it's about what i hope for what you now think are you know what's going to day for president in a republican primary and with that the political phenomenon known as ron paul becomes a contender in the race to the white house so will the third run be a charm. and in the throes of war once again from an organization that once promised peace so after years of military intervention after the end of the cold war nato is still trying to answer lies. and solitary confinement in the u.s.

a form of invisible torture state for the worst of the worst criminals or so you would think well not the truth behind who is really forced to live in those tiny cells. good evening it's friday may thirteenth at eight pm here in washington d.c. i'm laurin lister in your botching r t well you may have seen it ron paul has made it official today he announced he will be running for president in two thousand and twelve and the news was everywhere this is a very different tenor than back in two thousand and eight when he was considered a candidate of the libertarian fringe and the media treated him that way now he's going after the republican nomination now but but he is well known as a libertarian who ran for the republican nomination in two thousand and eight and who also ran as a libertarian twenty years earlier so kind of fervor for ron paul be a sign of desire for

a true third party candidate or third party before we get to that are two senior broadcast journalist megan takes a look at the history of third party candidates and the hurdles ron paul may place . in american politics you have the elephants and i'm newt gingrich and i'm announcing one term of the shoot for those in the through the donkey i will be election. i'm going to need each and every one of you to get it and then there are those dark forces at this moment i'm officially announcing that i am a candidate for president the ones that in the past were such a long shot not even the us media was willing to take a bet another question about electability. do you have any sir there's always the question of whether you were fired as a race for twenty twelve years up does a third party candidate really have what it takes to cross the finish line if history indicates anything the answer is no from ross perot to ralph nader and even

billionaire steve forbes no third party candidate has made it's number one in one nine hundred eighty eight the candidate that's until your face. first. ron paul ran on the platforms of non interventionism restructuring of the federal budget and a return to the gold standard bold ideas for someone running on tough conservative turf. george herbert walker bush do solemnly swear four years later just as here we ran a three hundred forty one billion dollars in their billionaire businessman ross perot took center stage wanting to set the record straight on us debt that's our legislators and our president trying to buy our vote this year. we're not even though ross perot didn't win he was the most successful dark horse to ever run who rose right again in one thousand nine hundred six but there was

a new third party face in the mix ralph nader is ok. with that enthusiasm nader nation was born his hatred for big government earned him the green party ticket think of the hubris here these two parties have spoiled our elections they've spoiled all right. it's. making him a popular contender but not a champion was steve forbes but he did forever change the third party approach to presidential races using thirty seven million of his own he made it so that money was no object for candidates running outside the well oiled two party system but no amount of money could buy steve forbes or ralph nader the white house that year. in two thousand both nader ian forbes we're back running this time came known as the spoiler who paved the way for a george w.

bush victory jump forward to two thousand and eight a decade after his first presidential run ron paul stepped back into the limelight are you running for president. with the tea party joining his stride in the political landscape changing his stance remain steadfast but america wasn't ready to hear his message you know during the campaign before a talk about the economic crisis that nobody quite understood was coming in the housing bubble burst i think that gave us credibility so it's one in twelve right around the corner and ron paul make his third run for president but charles if his ability to raise a million dollars in one day is any vacation plus the fact that you've now running as a republican perhaps americans finally are ready to bet on him. as bryant already he's a senior editor at reason magazine and brian thanks so much for being with us now i mean the first glaring difference between now ron paul announcing and three years

ago is the difference and in media attention i mean this was a big this was all over the mainstream media today and three years ago it seemed that there were only a you know a few places you could see ron paul what was this channel right here i do have to toot our own horn there is giving ron paul attention so what do you think has really changed now people are looking at ron paul seriously and giving a lot of attention. i think what's changed is that a lot of ideas that ron paul has that people considered wildly eccentric or crazy four years ago are now widely seen to actually be correct ron paul was the guy out there saying that the federal reserve policy was creating an unsustainable bubble that was going to lead to a financial crisis and it did the housing bubble burst the dollar continues to sink and world markets his fears of a complete dollar collapse now seem actually realistic he was the only candidate out there saying that our foreign interventions in the mideast were pretty much a useless waste of lives and money and that's an opinion that's becoming more and

