anger and rage in afghanistan today as deadly protests erupted after nato raid yet that's not what's making headlines so as mainstream media focuses on arnold schwarzenegger's love child is war reporting really worth the sacrifice. and food prices plowed through records and consumer wallets as well commodity prices threaten the global financial recovery g. twenty economic ministers need to try and find a way out but as some argue wall street is to blame can government officials really dictate any solution. to.

check that out the u.s. army has long used shoot 'em up video games as a recruiting tool now to chinese get in on the game. it's wednesday may sixteenth i'm lauren lyster coming to you from here in washington d.c. and you are watching r t now the g twenty finance ministers are meeting in argentina to address commodity prices they're concerned about the volatility food prices as you may know have broken two thousand and eight records since that started about late two thousand and ten according to the united nations just plowing over on and upward now the world bank president in spring said that the world is climbing out of the financial crisis but that other risks were coming from to use high and volatile prices of commodities now also the world bank released

a report just recently is today saying the u.s. dollars dominance will be done by twenty twenty five now joining me now from our new york studio on all of this is frederick kaufman he is harper's contributing editor he has covered commodities extensively he is offer a short history. the american stomach i want to thank you so much for joining us now as these economic ministers need to try and tackle the rise the volatility of commodity prices what is really behind them because there are a lot of factors people talk about wall street speculation something you've written extensively about but also normal factors like crop failure and you know inflation so really break it down what do you think is really driving this volatility this time around well you're absolutely right a supply and demand certainly matter and we have climate change richard throughout flood syndrome where we have pio fueled mandates on the supply side and of course on the demand side we see emerging middle classes along the world however added to

this conflagration and what we're seeing is a whole new level of volatility in the markets and this is really been in place since the first price spikes in two thousand and eight and what's happened is we have a whole hundreds of billions of dollars worth of new players who have entered this market through food derivatives and they're treating commodity markets as though their stock markets they're treating it as though we just put more money in and we're happy as we watch the price rise but of course commodities are not what he's talked about the role of speculation in the rise in food and commodity prices that we're seeing now because there's a lot of debate over the role to which wall street and actually investors are plain so how do you know really what role that is and how what to what extent this is affecting food prices. well really what are commodity markets for they're really for bona fide hedgers and for very large players who are producers of wheat and mcdonald's in the craft and nestle's for their risk management and for their price discovery and traditionally what you seen is that these bonafide hedgers have been

outnumbering the quote unquote speculators in this market but since about two thousand and five we've seen a reversal and today we have speculators outnumbering the bonafide hedgers for the one we have hundreds of billions of dollars transforming and hijacking what was once of rather stable and non volatile market and of course how does volatility enter the market it enters the market because what we're seeing is huge amounts of money from hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds and and pension funds coming in from very large banks goldman sachs barclays deutsche bank through all these new very fancy derivative products which have transformed the way the on a technical level the way this stuff is bought and sold on the five year early contracts and so the entire nature and form of the market has been transformed and ultimately what we're seeing is more volatility because the money is funny money and when you really blame it on what where does it really go back to because you mentioned it in one thousand nine hundred one that's when goldman sachs started

their commodities and acts and then all other banks are not all that many other banks followed suit you mentioned that later that decade deregulation of the market took place so so what do you really pinpoint as when this all started to go this direction that now you say is causing a solid selling. well look i think everybody would like to blame somebody and of course goldman sachs is that is a big fat target you know they just happen to be the smartest guys in the room in this case what really happened is we have a deregulation in the late one nine hundred ninety s. and all of the sudden all these position limits are are are negated you don't have to be a bona fide hedger anymore and what we finally have is this huge transnational problem and the g twenty is trying to figure out some way to regulate this on the national level there is thinking ok now we have to set position limits now we have to throw some light on the dark swap market but really i think the thing that's going to make the most difference is if we finally can get back to some transparency on

