i've seen it and what. they call a person born in a war and it's always a few of them you know three four five of them all one person is this police brutality this is police. but it's not only taking place in new york city occupy wall street protesters in chicago are the newest victims to experience police crackdown so the movement continues to spread one brave soldiers standing up to the cops with his brutal honesty. here's a human people are entitled to. but it's a right many here in the united states don't have instead thousands are in the waiting line for free health care so as the rich get richer we'll show you the faces of poverty and living in one of the world's wealthiest nation. and it's the birthplace of the arab spring and now it's unusual prepares for a new day as thousands head to the polls to vote but because lawmakers already slated to win ensuring

a last spring forward in egypt and libya because the mafiosi in the middle east back fired on the u.s. . it's monday october twenty fourth in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching artsy our top story this hour occupy wall street protests are going strong since they sparked over a month ago in new york protesters remain camped out on wall street where they believe is the scene of financial crimes that have gone unpunished crimes that they say have led to economic depression and increased economic inequality in the nation over the weekend protests got messy and chicago police cracked down on demonstrations and arrested over one hundred thirty protesters there it's the second round of mass protests in the city last. week one hundred seventy five

protesters were arrested but one marine officer one marine is taking a stand against police brutality let's take a listen to sergeant shamar thomas thomas you are about as they criticize police for turning on peaceful protesters. even the bees in the us are easy correspondent for an eye and take a closer look at these sergeants some are calling a hero fighting against military is a nation of a police force. six weeks into the occupy movement nearly

one thousand unarmed activists have been arrested in new york city. thrown to the ground beaten netted like flies and pepper sprayed. the n.y.p.d. statutes have been harshly criticized yet the most profound and public condemnation recently came from the us marine sergeant shamar thomas while defending demonstrators in times square. the lone man that stood up to dozens of new york cops comes from a family of honor and my stepfather he was he went to afghanistan in two thousand and six. so it wasn't even that long ago me and my mother were actually in iraq the

same time sergeant thomas completed two tours in iraq before returning to his homeland where he now aligns unself with the activists he sense are being targeted by aggressive authority in uniform i haven't seen the n.y.p.d. . take on a person one on one it's always a few of them you know three four five and i'm a one person yes these aren't you know protests as much as this police brutality is for hands down twenty five year old war that says it's come to a point where iraqi activists are treated with more respect and humility then their american counterparts he recalls an incident when hundreds of iraqis that violent with us soldiers a few people started throwing rocks and everybody kind of started throwing rocks and we actually had a marine hit in the face he was on back of a truck. you know the people were free to go you know what i mean we didn't arrest anybody we didn't. go beat up on anybody so to see the police officers doing

a step down on civilians in our own country was this it was you know stuff like i was amazed like i was in shock this coming from a man who's taken part in fifty combat missions in iraq. where u.s. war that's reached for nine years finally ends december thirty first he asked this marine if all the struggle and sacrifice was worth it not at all why because what would what is the result would have gotten out of this size you know a lot of different political agenda you know it's a political war machine it's not really a woman for the people the people united states can't even. peacefully protest so how are we going to defend the rights of the people when you know it's been proven you know to you know the various media outlets that we can you know protest peacefully visiting the protesters he stood proudly to defend sergeant thomas received something of a hero's welcome in zuccotti park michigan yes you know it was

a really you know we can have gestures of appreciation towards the marine that completed combat in baghdad but just began his battle against police brutality here at home because the govt you know people are fresh and it would be courteous and they're taking advantage of the bad you know honor that you know has bestowed him by the american people to protect them sergeant thomas is public lashing of the n.y.p.d. has one week in spite of the birth of a new book called offered by marines it calls on u.s. interests of all military branches to join hands on wall street. and with roughly forty thousand soldiers coming back from iraq five years and this international grassroots movement may grow even mightier. artsy we are. among the many grievances occupy wall street is protesting and equality and let's take a look at some scary new figures lose your job today so. the percent chance you won't find a job in the next month unemployed for

a year at ninety one percent chance that you won't find a job in the next month only forty seven percent of the workforce right now is fully employed and two million people have exhausted ninety nine weeks of unemployment benefits another four million will do so in two thousand eleven joining me now for more arthur and activist david swanson david thank you for joining us to be perfect just a reaction to those new statistics out it confirms personal experience there are people in my family that fit those categories people i've met in freedom plaza that other occupations who fit those categories it's outrageous in the wealthiest nation on earth other people lose a job with it people are in secure and without income and can lose their homes and can destroy their families it's there's no excuse for that and people are starting to realize it's not their personal fault it's happening to all of us and it shouldn't be and if we all get together maybe we can change it and david you have