more widespread and i think even the recent killing of osama bin laden well it's not being seen that way should actually be seen as a predator ron paul's captors he was the only one advocating that sort of car get it going after the particular people we wanted to get right who had been waging first giant full scale war the nation building as a tactic so i think more people are saying that it is not and was actually someone with ideas that are extremely important for americans to consider ok ideas that's an interesting word i think would you would you think it's fair to say that these ideas and the idea that we're allies considered friends have now moved mainstream. yeah i think that's unquestionable i mean the notion of jabbing against a federal reserve was extremely fringe and eccentric and now there's a national mass movement consisting of you know people in the streets chanting and the fed and of us from all over the spectrum are recognizing that federal reserve policy contributed to the crisis ron paul now heads the subcommittee in the house

that actually you know covers the federal reserve is right on that as she was been amazing and you have a point in years ago nobody knew what the federal reserve was and now i mean most people yeah absolutely no pun intended easing is or at least know that that is a term that exists that's had something to do with the economy hopefully they know a little bit more than that but that set aside from the ideas that could ron paul be a viable presidential contender. well we're seeing some reason to believe. a c.n.n. opinion poll this is actually kind of staggering from last week actually showed when they matched up against obama all the republican candidates ron paul actually was doing the best of all of them against obama still losing by seven points but doing the best in a recent new hampshire poll he came in tied for second it was a distant second to mitt romney but per second he told a million dollars on one day last week on the day of the first debate the fact that the media still insists on treating him like a marginal hopeless candidate is absurd i mean he ran in two thousand and eight he

actually had thirty five delegates going into the convention how many delegates of you know temple at the or you know michele bachmann or any number of people treated somehow was serious i have ever heard ron paul is absolutely as strong a potential candidate at this day you know long before any votes have been cast as anyone and that said you do have members of the more mainstream republican party interview that say you know in reality he's probably not a viable you know nominee for the republican party and you don't you know a fan of his for a reason he was saying that he is at all likely that he would be the nominee so how do you overcome this you know why would he decide then in this situation where some of the media is still treating him as friends and where some republicans are as well why would you decide to run for the republican nomination as opposed to running as a third party candidate. well for all the reasons that you're talking about your last segment running as a third party candidate is his is really a fool's errand in this country ron paul actually did the politically sensible

thing by running as a republican because there are all sorts of americans who just are not going to go outside the two party reservation it's just been ingrained in their heads and childhood that anyone who's not a republican or a democrat is some sort of lunatic so with his ideas already out ron is absolutely doing the right thing by saying ok i'm a republican you guys understand that and i know why he's doing why he's running at all even though his winning is unlikely which i do grant i'm merely saying that there's no reason to write him off entirely is because i go back to the idea of ideas ron paul has a set of ideas that he has been pushing in public life for decades now that he considers are vital to the survival and freedom of the united states and he has realized that running for president as a republican is absolutely the best way to get those ideas out there i mean in two thousand and eight he built up this unprecedented and unexpected huge mass of people a lot of them skewing young and skewing towards being willing to give him a fair amount of money to spread his ideas and i think he believes and rightly so

that he can do even better now with the groundwork that he's already laid has that really because he's known for having that's a very dedicated following. increased exponentially as an. i certainly agree that eventually. you know he there's this activist group called campaign for liberty. is pushing explicitly ron paul style ideas there two thousand and nine money pulled in was usually higher than there are two thousand and eight money pouring in so you know there's there's no sign that the momentum that grew around ron paul in the last campaign has shrunk there's a lot of signs that it's grown and you know none of us can predict the future but he thinks and i think that it's time to take it to the next level so it's growing or obviously at some point i just want to really quickly bring up this i want to talk more philosophically about the third party prosper a third party candidate or a sister and this is a reason and we have to consider you are

