everything you thought you. heard. him say a picture is worth a thousand words and how many words is this more video of police violently pepper spraying peaceful student protesters at u.c. davis so what's next now and will the students become the new faces of the movement . and look at the truly pros out there isn't the only ones feeling the burning police pepper sprayed occupy wall street rallies one after another and journalists are being arrested and makes something for doing their jobs so in the country that prides itself on freedom of the press why are so

many journalists being silenced. one shortly after president obama is trying to eat up china's credibility at the apec summit and looks like the u.s. is hungry again for more economic fear mongering so why are americans so eager to create a new thread and are there fears and justified. good evening it is monday november twenty first seven pm in washington d.c. and christine for russian arcee well it is the video seen around the world and tells an important chapter of the occupy wall street story that even when the protesters are peaceful the police don't necessarily care and you may have seen this video over the weekend but it bears showing again this video from the university of california at davis. was.

that was the right thing you see just how close these police officers are standing and spraying the students some of whom were apparently trying to cover their faces with their clothing a police officer was actually forced open their mouths and pushed way down and that's what's so because of what you're seeing here the u.c. davis campus police chief along with two officers have been placed on administrative leave paid leave i should add but students and faculty at davis are now calling for the chancellor linda katehi to step down as well one of those faculty members is nathan brown assistant professor in the english department at u.c. davis he wrote a letter to the chancellor describing in detail some of the effects the pepper spray had on the students he also called for the chancellor to step down i want to read just a part of this letter he says you are responsible for because this is what happens when you see chancellors were police on to our campuses to just spurstow peaceful protesters through the use of force students get hurt faculty get hurt one of the

most inspiring things inspiring for those of us who care about students who assert their rights of free speech and of peaceful assembly while the author of the letter nathan brown joins us now. and even from what i understand ok there you are from what i understand one of the organizers of getting people together at u.c. davis why did you write this letter. well i wrote a letter because as i argued a lot and i think that over the past few years the student movement you see in police brutality has been a tool that's been systematically used by senior administrator is to terrorize students and faculty who protest ongoing situation increases and to suppress free speech and political stunts our campuses i know this is one of the major issues for some of the young people in all the different occupy movement is the cost of feet

and also the funding that's being taken away from from the education system here. you put yourself at rest and i writing a letter like beth what has been the response the response has been really incredible and inspiring i have a tremendous amount of supports within my department from the faculty at the university from the board to give a sparkle to association and from faculty and students throughout the university of california and since i've been distributed a letter received thousands of e-mails from people around the world expressing their support and i know your letter where i think was the first place i read at least that following the students were actually coughing up blood forty five minutes after they were sprayed what one of the students tell you. well just today with a rally on campus u.c. davis attended you know what i would estimate as a crowd of around five thousand people and at the beginning of that really students spoke and gave testimony about. testimony that was harrowing

it included descriptions mention of the butter. but they also you know expressed the fact that there's a sense of how long and psychologically and emotionally they speak about not being able sleep eight students have spoken about being followed around campus by university police since friday. and this is something you know often follows police brutality trauma and serious emotional stress in now i want to you i'm glad you brought up the rally because i know that chancellor also attended the rally what i know she spoke what's the she didn't seem to mention. you know any response and terms of the idea of resigning or stepping down what did she say or did she say anything rather there that made you feel better. no she said lee didn't say

anything that made me feel better i think chancellor starts to this incident has been predictable all through and through it's basically followed scripts which is almost always followed whenever there's an incident of police brutality in this country basically which. is the placing about officers on unpaid leave you get the fun ation of committees to investigate the incident a new sleeves or simply tactics of deferral and displacement criticism which has already not only bush that's excellent it's sensitive see a grammar and rhetoric and what i know about chancellor spoken about this event is for persisting use a passive works so the chancellor says for example we i am very sorry about what happened on friday but the chancellor does not say to students i'm very sorry about what i did on friday and many of the students this is a major in the constituent difference at the same time however the chancellor is

remarks are very contradictory and she has also said that as the chancellor she accepts all responsibility for everything that happened on friday which is quite a remarkable statement when you consider exactly where beauty happened on friday what the chancellor doesn't seem to its ups or the consequences of her responsibility for those events and so she continues to say that she does not in such resign that she doesn't think it's appropriate for her to resign at this time and what i said at the rallies there was that i think a lot of us know very well that the chancellor is not a particularly good judge of what is appropriate and what is not and you know i want to talk about this sort of on a broader scale as thoroughly and these pictures have been seen around the country and even around the world that they're sucking to people and it's something else that i've found sokal what happened on your campus i knew the davis camp within actually illegal in california presents a prison guard is not allowed to pepper. spray on a seated prisoner and if

