arceo policy of peace is free trade stay out of the internal business don't get involved in these wars bring our troops home and the gospel according to paul and his foreign policy chapter is going mainstream r t is there in iowa or that. it's still. hear me now well if you were in san francisco waiting for the train last night the answer to that is probably no coming up we'll tell you how the bar tried to stop a protest before it even began by cutting off cell phone service and what this means about freedom of speech. costs a lot of money because you have to spend

a lot of money to send the. right money spent elsewhere so why is the us empire spending so much money on wars instead of its own citizens these late rating agencies have been wrong about nearly everything for the past ten to fifteen years don't pay any attention to them how we rate them great those u.s. credit ratings agencies how they stack up let's play their mood swings and more. good evening it's friday august twelfth eight pm here in washington d.c. i'm laurin listerine you're watching our t.v. while the g.o.p. hopefuls faced off in the iowa debate last night maybe you saw it for the most part it was a sea of hawkish conservative foreign policy talking points you would expect from such a g.o.p. debate things like the threats of nukes in iran and why military spending should not be cut but on that stage

a very different voice emerged to ron paul's and he got a lot of airtime to make his points heard on mainstream t.v. rick santorum even complained about it so are we seeing a new era of political thought we'll get to that but first what sets ron paul apart from the pack. he is a force to be reckoned with a three time presidential candidate congressman from texas o.b.-g.y.n. doctor and leader of a revolution. ron paul is now in iowa while you are at it again campaigning for two thousand and twelve the booms and busts comes from a failed monetary system. and once again his fans have come from all corners of the country to hear his message and show support from kansas city missouri and. ron paul myself and my family of four kids of my wife drove to las vegas

a long time critic of the federal government the constitution gives no authority for the federal government to run our educational systems and they should be doing it his policies are often called radical just think of how many nuclear weapons surround iran good chinese are there the indians are pakistan is there the israelis are there the united states is there all these countries china has nuclear weapons why wouldn't it be natural that they might want to weapon but many of his entire establishment ideas are becoming increasingly mainstream as more and more americans reject the status quo of past decades especially his views on u.s. foreign policy and particular the u.s. role in iraq and afghanistan resonate with voters i don't believe our our national security required i think we're a list say for it the threat of terrorism is related to our foreign policy so i feel less safe because we're over there i never feel safer for the foreign policy

that we have today while often doubted by the mainstream media if i was a betting woman i think ron paul doesn't have a chance unfortunately for you but who is there is there a lack of enthusiasm over some a top tier g.o.p. candidate another question about electability. do you have any sir there's always the question as to whether you know. looks like they paid more attention to you this time around they're moving my way his fans are some of the most loyal in american political history. since eighty six perhaps since he was here. first. for thirty years he's not flip flop at anything except the death penalty everything else. constitutional robert taft barry goldwater so at least you know which is and despite his seventy five years many of his fans look like this is

the man you need to be president but i think he's a smart guy and i think you change things and need to be changed personally would you describe myself prior to seeing ron paul in the only light or a liberal democrat you saw him up on stage talking you know it's against the wars against you know these violations that were said we were going to get a great saying was or even this we need to fix the country we maxed out our get ceiling as it is and then weren't too many countries and this is where it all happens a famous iowa straw poll here at iowa state university now ron paul has reportedly already sold thousands of tickets this is we'll be spending most of tomorrow as people cast their votes most people here think he will do exceptionally well the question is can he come in first so you can answer will have to wait till tomorrow to find out reporting in ames iowa christine for them r t but we don't have to wait until tomorrow to talk to christine preserve our what is really going on there get

the inside scoop she joins us now from iowa christine now ron paul got a lot of air time last night rick santorum even complained about it you are there is there a sense there ron paul's ideas hold more weight and resonate with this crowd and a stronger way than ever before you know already. it's really really interesting where i'm standing now is the press center here at iowa state university where the straw poll will take place tomorrow right behind me actually all the candidates including ron paul will be giving his speech this is also where i was last night for the debate that you were just talking about and it was really really interesting we had the debate on the jumbotron and here and just a sea of media and here and every time ron paul spoke particularly about iran or q but you could just hear the keyboards going faster people really you know not totally shocked but certainly when ron paul speaks from the things he says make waves and there are things that people like to discuss and talk about and write about it and not showed itself last night let me get your sense being there do you

