withstanding police beatings severe weather and addiction coming up a closer look at what's ahead for them. and speaking of change the death of north korean leader kim jong il catapult his young son to power but will the untested and inexperienced son open the door or keep it shot for the future of the north koreans . it is monday december nineteenth eight pm in washington d.c. my name is christine and you're watching our t.v. . well it has been one year of revolution that began in tunisia so now that we've reached this one year anniversary of the start of the arab spring we want to talk about what's changed what the future may hold before we look ahead or take a look back and see how it all started. it was a single move made by

a single man twenty six year old mohamed bouazizi set himself on fire after police took his fruit and vegetable cart away from him because he refused to pay them on his actions a protest against a way of life he deemed unfair he died a few weeks later but his one action ignited what soon became the arab spring starting with the ouster of tunisia's own president. ben ali after twenty three years in power. next came protests and revolution in egypt with thousands in the streets demanding major change to the political and economic system there at times it was a violent uprising with more than eight hundred people killed but demonstrators refused to cane. and on february eleventh two thousand and eleven egyptian president hosni mubarak resigned after thirty years in power. next came

a civil war in libya with those loyal to colonel moammar gadhafi and those who wanted him gone u.s. and nato forces got involved providing training aid and weapons to those they deemed rebel fighters after much resistance gadhafi government was overthrown and a few weeks later he was captured in his hometown of sirte dragged into the street and brutally killed. on rust and protest also seen in syria yemen and bahrain even spread to jordan and kuwait the political landscape across the middle east and africa is forever altered time magazine named the protester its person of the year in two thousand and eleven. the act is that in himself on fire it may have been personal for both of these it but it sparked a year of protests of revolution and of change so many arab leaders have fallen and more could be on the way but despite many of these revolutions being supported by the united states some of these new leaders are more religiously conservative

both in egypt's parliamentary elections and in tunisia as islamists have gotten the most support and will likely be the rulers in these countries in the post arab spring world there are people in the western world who worry that some will come into power and immediately impose sharia law and that will be that well earlier i was joined by robert naiman policy director at just foreign policy dot org i asked him whether or not these concerns are justified i think the concerns are legitimate so far i think they're overblown it's important to remember of. these concerns were used for a long time to buttress these regimes so mubarak prigs ample said you know it's either me or the muslim brotherhood and that's why you have to accept whatever i do and shut your mouth about democracy human rights so we should do guard these concerns with skepticism if only for the reason that they've been used to justify our blanche of repression if you look at what's happened so far the other is

democratic election in tunisia the islamist or. share thoughts and immediately and that's just a promise that we do it's to form a coalition government with liberal and secular parties. similarly the muslim brotherhood in egypt which got the largest chunk of votes has indicated its interest in like in tunisia rule imune a coalition with the bro and secular parties and many of the islamic parties in the regions have sided turkey as a model just consider you know moderate islamist government that. spreads protected again the case of turkey has expanded democracy and human rights and i think it's fair to say roberts or that should have been you know one ought to take them into context i think it's fair to say that i mean you talk about you know

for example the muslim brotherhood in egypt willing to work together with some of the other parties it's one thing to work within your country with other parties but what about when it comes to future dealings that with for example the u.s. or other western countries i mean is it possible that you know the u.s. at the state department will be able to negotiate for example with the muslim brotherhood or with the salaf easier or with some of these other leaders in tunisia and turkey well who wasn't brotherhood is one thing in the selfies are another the u.s. has open dialogue with the muslim brotherhood in egypt actually their contacts going back for years and we know that there is no intrinsic contradiction between being islamised which covers a lot of ground and having good relations with the u.s. after all you know the government in pakistan the government in afghanistan the leading parties in iraq certainly the government and saudi arabia is some of this

really. there's no inherent contradiction no it's true that for example or talk but egypt the muslim brotherhood has been very critical of the egyptian government's policy with respect to israel palestine very critical of their gaza blockade which the egyptian government so. just so there's going to be changed question is you know can the change be managed in negotiated you are also going to have to move . arguably it's going to move in a good direction because gaza blockade is immoral and should fall in the muslim brotherhood is right about that the people around the world were not as lovely as the group with the muslim brotherhood could do of the blood kill in gaza so i think this is a shift that the u.s. government going to comedy if it's reasonable that it should be reason hard to imagine the release from where i sit in washington when you see you know even just

the g.o.p. candidates talking about the importance of israel. it's going to be an interesting thing to keep our eyes on as we look ahead i do want to talk just a little bit more specifically about egypt and even just what we saw there over the weekend i know on this one year anniversary of boise's action in tunisia we do think about what happened in egypt into her square and what we saw in cairo on saturday and sort of look like what we saw there ten months ago i want to i want to show some video here take a look. so the violence is not going away and there's this photo here of this woman being dragged through the street many demonstrators in egypt say you know what things haven't gotten better since hosni mubarak stepped down and protesters are demanding that the military police hand over power to civilians but as we know that they still do have a lot of power so robert what's the takeaway from this i mean that revolution does not a democracy make. well clearly it's an unfinished revolution they got rid of mubarak