a prison guard does they face immediately and media disciplinary action for using excessive force so talk let's talk about the broader picture here and the fact that peaceful dense and good students from what you say as there is with great grade students who are very engaged in class sort of being treated worse than prisoners but well you know prisoners shouldn't be treated that way either no one should be treated that way you know this is a crock and a whole culture of the same. in this country as some people have pointed out what happened on friday it's not an example of bad policing it is simply an example of policing and many people in this country understand were people in this country communities whole or in this country have understood for a long time that police officers are all tarpon those communities understand. that it was fiction that we stopped its people safe or that they are whole lot and what

we've seen on lucy chemists is an example of what happens all the time in communities throughout the united states. police officers do not keep communities safe they aren't facts they are in fact and major danger within many of our community centers of sudden the letter chancellor he and you c.p.p. are in fact a crime or a threat to the health and safety of students on our campus it is really interesting something i think that was not anticipated or expected with this occupy movement it's really set a whole lot of light on police brutality in this country making it known to a lot of people who certainly didn't know about it before and it's a day with professor nathan brown thanks so much thanks so much for talking about that. well let's talk about another way in which the occupy wall street movement is changing this change though not necessarily a good thing for those who have been following it closely reading articles about it and launching reports about events unfolding there because some of the very people trying to get the story to report on it are being kept far away from it in some

cases being arrested by police even though many of them are wearing police issued press credentials well are to correspond on a saucer churkin to looks deeper into the question of whether the first amendment to the constitution could be taking a little bit of a beating. freedom of the press versus the press the press a new reality for journalists reporting in the u.s. being broadcast arrested and blocked from coverage exactly i think that the ball is not something that we. read that right now our freedom in the attic used a warning thirty twenty one year old and we could see miller was here gassed by police taping it that's happening and really hurts your eyes a lot another journalist christine quinn handcuffed while text messaging then held for several hours i was directed down across the bridge on october twelfth right in front then there's a brutal detention of space bougie caught on tape by

a colleague the one from where we came out from behind a router to the ground. an estimated twenty six journalists have been far been arrested covering all keep my wall street protests the majority are members of alternative media the media is there to be a watchdog to report the news not to give you gentle soundbites said don't hurt your millionaire years not hurting millionaire ears or the corporate media often covering the action from behind the barricades relaxed but amid the crowd many journalists have been blocked regardless of their press passes are up which means or be just too much of the process. and we're even threatened to have their media credentials taken away. the day of taking press can press passes this is unprecedented behavior it's shocking to me you know it's just that our liberties as individuals and as journalists are getting rolled back daily not long ago

a journalist in america used to be respected but now being a journalist you have absolutely no credential that will keep you from getting arrested here just this budget risk of getting arrested everyone else times are different and some rights simply gone out the window the united states has changed . twenty years ago when i got into this job if you had press credentials you could go anywhere and it really was a free pass to police brutality occupy wall street protests to speak recently and some officials even attempted to keep it under wraps. so that they could be like what. excuses for blocking the press given by authorities have very many are just not buying it and media journalists go and have the right to videotape police activities. it almost sounds a lot like when bush invaded iraq and he said well you're not allowed to see bad things because that hurts our freedom the u.s. and always why did it impress freedom it has tried. by lecturing other countries

would be occupy wall street protests unwilling all sorts of skeletons in america's closet the concept would be won on its way to becoming nothing of the past is this intricate are our team new york. all right so we just showed you the stories of a few people who have fallen victim to the new interpretation of the first amendment of the constitution namely that it's being ignored but there are several more examples and i want to bring in someone now who has been documenting all this tracking the various attempts by police and other officials to suppress the press josh turner is an associate program director at free press he's in northampton massachusetts and spoke to us just a little bit earlier about how many examples of this he's actually seen. i wish i could count that high but the number of total press suppression is almost impossible to count as right now we know that twenty six journalists have been arrested and thirteen of those who have been just in the last week in new york

while and i want to talk to you about what you've seen in terms of the methods in which journalists are being prevented from covering occupy wall street across the country of course their arrest as you mentioned they're also journalists i read being put in chokeholds but it seems like so many are simply just blocked access talk a little bit about this that's right that's one of the most staggering things here is the fundamental and direct meaningful way in which the new york city conspired to keep journalists out of the picture they really kept you know four or five blocks back from where the raid on zuccotti park was happening and then even the journalist who did get close who were stuck in the mix who were there on the ground trying to cover this had things like their cameras were broken they were put on the republish sprayed so it's a range of activities as much as trying to ground helicopters news helicopters to places like c.b.s. couldn't cover the newtons so interesting i remember that airspace being blocked. i

