in india she's available in the movie going to join me that shows a movie that's the great way which is the grand imperial truly the taj was there to school until you can the essential tools with which civility to go clear reticence the colonel was a child as used to retreat. happy birthday mr president as obama rings in the big five zero the american people are left with nothing to celebrate as the economy is seriously over the hill with record unemployment so will a new year bring up wiser president. well no probably not because when it comes to human rights violations it may still be and do as i say not as i do for the obama administration here how the u.s. plans to combat those who they see are in violation. bush will refuse any.

some say three's a crowd but when it comes to marriage in russia many men are saying the more wives the merrier and the women agree so should the u.s. jump aboard the polygamy bandwagon. it's thursday august fourth four pm in washington d.c. and christine for sound you are watching artsy. starting off today the white house has announced it will make getting tough on human rights violations around the world a top priority there the president issued a comprehensive review in hopes of quote strengthening the united states' ability to prevent mass atrocities the obama administration says a wide range of economic diplomatic and other tools will be employed in this effort and also outline the president's priorities we're going to discuss some of those priorities now with jennifer her very she is a human rights lawyer and also the author of truth torture and the american way.

there jennifer i want to go through and highlight some of these priorities kind of laid out in a press release today from the white house let's start with this one it says obama is committed to strengthening the united states government's ability to prevent mass atrocities and serious human rights violations this is ministration has prioritize the protection of civilians and the prevention of mass atrocity and serious human rights violations i want to just focus on part of that protecting civilians a kind of a hard thing to swallow when we look at what's going on around the world courtesy of the u.s. i'm talking about libya i'm talking about afghanistan iraq air strikes in pakistan and yemen how do these all fit in with this claim that the u.s. has you know prioritize the protection of civilians. right think really for all the reasons you just stated can't claim that we are protecting the civilians certainly

we've been great enough to understand under president bush that in fact we were leaders in in trying to openly carry out torture as the operating room of interrogation unfortunately we still use blackwater we still use a number of other organizations to use of torture as a standard method and we're still using other government and i know i'm sort of sure because we have not closed down. so we in fact have a very serious problem it didn't just start with the september eleventh either it's not something that obama just recently inherited and it's only gone down for a while and i will say all of our friends in not america were tortured were able to look at the techniques in the ghraib photographs and verify that those in a committee had been used and that american advisors had been in their torture cells teaching. they also course were very involved in my part of torture and disappearance and brought them all over the south through the provide us documents

i know you've talked a lot about this and we know your care is moving a little in an hour right there with us ok just so many important things to talk about regarding human rights another thing listed out in these priorities the obama administration says preventing that mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and of course moral responsibly the responsibility of the united states of america let's talk about this aspect of being a core moral responsibility how does this play out i know you talked about this a little bit in terms of some of the military actions and i guess i want to know when you know who made the united states the moral authority well we've always wanted to think of that the moral authority because it says. founders. i think progress decisions etc there should be no more iraq or change and i'm quoting patrick henry so whatever separation we never build in that it became

sort of a waste to not that we would make up for israel exactly the opposite that overseas another country would persons who are merely white upper class and from the world does not. mean i'm going for all of those. but to what extent i mean should the obama administration get credit i mean as we know his is the first that actually appointed a person a position in the administration to focus specifically on human rights violations and it's hard to say that you know when compared to his predecessors obama is doing worse i mean shouldn't he get some credit. i'm pretty sure that we were very pleased the first thing he did was to sign that there would be no more of these kinds of organizations but he's been very through town and most still there the last nights are still there tour still being used as a as a standard operating procedure by us and intelligence forces we're still using

companies like block. he has tried various. inherited possible early in the white house with the crash and cetera et cetera but he has not built. rights. and we are very disappointed with. let's look at one more of these priorities and there are several outlined but we just want to make sure that our view is kind of understand the gist of sort of what is being said and how it doesn't totally match up with action here let's look at this one the united states has states as long to ensure that our country does not become a safe haven for human rights violators or those responsible for other atrocities existing u.s. law render certain human rights violators inadmissible to the united states such as participants in genocide torture extrajudicial killings or certain violations of religious freedom i'm wondering if you know of some of examples where the exact

