five hundred. percent. of my. room. and thirty years after a journalist was convicted of murder there are still gaping holes in the case and in the u.s. justice system for that matter while a bag of movie i would do miles questionable convection. diagnoses is that the route which should inspire confidence does not inspire in this confidence if there is no deal on friday there will be no second chance yet another evil emergency summit takes place in brussels it's do or die for the euro because this isn't a game of monopoly and one wrong move by e.u.

leaders could bring down the world fragile economy. became the hillary clinton really would like this to happen and you see it in their relations to other countries where these revolutions benefit to us stirring the pot and u.s. officials can't get enough of the arab spring these days even trying to push it into russia the thing is they're about twenty years too late to the party. it's friday december ninth five pm here in washington d.c. i'm christine freeze out here watching our team. well today marks the thirty years that former journalist movie abu jamal has been behind bars and this is a case that has garnered worldwide recognition and has made himself a hero of sorts and i want to walk you through a timeline to highlight some of the things that have happened in this case over the

last thirty years started to summer night one thousand nine hundred one officer daniel faulkner was shot and killed during a routine traffic stop and lumia abu jamal was charged with first degree murder and the following year movie i was found guilty and sentenced to death in one thousand nine hundred one it moved me i was denied his petition for rehearing twice april sixth two thousand and nine the u.s. supreme court refuses to hear of appeal and just two days ago the philadelphia district attorney seth williams announced that his office would no longer pursue the death penalty in this case well there are multiple questions surrounding the original case and hundreds have called for a new trial to be given to abu jamal many others from archbishop desmond tutu to dr cornel west have called for his release all together laura smith takes a look at the case and also at the international appeal of movie abu jamal. three decades behind bars for a crime he says he didn't commit it's

a dubious anniversary for moon abu jamal a black man who's always maintained he didn't kill the white police officer he's supposed to have shot and what's more hundreds of thousands of people around the world believe him people who have read and understood the situation within the united states and having on the having an understanding of. people could see clearly that the justice system there has to move here and feeling miserable that what purports to be a justice system in the case of withdrawal turning or nothing more than a congo rule court a former journalist and influential black panther organizer has won prizes for his activism at the time the black panthers were greatly feared by the police in philadelphia and his message that the american system of justice is rotten to its core racist sexist classist was inconvenient the murder conviction his supporters

maintain was a way of silencing him but one that failed miserably i think himself as a very charismatic individual i think he's an individual has a lot of support but i also i think. what maybe hasn't. come out or doesn't come out a lot with other death row cases i think for me himself being a journalist has. continued to speak about his case his cases continue to be in the media he himself has a. prison radio shows and he's written many books whilst in prison he's attracted a global following he's an honorary citizen of more than twenty cities and this even a street named after him in paris demonstrations for movie and european cities are a common sight after a trial that many called a sham it's emerged that fifteen of the thirty's. three police officers who testified to a charged with corruption and tampering with evidence supporters have taken up his

cause as a political prisoner and he's become a spokes person and poster boy for other oppressed and wronged minorities so me as case stands out as a place that people can sort of you know it's very excessive or they can they can get involved and they can. lend lend lend support him and so i think he's been very good at sort of publicizing his own case but also publicizing sort of some of the you know many of the injustices with a definite system but also other injustices around the world in the lead up to the thirtieth anniversary of his incarceration mia was moved off death row now he'll be put into the general prison population but his life's not out of danger we are very concerned that transferring me to the general prison population open the possibility for me or to be murdered in the in that because they are a lot of prisoners and all the thought is up to see how they have done in the past

is to get rid of him and it will do you some good unfun craze a prison will do the movie is removal from death row is no cause for celebration among his supporters and they don't see it as a reason to rest on their laurels he still has to spend the rest of his life behind bars with no possibility of parole they say his case represents wider corruption and unfairness in the legal system and they won't rest until he gets a new trial and is set free laura smith r.t. london. now in just a couple of hours a major event will kick off in philadelphia to mark that thirtieth anniversary this is a sold out event at the national constitution center as grand hall guest include cornel west immortal technique and archbishop desmond tutu will be speaking on video now dave lindorff wrote a book about the lumia case it's called killing time and investigation into the death row case of movie abu jamal dave is in philadelphia to speak more about this

with us and david i know this is a case that you care deeply about you spent years researching and investigating it on this thirty year anniversary what is the thing you think people should know about movie abu jamal. well first of all he clearly had a trial that was a sham there were this. minute clear evidence that a lot of the prosecution witnesses were perjuring themselves and the other thing is that he has almost no way to get out of jail now short of a new witness coming forward because of the way our system blocks appeals by by people who are in these situations and as we know his appeal process has been blocked time and time again i talk about the system talk about i think that's one of the things that in the case that has really done it to it's drawn attention to a lot of the flaws in the u.s. justice system talk about sort of over the years what has come out in this round