want to talk though about some of these discussions about police issued a press credentials i know in many cities it seems that least that police officers don't consider you a journalist unless you have you know the official city issued press pass that didn't necessarily prevent them from arresting i know at least five people with official and y.p. presences were arrested i also want to show you a photo we have a photo a journalist susie cagle i think we're looking for right now susie actually is going to be on our show this evening at eight pm but if we don't have it that's fine but basically this is a photo of her and it shows her in hand as there she is and you can see clearly around her neck she has a press pass on she's being handcuffed on the other hand you know from what police are. hey everyone's a journalist these days you know anyone can start a blog and call themselves a number of the press i guess i want to get your take what's the bigger picture here i mean should the press credentials even matter well let's start with those

press credentials that were there as you shows on the video that introduce a segment police were actually tearing press credentials off of people's neck they were ignoring press credentials and they were saying they don't count and yet their defense later on afterwards the mayor's office actually said well more people should get press credentials we had people calling the police department to find out what that took and the police departments and they don't give press credentials road of us events so we're getting these conflicting messages and i think the fundamental answer is that the press credential system is broken especially at a time when mainstream media is rude you know pulling for their father away from the daily coverage of these important parents and we need alternative media and citizen media to be in there i think that if you're committing an act of journalism you should be protected i think that's a really interesting point you know here we are in two thousand and eleven it's not just you know the new york times in the wall street journal and you see a.b.c. c.b.s. i mean there are countless networks out there international networks kaliz websites

that are widely read by a lot of people around the world with journalists who lie find that they have a little bit of a hard time getting credentials so i guess i'm just wondering your think on this and i police that you know they can't credential everybody that everybody can't necessarily be a journalist well the first amendment wasn't written to only apply to people with press credentials so the first amendment is a fundamental doctrine it's the it's a theory and a principle that our nation was built upon it's what helps our them up democracy run we need to have news and information that meets the needs of communities and we need people there covering it and if press credentials are the only way to do that and we're limiting those voices dramatically and i think that again the first amendment has to apply to all people. you know josh as you probably know. he has been covering occupy wall street since the first day and you know we've been out there and this is a story that we've really been focused on just the treatment of journalists there

and i know that we recently ran a story last week and there was a comment on our you tube page that basically said you know i don't hear any of these embedded journalists in the war saying stop the shooting i can get hurt you know so basically this person saying why should they get special privileges here what do you have to say to that mentality i've heard that from a few different people saying you know what they're unless you have to follow the same rules of law that everybody else does well i mean it's an interesting question if we need journalists to cover our rules and our laws and the breaking of those rules and laws we need just to be able to go in and be part of the mix to actually witness that we need people to bear witness and if they can't do that then what we need journalists to do what we can we rely on them to do it and that's you know short sighted say it should be the last i think it misses the whole point that many of these just were doing exactly what they're supposed to do you know as a journalist who's going to cover a breaking news story on a private property can you blame him for trespassing if you try to cover the story

we need to have a nuanced understanding of the responsibilities of journalism and we have to hold journalist high standards absolutely and we also have to protect them and as i know you mentioned just a little earlier that from your accounting at least twenty six people numbers of the president arrested i want to put up just for our viewers some of the names. and affiliations of those people these are people who have been arrested people who have legitimate jobs with who you know legit in it news sources and these people have been arrested simply by for doing their jobs that we wanted to put these names just to show that you know this is real they're actually. names and faces that go with this story and finally i just kind of want to talk to you a little bit about what you think is coming next a lot of people very concerned when they're seeing not just in new york not just in oakland seeing journalists freedoms are being really really trampled on could this

be part of a larger trend that is going to start to be accepted well you know in fact in two thousand and eight that our own see the national convention the republican national convention there was fifty journalists arrested in under four days and people like me couldn't get moxon out how to press credentials ripped off her neck about point so this isn't something brand new and that's the troubling thing if you look at the statements from the society for professional journalists the. reports to me from the press and these other press organizations they all say this is a growing trend we we must speak out now we must get involved in this fight now because we're going into an election year and this election is going to cover differently than any other election because we're going to have more system journalists we're going to have more new independent alternative and nonprofit journalists and we need to make sure that they can get the stories they need to get to keep us informed yeah i think it's seems like the police departments and some of these city officials really need to understand you know the age of technology has

arrived there's nothing you're going to be able to do to stop it so you might as well figure out a better way to deal with it as a program director and free press that josh stearns want to thank you so much for weighing in on everything you've written us. also had here on r t it's time for some chinese take out american style u.s. lawmakers are putting on their boxing gloves and taking swings this time in the form of economic theory mongering coming up we'll take a look at the real motives behind this great tension. with the loans back you raised all the way to about with that nothing people are suggesting she's told her you'll see. she said.