been at the occupy d.c. protests that we have to over two thousand and eleven protests from the beginning over one month later what are what are the latest developments there. well we're we've got a protest encampments permanently established in both freedom plaza and another group in fierce and square and they are doing actions every day we are protesting not just our government but it's funders it's handlers it's think tankers and we're building community and we're making decisions and we're networking with the other occupy movements around the country and yes it's getting colder but it's it's very very encouraging to me we are starting to hear talk again from the police that they are being pushed by someone in the administration iraq to to drive us out of there we'll see what comes of it we're not leaving and ok well that was going to be my next question now you know where does it stand and how long you plan to be out

there but it looks like you plan to be out there indefinitely i mean as long as it takes i mean we'll see what the police do and what the weather does to of these occupations but you know the weather won't shut down half of this country that will stay warm for sure and we have no intention and there are a lot of people camped out there that have no intention of ever leaving and this movement's market and they have it i'm going to ask you to say i'm by for a moment. at a fact of this rising inequality as a rising number of people without health care and as poverty and unemployment increase as the problem is only getting worse and he for health care reform has been one of the issues raised during the occupy demonstrations nation why are tears rimando lindo shows us the magnitude of the health care problem in los angeles where those desperate for health care of like not for treatments they can't afford . this is what it says to and shame on america

the united states of america sixty three. vision problems their fair share of the games but what really hurts she says is thinking about. whicker country is headed back out it was the people bad the people for and the people. that we changed down that brown was recently laid off and now waits along with five thousand other people to see a doctor at a free medical clinic in los angeles it's a lie which seems to never end this morning thousands of people lined up early in hopes of receiving free medical care this is just a fraction of the tens of millions of americans who still have no sort of medical coverage nationwide more than sixteen percent of the population does not have health insurance this free clinic attempts to fill the void in america's broken health care systems like looking at this you can see the something horribly wrong

with our health care system thousands of medical volunteers provide everything from dental fillings to mammograms dr tongue has volunteered in some of the poorest countries in the world but now sees the desperate need here at home the same thing that's. if i don't have to go all out brawl to do some. work i also need help affordable health care has been one of the demands of occupy wall street so our educational systems are dealt with until access to health care and food and shelter are actually available to every citizen we have no intention of stopping back at the free clinic it's not just the most impoverished who are lining up for help many year have advanced degrees and jobs but aren't operative sure untaet work or can't afford it the doctor will health care is a human right people are entitled to be able know that their if something happens

that they're not going to go bankrupt johnny chung has an english degree and works as a data entry clerk she blames wall street corruption and excessive military spending we're taking. we're taking money away from people that need it late everyone that's in line over here those families can't wait for health care reform chris is a cook at a family owned restaurant which does not offer health insurance he has dealt with pain for years even though you know blood. has few options to get expert attention people can afford things you know i mean i want to be around for my son and my little girl is on the way so i want to be. the world's despite being the world's richest nation nearly forty five thousand americans die yearly because they lack health insurance and can't get a care rose brown to go to nations elites see these long lines and take notice

do you really cared ows people their nose places we the smaller people ok you know him in a nice whether or not those in power here brown is hopeful and i am so happy to see that the masses taking it to the streets. in los angeles. are cheap. and i'm back here where they have it's once and they've had a growing inequality as we just as a fact in health care in california one in five people are without health care do you expect this problem to get worse clearly we haven't seen any solution and acted by our government it's a problem of our corporate health insurance companies and they are as much in control as ever if not more and talking to reporters from abroad at these occupation protests they cannot fathom why there is

a debate over this in this wealthy nation why we don't give everyone health coverage and we should and we will if we have majority control over our government it's a question of power all these issues of inequality and. just wealth and benefits both of political powers and you know we just we just heard that report out of los angeles that you're dealing with a movement here in d.c. so what extent is health care an issue for the for the protesters that are out there in d.c. well it's a huge part of it i mean it's a huge part for for personal reasons for many people it's most people's biggest expense after their house in most cases it's the leading cause of bankruptcy and there are people with horror stories to tell about not having health coverage in this incredible wealthy country it's it's an outrage and it's it's at the top of the list of issues and has been from the beginning for october two thousand and eleven and in terms of health care what it can be done to potentially solve this

massive problem the whole other nations have used various forms of what's called single payer coverage where you cover everyone it costs you less than half as much you just cut out the profiteers and there's no reason we couldn't do that you know we do have a misinformed public to some extent but we have majority support for doing that we just don't have control over our government and if we get that we can solve this and many other problems the money is there but the science is there it's just the political control and david i'm going to switch gears now to another big story today the world's biggest whistleblower has announced that they are going silent at least for now with the leaks founder julian assange on start the organization over frane from spilling secrets until they raise enough cash to continue operating resources for wiki leaks were spread then after several banks told the plug on them after they released hundreds of thousands of u.s.