opposite is happening where human rights violators are being sheltered in this country you know we can talk about the freedom fighters who were jailed talk a little bit about this do you think there are specific examples that that contradict. unfortunately there is there's a sleeping number of examples most of my torturers have long since been very welcome in this country colonel who was working for the cia and the pathos that was prosecutor and near the cia for nearly ten years after all of that information that motivated many of the people in the guatemalan death squads who are no smoke or thirty closely with the cia who were trained at the school that the america's many of them still have very fancy homes in houston and miami general also credible lead is the darling of the u.s. embassy down in guatemala and is running for president and will probably win and we haven't heard one peep out of the u.s. embassy about the fact that he participated in genocide as

a building official and that he was responsible for my husband's torture and murder in fact have been the details trying to run eighty two over the bodies of the number of murdered prisoners of war for example a number of the word leaders are. sheltered up in their jersey and haitian persons who still bear the machete scars all over their bodies actually have to see their torturers in the streets shelf in these people because we have trained them there are very very interesting and just really important to point this out as the obama administration moves forward with that goal important to show that that's not exactly what we're seeing in terms of reality right now jennifer harbury author and human rights where. well today is also the day our president president obama turns fifty years old the big day for him and after the stressful couple years he's had he deserves a great birthday and some wonderful presents but the reality is the president has

been given quite a few gifts he probably wishes he didn't have to open an unemployment rate that continues to hover above nine percent a stock market that plunged more than five hundred points today and will most likely close down for the ninth consecutive day a federal reserve that seems to be stuck in the mud cloud of uncertainty and extremely slow growth according to some new numbers released by the commerce department during the second quarter of the economy grew by just one point three percent making for eight tenths of a percent annual growth rate far less than the two point five percent pace that is needed to keep unemployment from rising. well i guess it's no wonder that even president obama's own former director of the national economic council says the u.s. appears extremely vulnerable to another recession i wanted three chance in fact so what do we make of all of us well dean baker is the co-director for the center for economic policy research and is here to serve some light on what all these factors

means that the president celebrates another year hopefully maybe another year means a little wiser for the president in terms of how to better one for the economy absolutely absolutely let's talk about several things today or today two days after the president signs the debt ceiling raising the debt ceiling into law where do we stand i mean considering how this debate played out i feel like we should be breathing an enormous lie of relief today i mean we did it we passed it is that the case but we should just be happy it's over i mean it's absurd it ever escalated to the extent it did because this is always been routine passage congress we've raised the debt ceiling i think it's ten times in the last decade i forget the exact number i mean this is we're arguing over sending in the check you know if you want to argue over whether you should buy that car you know you know buy a house that's fine but we already bought it so that this is simply paying paying the bills so it was really kind of ridiculous in the real tragedy of it is that with the economy basically stagnant the unemployment rate rose from creating very

few jobs congress and the president were locked in this ridiculous to date which was not to do any good at all for the economy the real question was how much harm would it do absolutely and i know we had you on the show here on our team just a couple months ago and you laid out sort of a prediction for how this would play out i want to play this back to you and then see what you think about it. here in vision there's two two series basically one is that they come to some sort of deal in the not too distant future they'll turn to because you actually get to this deadline august second i know it's a hard and fast deadline but somewhere they're about and that point secretary geithner presumably make some statement saying look we owe x. tens of billions of dollars have to be paid in three days there's no money in the bank i can't pay that and at that point the financial markets could not so be just like what happened when the charge was voted down the first time at that point the wall street people are scared to coin speaker boehner cantor mcconnell so you better pass something or this is it and i guess at that point they go running back

all right so what do you think what was how it ended up playing out what you expected what was pretty close to that because there are a lot of reports i don't mean it's not actually spring water reports the weekend before the agreement a lot of wall street people were calling boehner and other top members of congress and saying you know we need a deal and you know they did come for one so so yeah i think was pretty much on schedule you know the exact timing you know who could say but it was pretty much on schedule let's kind of look at some of the main arguments and the nuts and bolts of these discussions over the last few months regarding that feeling i know of course you know spending cuts or absolutely on the table revenue increases were also on the table as we know those didn't end up happening just the spending cuts i know that you have argued in the past that what this economy really needs is more demand and more demand what has to come from more government spending but that seems to me just to be a very unpopular idea congress would have to get involved and it just seems very

