sure it was from a super close touch. three strikes and you're out occupy oakland protesters have had enough with brutality and corporate corruption this after police use excessive force to try to shut down occupy oakland encampments but these protesters are standing strong will have a live report from the grounds of a place historically known for sticking it to the man and being on the forefront of the apex of american change. and from one call first the systematic change to another is it time for the u.s. to drop an age old tradition motivate the relevance of the electoral college. and as the world lies in global unrest leaders are meeting in france for the annual

g. twenty summit vote with so many issues to solve in so little time can anything really be accomplished. and breaking news out of the big apple a russian businessman has been found guilty of arms dealing so with critics dubbing victor boot the merchant of death did he ever stand a chance at a fair trial we'll have a live report from new york. good afternoon it is wednesday november second four pm in washington d.c. i'm christine friends out there watching our team. but we are keeping our eyes on oakland california today where protesters with the occupy oakland movement have organized a general strike now it's hard to underscore the importance of this but what happens today has the potential to be a dramatic escalation of the occupy wall street movements around the country now on

their forty seventh day so essentially what they're doing they're using a tactic that hasn't been used for sixty five years they're hoping essentially to fire a warning shot to the one percent that they have been occupying banks throughout the day and hope later to shut down the port oakland port by the way the fifth busiest container port in the united states but let's give this a bit of historical perspective a general strike was last used after world war two i workers many of them world war two veterans who wanted more jobs and higher wages according to some historians listen to this this is interesting it was about working class anger high inflation an outsized corporate profit familiar right in oakland in particular it all it took was a few store managers asking for police to help them get goods delivered while retail clerks were striking hundreds of police with tear gas and riot gear showed up to help trucks push through the picket lines in response more than one hundred

thousand workers walked off their jobs in december of one thousand nine hundred six this ended after more than two days when the city vowed to stop sending nonunion trucks to cross the picket lines. this is video of the port of oakland also the site of violent clashes between police and antiwar activists back in two thousand and three they were protesting shipping companies they believe were profiting from the war when protesters failed to clear the streets police fired into the crowd badly injuring at least a dozen demonstrators as well as nine longshoreman were standing by. and it's still in oakland fast forward a few more years to two thousand and ten and this was the scene people here protesting the ruling in the case of an officer who shot an unarmed black man oscar grant that officer johan is most really was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and not guilty of second degree murder or voluntary manslaughter the

ruling caused riots and people complaining of a broken system of justice and that's a little history for you but now let's get back to the scene in oakland today now earlier i spoke to our own lucy cavanagh she's on the ground there and give me the very latest. it was i'm standing in the what's been renamed us the us our grandson plaza the occupy the center of the i cry wall street occupy oakland movement here in california as you can see empty right now and that is because. thousand or so testers that are gathered this morning are nothing mobilizing there. are all marches that guest all say they're essentially holding several of our route the saints to shut down various banks to raise their voice protests on august eighth the general strike to significance of today an all expense of culminate in a gossip but protest scheduled against the court of oakland this is the built in c.s.

order in any country in fact and what the significance of this is protesters are able to successfully shut down the courts i've heard the really. good news wall street movements they call charlie bell tower their ability to actually backed up commerce here in the u.s. and i expect this copied and other occupations across the country punish thinking i should notice as walking down here. i open the plaza many businesses are in fact shuttered we saw a lot of science say they're closed today november second all in sort of solid areas i'd like to call this with me a general strike has been scheduled for today and i know lucy you went straight from occupy wall street in new york where you i know you spent weeks in zuccotti park and now you're in oakland tongue camille little bit about the difference i feel like it's safe to say today all eyes are on oakland but

a lot of this movement the heart beat of this movement still very much in new york talk a little bit about the differences of what you've been seeing. that's. all to california but there. are two things that really struck. me is the occupy wall street movement . part. of our series are i care. about capitalism. testers couched answers. saying you know we're not. just. here. much much more ability. for california. it's. not free to say. our military actions in her way to be

approached. and lucy certainly we i think it's fair to say that you. were in a little bit of trouble with here with your audio there bill but let me just ask you i know that part of the reason you say people are in oakland people in oakland are a little more militant than we've seen i know certainly part of that stems from what we saw that incident last week where police were told to come in and clear protesters out of the where they had been staying that resulted in one of the protesters iraq war veteran scott olsen being severely injured critically injured with a fractured skull i want to put up really quick a picture that you took this is a photo a memorial for scott olsen who continues to recover in the hospital i believe this was made there in oakland where you are just wanted to put that photo up for viewers to see but talk a little bit about how that incident sort of propelled this movement really much faster and farther in oakland just over the last few days. i mean that has everyone

