playing out in the g.o.p. presidential race. and it seems that scenes like this are becoming more common these days a new report shows that over forty percent of america's youth has been handcuffed before the age of twenty three so is this a sign that our country is screwed. it is thursday december twenty ninth four pm in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching r t. well more signs today that the u.s. and iran are inching closer to war this after an iranian warplane spots a u.s. aircraft carrier crossing the strait of hormuz now this strait is critical because it's the only sea passage to the open ocean for exploiting oil over fifteen million barrels of oil passes through here every day that's about

a third of the world's oil shipments by sea the aircraft carrier ron says this spot is part of the fifth fleet which is based in bahrain not too far away only rondout flexing its muscles and threatening to cut off oil supply from the waterway this is a response to the west imposing sanctions on the country and the u.s. is using it its navy valen to use its navy station in the persian gulf to stop iranians from blocking the passage well in the wake of these events is this a nother sign that war with iran is just around the corner i want to bring in lieutenant colonel anthony shaffer a senior fellow at the center for advanced defense studies welcome anthony so what is happening here is war becoming the only option. no i really don't believe so i think all sides will prevail and thinking the same through there are any of us have a great deal to lose one of the things that i'd like to mention is a fact that they produce about one third of the crude oil in the world that we

currently have in searching lation so one of the folks who would be hurt the worst by a conflict in this area would be the iranians i don't think they're that irrational secondly this is something that goes back to president carter jimmy carter back in the seventy's said it is liberal as he was that there was no way we as the americans would ever stand for the straits of hormuz being cut off by anyone therefore i just don't think that the iranians are willing to call our bluff on this and frankly i think they would suffer as much if not more than anyone else because their oil can't get out either i also want to talk more about the significance of this waterway the strait of hormuz this is a crisp crucial passage and terms of shipping oil in the region if iran blocks this package passage which they say of our value to do at the u.s. moves forward with these sanctions what effect will that have. well huge it would just jack up the price of oil globally we're talking about prices and i would be i think a conservative year five to six dollars

a gallon i mean unheard of prices and most importantly you're talking about a huge huge hit to the global economy and this includes all of our friends in asia as well because they need the oil it more than we do it we the americans are down about sixteen percent of our oil coming out of the way of this or the world therefore we would be hit but not nearly as bad as the rest of the planet so i again i think all sides would have hoping they will think this thing with before any sort of armed conflict would come to fruition on us and what exactly do you think iran is really trying to achieve here i-man it this is a response to the sanctions do you see the u.s. backing off as a result of this well not really i think the sanctions are really a paper tiger the people the only people have signed up so far for the sanctions are us the rest of the world have ignored the call for additional sanctions so i think the iranians are overreacting so simply put it saber rattling i don't think iran is going to slow down this need to get way and let's talk bluntly about their

nuclear program i'm one of those who believe based on my sources they have at least two nuclear weapons at this point in time the problem is they don't have a delivery system which will take another eighteen months to two years to put together so i think we need to understand what the realities are i don't think it's there's any practical way for the west to bomb iran to prevent of getting the bomb and on the converse i don't think the iranians really want to prompt a western response which would require which would result in them losing men material or military capability i want to talk about military capability of want to bring this up as they as they they spotted a u.s. aircraft carrier and the region i want to take a moment to compare and contrast iran and the u.s. navy fleet. so iran is equipped with twenty eight thousand personnel. sixty five aircraft twenty six submarines five for a gets two hundred twenty five vessels and warships but that is nothing compared to

the us navy fleet with three hundred twenty four thousand personnel three thousand seven hundred aircraft seventy five submarines twenty seven forgets and more than four hundred and six that's almost double that of iran vessels warships and destroyers so want to get your reaction clearly we are at an advantage when it comes to being equal. that's correct and let's remember that we have a global responsibility they don't so those numbers are a bit mis misleading by the fact we can't have all of that larry there's just no room for it anyway secondly that the advantage we really do have is in technology we can spot them coming we can do things with cruise missiles and frankly a lot of that you put that they're currently using to close their force is from the seventy's some of the same weapons we sold the shah are still in service include f. or chains and f. four s. which were i've long since left our inventory so i think they're a huge disadvantage however it doesn't change the fact that they could badly hurt us by focusing on the stories of romo's and clearly their objective is not to the