unlikely so your suggestion seems very unrealistic what what how do we actually do this how do we actually put some place how do you get around it well i mean it would be great if you know president obama is really a band and i give him a lot of blame on this because it really began when the argument for stimulus you got this bill back in february of zero nine just everyone in office and he knew. you know secretary summers or actually there's a national security economic adviser larry summers you know has said this christina romer strict economic advisers and also they knew it wasn't enough so rather than going around saying hey great first step we're likely going to be more we really did call on everyone who wasn't his fault their point has been off just one month this isn't big enough he instead said no green shoots of recovery run the way and he should have known this was the numbers to show that right if you look at when the stimulus went into place and sort of when the money started running out there was you know some signs that the economy was improving and i'm sure it helped i don't think there's any doubt about when you look at the numbers and some people

don't seem carefully parametric research it definitely impacted predicted create somewhere in the order of two to three million jobs that seems very much in the ballpark the problems we need some on the order of ten to twelve million so two to three millions great but when you need ten to twelve it's clearly not enough but again let's talk about today and moving forward i mean that's just not feasible we have the republicans in many ways winning the message war saying that we need to prevent tax cuts or tax increases on some of these larger companies because after all they're the job creators if we give them tax you know group of eastern taxes nobody's going to create jobs so it's and that argument seems to be kind of what you hear. across the board when you kind of look into this it's funny because most of them seem like they're old enough to remember the ninety's you know we had higher taxes and we're creating three million jobs a year and we should remember the last decade when we cut taxes and include any jobs but but that aside so you go ok so what are we going to it's a simple man you can increase spend well there's a number of things you could try to do and you have to try to do something one you can try and follow that's been very successful as for most importantly germany

works here it's actually part of the unemployment insurance program and i think it's twenty states now president obama could try and promote that try and push it being that instead of companies laying off workers they reduce work hours every month we have two million workers that are dismissed from their job they're laid off or fired if you can reduce it by ten percent that's the same thing as creating two hundred thousand jobs a month i don't know if that's a realistic target but the point is that there's a lot of jobs being lost that is also going on i mean are we seeing certainly when we talk about government workers we see things like furlough days and things like that that are you know what we call underemployed there if you do see a lot of that i'd like to see a lot more in the sense that if you're throwing a person off you're much better off going to part time not that i'm going to be happy if they're counting on a paycheck for forty hours a week but if they get a ten percent cut in hours and a five percent cut in pay i think most people consider that much better than being laid off altogether and you point to germany and many ways they seem to be a country that a lot of people are looking at as setting a lot of good examples i want to look to two currencies around the world and so

it's wheat from the global economist nouriel roubini today he said basically q e three has already started in japan and switzerland but the fed will eventually get to it too but it may be too late so i want to talk to you about your thoughts on the swiss and the japanese devaluing their currency against the dollar and if you think that another round of quantitative easing here in the u.s. is necessary and if it is necessary when the timing may well i understand both japan and switzerland doing their currencies have been rising especially switzerland certainly hurt their trade situation. the u.s. is a country of course with a big trade deficit so we absolutely should be looking at the value that i would down and part of that story would be a q e three that will have some impact that by itself is going to do it this again is an area where i really blame obama for being just horribly negligent he's got vacancies on the federal reserve board he doesn't even have a nomination now i understand republicans are being obstructionist to wherever he puts up with so you know maybe if you put up john boehner you know you point to

prove him but you know where he puts out they're going to give a bad time no doubt about it but if you don't even put something out there you can't blame the republicans so he should be having in his nominees out there and he should be leaning on the for the conservative certainly leaned on the fed about q.e. two my god they're blaming it for everything in the world you know they're probably blamed for the earthquake in japan i mean you know so they put a lot of pressure on board naki and made it difficult for him not to be more aggressive he should be out there you know that they have this idea of the fed being independent we're not going to fire but not keep the point is to say here's what we think the fed should be doing laying out the case for the public which he's not done at all and there are some people that probably wouldn't be very happy about that though and let's talk about china i know china central bank has been warning of some rough times here in the united states and we did see china as a global cutting the credit rating from a plus to a meanwhile we know that the big three firms that most people up to standard and