well let me just give you an example the judge ruled that his death penalty was illegal in unconstitutional in two thousand and one also found a number of problems with you know bias by the judge by you know errors by the judge by the court problems with the press q since annulling of the case that would have been grounds for a new trial earlier on but because of one thousand nine hundred five bombing in oklahoma city the effective death penalty act was passed which limits judges in federal courts from overturning cases because of errors by state judges unless they're considered on reasonable errors so you kept finding these errors and then saying but because of the one in ninety five act i can't consider that so really there are a lot of errors in this case if you could in recognized if it will judge talk to me

about we just had a report about me and not just having a major following here in the u.s. but having a really big following internationally there's even a street named after him i think in paris why do you think that is. well it really highlights the defect that you know first of all most of the people on death row in the united states are black and all of them are poor you don't find rich people on death row in the united states of the of the three thousand six hundred or so people who are on death row i think you'd be hard pressed to find one rich person though it highlights how american justice is really so you could do the poor and punish minorities and execute them in the cases of you know capital punishment cases and i think that you know when you look at for instance europe where the death penalty has been been abolished that turns people stomachs and it makes them very upset and jamal is a really particulate spokesman for the what the problems are yeah i think it is

very interesting he's garnered a lot of support because he is that was so articulate and well spoken about his own case and about the system in general talk to me i know that you are in philadelphia right now and you're planning on attending tonight's event talk to me about about what you expect well i'm going down there to cover it as a journalist which is what i've been doing all along and i expect to see a lot of passion over this a lot of anger because of the fact that he's still being trapped in prison and he doesn't get a chance really to challenge his guilt you know one of the things about this is that if they try him again on the on the penalty he would have been able to call in witnesses who could have impeached the original trial witnesses and even called in the original trial witnesses and question them to show that. they actually had lied at the trial and now he doesn't get that chance. the fact of that that

tonight's event is a sold out of and also shows kind of the support that to me a has garnered over the years here in the united states in your research and your investigating what you did for your book on this case what did you find the most surprising from people who supported me. what you mean from the from is is advocates well just there's an enormous passion. on this you know one of the things that you also find though is that a lot of people don't know all the details a lot of people who are passionately behind this. you know will say things that are not true as it as is also true on the other side you know the people who have been wanting to help me executed are a risk giving rampant lies about the case is so you know there's a lot of misunderstandings and misinformation but clearly this is

a guy who went through a kangaroo court and has been spending thirty years on death row and orrible conditions that prove to have been an constitute oh well hopefully on this thirty year anniversary a lot more attention will be given to this and those facts will eventually come out journalist and author dave lindorff also be sure to stay tuned for at seven o'clock our seven o'clock so it's not just authors and human rights activists protesting the as incarceration but also actors will speak to mike farrell for his thoughts on this passionate case. well saving the euro risking just about everything else in the process the e.u. leaders try to inflate an economic rescue raft we'll tell you who's on board and who's not. just burned your eyes right i mean it's like a derivative of actual pepper it's a food product essentially. this is much stronger than anything you'd buy off.

thousands of times i'm stronger than any kind of ever put you know. first. first. thing.

they did the week. but what. nobody seems to know. that never appropriate to face quite hard the argument that they're being overly dramatic. both in the capital of the bible or in mr. well today is the day for the euro as

leaders with the european union met in brussels to try to find a definitive solution to the region's debt crisis a failure to come up with a solution say many could mean the failure of the eurozone and could set off dangerous economic fireworks that may have widespread negative impacts on the global economy now as you can imagine this is a scene of high drama of course when you put leaders from twenty seven countries in one room seventeen of which are members of the eurozone there are going to be some different interests at stake though the economy of the entire continent in some ways the entire world is resting upon what is decided here so here's what's going on so far twenty six out of twenty seven e.u. leaders have agreed to move forward with a plan that includes fiscal discipline and more regulations britain has decided not to get on board with british prime minister david cameron saying he rejects those new regulations now there is still a lot that's up in the air but i want to go to our correspondent tessa our cilla she's in brussels with the latest. decisions that came out what we're going to see