fetus it's to interfere with our interests and our responsibility to keep the straits open and are we as we are seeing this escalating tension you know a confrontation in the gulf cut impacts certainly impact the region and world peace how far do you see this ask going i don't see it going much beyond where it's at right now again i think we're going to see a lot of saber rattling the only thing i would think that would make take this to the next level is if the israelis decide to take on the nuclear program and do you know unilateral strike then there's going to be a lot of issues relating to do we the u.s. fall in with them to help them or do we back off that's a question that no one seems to know the answer of so i do believe you'll see the iranians continue to prompt over they make us attempt to overreact but i think their focus really is going to be on our iraqi leader not trying to gain more influence in iraq so why would you want interference with interfere with doing that and i think that's what they're really going to focus on the rest of this i do believe is saber rattling for the most part so what about you do you see that

president obama declaring war with iran no i don't there's three three elements here and tom petition you have the military war fighters who have plans to do this we always have plans to go in to do something you have president obama who's been very clear and reluctant to do take any military action and then you have the. candidates the republicans are all literally trying to say that they would go to run a war with iran which i think that the rhetoric has huge lee and unhelpful in the current situation so those three elements are right now in conflict frankly i just don't see the americans doing anything to provoke the iranians but clearly there is interest in keeping that strait open the matter what it takes and that would require president obama to take military action if the iranians really did something to close it off as certainly we are seeing are a lot of rhetoric especially from the republican candidates i mean at how do you think that impacts the chances of coming to

a peaceful resolution in the region when we are seeing so much of this harsh rhetoric almost pushing to go to war. from these candidates we have to look at this the chess game the checkered game i will say this directly the republican candidates filter saying is that they're like chess they're don't like checker players then we need to look at the region from the perspective of pakistan afghanistan iran iraq so to arabia syria we have to understand all of those things and not simply push on want to assume that we can get away with so i think that the wisest course of action going forward is accepting the iranians will probably have if not already a nuclear weapon and try to deal with them as a regional power and not provoke them and i think the the republican rhetoric is not helpful this one time i don't think that republican candidates even if they were elected would be able to fall through with any military action you know if they wanted to hear such a lot more anthony thank you for weighing in on this that was lieutenant colonel anthony shaffer a senior fellow with the advance with the center for advanced defense studies.

well still ahead on our team he's been labeled as just about everything except for a viable and g.o.p. presidential candidate but is ron paul really as extreme as everyone is making him out to be after the break we'll find out if some people are choosing to play dirty politics. new website with twenty four seventh's live streaming newsstands what to do about the ongoing financial hardship unlimited free high quality videos for download. and stories you never find on mainstream news. media and it is. pushing more art.

let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime in britain. i think. he'd want to well. we never got that says they're going to be safe get ready because their freedom. well the attacks against presidential candidate ron paul just keep on coming since ron paul's surge in the polls in iowa it seems the mainstream media has been

focusing on kicking him down hysteria over a newsletter as his staff wrote decades ago but what about everything else the candidate stands for like his foreign policy which clearly separates him from the others and is clearly resonating with more and more americans today stopping the wars abroad shrinking government spending advocating civil liberties where's the discussion on all of this well to discuss all of this life in new york is journalist michael tracey welcome michael so why isn't the mainstream media taking the time to analyze his policies and what he has to offer. well the mainstream media frankly has never felt it necessary to afford ron paul substantive coverage it was only in the last two weeks when he ticked up so dramatically in the polls in iowa that they felt it necessary to vet him as they would any other candidate. ron paul actually has been leading the polls has been in the top tier of the national

polling for a good portion of two thousand and eleven and until now when it's actually his candidacy is considered viable by these mainstream media types that they you know go through his past and sort out some of his lie that he's now ron paul he is seen as this fringe candidate as kind of an extremist i'm quite far outside of the mainstream thinking here's what gay rights activist dan savage recently said about paul. to show what he says is ron paul may not like gay people and may not want to hang out with us or use our toilets but he's content to leave us the f. alone and recognizes that gay citizens are entitled to the same rights as all other citizens so that kind of shows that ron paul isn't that extreme especially when you have someone like rick santorum that he wants to restrict gay rights by law so