poor's and moody's and fitch have reaffirmed the triple a rating for the united states but what do you think it says i mean should people be concerned should people be paying attention that china is saying you know you're going to slide down a great in our book for now well i serve you keep out of it because really what we've been asking china to do is to stop on euro bonds you know that's that's how they support their currency how to keep their currency down our currency up they buy you know hundreds of billions of dollars in u.s. government bonds that's exactly what they've been doing that we've been asking them not to do then i think a lot of stop buying are bought that's right that's right so supposedly we're supposed to be worried that they're going to stop buying our bonds letting their currency rise. i'm not terribly worried if that's what they want to do i think that would be great stop buying their currency what the rise again spreads good for china to the world where i mean they're there because they have a problem with inflation well when i when my economics one way to reduce inflation i have your currency rise suddenly all the imports are cheaper and then on top of that there will also slow your economy some because that's one of the factors certainly contribute in inflation and i know you've been

a big proponent of economists especially in this day and age needing to think outside the box you point to the fact that so many economists sort of do the same things over and over even though clearly some of these policies are responsible for the bad situations that were and i know that you've supported some of ron paul's policies what do you think are are the things that maybe should be really really deeply considered even though they're a little different and not the norm well certainly the ron paul policy that i had mentioned was that he had proposed having the federal reserve destroy government holds and to my mind it makes perfect sense because the the idea and he came up with in the context of the debt ceiling that would get us around the debt ceiling but i was saying that was a good thing that's fine but over the longer term the plan of the fed is to sell it off to the public and that will create an interest burden on the treasury why do that we ran up this debt because we had this downturn in the economy why do we want to penalize taxpayers in the future so why not have the fed just destroy a lot of debt so i think that's

a very good policy one that certainly doesn't seem to be given much attention and i think people ought to think about it that's it people are reluctant to think in washington particularly economists and who knows if history is any indicator ron paul's ideas that he advocates for five or six years later people start to take them seriously dean baker co-director of the senate center for economic and policy research thanks as always your insight is very helpful thanks for now. well another economic factor in this country not people or population in order to increase the population you need babies to be born and in order for babies to be born you need well you know but in russia women outnumber men by about ten million leaving many single bachelorettes clamoring over the few eligible bachelors but one man things he has found a solution to the women throwing themselves at his feet all the way are to correspondent mary of an ocean or shows us why one man says are more the better. and need some dream

a father of three and husband of three and that is ok and dray got married two years own. and then again. why should i refuse any of them is one of them all really why the country's demographic realities andries site according to the latest census there are ten million more women in russia than the mean and shortage of supply leads to the need for sharing a concept of andries right see the meat piece we are worth but i thought he was kidding when i realized that he wasn't i never expected something like that happening to me evolve or used to you know if you love me you understand we never fight for under never quarrel there is no kind of competition either. and reconsider is himself an ardent christian yet to his wife who brought up news means the distribution of duties and conjugal delights within the household also lies in the islamic traditions. ceramic with what i make the move feel equal if one wants

me to buy her something i will but that old boy something of the same price for the other two his world or the building three houses and three apartments progress fear isn't it boredom. as extraordinary as it seems andries example is not that rare in russia many men are in relationships with several women at the time of course most are keeping their extramarital affairs secret. know the more numerous this may look strange i agree which we consider it better to be a second or third wife rather than think you are the only one and we be selina's equal the scarcity of man is also play down to their propensity to need it was described as unhealthy behavior alcoholism and reckless driving is cheap in a way at the country's gene pool let me tell you my story twenty eight years old reasonably smart fairly pretty and very compassionate yet i'm still single i always of time the author gets in slimmer every year according to recent poll in russia

forever a single man over thirty there are dozens of single women still on the lookout for their brains with their wounds search for true love becoming statistically challenging no wonder i start wondering abroad and the from russia with love mantra is to go in strong. regional shanty moscow. all right so it's going out in russia and guess what it's also going on here in the united states according to some figures there are as many as forty thousand underground polygamists here who know that that includes all the people who are unknowingly sharing their husbands with other women but still it's worth talking about with all the baby boomers and with more women working there's then a serious drop in the birth rate in this country over the last few years at times by as much as four percent so should we consider polygamy as at least one idea to stimulate the population why not have tear it as a family and criminal defense attorney he's in seattle washington. how is our final