is a two speed europe essentially those who are on board the a franco german push for more fiscal integration stricter rules and harsher punishments more supervision and those who aren't now as it stands there are twenty three yeses maybe including sweden hungary and the czech republic who will have to check with a problem once and get back with an answer and a note coming from the u.k. you know that no it's not very surprising because david cameron before getting into the summit had already said that if he doesn't get the guarantees that he needs to protect british interests the sticking point being the financial transactions tax and labor laws then he's going to use his veto to avoid that sweeping e.u. treaty that's exactly what happens in the u.k. is going it alone now from german chancellor angela merkel's point of view it is a breakthrough a success looking at what germany had wanted to achieve going into the summit and what they're getting out of it yes it would be fair to say that it is a success from their point of view now merkel also said that far as the u.k. is concerned she didn't think david cameron was ever at the table with them to

begin with anyway well now the next step is how are they going to go about doing all of this this new agreement among the twenty six e.u. commissioner also had said it would have been less of a headache if all twenty seven were on board from a legal institutional point of view but he also thinks it's a possibility that there could be an intergovernmental agreement among the twenty six provided that the three maybe become a yes but it will be interesting to see how these leaders will have to go home and present the plan to their citizens and explain to their people exactly how these plans will affect the ordinary guy on the street bureaucrats here would be would be considering this a success they're saying that they're actually very glad at the speed with which this agreement had been reach or this plan had been reached considering that the lisbon treaty took eight years to negotiate so they're thinking and saying that the credibility of the euro has been regained because of this plan on the other hand you're of skeptics are still voicing out their concerns saying this. this need for speed mean

a sacrifice in democratic processes and what will it mean for countries like italy and greece who have already suffered cuts because of plans imposed by the e.u. so question still there and the big question that journalists have been asking readers here is does it mean that the euro is saved now and the most conclusive answer we can get at this point is we hope so. and that was our taste has our cellar with the latest from brussels well no doubt the landscape of the european union is now being redefined and depending on where you look today's agreement is the solution some of been looking for but others say it's simply a short term solution for a very long term problem writing ahead of the summit summit writers journalists felix salmon wrote quote europe's leaders have set a course which leads directly to a gruesome global recession before we've even recovered from the last one and europe can't afford that america can't afford that the world can't afford that but the hopes of arriving anywhere else have never been demmer now there is still no telling how the markets will react to what to this or what significant changes it

will bring about but i do think it's important to dissect this and i spoke earlier to joe weisenthal the deputy editor for business insider to do just that i just asked him a simple question to sort of what is going on and will it mean the end of the european debt crisis take a listen. no unfortunately it doesn't if this doesn't really result in you know before the crisis we identified several of the problems if we were to go backwards the lack of the e.c.b. is a lender of last resort in fact dead countries still aren't competitive the fact that they can't control their own currencies and so on the fact that they run into huge jug trade imbalances with each other and identify those big problems and this latest agreement which is barely even agreement it's more like an agreement to agree to something else doesn't solve anything we've got austerity for two years now in greece and elsewhere and it doesn't austerity is not a path to fixing debt crises in fact it makes deficits go up because the economy

shrinks so it's hard to see what in there people could be could be happy about. the prior to this will you know prior to yesterday there was this hope that if the country's agreed to a fiscal compact then perhaps the e.c.b. would step in and backstop the whole thing but mario draghi has made it clear that's not part of the bill or he certainly hasn't promised to do that yet so it's going to be dicey for a while still and certainly when you talk about there are people who have thought that this would be dicey from the beginning i know earlier r.t. interviewed nigel farage the leader of the u.k. independence party he has been against the euro zone from the start but i want to show you his reaction and also his prediction for things to come i think in the next twenty four hours the seventeen politicians not peoples will agree that they are going to push on the they are going to give incredible dictatorial powers to

i'm elected bureaucrats based in brussels the markets will remain extremely nervous and remember that even the package that talking about today will take until march to implement and i think in the meantime the eurozone in particular the mediterranean countries are extremely vulnerable indeed. all right joe couple questions here on number one the fact that this won't even be implemented tell march in some ways when you talk about the economy that is a long way off and i also want to ask you i mean a lot of the countries that did sort of sign on to this they're still very wary of this loss of sovereignty so what does this all mean. i think that some of the right merge seems march is a long time from now. in terms of you know what how fast markets are moving these days how fast the contagion has moved so i would be surprised if they could just kind of come back and revisit this in march and everything is still fine and then i think they're going to have to move very fast and we haven't seen the last of these

emergency meetings by any means and the loss of sovereignty is certainly a real thing but the fact of the matter is the new agreement would leave clinton with almost no ability to stimulate their economy or do anything in a recession the rules regarding deficits are very direct tony and i would say something like a country can only have a zero point five percent deficit or a tiny surplus that's not going to be realistic in many cases so. it is hard to see countries winning the germans basically will like this because it really preserves the status quo it preserves their model everyone will kind of live the sort of miserable austere life that perhaps the germans think they live but i don't see this being particularly effective or certainly not very popular you're talking about germany i want to show you something that's kind of fun this is an advertisement for english language classes but this is a video that's going viral right now on the internet. thank you.