r t is the state run english speaking russian channel it's kind of like. russia today has an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to us. well it's now official the super committee the team of six democrats and six republicans charged with cutting one point two trillion dollars from the budget is a super failure president obama announced just a short time ago that the committee did not reach an agreement and he said he will veto any attempts to eliminate the automatic spending cuts that go into effect as a result of their failure well this comes just a few days after the president returned from

a trip to australia we've down to reassert u.s. presence in the asia pacific sending a clear message to china whose growing influence seems to have some world leaders alone worried meanwhile china's global credit rating agency has threatened it may downgrade the u.s. credit rating whole lot of talk about here regarding china and u.s. and the relations between the two countries so let's bring in political economist and writer for the revolution newspaper ran a lot of. pay raise so it has been an interesting couple of weeks for us china relations i guess i want to get your take on what you see as the most significant in terms of some of these events that have unfolded. well i think it's very true what you say about the significance of the events of the last ten days essential what's playing out is intensifying geoeconomic rivalry between the united states and china the subtext of obama's trip to east asia has been the fact that china's economic and military strength is growing and there are major shifts in

power in the world economy the us share of world production has declined the role of the dollar as an international key currency has eroded and china's growth has been very very stupendous over the last fifteen years it's now the second largest capitalist economy in the world it's the second largest manufacturing exporter and just this year it will surpass the united states as the leading trade partner with the major asian economies so this is the backdrop for what is taking place and part of that backdrop is also the global economic crisis so you see this flux in the world economy and obama has done over the last ten days has moved along three axes it's kind of a three pronged attempt to compensate for declining u.s.

economic strength in the world through our you know it's simply are military dominance so you have on the one hand that basing agreement that was signed with australia and it's very significant this is the first and the most significant expansion of long term expansion of u.s. military presence in asia since the war in vietnam so that's the first the second was the launching at the association of southeast asian nations summit of the launching of what has been called the trans pacific act and this is a trade blocked. that the u.s. is trying to forge in asia their kids speak of slee excludes traitor so you have that and then thirdly the us has been the us imperialists have been insinuating themselves into the territorial disputes in the south china sea these claims by different countries try to of course they're over these critical sea lanes which

are vital tree roots for traders growing economic switch are also rich in potentially rich resources and the u.s. is also using this is a pretext to increase its military presence surveillance and they will worship similar way let me get in here and talk i mean certainly a lot that you just laid out there i think you laid it out really really well on if you think about president obama and the position that he's and leading this country that certainly. is not growing nearly as fast as the second place team china and just to watch what's happening there probably a little frustrating but there seems to be a lot of trying to retaliate and also a lot of on trying to get in there and talk to china's leaders i know over the weekend president obama met with china's premier trying to get them to you know attempt to try to get china to raise the value of its currency the u.

one china doesn't think they care what these other countries want when you have president obama when you have the leaders trying to get in and talk about this talk to me a little bit about this. well i think that you know what's going on is as i said these intensifying escalating tensions between the united states and china you know over you know the over the asia pacific region the u.s. has long been the dominant pager monuc collar there economically and militarily and now you see china's very rapid rise and the u.s. as i said is seeking to pressure china and actually to forge a strategic encircled line of china diplomatically economically and militarily you know i indicated some of the dimensions of that and i think it's important to understand that this is not in the interest of the people of the world in the united states or bows the u.s. is the most dominant imperialist power in china is

a capitalist power in transition to becoming an imperialist power this is not in the interest of the people the world like you know it was in italy and not any interest of the people of the world thing that growing tensions between the two countries. well if the u.s. is really asserting its dominance in that region and what i'm saying is that will a potentially lead to conflict and be the battle between the united states and china is a battle over the right to exploit to create exploitation zones you know it's interesting that one of the agreements that was reached it wasn't really an agreement in the negotiations of the last two days that obama has been in with the leaders of china there was this whole question of intellectual property rights which has been a vehicle through which the u.s. has maintained you know its technological edge but the u.s. has insisted they're trying to legalize software and is upset about the private pirating of software but you take the i pad you take something like apple computer

those i pads are produced in horrendous conditions of employment in china in factories where people are working sixty hours a week where people are subjected to a lethal chemicals were last year there was a rash of suicides by workers protesting these conditions so here you have china offering up its labor force to transnational capital and the u.s. in turn you know seeking to oppress its technological advantage through these intellectual property rights so this is another illustration of my point that what's going on between them is not in the interest of the people of the world certainly a lot to keep our eyes on their on you talked about you know i think it's important to remember that a lot of the things that we use every day our electronics i don't mean that we are actually on maybe there and i don't i phone four s. comes out gets released in china i think this week i always learn a lot from you political economist and writer for the royal revolutionist paper raining a lot.