think they make waves because they make news because they're so different or do you think they make waves because now they're gaining a lot more traction i think there are several i think both of those are correct i think that some of ron paul's ideas that he's had it since day one are still are starting to finally resonate with people because of the economy because of the war things that seems radical before no longer so radical but still as you got last night certainly his ideas about iran and cuba to many many people including most of the other candidates do seem very very for and so they want to send the case but you saw in my report i mean a lot of the people that we talked to change from so far just to see him they like that he's different they really really like what he says he's consistent i know that seems like it should be a given but when i talked to a lot of the young supporters here yesterday and today the one thing they say they say this is a guy who gives it to you as it is and he doesn't change his mind and he's real

well it's not surprising getting some of the criticisms we've seen of the president in office now which promise a lot of things change course on a lot of things that surprise me that maybe people want them to deliver care another thing i want to go back to iran because you mentioned that you made some waves with those comments and he. a really different viewpoint than the majority of the g.o.p. candidates which all kind of have that talking points you'd expect from the g.o.p. that iran is the biggest threat to the us that iran might get nukes that's the the big concern it's interesting because i was just speaking with a colonel a retired colonel who is a decorated combat veteran who had a very similar reaction about iran and now because of iran as one poll so my question to you is what was the reaction specifically to ron paul's iran comment in the audience were people receptive or with were they shocked well i guess i wasn't in the actual debate was taking place because it was sponsored by fox and most of the other media without i was in here with every single media outlet i mean there must have been five hundred other you know media people in here so you can't really

judge the feeling of the country based on how the media particularly the mainstream media is reacting to some of those comments but certainly a lot of people you know and again when you talk about iran it's such an easy way to scare people it's an easy way to get people to jump on the bandwagon because they're scared of something and so i think that out of all of ron paul's policies that's probably one of the ones that people might have a little bit of a hard time grasping because they're not used to the idea that iran is not a threat because they've always been told that it is so i mean it's a good question hard to get the pulse of that right now i want to get the goals that you spoke to a lot of his supporters and a lot of analysts believe that ron paul was going to straw poll and we'll win the straw poll he has in the past he's got a very dedicated days christine i want to see him as president or if they see him as their best chance for a longer term change. and that's a really good question too for his supporters i mean a lot of these supporters are fresh out of college extremely idealistic and

a lot of them do believe that ron paul paul can win and will win so you know whether or not the polls show that i will say this and i think it's important to look at other things other than the polls too as far as raising money ron paul has been able to raise a lot of money here in iowa at least it's pretty outrageous and also when you see his support i mean all of the candidates kind of looked to him in awe at least some of the members of their team based on the amount of support support that he generated i'm here i've been hearing rumors we were at the iowa state fair this morning which is where ron paul was on a radio show earlier this morning and people were talking about he's already sold more than four thousand tickets now i don't know if that's definitely true but we were outside on top of the big tent here so it seems like he's planning to make a splash of some sort right and maybe wonder why the mainstream still is so dismissive of him as a contender but we want to give it a fair chance and a fair shot and get all sides and christine it's great to see you there in iowa

you're doing great work and we'll hear more from you after the straw poll this weekend certainly interesting getting a taste of what people here in the heartland are feeling yeah absolutely. all right the basic right to digital free speech or digitally organized assembly well it's something we've been asking as we've seen these riots go on in the u.k. and have seen u.k. leaders ask if they can stop people using social media and their cell phones to prevent possible crimes it sounds a lot like the authoritarian tactics that western democracies would usually decry but what do you know they're already doing it in the u s to stop a planned protest yesterday authorities were worried about a flash mob the train system it's known as the bart in san francisco turned off cell phone service they turned it off cell phone companies complied so what are americans first amendment rights in this age of social media protests here to help