actual grain reserves so people can really understand how much different companies are holding their reserves opening up those markets so that we can actually get some real grain to calm down the hysteria that imaginary grain from grain futures has contributed to this mess big picture is this something that should be taking place in this way this kind of commodity trading because this is people's food you know if prices are driven up because that investments accusation people can't eat they're getting good mic could arguably die. yes food is different food is not money food is not general electric stock food food is not boil and so therefore they have to be different rules supply and demand rules are different for food you know if the price of food goes down by half that doesn't mean i'm heading to dinners every night the price of food doubles that doesn't mean effectively that i'm going to eat half and what happens is you have a billion people out there in the world today who are having to live at about the poverty level about twenty five a day or less and in the past year the price of wheat has effectively doubled and

of course what's just happened is every month of that year we see tens of millions of more people pushed into food insecurity and pushed into starvation we have to treat food differently what about the role of the u.s. government does some blame easing the federal reserve's policy of easy money of flooding money into the system and adding liquidity into our financial markets that this is really driven the rising commodities do you implicate the federal government on this but well i don't really implicate the federal government however i do believe that there is no question that as the dollar floods the market that the entire commodity complex goes up now of course people are seeing the end of quantitative easing they're seeing that actually this massive historical short on the dollar is it is maybe not is maybe not as extreme as it should be in the dollar has been strengthening ok so the dollar has strengthened and we saw this great sell off in commodities last week but guess what today the entire agricultural complex is actually inching up what does this mean it means that the agricultural part of

the commodity complex is in effectively dealing this is i think what the bankers really want because what they would like is different investment products for different things all moving with tremendous volatility based on their own. portfolios are set for they have invested their longs in shorts what about farmland that planted it because you know we all couldn't help but notice here that farmland and united states has jumped twenty percent year over year and the first quarter of this year. yeah and you have to remember that biofuel mandates are also changing the landscape on corn in particular of course of people realize there's a lot of money in corn for that biofuel what happens effectively is that there's less land put aside for wheat and so then of course you once again have this supply and demand issue and of course what we're seeing is that yields are stagnant in other words we are not seeing those green revolution doubles and triple yields that we saw that certainly in the eighty's we're not seeing anything that's that's

that's all we've got and so therefore what we're seeing also very disturbing are these land grabs across the globe saudi arabia and china and other countries throughout africa and it's neo colonialism it's colonialism all over again and this is going to be very problematic particularly for countries that are food insecure that are net food importers like egypt like the middle east north africa this in this contributes to tremendous political unrest as we've just seen we really couldn't i mean i'm just out of time but neocolonialism what you need by that just real quickly what's behind that allegation but what i'm saying is that you have countries with a lot of money like china for instance like saudi arabia but what are they lacking they're lacking what is known in economics as value what is valuable today arable land what are. food and so what they're doing is they're going into other countries and saying we'll take that from you thank you very much and what's happening is people are being bought off and this is a big problem so interesting and i wonder how much of the farmland is driven that

the rise in front is driven by foreign investment that we don't know and we didn't get to the dollar we'll have to do that next time that was frederick kaufman contributing editor for harper's magazine and author of the short history of the american stomach now meanwhile in afghanistan at least eleven people were killed and eighty injured today when violent protests broke out after a nato raid that allegedly killed four civilians also a senior united nations official warns conditions in libya are a ticking time bomb as humanitarian conditions continue to deteriorate and on the u.s. big cable news channels these are the big stories boot sales of how hard i'm sure to there was able to keep his love child a secret for so long and what's more until the one real found out schwarzenegger acknowledges father in a child out of wedlock with a member of his household staff would juniors ago well susan succubi although. not one of those with the three models those lowlights are their.

models bills are of sorts nader's split and love child meanwhile journalists are still risking their lives to cover wars and some pay the ultimate price as the creator of this afghanistan war documentary ten hetherington did he was killed covering the libyan conflict last month take a look at his movie risk. i had been on the phone for my detention sleeping pill some of them. and something else and i'm sorry if you're not sleeping tonight you know about if you see and you see the truth from . the color of. their brains are going to. feel sorry for you. because for a song or go about like we're ready. to get that.