ok. thank you we thank you with our i know. this is holmes clods. like you. what's are you seeing a ball it's to. got a funny there. but in very in some ways relative to what's going on in the eurozone right now what is your reaction to this funny little after the video is hilarious and just sort of this something that people discovered is like them too does six from a language school and but you know this is exactly right this sort of german continued it's the the attitude along german leaders has been that there is no euro zone crisis there are there are specific issues in one country and other so for example greece got too much debt italy had a political crisis ireland had a banking crisis and so they see it as these one off issues that can be fixed with

just more discipline and less corrupt governance and it's not that it's actually a fundamental flaw in how the euro is constructed and the ability of countries to finance themselves so the german leadership continues to insist basically that there isn't really a euro crisis but because they're wrong that is completely out of step with how urgent the situation is and i'm sure you've heard a lot of people calling the euro zone you know the united states of europe. now the u.s. the united states of america leaders here have been tuning in to everything that's been going on of course they're worried as they should be but it turns out our president joe biden it was actually joking about this a little bit recently in athens greece of course knocks down by massive debt but while visiting with greek leaders the vice president said while introducing a member of the treasury department he said quote this man represents the treasury department brought he's. that hundreds of millions of dollars with him. you know

kind of all in good fun and the vice president did get some laughs from this but a lot of people found this to be very insensitive is this just you know the u.s. trying to make light the vice president trying to make light or as maybe a little clueless there was a really good it does seem like a classic biden move so there's that but beyond that this is becoming a more and more politically charged issue domestically and republicans have been pushing laws that would prevent the u.s. from taking part in any further i.m.f. action to be honest i figure it's almost no chance that u.s. taxpayers are going to be owning up more dollars for europe there's zero political appetite for that no obama would never stick his neck out for that perfect you know so we might see more stuff like the fed to swap lines to lower the cost of borrowing dollars but not seem you know we're not going to contribute more to the i.m.f. for this but yet it's clearly you know this sort of plays in very nicely to the

republicans is what can happen if we don't get our own spending under control so you know this is becoming a more salient political issue and the economics are obvious if you're close in a recession it's going to be hard for us to avoid one and if you're goes into something worse about you know a financial collapse a banking panic then that really will have ramifications just real quick one sense or last what are you still looking for out of this meeting in brussels. i think he you know i still kind of think the e.c.b. will eventually come in with a save of some sort and everyone will be miserable but they'll hang together but still maybe perhaps that's wishful thinking now right business insider deputy editor joe weisenthal. with some good insight there thanks so much. protests in russia in response to elections there are being viewed by some foreign observers as slavic version of the arab spring but analysts inside russia say it's pro-democracy

protests twenty years ago and argue this is not a sign of major changes to come there at all as our season is now a reports one of the people in the u.s. who see russia's current government being overthrown is u.s. senator john mccain. dockery our dear sky. us senator john mccain tweets dear vlad the arab spring coming to a neighborhood near you but is it seems russia's so-called slavic spring came and went twenty years ago. mccain and hillary clinton really would like this to happen and you see it in their relations to other countries where these revolutions benefit the u.s. and of course they're pushing for this but don't think it will happen there we're talking here like protests during the collapse of the soviet union hundreds of thousands were out on the streets people who. are always in

these they will. get. most of the few thousand out on the streets of moscow after these elections move young enough to either not remember or be unable to compare some of this though it is funny how it worked out the middle class that exists today does so because of the politics of this government if they rebuilt the country four years ago there was a much smaller middle class if any. a middle class egyptians would dream of its revolution praised as democracy by the west so on the military takeover. we have only one demand that the military council and the army go back to their barracks and start protecting the country they've demonstrated they're incapable of leading the country over the last nine months. to her ears certainly proved twitter and facebook are fierce tools when planning protests some thirty thousand have already signed up for

a moscow meet on the weekend but russia should have been my friend to egypt and to rebuild from scratch can take decades tens of thousands of young people are preparing to come out onto the streets and voice discontent and that means millions won't it's a safe bet many of them remember all too well the turbulent ninety's what chaos means for such a large country and aren't willing to go back and start over and he's now r.t. moscow. and that does it for now but for more on the stories we cover go to argue dot com usa or you tube dot com slash r.t. america you can follow me on twitter i'm at christine for sound. r t is the state run english speaking russian channel it's kind of like al-jazeera .