and that was one call but. protestors in a moment they're always said that that wasn't the ultimate goal of the ultimate goal was democracy and human rights and i was the. area they have a it's an unfinished revolution they have now are in the process of have an election which has been judged relatively free and fair and the question is whether the north terry key question will hand over power to a democratically elected government there is not a result of the military has a back down significantly to some of their earlier claims about how they would maintain power so it's an unfinished story and i think that's a takeaway it's an unfinished jury and there's a process there and it's not complete and you know the u.s. role speaking in the u.s. is something that deserves further scrutiny because you know you showed those

pictures from the street in in cairo that's the egyptian military that gets of one point three billion dollars a year and u.s. military people should be asking the u.s. government what are you doing about this given the backing of the united states the egyptian the timing that's a really important point question to be there speaking of other countries that the u.s. has backed let's talk to talk about let me i mean moammar gadhafi is dead and it seems to me at least that after that happened a lot of people sort of waved their victory flags and moved on we don't see a lot of what's going on but i'm pretty sure there are still clashes going on and a lot of unfinished business what do you see as going on in libya right now. one piece of unfinished business is that there's never been any accountability who are the killings of libyan civilians by nato there was just in the last few days there was a very damning article in the new york times. times that its own investigation

reports of civilian deaths and casualties as a result of nato airstrikes and they confronted it with this report no it was never the interest in this issue and the quote human rights groups like human rights watch and survey saying that there is a climate of impunity around civilian deaths and casualties in libya as a result of nato and the beer they can dress the staff get a stand where as a result of pressure need to has you know now as a policy really investigate complaints. and you know try to compensate victims none of that. libya so there is unfinished business there and you're right there you know although this was a story that started with reported concern in protecting civilians you know once they got to go all that they saw was overthrowing libyan government and the concern about civilians appears to have spear right robert naiman policy director at just foreign policy dot org in our bana illinois. well it's also another anniversary and

many ways directly related to the arab spring it's called by sound the american autumn might look surely to be headed into winter this is a movement that is also an outcry against economic injustice corruption and the growing gap between the rich and the poor and it's come to be known as occupy wall street three months and still going strong are to correspond on a chair going to take a look at the movement itself what it stands for and how it's evolved. these are the images of america over the last three months that cops are must beat themselves in the forehead because they've given such life to this movement not welcome by authorities a movement against wall street wealth inequality and government corruption exploded in new york and spread all across the us the nexus of all of our grievances was the the profit motive the fact that. the corporate sector dominated by the financial

sector has our ostensibly democratic politics in gridlock and. occupy wall street has just marked its three month anniversary what we volunteer on september seventeenth with this momentous moment of restoration in anger with america is this time now i think that we've kind of injected the idea of economic inequality and see the public discourse how come i walk straight past that it would not last long enough to deliver any significant message but three months into the biggest nationwide movement to what has been years it's clear that the protesters are feeling stronger and more united to one critic said the protests would not survive until winter they have we can't fund education we can't fund health care but we can fund the police state and fund these wars until the cows come home at what point is it enough. when does the greed stop opponents said the demonstrations

would never track tens of thousands they have i would love to see a peaceful revolution where really what the media ridiculed them is a joke that is one of a party in their lives and is a trying to have burning man are living right now. but kidding they were not. many believe the uprising has transformed the face of america it's totally changed the conversation in the united states on saturday the occupiers of new york facts relax. samplers after being evicted from zuccotti park. attempted to occupy a new public space to use as their base. but confronted by police about fifty were arrested others were pretty resilient i think you know in a short amount of time and. surely the. demonstrators plan to keep going until they see

a revamp of the financial and political system in the us the financial elite is still mourning it over everyone the economy is in trouble foreclosures are continuing to grow all these real reasons the protests and the movement will continue no matter the obstacles the goal of occupy wall street is to make history we're growing and we're going to be the transformative moment for example in economic justice in america. r t. so quite a few important points here about the movement's impact on the public conversation and also the spotlight now shined on police brutality in this country which has played a major role in drumming up more support not less we also can't forget that the occupy movements are still taking place all around the country and despite the police dismantling many of the occupations the movement thrives in other cities as well as to get a firsthand perspective i spoke just a little earlier with christina gonzales she's an organizer and activist for occupy