now earlier i spoke to had an intense collaborator on that academy award nominated documentary restrepo also his friend and author of this book war that you see right there sebastian younger and i asked him if covering wars this way is worth the risk for journalists if the mainstream media doesn't really seem to be paying as much attention as they could here's what he had to say. tim died in misrata libya and it was the story he was covering they were his life you obviously know but if you take the sort of aggregate of all these stories through the years through the decades of the bosnia is the rwanda as a liberia sierra leone afghanistan you take them together. is it worth it to have a group of foreign reporters covering these stories of the world to know what's happening and possibly intervene possibly do something yes absolutely very much like farben or pro or like policeman there is a casualty rate but good society is unthinkable without those without those groups

i think it's true of journalism as well do you think that those stories are getting to you know the stakes here in america getting to americans are those messages getting to americans are they memorable when you know you've got editors focusing on news that's going to have entertainment value or going to appeal to a large audience. well i you know i i think it is affecting cision making i mean i know there's i'm sure there's a swath of there is the civilians who are really focused on afghanistan or libya for that matter but let's face it it was probably press coverage of the humanitarian catastrophe in libya that triggered nato involvement and nato action which saved a lot of lives in benghazi i mean qaddafi's troops would have overrun big guys and it would have been a bloodbath that did not happen because of the press so if someone's listening you said that that did not end because of the press but you also had countries that were rallying you had even arab countries that were that were calling for

intervention at that time do you think that it that the press have an interval role really n.f.r. or is that you know other actors. but without the press there's no information to rally around without images of people suffering without casualty figures without evidence that crimes are being committed against the civilian population there the arab other arab countries would not have been stood up against gadhafi you need that information and the press is at least in the initial stages of the conflict that information gets out through the press and they were very brave bunch of people. very honored to have spent seven years being one of one of the tribes and you know i really can't imagine a world without them after having your or your friend you know die in this way be killed will you go back. no i'm not i've done this for almost twenty years now

i'm going to continue reporting i'm going to continue covering conflicts probably in countries in turmoil but i'm not going to be doing stories where i'm not a very front line getting shot at. done and what why is that what happened that made you come to that conclusion. well tim's death really was tremendously hard on me and i realize that if that same thing happened to me i would be inflicting the sorrow that i felt in this last month on the people i'm closest to and i never quite thought of it that way before i maybe you have to be in your late forty's even be capable of thinking that way but now i am thinking that way and i think i just feel like it's sort of time to move on and like you can see you can do is redo the same thing over and over again and maybe you're being challenged and maybe for me it is things that are more challenging than front line reporting i was a bastion younger author journalist and documentary filmmaker and while we're on the subject of war in the u.s.

or the hollywood movie red dawn is being remade with a chinese invasion to replace the original soviet one of the one nine hundred eighty four film and lawmakers fear monger over china's rise to justify defense spending and those issues we've covered here on our t.v. giving examples of that time and time again it looks like china they giving the u.s. a dose of this medicine fatalism. so. china came out with this first person shooter video games developed by a chinese company but backed by the people's liberation army now it's modeled on the u.s. army major shooter game america's army now like the american counterpart which was introduced as a recruiting tool in two thousand and two glorious mission as this came is called starts with some basic training before a player goes out into combat and fights what looks like a u.s. army and also u.s. apache helicopters and a news report showed chinese troops playing that game very diligently so we wanted

to bring it to you first now meanwhile to the economy the u.s. broke through its debt ceiling of fourteen point two nine trillion earlier this week and the government is now employing quote unquote extraordinary measures to pay its bills until august well the white house says there is really no plan b. if the ceiling isn't raised but what average americans on the street think about this bill or harshness of the resident out net took to the streets to find out. do you think they should raise the debt limit again i'm not sure of the shoot but the rule is they really have to go through how do we get to a place where we have to keep doing it. to an. expenditure if you have to try to national parks if you have to try to. turtle or this is what some teachers draw up to maybe three percent here three percent were.