us figure this out is declan mccullagh he's correspondent and. thanks so much for talking to us about this so this is the kind of thing declan that the united states would to cry about you know say iran in two thousand and nine when they were clogging cell phones to stop protests there does it surprise you that this happened in the united states. and so low prices where does it leave the local san francisco city government open to charges of hypocrisy when you can imagine my. use in the room thinking well i'm gonna look at the united states as a new there's i was a san francisco bay area i paid why it's called a bar to work with a cessna plane and we want to go what was going on here i don't know all the facts we found around you ours but what we do know is really that they didn't even after the providers faced the agency rise and seem a bit better for them to have relationships with bart they've turned off the electricity so the small cell towers inside the bar base and without even giving

them notice and those in the you know water with vision by going to be left to the bottom of the to know exactly what's going on who made this decision is it that simple that just you know i and one report with saying that the media relations of bart decided to just go ahead and turn off their ass is this that that temple that essentially anyone can just say hey let's let you know. well over by me you know this is the case in san francisco it was the fans go there it is birth of the free speech one of the ideas and now that we're giving birth today and i received movement to say it's the word of some and children first amendment issues there's. something the court has brought look there's been some again the foundations and so now grappled with. phones a cell phones mobile devices and i happen to different ways they can both be the instrumentalities of the crime was

there used to say do some violent things or use sort of by small bit i gave them property in which ordinal the first amendment protected activity that they can be used to get the word out of the police per se during a protest event which was metaphor used my call for going to say the package. was a good effect was a valid bedded. down or here and i hope that people pay attention start asking questions absolutely i mean what is a this kind of a new terrain i heard someone else and an analyst saying that she can only find precedents for this happening in this kind of a great area where all of a sudden freedom of speech can be easily learned in the united states. right let's put this is a separate thing to build on your analogy and let's say you have a protest and we are acting illegally they're giving us protesters maybe even shooting some protesters and it's to stop people from getting the word out that saw

people from documenting that. is why when video the police will go on local phone service there's this this is something that is worrisome has done for the wrong reasons most importantly because of the best reason so the whole great reason. this is the thing that we're used to american was going to do things you don't have the power to speak freely because it has been convenient for us but the way it works they work for us we don't work for them absolutely and the excuse being made that you know this is to prevent possible public safety problems i mean that's so preemptive what's more important the threat to public safety that could or could not happen or individual rights and civil liberties like freedom of speech rights it is always one thing that is the individual rights and the bill of rights i mean this is also the flip side of this i mean what would happen if someone of this happened we don't know the details but this is happened in the in the last day

and what happened to some of the on the subway platform and i'm going to have a medical emergency we're getting attacked by a motor boat to call nine one one well ok but it wasn't working as the flip side of that we don't really know but thank you so much for bringing us the latest i'm so sorry we're out of time i know that this is just now come out and we will wait to see. what details emerge but it definitely is shocking as we've been talking about what's going on u.k. could it come here as far as living social media and it's already happening i just have to wait and see what the extent of the thought is that was deafening the cola correspondent at the net news. now earlier we spoke about defense spending in talking about the g.o.p. debate possible g.o.p. presidential candidates are defending it ron paul saying you got to cut it because you can't afford it or earlier i asked retired u.s. army colonel douglas macgregor to assess to get to the bottom of that he's a decorated combat veteran and for a bit more years of rage the great tank addle of seventy three easting i started off our conversation asking him a simple question can the u.s.

afford not to cut defense spending dramatically here's what he had to say. but the answer is absolutely not it's a strategic imperative for the united states to scale back its investment and defense cuts to what extent well the plan that i've put together seems to point seven nine trillion dollars over the next ten years and that's what we should aim for we should look at least two trillion because the idea in my plan was that almost a third of that money would be harvested for investment in new capabilities because in addition to this thing being too expensive that we have been too involved the too many places in the world we're quite frankly we don't need to be we've also got an anachronistic force structure force structure with its roots in the second world war and there is no existential military threat to the united states that hasn't been system one nine hundred eighty nine so the argument that there is great risk if we reduce spending and reduce our presence of resumes simply doesn't hold up to closer scrutiny what about iran what about china what about those of those popular