cares very much aware of the. i doubt you hear scott also. cherry blowing up. discussion. now with our senior producer lucy carter not lucy has been giving up to the minute tweets complete with photos and quotes from occupy oakland she is in the thick of things and if you want to know what's going on on the front lines there you should follow her on twitter she's lucy caffein of. well there are so many aspects of what people mean when they say the system in this country needs to change the economic system is one thing for a political system horsley tied to the economic system is another and it's not just what happens once candidates are elected into office but some people are frustrated about it turns out many people think the process the electoral process itself is broken as well take a look at this point this is a gallup poll released

a few weeks ago that shows that sixty two percent of people in america now support a constitutional amendment that would make the presidential race contingent on who won the popular vote with only thirty five percent in favor of keeping the current system with the electoral college. so we want to dig deeper into this and joining me now for more on this topic is executive director for fair vote rob richie and conservative political commentator and strategist had their say about thanks guys for coming in today i guess let me just ask you this is the electoral college still necessary why or why not how it all started here sure well it's interesting you brought that poll because the response was that sixty two percent of americans believe there should be a constitutional amendment to abolish the electoral college that's something that perhaps they consider again the reality is a thousand different bills that would have done something like that have been considered by congress and it hasn't made. any if you and i dress think you are

looking for the word so you know and i think there needs to be a lot of education on the history of electoral college and why the founding fathers actually stablish it in the first place when you compare direct vote versus college vote a lot of people would say well that sounds antiquated but you get right down into the nitty gritty details and they're complicated and while we have literal collets i think a lot of people would say it's worth preserving and certainly a lot i think it's a good point a lot of people don't quite understand it that one lesson in history class that a lot of people are confused about what about you do you think that the electoral college is necessary or should there be changes those two answers to the question what is the policy of the national popular vote versus having this current state by state system where whoever wins it states gets all the state's electoral votes which we assume means the electoral college and in fact is just based on current state laws governing the cars. the voters and i should say that about sixty two percent includes majorities in both major parties and this is something that really

is a bipartisan issue in congress and when it did come up as a presidential moment back in the sixty's it got eighty one percent of the house to vote for it in gerald ford getting more trouble walker bush and a lot of. republicans voted poured a lot of democrats there to. today the problem with the current system and we're seeing it in each election is getting more and more severe is that with the sort of the partisan breakdown only a few states are seen as competitive where the back to the candidates might change who wins the state so all these other states are safe states firmly red and blue in the because of this winner take all rule there is no need to campaign in basically forty out of fifty states i want to talk about that especially as we are if you can believe it just about one year away from the twenty top presidential election a lot of other elections going on too of course but there is a common perception and that is that many of the early voting states iowa and new hampshire. are every election cycle showered with tons of money because of where

they fall in primary voting and like you said so many the majority of other states are in their issues as well are kind of ignored that is one perception or what do you think about that perception i mean is that accurate i actually don't think it's accurate i think the whole reason that we have electoral college and whether you keep it is to have this balance of power to have this federalist doctrine preserved we don't want you know california and texas and these other big states to have more of a play because they definitely would if we had a lot of our you know like montana and wyoming and other small states i mean it seems like iowa and their issues are certainly given so much more can i clarify what you are so we have the primary process the nomination process with we're are following right now on the republican side and that's where whichever state gets to go first like i was right here gets a lot more attention with the general election we're talking about a different dynamic but it's not a matter of going first because we are both in every state at the same time it's

whether your state is competitive ok and that's where almost every small state is not competitive right so wyoming i do delaware actually twelve of thirteen smaller states get no presidential tension whatsoever in the popular vote elections and we're quite familiar with them because. we use them for everything we know that it's a free market voters and any candidate that ignores potential consumers of that you know voters is making a mistake right so you go out and get votes. wherever you can and that's why the reform proposal of the day that's really moving is actually a state bass player and it's one that would establish a popular vote for president through action in the states and it's passed in a whole mix of states so far small and big west east and so on and it's been the tide builds in all fifty states and that's where the reform energy is focused which is because it turns out you don't need to get rid of the electoral college in fact states can use their powers under the electoral college to establish what almost