wall street i asked her about the significance of this past weekend and what the three month anniversary means to her. wow this weekend was definitely amazing you know we old guys together are we saying happy birthday to ourselves it was really kind of cute actually and there were just so many people mobilizing you know we were taking over spaces there was actually a big immigrant march that happened on sunday so it was a really big weekend for us you know it was just about celebration of course the cops like to break a bunch of that up but we don't let them deter us so it was really just a time for celebration and i feel really good about it and it feels good that we made it to this three month mark and even though the park has been torn down you know where we still have it going on and people see that and christine i see the button that says stop and frisk i know you're part of a group that's really active and shedding light on something that really has had something so much and that is police brutality occupy wall street has really

brought to the front lines and to everybody's t.v. screens some things that i think a lot of people in this country already knew which is that police might not be the one percent but they certainly seem to do a lot of protecting of the one percent talk to me about stop and frisk and about what this movement has really meant to the attention that you're trying to bring. right so i've really been deeply involved with this movement to stop stop and frisk so stop and frisk is a policy that the n.y.p.d. conducts and that's to stop people on the streets if they feel that they may have a weapon on them but we know that this policy is racist it happens mostly in low income neighborhoods to mostly young black and brown men and you know this thing really needs to stop and it's unfortunate that so many people in this country and around the world have no idea that this is going on and people are being harassed in the streets and it's you know it's not only is it unconstitutional it's

humiliating you know it's destroying a generation of youth the youth that are supposed to be our leaders and they're being harassed in the streets by people you know the statistics are staggering that something like every out of every two thousand young men that they stop in the streets they find one weapon you know this year alone they stopped almost seven hundred thousand young men in new york city to see if they had weapons on them i mean it's really a racist policy we have to get rid of it and now that the occupy wall street movement is going on it's judging light on the fact that police brutality happens all the time and it's happening to people that never expected it that it was going to happen to them and we've been able to mobilize them to come and join us and to stop this thing so we've been in neighborhoods like harlem we've been in brownsville in brooklyn we've been in jamaica queens and we're going to different cities throughout new york to make this thing stop certainly i think it is just becoming so much more of the part of the everyday conversation when we see what we've seen over the last three months which is massive amounts of tear gas being

fired on people rubber bullets we saw. scott olsen in oakland be critically injured because the tear gas canister hit him in the head not to mention the police baton and the really really interesting treatment that's taken place in these clashes and i want to switch gears a little bit christine i know that you in addition to being very active in occupy wall street i know that you were also in egypt just a couple days before the revolution there began we're also today marking the one year anniversary of the arab spring talk to me a little bit about your experience in egypt what you saw from the perspective of being there right before everything started. you know i guess we should have known something was growing because at that time in tunisia is when everything began over there so as we were in egypt the revolution was going on in tunisia what shocked me me and some of the john jay students we went out there to go talk to students at a high school and you know explain to them about how you can stand up for your

government you know we don't have to believe what they're telling us that you know corruptions going on how do we start a revolution and to our surprise we got there and these sixteen about fifteen to eighteen year old students were teaching us about how to start a revolution were teaching us how to be involved and you know they had so much information not only what's going on inside their politics in egypt but what's going on in america world politics so it was kind of like we went there to learn from them and it was just it was it was so it's such an amazing feeling to know that they're involved in what's going on that i'm looking for that and the young people in this country i want to turn off the reality t.v. i want to stop shopping and i want to learn and to educate each other so that this way we can make this thing happen here because you know the movements growing but there are still people who are not focused there are still people who are letting the mainstream media missed mislead them and think that this is a group of ragtag hippies who have no idea what they're talking about and we really

need to focus on the youth at this point that's my thing we need to focus on saving the youth that are being harassed by cobb we need to focus on the youth that aren't getting education in the school system we need to focus on the youth that are being targeted by corporations and by reality television shows and by music and corrupting their minds that's what we need to focus on but i think it's happening in my video games as well those are all topics. that are directly related especially when you talk about the education system here in this country i know that this is one of the major things that a lot of occupiers cite for talk to me about occupy wall street though i mean where is the movement three months in. i mean i think that we're at the best time ever because right now we have a lot of organizing going on and you know people people are naive to think that because they don't see us in the streets because it's cold out ok that that movement is dead and they're just so wrong because just because he doesn't you don't see it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist and we're online we're networking

ok we have people you know it's too cold so we're not able to occupy outside space right now you know maybe for a short time we can but we're occupying inside space and we're really working on that and we have a lot of campaigns going on right now and the internet has been such a great tool for us and that's what we're really making this thing happen so you know over the wintertime world going to be organizing and getting things together and once a nice weather comes out and the flowers are blooming so will the movement and i think it's really important because there are critics of this movement and even people that aren't necessarily critics but that see for example where you are they see that tents are no longer allowed in zuccotti park they see what happened in seattle and denver and l.a. that a lot of the occupations have been dismantled the whole camping overnight aspect is no longer a part of this i will say that just down the street from our studios in d.c. . occupied macpherson square just keeps getting bigger with more and more tense but christine what do you say to those people that say you know the tents are down that