a libertarian organization but i found that eighty percent of people would consider their party candidate for president in two thousand and twelve so where's the disconnect between i don't like this and what you're saying where you're saying the real glocks from having at third party candidate or breaking away from the two party system is that people simply won't vote for a third party candidate yeah our poll results were amazing and they may be a sign that something has substantially changed america certainly never in the past has there been that level of willingness to for people to vote for a third party candidate you also have to understand that beyond the ideological barriers there are enormous financial and legal barriers for third party candidates to succeed merely getting on the ballot if you're not hooked up with the republicans or democrats are going to cost you a stunning amount of money a stunning amount of volunteer labor it's a huge barricade that the two parties have created towards opposition i was excited by the results of our recent poll i must say and i'm a tiny bit doubtful that we'll see that payoff in two thousand and twelve and also because i'm not sure who this third party leader on the horizon would be i mean the

most interesting guy out there seems to be who we're talking about ron paul and he is seeking other republican nomination right now if he doesn't get it will he make a third party run he's always said he doesn't intend to but that doesn't mean that there's no chance that. all right well interesting conversation to be having with ron paul looking like this you know political phenomenon and maybe the political system phenomenon being this discussion that's becoming very real and much bigger of a third party candidate and criticism of the two party system and u.k. so i thank you for your insight that was brian doherty senior editor at reason magazine now for avid military non interventionist ron paul two arguably the globe's largest interventionist nato nato secretary general met with the united states presidents today they met and discussed libya and according to a white house statement agreed that nato will maintain its operations to quote protect civilians in libya this as the organization continues to describe to the

world its raise in death or at but as allies tried to head in libya and afghanistan and other missions are they still trying to find one. several decades and wars and later it's still the question it's top of mind when it comes to the world's largest military alliance any people i think today wonder if at the end of the. nato low and behold it is busier than ever. to counter perceived threats from the soviet union the north atlantic treaty organization has plowed ahead without an enemy after the end of the cold war. so the fact that the alliance lost its reason to exist instead what happened in fact and in violation of even the accords and the agreements at that time was nato aggressively expanded.

and a larger alliance it once promised and instead pledged bombed in troops to afghanistan going on a decade. and in its latest endeavor thought airstrikes into libya but uniting a new church egypt goes back in november libya has launched allies to dischord some countries don't want to actually you know shoot ground targets. just to hit air targets which are night. amid the infighting it's unclear what motives are really behind the plane flying in the name of nato over the african country is it the personal aspiration of a leader a friend for you to do is it a friend for you or is it a sarkozy. do it i've tried to do to convince the world that he's the man in this episode to be the leader of the g twenty the g eight france was among the first to push for intervention president wants to get in on what i call the

imperial condominium a return quest of african or is it a showcase in a new arms race military buyers love to have weapons that are tested in war if your weapon system does very well in the war you can count on sales going up in fact the only two planes now in contention for a ten billion dollar order of one hundred twenty six planes from india are the euro fighter typhoon and the french for a spell the very ones french and british allies have been flying over. is it the opportunity to oust the qaddafi regime it is u.s. policy that i feel needs to go and prop up one more favorable to us foreign policy . interest to. see which. describes. the so-called humanitarian intervention that critics argue was never warranted but which now may

be causing a humanitarian crisis we didn't stop a bloodbath we are prolonging and perpetuating the suffering of civilians in libya suffering that is now washing up on the shores of nato allies by the boatload of refugees as news leader comes to u.s. shores the nato secretary general needs here with the keeper of the keys in washington president brock obama now though the united states has seemingly stepped back from libya the u.s. is the number one contributor to nato and therefore many would see the u.s. really as being nato now this comes at a time when the conflict in libya on the ground more and more people are calling a stalemate and amidst the allied infighting as well as rising costs in every sense that same question people have been asking for decades comes to mind if it is. a nato lauren lyster r.t. washington d.c. . now one thing i do want to point out really quickly is that this pledge to continue protecting civilians and nato comes on a day that libya reports that