names thrown out i.q. encounters with her last night as as a threat the biggest threat to the us well i think that i think that some of the people that you listen to certainly ron paul isn't one of them but the others that you listen to or well intentioned well meaning people but they're uninformed and there is a tendency that emerged during many decades of the cold war to equal weight defense spending with patriotism the notion that if you weren't supportive of the defense spending that somehow or another you were sympathetic because i mean isn't it hence unpatriotic and i think many of these people are stuck in a time warp and they're listening to the wrong voices they're listening to advisors who have also been with us for many many years who have personal agendas unconnected to the interests of the american people what agenda do you have why why and why you know you're not some lefty anti-war activist you are a colonel you're a retired colonel you're a decorated combat veteran i know your thing that you know well what am republicans going to take on well i think that's changing and i think that was the point of

your previous discussion but i think you're going to see more of that in the future more and more americans are finally beginning to ask. questions but they've lived remote from the realities of war for war has impose no cost and no detectable course the losses of trillions of dollars along with thousands of people not even addressing the hundreds of thousands of people who have been killed who were muslim arabs or afghans whose well being transparent it's invisible to the american public be very public is finally beginning to connect the dots between the tremendous loss of revenue overseas on these fool's errands that we've been involved with these nation building exercise and and the current economic problems at home so i think it's changing but the president has so much control over foreign policy separately from congress so if you have someone like the people that we saw on that stage last night who think that iran is the biggest threat to the united states and iran getting nuclear weapons how is what you're saying we're going to play out well

there's a supposition that iran this is something more than it is iran is actually a very backward place it's struggling to survive its oil and gas industries it ruins and it's investing in a nuclear weapon at least as much because of iranian nationalism is because they want to ensure that we can intervene in their country if we choose to do so and i remember that israel which is sitting not very far away from both iran and turkey in the rest of the region has three hundred nuclear weapons so if you're sitting in tehran right now you can come up with lots of reasons to try and build a nuclear weapon what's astonishing to me is that after all these years they have done it they must be monumentally incompetent to be blunt as that with macgregor retired u.s. army colonel and author now all of this talk of beverage spending of military cuts may come as the u.s. could lose its ability to borrow money at a low rate it hasn't happened yet but that could be the result of the u.s. this credit downgrade but just to get this power to downgrade we want to look at

the ratings agencies they seem to build immense influence over the global economy a mere warning from one of them can rock markets it can flow it's a debate by governments and it could have ripple effects that trickle down to individual folks so what is their track record and whose interests that they really serve well i found out it is a twisted web. breaking news the united states has just lost its top notch triple a credit rating from it was the downgrade heard around the world in a strong reaction to the rating downgrade the u.s. for its. standard and poor's took the u.s. from straight aaa student to one notch below for the first time ever bad marks were handed down for the nation's debt and politicians inability to agree on rein it in the tea party downgrade a lot of it has to do with the failure of the president a stage i think this is a tea party for a greater in chief says the u.s. has become a bit more. a

stalwart response from the downgrade or that helped ratchet up the yeah tricks of the debt ceiling debate with the help of the other ratings agencies of course stealing the show from bickering politicians with their eyes on the debt deal they nabi missing really a larger concern because there is growing evidence today that the u.s. credit score is going to get hit now that the u.s. has gotten hit just how much does it s m p's mark actually count well not much according to some like investor jim rogers but it's not because the country isn't broke that america is going down the tubes we're the largest debtor nation in the history of the world it's because of the source rating agencies have been wrong about nearly everything for the past ten or fifteen years don't pay any attention to them so just how does the report card stack up for the major ratings agencies themselves they are s.n.p. moody's and fitch let's assess test one the mortgage crisis of two thousand and eight these are the same agencies that rated the toxic sub prime debt aaa so i mean

how do we take them with any level of credibility after that. well let's see if they get any from tests to the too big to fail banks and insurers during the financial crisis. bankruptcies investment. the women bear stearns right to the very g. they gave a aaa rating to. the last good grades for firms that collapsed or were bailed out because of bad debt in fact the financial crisis inquiry commission said the three credit ratings agencies were key enablers of the financial meltdown and this brings us to test three ethics ratings agencies are paid by the investment firms they grade and moody's and s. and p. are publicly traded which means they may be more driven to increase profits for shareholders raising this debate right now you have the companies that are are being judge of paying the bill and i'd like to go to berkshire but mr buffett also