small percent off of everything have to cut everyone has to give up something would you be willing to give up two more percent of your salary no tax no tax reasons you'd be willing to pay more in taxes you know a little bit i think it's patriotic. i do too what's with the people you know say that they're so patriotic and that they're american and they stand for america but they're not willing to pay more taxes for the country so i think the only political system that's kind of relevant to christianity is socialism and i don't think jesus would be very happy with us not sharing it's a shame what's happening middle america is disappearing this should be happening do you think middle america is aware of the corporate america seems like people don't even realize how they are you know i would agree with you i think middle america they're such good citizens nobody wants to make any they want to be rabble rousers you know they want to be included in the whole process but when you see people from the economic you know the three million dollars or so million or whatever or a.b.c. making forty thousand and i mean what happens if you make by going to. people who keep people working there what i would be would have much more value for everybody

the world economies in the same situation you know you look at what's happening with china. going to be economic situations time you know pretty bad they're. going to regroup the whole system just say you know whether or not you think the u.s. should raise the debt ceiling the bottom line is given the fact that we've done it that many times since one thousand nine hundred eighty two i think it's just day that it's going to be great again very soon. and joining me now for more is brian bueller he is a reporter at talking points memo dot com now brian that ceiling many people are very you know financial analysts economists that the united states just has to raise it and the u.s. has raised it ten times over the last ten years but yet you know you're writing today the top republicans in congress are saying that hey it's not that big of a deal if the u.s. defaults you know it's ok i mean what is the deal here there's

a there's just been a long brinksmanship going on between the parties over this and this is the first time the negotiations over the debt ceiling have been used as leverage for one party or another to extract political concessions. that they want to and republicans are trying to get the most that they can out of these negotiations they want to cut spending in dramatic ways that will sort of undermine existing entitlement programs that i think that the best way that they can get the president and democrats in congress onboard with that is to basically say we're not going to allow you to raise the debt ceiling and you know we'll even will even drive the country into a brief default if we have to in order to get these things is this just politicking where they really like to happen do you think it's hard to say i think that they say they would no and i think that as time goes on and as they. conglomerates you know sort of increased their pressure on on individual lawmakers that that story might change a little bit but for the time being the official line from republican leaders in both the house and senate is that no no republicans will vote to increase the debt

limit unless they're going to secure trillions of dollars in spending cuts over the next ten years let's talk about just republicans and democrats ability to agree on any of these reduction to the deficit or the debt we just saw a senator fall out of this group of six it was trying to negotiate on that because their differences are so polarized they can't agree on anything i mean does this give anybody any sense that lawmakers will be able to tackle the deficit or the debt or ever get this under control for this country i don't think i don't think anybody should too much confidence that i would take to another group of members of congress and the vice president we're talking about ways that they can come together to to cut spending to to figure out a way to reduce deficits and debts over time they want to hit a number somewhere around four trillion dollars over ten years of of deficit reduction they've been able to identify over a couple weeks in negotiations about one hundred fifty billion so they're nowhere near where they should be and you know they have until basically august second to come to some sort of consensus and if they if they don't reach it by then then

you're really into territory where you risk. of america making a payment default one of it's one of its creditors and who knows what happens there and republicans are going. for the spending cuts but meanwhile a democrats have been going for an end to these tax these oil subsidies which failed but then it wasn't even constitutional so are they are they playing the same game a little bit i think you know i think that you would find support probably for eliminating these these tax subsidies for oil companies as part of the republicans as part of a broader package of major spending cuts and elimination of other types of the poles that you know was was lumped together with with broad reductions and into the top tax rate tax rate for individuals and corporations but as a standalone measure republicans are going to vote for the not just going to give democrats something that they want for nothing and so they'll withhold their votes and democrats knew they weren't going to get those votes so they didn't bother dotting their i's and crossing their t's with all the procedural stuff and as i

wrote it turned out that that the billet tried as would been unconstitutional if they said we did it which is insane really quickly though we're almost out of time but where do you see this going august second and the country can't pay its bills anymore geitner is external measures have run out have lawmakers agreed on any kind of real way to tackle either spending or taxes in order to bridge any of this you know that and deficit problem as often happens in congress i think what you want to see is as things come down the wire and also as they approach their august recess which coincidentally is around august second they're going to move the how it works out pretty nicely for them though they'll they'll figure out some way to go but if they have to extend past the beginning of august recess to do that they'll do that and i think that even past august second secretary geithner will have to find ways to defer payments to vendors or something like that in order not to default on these interest payments to creditors or else the you put the u.s.

