the

family in the way that they need to be. compared to other developed countries the u.s. spends one third less an early childhood education and doesn't have universal public preschool there's a big problem with. congress deciding. not prioritizing basic social programs fundamental human rights but instead. you know catering to the interests of corporations who are more interested in. building up the military with women accounting for two thirds of minimum wage workers in the us. the economic crisis has forced many women here to choose between feeding their families and caring for their children in florida artsy washington d.c. well.