pointed out the market requires it because these ratings agencies has been around forever so they're in shrine by government regulations which oh yeah they have a stake in test for objectivity and for legislation the financial reform has restrictions on rating agencies and the rules that are yet to be written and they care a huge deal about what those rules and looking works or it would surprise me if they were trying to curry favor with certain politicians in fact they spent a combined total of one point seven six million dollars this year lobbying washington over the regulations which brings us full circle to the downgrade of u.s. credit the u.s. was downgraded by us in p. because of government debt or remember the government ran up that that in part because it bailed out the big banks then a.i.g. back in two thousand and eight remember the one saddled with all of those bad mortgage bonds which the ratings agencies graded triple a when in reality they were a d. or and makes you wonder if the ratings agencies themselves deserve

a downgrade lauren luster r.t. washington d.c. . now nationally the u.s. is investigating s. and p. over concerns of insider trading in the wake of the u.s. credit downgrade so earlier i asked karl denninger from the market taker if he felt this investigation was legitimate or a political punishment there's a reset. there's clearly an element of legitimacy to investigating insider trading and there was an awful lot of rumor mongering that was going on for the downgrade in this case the rumor turned out to be correct and there was a huge swing in the market on friday prior to the downgrade be issued so clearly some people knew in advance and the question is who are those people and how did they get that information because it is clearly improper under u.s. law to trade on material nonpublic information if you have it so to that extent the inquiry is legitimate. there's a good question in regards to why hasn't insider trading been investigated in the

general sense for lehman brothers for example was known by some of their card counter parties to be functionally bankrupt for some time prior to when they went under and nobody at the federal reserve or the new york fed or anyone else bothered to say anything to anybody we had the c.e.o. that was on the air so there we thing was fine and the same kind of thing happened with bear stearns. there is clearly a political element to this but i would like to see more investigations of insider trading rather than fewer i think if the government bailed out all of the banks that have all those mortgage backed securities they argue it paid a much higher price for that in dollars and cents because right now you know the debt has been downgraded but yields are still really low on treasuries but if a government with a downgrade and now they're investigating is it because that as you'd flap to the u.s. reputation. i'm sure that's part of it but if the path itself probably doesn't begin or end with innocent people my guess is that the investigation is going to find if

the if it's not just an arm waving show there were some extra parties that had nothing to do with us and he made a great deal of money on friday and that is a serious concern we have weeks within the system like that so i know who benefits from the downgrade of the u.s. where are these and that's what about putting. if you know downgrades coming in you short the market prior to that you could make a great deal of money. in terms of who benefits from a downgrade the answer is nobody but the united states had several warnings let's let's remember that that's and p. did tell the united states and did say it publicly that we needed to take four trillion dollars off the deficit over ten years that the four hundred billion dollars a year rate of actual cuts and the bill that was passed was less than half of that so they had made it clear several months prior to the event that this was what was

going to have to happen and they were going to issue the downgrade i don't understand why i think it was a surprise ok i guess because it actually happened and many thought that it wouldn't my question is what price is the u.s. going to pay because right now we haven't seen it pay much. well in the immediate impact was essentially nola fired by the fact that the stock market blew up at the same time so when you have the stock market collapse like this what happens is people go into what they perceive to be safer assets and bad regardless of the downgrade is still u.s. treasuries because there has been and will not be a default what happens next month or when they got a call that interest in the markets. and come back next week for stories you won't want to miss on our t.v. there's an elephant in the room with republican contenders in iowa and i am not talking about the u.s. as bloated defense budget it's the i was straw poll and it could be an indicator of things to come from paul wins how does this shake up the political race christine for that is their shelf and listen plus as american children are buying all of

their back to school supplies children in india are taking anything they can get including a free education the state is providing to stamp out literacy illiteracy so why then are so many children being left behind we'll bring your report from new delhi and finally it's life liberty and the pursuit of i pads as they square off with london's rebellious youth are riots and government protests really that far off from the u.s. we'll take to the streets to get your opinion those are just some of the stories on tap for next week so come back to our team monday at four to watch them all because you will not want to miss them and that does it for now for more on the stories we covered go to our to dot com slash usa just argue to page it's youtube dot com slash r t america follow me on twitter lauren lyster and go have yourself a great weekend.