means the movement almost over. i say open up your eyes as i say you haven't been paying attention already and that's why our country is in the crisis that it's in right now open your eyes turn off the mainstream media and pick up a newspaper that's more progressive pick up a news newspaper that's going to tell you the truth that they're not going to be biased you know i ask people please open your minds and open your hearts and understand that this is something that needs to happen and because you don't see it don't doubt us don't doubt us because we're becoming stronger than ever right now and i just ask them to respect the movement understand like people like to make fun of it please don't take that approach because i think that with time eventually people who you know they they doubted us they're going to jump on to and you know we'll be here and we'll be waiting but just because you don't see it on the new because you know they're doing dancing with the stars or you know snooki had some type of situation with her boyfriend i mean that is not going on there is. and we

did a show on fox news clip in our report that we played just before having you come on you know some of the fox news hosts like to say in addition to calling you guys you know dirty hippies this one woman said oh they're just trying to recreate burning man in the streets of new york but certainly i think that you are one of many examples that we've had here on our key that shows that that is just not true occupy wall street organizer and activist christina gonzales thank you so much for having. and change is happening also in another part of the world though the cause in this case is not protest a revolution in north korea it seems it was exhaustion that led to the death of the country's leader for the last seventeen years kim jong il according to reports out of the country died of exhaustion will writing a train the world is waiting to see though what happens next with japan voicing fears of a possible military escalation in the korean peninsula and a state of emergency emergency and military alert declared by south korea kim jong il's youngest son kim jong un is expected to assume power many now wonder how he

will lead and to what extent till follow in his father's footsteps r.t. correspondent lisa now a reports on the man who is personified or who person of five north korea's communist state. a mystery to the world what now for north korea with its leader kim jong il dong this massive military great was held in two thousand and eight to mark north korea's sixtieth anniversary general can john wasn't there to greet the crowd the court suggested he suffered a stroke in two thousand and three reports claimed kim jong il died of diabetes and had been replaced in public by stand ins hired previously as a security measure he never spoke to the media had a profound fear of flying and ate with special chopsticks which could detect poison rumors have surrounded the so-called supreme leader throughout his life beginning with birth according to one source he was born in the soviet union in one nine

hundred forty one during his father's exile all kim jong il's official biography claims his birth was heralded by the appearance of a double rainbow. our people take pride in the fact that they are blessed with great leaders from generation to generation. the leader of the democratic people's republic of korea since one nine hundred ninety four he succeeded his father kim il sung keeping korea close to the world kim jong il was also named supreme commander of the people's army one of the largest in the world with one million active troops and over four million reservist. it's believed enormous funds allocated to its military might aid up north korea's resources needed to fight famine and other social problems but kim jong il and his regime tried to put on a different show when allowing the globe a glimpse inside for the road you know in your mouth farther to the general. thank

you so much hours. after the korean war the demilitarized zone was drawn up sending north and south korea into very different directions decades on the north remains a closed communist state the south a modern democracy an innovative success story north korea has caused global outrage in recent years testing patience by carrying out underground nuclear test and short range missile launches leading to u.s. and un financial and military sanctions it is now not a matter of the united states and north korea it is really a matter of the region saying to north korea that it has to change its behavior russia has tried to be a mediator for peace on the peninsula by pushing for negotiations. in the asia pacific region this serious potential for conflict and there's no alternative but to set up dialogue and improve understandings between this saw you in twenty ten new cars up around the north with talk of the possible next leader that's when kim

john on became a four star general and first moved into my mind to take over for his father november saw tensions reach its highest point in decades after the north launched an artillery strike that left four dead south korea continue to hunt war games with the u.s. and japan and wants conflict would break out if the mother attack was launched now kim john on a young and inexperienced leader zappa helm either open the door or continue to keep it shut. that's where a way station was built in two thousand and two with hopes of connecting seoul and palin yang but the north koreans. she backed out at the last minute making this a lot stop train heading back into the south now with kim jong il. that what we would see a train heading in. light of the most secretive and. he

said no way are to me. and that will do it for now for more on the stories we covered go to our t. dot com slash usa and don't forget to check out our you tube pages you tube dot com slash r t america you can also follow me on twitter at christine for sound now first i want to give a quick shout out to my very good friend and colleague alone makovsky she just made the forbes thirty under thirty list congratulations to you alone and you can catch her show on weekdays at six pm eastern right here on our t.v. she does a really really great job coming up in a half hour the big picture with tom hartman tonight tom sits down with d.c. insider jack off about the correct influence of money on us politics but that's going to do it for news hope you have a great night. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm charming welcome to the big

picture. culture is that so much money going to come which of course he's going to come down to here it is like a pleasing phoenix rising from the ashes newt gingrich again shows himself to be a major figure in american politics does he represent the republican party. more news today violence has once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. china corporations are today.