all of the voters like don't you think and how they're all of the question do you i mean if some states passed this nashar and decided that you know they would implement a change in other states didn't i mean we are still the united states of america is exactly the major criticism that's been leveled against this national measure because they are lobbying mostly in the states that are highly populated and that would just give them the two hundred seventy electoral votes they need so they are in essence ignoring a smaller states because they don't really need to focus their attention on that and the reality is this would definitely not withstand any sort of constitutional challenge because we need to have a constitutional amendment if the gallup polls accurate and sixty percent of americans actually do want to go and change like for a college or get rid of it i'll together then let's go through the proper process and we only have about a minute i want to say so i have to also simply say one is because in all fifty states it's passed in several small states so it's not like there's any focus on big big big population states wherever those legislators who want to move this and it moves. but. it also we currently have

a system where states can change how we allocate electoral votes state by state right so you have pennsylvania debating right now changing its rules from winner take all statewide to where to win seats congressional district the brassica already does that right so you. we don't have a uniform system there's no system that's mandated by the problem fathers what they did was give states the authority to make this decision and that's what the national public plan was based on and it goes into play only when the number of states that have passed it can guarantee the national public vote are women so it's really a bright line choice between the current system and the national popular vote how do you think about the criticism that having the electoral college makes it so that you know no third party could ever stand a chance that having this electoral college you know really supports it enforces a two party system because only the democrat republican party can afford to compete and that's well i don't think that the electoral college necessarily prohibits a third party candidate from actually having

a viable option or an opportunity to win i think actually opening it up. provides too many people to be in the race and you could actually have somebody who has only you know twenty percent of the popular vote win and that's not showing unity behind a certain person and the criticism of the n.p.v. movement is that you and the state would have to get all of their electoral votes to the winner the popular vote nationally so it's really not reflective of the state it's really actually you have to go over your your votes to the national record it is rather one spends a lot of what is an argument that is reflective of what voters the majority of voters in every state want which is to have a national popular vote for president all right executive director for fair vote rob richie as well as conservative political commentator and strategist have their summer always an interesting discussion i think you. well we want to talk now about the g. twenty that's a kickoff tomorrow in france and i should mention all eyes are on greece are leaders have been told to make up their mind immediately as to whether they want to remain part of the euro zone now this follows a shocking decision to call

a referendum on a one hundred thirty billion euro bailout this caused a major panic on markets around the world and just a lot at stake here in terms of what's going to happening happen at these meetings and joining me now for more is costas plenty of talk is he is associate professor of sociology at the city university of new york hey there let's let me start off by asking you what do you think are some key things to keep our eyes on this conference certainly a time major of major change between you know the occupy wall street movements the greek debt crisis what needs to happen. well i think part of what will happen is there will be a lot of pressure on the greek prime prime minister perhaps to reconsider his decision he has been not invited he increases not part of the g twenty but he was invited because some of the crisis the reason he's calling that are for and i'm is

because there is growing resistance in greece against these austerity measures that are taking a great door on ordinary creaks with addressing now the crisis in fact physically making the crisis deeper and deeper making it harder for greece to repay its that so the speech distance in greece by the way is part of a growing movement of resistance around the world in the united states and of course in crohn's itself thirty's there were demonstrations picked them up stations so against trying to make the point that when you compare a place people all over the profits of the of the of the fuel and the interests of the financial sector yeah i think i found out ten thousand people protesting there let me ask you something from paul and you call me whatever you think probably an opinion question is the european union still thinking if it can't. well.

perhaps the largest one i'm perhaps the largest market in the world i believe it's a larger market than the united states but the way it has been money. sickly. has undermined the socialist model. of the european social model cuz in the past been based on word first and. this project is being used to undermine basic. rights and we see that in these in these crises were the attempt to deal with this crisis through austerity measures is proving counterproductive and these the pending the crisis and spreading the crisis around the continent. you know with the occupy wall street movement taking place we've been talking a lot about the inequality gap here in the united states growing space between the

rich and poor in this country this country of course not alone in that regard i want to show you something that we found want to put up a map of low risk for greece this is a modest city the capital of the agricultural i grew cultural reason region of the sollie and i'm two hundred fifty thousand people live here and guess what there are more porsche cayenne here per capita than in london or new york in fact there are more course and that registered in grief and then there are tax payers declaring an income of fifty thousand euros or more that is according to a recent economic study there so here's a question how does greece convince a company country rather by germany for example where people take paying taxes very seriously how do they convince germany to continue to bail out greece when so many people are still living so large. well basically you know quality increase is very high it's probably higher than in the united states