you've been pretty outspoken attorney who in favor of polygamy and i know you've said that the government should not be able to mandate who you marry whether it's group marriages gay marriages mail order marriages there is for convenience or for money and that it should all be allowed to talk about the legal implications here well it's basically it's based on the right to contract which is in the u.s. constitution and in family law in the united states this is run by the states each state has its own family law and family law encourages contractors if there's settlement agreements so this really is consistent with the american tradition of contract law. and family law contracts but it if you're going to legalize polygamy it stops at the age of consent and i think that's very important we talk about rights a lot of people say well you're right substantive but my nose understand that metaphor same thing with polygamy this argument of an orthodox or plural marriage the proper

term. you know it starts at the age of consent even if so you're really looking at this in terms of simply a contractual obligation and certainly thirteen year old boys or girls don't really have a right to be involved in signing contracts like this. you know they do have the capacity less a legal term they don't have the mental capacity to contract and that's what it all is really eighteen in most states and washington state for example you can get married at seventeen. but you think she should have to be eighteen and that this is an issue of a contract and you know i i get your argument the constitution may be king here but i also want to weave in this i mean in this country we've you ourselves as a society and i think it would be easy for example to use freedom of expression as a great reason why people should be able to lock down public streets naked but as a society we've agreed but that's not how we choose to live there are countless other examples like this so don't you think that this should factor in you know

that this should be taken into account it's not just constitution we also need to to make this not a black and white issue and weave in how we want to operate and be as a society. i don't think so you know i do think it's a right it's an alternative lifestyle it should be protected as long as it's victimless as long as there's no rape going on or false imprisonment or forcing young girls. it should be legal and. just like when you legalize something you take it out of the muck of the black market legalizing prostitution for example we found underage prostitution goes out the window when you legalize and regulate it and the same with polygamy i think you'd see under-age involvement. drop as polygamists came out from underground they were more likely to report domestic violence really underage stuff but when you criminalize it you force it underground and i think that's unhealthy you think have a very you know sort of constitutes lost perspective and i know in the report we just showed another argument was that in russia there is simply

a shortage of men and so this sort of supply leads to the need first sharing do you think there's also as a valid argument that you know it out of necessity and you know here in the u.s. with a drop in the birth rate maybe that could be a reason too. possibly and it was happening in russia it is great it's the free market both of dating if you will supply demand men die but women live longer than men men or die in war they don't work and the first minute if we can just keep chugging along in our life the ratio will benefit us so they're in russia that's happening in libya he was very practical market based response to supply demand there let's just talk and i'm kind of a realistic ground here i mean certainly we can argue legally we can even argue societal e. but you know this woman in the in the report said oh you know there's no competition between us but i don't think that that's very normal that in the united states of america that we when see you know whether it's a woman having several husbands or the opposite i mean we know that in our nature

even animals get jealous and you know don't you think that this could also lead to a lot more i don't know strangling of the other wife or anything like that i mean i just it's very hard for me to swallow that women won't you know the woman would allow that or men would allow this and i think you're right even if it were legalized i think culturally really remain one or two or three percent and if it was just sitting at apology you look at polygamy and polyandry spin around for every human culture but it's been kind of rare in pockets here and there. so. especially american women and their independent it's your typical american woman you would think is not going to want to go into something like this but it's an alternative lifestyle you might see a one two three percent. do it i wonder how many do you have a lot of people coming to you that there is their hopes are to live this lifestyle no no i mean i don't have any clients i'm representing i'm not really directly involved i don't have

a dog in the fight so to speak. but i think we've given marriage i think polygamy is naturally following on the heels of gay marriage gay marriage is now legal in several us states and i think in fifteen years you'll see gay marriage probably legal in forty states and our like to think that was the first state that's going to legalize polygamy you know it could be done by a core could be done by initiative and be done by the legislature. but i think it's it naturally follows on the right to gay marriage and i should just say a lot of people always ask me well this plural marriage is like these geology or marrying your rock or your dog and it's not if there are you can't under american law marry iraq or you or that they were just can't they don't have rights and a lot you can set up a trust for your pet you can't marry them and i think those comparisons are unfounded but polygamy is a and i think it's over i'm in a size i think people think of it as sexy or group sex or menasha twat if you look at real people who are polygamous it's it's work in.