a nato air strike has killed eleven imani now if this is true and it cannot be independently verified that would make it the largest death toll civilian death toll in an airstrike that's been reported during now talk more about this issue all together though is rick rhodes off manager stops nato international thank you so much for being with us mr rudolph now i want to start and analysts that i spoke to today that i interviewed for my story he believes that the outcome of libya and afghanistan are really important to nato because if things don't go well in these missions it could be the end of the alliance do you agree. things are going well either in afghanistan or libya nato's point of view i believe this is the fifty fifth day of the aerial assault against libya and we're out in the beginning of october eleventh we are there with all of them and have a sense of where if they're playing on nato's for them is to run him down from the counterinsurgency and bombing campaigns around the world i suppose things may be

going well so i mean that is not their master plan it's not going to replace with the way look we've heard since the last notes period and the end of the cold war and certainly with reform or dissolution with the words are one hundred ninety one so in other words for twenty years we've heard about the imminent demise of nato but in the lead up to this program you had a translation of the statement by the secretary general anders fogh rasmussen the nato that we've never been busier than we are now and i. don't even mind was almost two months old now war against libya in the third quarter which the north so-called north london thirty organizations waged a war. with was the one nine hundred ninety five yugoslavia and. famine stan from two thousand and one but with the present day and knowledge that this is not an organization that's going to do business in the future do you think that they have a libya as that kind of

a mission that they have to accomplish kind of the things that they have publicly said you know for example ousting qaddafi do you see these goals as being things that they do not want to end their mission until they've met. you know this is a ruthless military organization and the response from earlier in your show that it's the largest military bloc in the world it's the only military in the world and it's one that's expanded from sixteen to twenty eight members in the decade from one hundred ninety nine to two thousand and nine offensively having the sort of former warsaw for a minus russia. either directly or membership or through a variety of partnership programs incidentally every single state really trying to give them the authority of the mediterranean sea or island nations in the sea are you there now you the members of nato are members of the partnership with the on the mediterranean diet or partnership bourbons excluding only for the time being i'm sorry because libya and syria so you're talking about what has become

a global story for and you know will they lose face will be when. they bombed serbia over a lot of your facilities for years ago they bombed with the fifty five fifty six days and they won't stop until they've achieve their objectives this is a dangerous organization that is the overall assume the world in the world community needs to search for the strong resistance we're going to the united nations and not a u.s. led military which enjoins of resolving conflicts or not in the world you mentioned that nato will need to save face f. things don't go well in libya in terms of what the goals that they've set forward but where you agree that the infighting that we've seen in libya among nations among nations that they don't want to get involved or that wanted to step back their involvement in germany and one that comes to mind that was opposed to that do you think that up a sign that this is going to be more and more difficult to collaborate on these missions going forward if they continue along in the way that they have been. at

this point not offering our position as being at least complicit when we began the stages of the war against libya with words for our business as you recall operation odyssey dawn which is under u.s. africa command africa we have to keep in mind they got their first war and so the nato as its first african war germany offered to send several hundred more troops to afghanistan in various capacities to free up some other nato nations to participate in the so-called libya so i think there's a certain understanding of division of labor as is comparable for example in the german french belgian and canadian opposition to participating in the invasion and the conflation of iraq in two thousand and three and what happened with an a.b.m. prime ministers around three pm and sent more troops to afghanistan took over the deadliest province in the company found out of it. and there is seems to be some general agreement where you know one country the soldiers responsibility to run the part of the world and then right nato is also raising the ongoing naval

interdiction operation or about africa that's part of the operation ocean shield where they're involved national caliber. firing on ships killing people boarding ships forcibly and so forth so i mean it is interesting that there are many mysteries not to speak directly in the bombing case and that is a significant. the other countries that have not and i just stated that any meeting for the new nato members in eastern europe with exception of all in romania which means some are warships or naples or will be i'm not sure if you know what the internal divisions are but i know that at the lisbon summit of nato and as we listen to some of the nato summit last november the north atlantic treaty organization unanimously all twenty eight members and doris a u.s. led interceptor missiles system to take in the entire european from the cost of excluding the sort of ukraine for the moment right now they endorsed supplementing