his credit rating at risk and nobody on the hill really wants to lot of happen nobody at the white house really wants that's happened so they'll figure something out but and that's what they'll figure out is completely unclear and i'll just play this game in the meantime pretending like they really don't it doesn't matter as much that i want to thank you so much for coming in thanks for having fight brian boiler it where you are butler reporter for talking points on the dot com. now meanwhile a call is mounting in russia to introduce chemical castration for pedophiles now it's something that's already going on in nine states here in the united states and activists say the current laws in russia are slack and criminals to re offend that's of justification for the castration however there are those who believe that hast ration is far from a quick fix for such a complex problem and our chief correspondent correspondent rather the notion has more. ne ne's a model three last summer her four year old daughter was raped gansler learns what happened she found the man responsible and beat him to death. i don't want him back

i can only say that i just wanted to be sure that this animal was punished and would never do such a terrible thing i did to my little girl. sadly it is cases not an isolated one in russia in a country where seventy percent of paedophiles up the road with their duty to reoffend age learn to justice is often used as an attorney to court of law some of them lynching is inadmissible it starts with the state veils if poor mothers and fathers knew that offenders would get fifteen years in prison or would be castrated before being released would never be released without a satellite tracking giroux as in the usa at least in obamacare if instead i'm pretty sure they would not reveal where. they've been numerous attempts to toughen the laws and paedophiles in russia in a decade dozens of bills stipulate in chemical castration life imprisonment have

been discussed by the state duma but not a single one has passed. morgue paedophiles aren't without support in russia this means some police officers receive money for allowing brother walls and thence to operate a board members of the court system acquitted criminals but i am not all the talking about the child porn industry that is so much money in so many people involved in this corruption evil is too hard to avoid for goggle but some don't give up and fight their own war so he's hiding his face he says the country's paedophiles on hunting for him gathering information from these papers and t.v. has created an online paedophile database with shock draw files and photos. it in ninety eight percent of cases of child abuse is real. people should know who they are provisioned know what they look like they should be on alert sergei says in the thirteen years he's been working on the site not

a single official has taken any interest in his plight and they do have the databases which is don't want to. go with the should have done for sex offenders here are divided into categories from those serving sentences to those deceased but there are many who are monsters at launch or wanted a terrifying thought for parents everywhere. every day some sixty children become victims of paedophiles in russia but means in the two weeks we've been working on this report more than eight hundred kids have been abused for years russian legislators have been talking about what sucked into print but for each they failed to act even more innocent lives are being told. not to be more. now as are heard medvedev asking for lawmakers to look at the idea of castration chemical castration for pedophiles in the wake of the sex crimes they've

seen other countries have done there's an ad i mentioned in the united states nine states have that as a legal punishment for pedophilia for repeat offenders now earlier i spoke with derek lowe here arthur of the book once fallen about sex offender legislation he is also a sex offender himself here's part of our conversation. one big misnomer that only nations know. civil liberties know somebody who is on the. group now there were only those on the. right we are hopelessly wrong. so laws that are normally unconstitutional when applied for the individual seem to be seen we passed. people in our own rooms for castration is based on the idea that a limb aiding sexual urges but eliminate the reason for engaging in criminal sexual behavior and i mean european studies have shown that recidivism is very small just

two to three percent when castration is employed another study found that it does or a psychiatrist said that it does eliminate the sexual urges so what's wrong with that it sounds to be a good punishment as far as recidivism lauralee or. while it reduces sex drive it doesn't loom in a. social performance of her that what little so what about good children from game lasted well the part of the problem of lawyers and it's only going towards you know the social currency per person can still perform socially and there's a psychological consciousness not be taken into consideration when you talk about you. know or illustration it may reduce the sex drive not the need to have sex in itself a lot of the psychological and metaphorically it's something. we do in we do cross there.