state department cables now wiki leaks says they are in barking on an aggressive on iran's the fund raising campaign to keep the organization afloat david is wiki leaks do you think that they are in danger of extinct extinction now. i certainly hope not they are under far greater threats i think from the us justice system and allies and coerced allies abroad but they deserve our support and our gratitude without their information we wouldn't know half of the things we're protesting in these occupations without the the information that apparently bradley manning least two weeks and weeks there would have been much less pressure on the within the iraqi government to say no to a continued occupation of troops with legal immunity we owe them as much gratitude as we owe principled activist movements and i hope people will put some money into that and you know why are these financial companies they're pulling the plug on wiki leaks but something they're not legally obligated and they're not legally

obligated to in fact julianna sergeant calling it and no lawful financial a blockade. whether it's on lawful or extra legal it's immoral it's discreet spall it's it's corporations with power they should not have with monopolies they shouldn't possess acting at the behest of a government that they shouldn't be listening to just as they have gone in actions that are clearly illegal including sharing of information and spying on our own people without warrants and so forth this is this is the problem in this country is the power of corporations and this complicity between them and a government that is operating against the public will and you know some people have accused wiki leaks as being a terrorist organization for putting national security at stake others have touted wiki leaks for encouraging transparency for holding governments for holding

corporations accounts of all and now with this with the organization at risk of extinction what do you think that has to say about the freedom of the press and the attacks of organizations and whistleblowers such as a wiki leaks well we have an assault on whistleblowers in this country and bradley manning among others we have record prosecutions of whistleblowers under the obama administration we have we have rather a joke of freedom of the press to begin with with the monopolies of mega international media corporations in its country but the assaults on weekly leaks for exposing information for which there is no evidence that they have caused any danger to our national security well the government routinely week's classified information in support of its own efforts is hypocritical and discreet small and dangerous and i think increasingly the american public recognizes the hypocrisy

here they have i thank you so much for your thoughts on these wide range of topics that was an author an act. yes david swanson now as you just heard income inequality is one of the main issues surrounding the occupy wall street protesters but still despite this one cause many still argue that these protesters don't have a unified message as well laurie harkness of the resident that nat wanted to find out how members of the movement feel about this criticism she took to the streets of new york to catch up with some of the protesters themselves. a month into the occupy wall street movement is there a unified message this week let's talk about that. there isn't a centralized message a lot of people say that's a problem and i think that's actually a strength that we currently have. as a movement were we're just over a month old october seventeenth was

a one month anniversary. and i think it's it's early to be issuing any statements or anything along those lines any any sort of major movements or revolution or anything like that throughout history has issued a statement within the first month it feels a little absurd to me to expect there to be one core message when this is a movement that's wanting to be inclusive that wants everyone to have a voice and everyone has their own life they have their own struggles is it i mean today's world is a soundbite no one has the potential of a.d.d. world and they need a sound bite or they're opposite the current dominant paradigm and we're looking to give examples of what alternative paradigms could exist i tried to come. for a couple of years so a lot of people who say that the message is it unified and that's an issue that the movement is having its problem communicating but i don't see an issue. because you

feel like it's it's you know i i think it is ultimately this is a big battle of ideas. different worldviews pre-schooler foot. people are talking and people are listening. like the best university in the world but there's no unified message a lot of people don't seem to really understand why they're here they can articulate it so you know if this sort of makes them think about why they're here well there in the alternative do you think that that's a problem with the movement is that there isn't a unified message not necessarily i think there's a prevailing theme to it everybody is disenfranchised with something you're saying education and health care some guy over there just said shipping jobs out of the country to the stuff we part of it i mean there's not one thing like i said it's not just one thing and there's a bunch of different reasons that i'm part of that too i mean i definitely agree with the fact that there's shipping jobs in the country we don't need that anymore so so how would you sum it up in one clears plantains what the message is here.