the new u.s. cyber command. so that brings me to another question which is you mentioned missile defense many analysts that i've interviewed argue that missile defense essentially doesn't really do that much it's not that effective obviously this is very expensive machinery and one of the arguments going on right now surrounding libya is that this is a great advertisement for countries that want to sell their arms and in fact we see the indians looking at the two planes that are flying over libya and this large sale of planes that are going to be making this purchase of planes so how to what extent do you think nato is a way to sell arms that's. very interesting. on . the surface. and sort of be a routine. to be. if you can get the. real time are the words i'm not sure you've heard words for other nations room that we received who goes. to the united states for instruments we.

were going. for our friends were it was the one this is what you were through this is working for you we don't believe. what your political terms so that you so you're saying i kind of profession wait status power and kind of control one thing i want to get to you and i want to talk about the money because you mention that all these countries are signed on it nato has expanded but it's no secret that the united states contributes the most and that many other countries are disparate in what they contribute i wonder what you think about kind of the cost of that and the tradeoffs you know for example just to show a couple of the country is so we don't have time to show them but you know germany denmark luxembourg they give a very small amount of their g.d.p. you know one or so percent in military spending compare that united states which is you know four point seven percent do you see a point at which you know these trade offs are when they work. i think it's right

up there coming just real quickly look real briefly is in a way our lives when they were demands of not only its members for the working world forty four orders of nations world over the world they increase their difference from going to responsible for the little village with eventually bridges that's one of we're literally thousands of the moment for the cool and others i'm sorry so many do members of bertha's. there's a realistic understanding of the more involved solutions of the senior we're that's very interesting you mention some burglaries we're not going to live up to that it's the reason that the us gets word one sort of arrangement and. we've seen where u.s. military refueling planes are going to be operating to other bases and border carrier for the war in afghanistan so i'm sorry to cut you off it sounds like you think that the benefit of the u.s. is the strategic position i want to thank you so much for weighing in on all of these issues coming out today thanks so much greg move out that was record of stop

nato now meanwhile solitary confinement is an issue that is not always top of mind for you know the mainstream media or for amnesty international they released its report on the state of the world human rights and highlighted positive movement in places like egypt and tunisia but it is the highlight of criticisms of dozens of other countries now in the report criticism of the united states came for dependent on time of day and in afghanistan but invention very little about solitary confinement which is a form of punishment has become so widespread and earlier we spoke with lin paramour artist christine for the dead and she says the irony is that doesn't make things any safer. the irony is it doesn't control violence at all in fact some of the prisoners become more violent after being put in solitary confinement and the danger is also if you when they're released back into society if they have been subjected to this treatment which has left them mentally deranged

in some cases more agitated more prone to violent behavior they become more dangerous to society i think elaine it's really important to point out and to make clear that it is a question once in a while solitary used because you don't know what to do with violent prisoners but so often more often than not i believe this is not used to keep violent prisoners away from the rest of the population away from the rest of the prison population this is used as a form of punishment and and here's something i find so interesting a lot of times it's used as an interrogation method but let's think about it if you want to interrogate somebody to get the truth out of them putting them in solitary confinement is going to make their mind less able to answer questions and less able to work properly if i want to interrogate somebody i want them to have ten hours of sleep have a meal in their belly so they can talk to me. you're exactly right it's a form of torture is the way to arranging and mutilating the human brain and the

results of interrogating prisoners who've been tortured are widely understood to be unreliable and it's you know one of the most disturbing things is that as you say it's often not used for violent criminals many times it's the mentally ill who are housed in facilities and put in solitary confinement because there's nothing else to do with them maybe the mental health resources in the community are such that there's no place for them there and putting a prisoner a mentally ill prisoner in solitary confinement is like putting somebody with pneumonia out on an arctic tundra i mean it is a really dangerous medically medically devastating thing to do and it turns doctors into participants in something which is actually damaging to a patient's health so it brings up the question of medical ethics we still have an idea i think in the back of our minds that.