even though or an inequality here is very great itself saw the people who have these luxury cars are not the ordinary critics these are people who are carbon be paying purposes the governments have not been willing to tax them or have not been able to but you see the very good measures that are happening taking place right now they're not rescuing i mean saying that. greece is is a little too very mean. measures are making hello the life of ordinary people into hell and we have the same kind of pattern where the people who have a lot of income and wealth are not contributing and this is why most of the recent boxes and spending projects affect ordinary greeks who have not benefited

from subsequent only growth as has existed in the past the most white people people are angry so we shouldn't talk about germans bailing out greece in an indiscriminate kind of fashion i mean. basically germans are and the german government and the french government are trying to protect the interest of their constituencies and the banks and they are imposing measures that will actually benefit some greeks a third namely the rates we did not even thought of there haven't been paying taxes actually we just found that to be an interesting comparison a lot of people you're right angry and protesting on the streets in greece because of this inequality associate professor of theology at fifty university of new york author author of this book remaking scarcity from capitalist inefficiency to economic democracy cost us money and talk. i'm sure to stay tuned for the newscast and thirty minutes what's the mood on the ground in cannes as world leaders arrive and is the e.u. still alive we'll have the answers plus the very latest from the g.

twenty summit and a live report from cannes france. and still ahead here on r t breaking news a russian businessman has been found guilty of arms dealing stay with us a live report from the big apple coming up next. well the verdict is in the trial of russian businessman victor boot are he's on a sausage shark and i has been following the high profile case and joins us from our new york studio with the latest breaking developments. on a saw

a guilty verdict handed down a what was the reaction there. well you know christine it's definitely been really a case that we could describe as a hollywood screen cleave really gone sour because this is a case that's been dragging on for a very long time the trial itself was going on for three weeks and even though it seems like victor boot have lost this case in the court of public opinion in the united states a long time ago he and his team were still hopeful until the last minute that the verdict will be not guilty but as you said the twelve jurors found him guilty on all the charges made against him including conspiring to kill american citizens and conspiring to smuggle drugs in cooperation with groups such as far a group terrorists by the united states but not by the united nations russia and thailand where there was arrested in two thousand and eight the mood is not great but his defense team does plan to appeal they have thirty days to do this with a judge expected to announce the sentencing on february eighth as of now we've been

talking about this case for several months and i know we've been. thing between the nickname given predictor grew as a merchant of death in hollywood getting involved in this case it was in so many ways decided before it even began to talk a little bit about this. but christine this is really one of the most important controversies of this case to be to be specific you know because like you mentioned hollywood had made a movie about this man even before he was brought to the united states the whole of that the lord of war with nicolas cage staring at it as starring in it and of course we know how much you know the american people love a good a good action movie we know that the judge did make the jury sign a pledge that they would not even be googling this man around or looking him up on the internet because the judge knew how much of a negative stereotype exists about this man in the united states because even the prosecution was legally him the merchants of death before brut was even brought on say u.s. soil and this is also

a term the judge had to bend from the case finally i thought i want to talk about a larger trend a lot of people see this case as one of many in which russians are or other foreigners are entrapped by u.s. officials in sting operations talk to me about the bigger picture here. well you know christine in this particular case it's been very interesting how our u.s. officials have been talking about boots trying to sell arms to sark rebels you know these terrorists reporting to the united states but it's important to keep in mind that in this particular case it's it was the u.s. special agents holding as far as members it wasn't actually these group members trying to you know goo trying to deal with them it was american special agents from the drug enforcement agency who went undercover we know that tens of millions of dollars were spent in setting up this sting operation and another enormous chunk of money spent on bringing into the united states so certainly you know this is a practice that we have been reporting about entrapment a lot here on r.g.p.

we know that in a previous case in september where another russian man was found guilty constantine your son to a similar scenario took place so this is certainly that's something that's raising eyebrows u.s. officials are imprisoning foreign citizens for crimes that they themselves lured them into. court correspondent on a sunday a church cannot live in our new york studio we do appreciate i know you've been following this case. every detail for several days and months as it's been going on thanks so much and that is going to do it for now but for more on the stories we covered that are to dot com slash usa check out our you tube page you tube dot com slash r t america you should also follow me on twitter at the stay right here though on our next capital account the euro zone debt deal appeal appears to be collapsing or a lister we'll tell you why this matters for everyone here in the u.s. for now i'm christine from south.

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