going to comic reform and how it's both parties i think we want to party so it seems like everybody here feels like there is a unified message and that is there isn't a unified message which they feel like is the very strength of the movement. still ahead on our seats in asia was the first in the arab spring and now it's the first the whole democratic elections but with a huge huge europe egypt libya hanging in the balance the best all backfire for the united states. and.

welcome to the conflict i'm lauren lyster. well the polls have closed and sneezes first free election it's the first task for emerging democracies in the arab world and tunisians are in are exercising their new rights and estimated ninety percent turned up to the poll to cast their vote the election will decide the over two hundred representatives that will draft a new constitution and choose who will lead the north african country so what does this historical event mean for the future of tunisia and will democratic practices act though throughout the rest of the arab world meanwhile in libya a revolution and its earlier stages is underway after the death of longtime libyan

leader moammar gadhafi now the interim leader says says islamic shari'a law will form the foundation of legislation and the voting government this sparking fears that an intolerant islamist resurgence will take hold of the country for more on this earlier we spoke to our three correspondent an isa now we who is on the ground in tripoli. the so-called liberation ceremonies haven't quite come to an end here you can hear the fireworks behind the guns from people still celebrating and already this announcement from what i was neil who announced that she real war would be the way that libya goes if it follows the path that he sees for it and of course this plays into fears that we've been hearing from analysts way before momar gadhafi was killed that the country would take a hard line islamist direction and this announcement of course just insurance if that's most likely the way the country is go if most of the members of that and you

see do go head and get elected in these elections that were being promised over the next eight months or so in eight months i should say and yes there are fears here that this is going to become a very different country that it is essentially going to be called an islamist state. and then what about in terms of another concern is women's rights. there are some conflicting interests there with shari'a law and women's rights what is the reaction you're seeing it so that. really libya during the draft was a relatively liberal country in terms of women's rights women's rights here they have a choice whether or not where there's so unready today my producer on the ground said to me you might want to put something on your head today people might be looking at you differently than just on friday and of course he was joking but that is really a sense of some of the fears are on the ground that the things are going to become

a lot different in terms of women's rights the way women are treated here and that's going to be very different from the way it was while because he was still in power now and he said i want to shift our attention to tunisia. where they just underwent there in their first free election and. from what you know of the process there did it go smoothly or where there are any irregularities reported. there were some minor irregularities reported we do know that voter turnout was very high although we're hearing that ninety percent of those i was able to vote came out to vote i just want to point out though that according to my sources in news only fifty percent of the population is in fact eligible to vote so that's something that might perhaps be debated in the coming weeks and months as this country moves forward so-called democracy really there are very long lines at the polls some of them were mixed gender some of them separate and not really

highlights some of the issues that people are starting to focus on there is where it looks like the main islamic party is going to get most of those seats in the parliament and not something that people are worried about and in terms of irregularities you were asking me it was in fact party although like i said mine are a small group of about fifty people or so did jobbers approach saying that the irregularities that are car are with the another party which is the leading islamist party there and this election a huge milestone for its needs and the middle east. at least symbolically turns around of the arab world learn from tunisia especially where you are in libya. well it depends i mean this is where the whole arab spring started so much focus was put on from usual last december really as as the brave country that went forward and tried to rouse been

a leader would been in power for for too many decades most people thought and so really it preserved them for libya they were very much put on a pedestal but in a way their revolution i think it's fair to say it's been hijacked because so much focus then moved on to egypt and then on to libya and i've been to all three countries and it has to be said that they all have very different atmospheres if you will it's all about something else the one thing they do have in common and if anything from these this will be less of a problem my father's actually from news and i spent summers there and really it was a very liberal north african country probably the most liberal so the islamist problem is much less of something that they're going to be worried about as opposed to here in libya we've already spoken about the proposal in syria law and even more so in egypt where the muslim brotherhood is expected to get thirty percent of the parliamentary vote in in november so they do share very common things not going to egypt and libya learned from news it's hard to say because the countries are very

different and of course egypt there's relations with israel libya there's oil misa doesn't have very much besides tourism in the united states knows that in fact they didn't even back up candidate that's not the case here in libya where obviously they're backing the national transition committee and it's not the case in egypt where most certainly will hear some kind of official backing of one of the parties and he's a thank you so much for keeping us updated there that was our to correspondent and he's anally with the latest from tripoli. well that does it for now for more on the stories we covered go to r.t. dot com slash usa and check out our you have to page it's you tube dot com slash artsy america you can also follow me on twitter liz wall the a lot of show is up next in thirty minutes. issues.