what do you think about that ron paul being labeled extreme when you know he does take some balanced approach as just just as the one we just we just pointed out. well i think it's very illuminating to consider what mainstream media figures. believe constitutes extreme positions or extreme enough positions that the candidate espousing them should be disqualified from serious consideration so you have newt gingrich for example who has called for the execution of drug dealers who wanted to forcibly intercede to halt the construction of the ground zero mosque who's warned about the potential of electromagnetic pulse attacks if gingrich were to win the iowa caucus this would be considered you know perfectly normal appropriate and mitt romney for example has said that the withdraw from iraq is one of barack obama's greatest failures he's a lot of the suharto regime in indonesia if you can believe in

southeast asia. and yet it's ron paul who has actually called attention to civil liberties and drug prohibition and the racially discriminatory sgrena tory nature of drug laws that is considered beyond the pale so it's very revealing insight into how modern media discourse kind of operates and which views are pushed out on terms of. fear of propriety or lack thereof what do you think it is about ron paul that makes him such an easy target among his opponents among the mainstream media i mean some say that the only thing that republicans and democrats liberals and conservatives agree on is that they don't want ron paul in office. well i think it's because he doesn't fit neatly into the left right paradigm that mainstream media in their functionaries throughout the government help intrench ron paul has specifically disavowed that paradigm as not being adequate to describe

where he how he views his political philosophy and his educational mission as a longtime libertarian you know just yesterday ron paul was asked about the tea party and the occupy wall street movement and he actually said that he has affinity with both. and of course this comes as a shock to. people in the at c.n.n. for example and other outlets of that nature who expect very simple easy to pigeonhole answers to these major philosophical questions from paul kind of penetrates through that orry discourse and people are sick and tired of and i think that's why his message is resonating in and i would also kind of want to talk about the timing of this smear campaign against ron paul why now i mean these letters have been around for decades they haven't been a secret but they're just now resurfacing and capturing and captivating much of the

media why now. well you know as i mentioned earlier even even up to a month or so ago it would be very common for political journalists in america to scaf that the suggestion that ron paul should be contended with as a viable candidate for the republican nomination even now they claim that. so. so rather than apply due diligence and sort out his past life as they have with other candidates this is now being presented disingenuously as a shocking new revelation where as you you noted the newsletter controversy was thoroughly documented to two thousand and eight nothing that has been written about it now is actually new at all but you know this is just part of a chorus of predominantly right wing. vitriol that is coming out of certain quarters of the conservative movement in response to his impending when i would even have people at the washington examiner phil cline for example has suggested

that ron paul on account of his apprehension about the about israel's attack on gaza in two thousand and nine. helped to bet a global conspiracy to undermine israel i mean this is a very serious charge and is being leveled against the individual who may well win the republican the first republican primary contest so it's very interesting development in american politics and i think it reveals a lot of the you know kind of odious orthodoxy that underlie conservative thinking and especially authoritarian minded thinking because you're finding ron paul attracting support even on the left in some quarters and among independents and people who don't again fit neatly into the left right paradigm michael thank you so much for weighing in on that was journalist michael tracey. well still ahead here on earth see a new study shows shocking statistics when it comes to the number of adolescents arrested after the break we'll get to the bottom of this trend of our arrested development here in the u.s.

. you'll be happy to see. people calling like you said for free and fair elections. and we're still reporting from the clinton as you can hear behind me loud explosions constantly. reading this. please. i get it.

and there's the police in. one of the protesters nobody seems to know. that number of pepper sprayed the face by part of the argument that they're being overly dramatic . well today's youth in america growing more troubled a new study shows a staggering amount of young people getting arrested these days according to the report by age twenty three forty one percent of adolescents have been arrested at least once for something other than a minor traffic violation and the study doesn't give details on the crime so it's unclear what exactly they're being arrested for but it looked at seven thousand young people between the years of one thousand nine hundred seven and two thousand and eight so what's happening to today's youth and what's behind the skyrocketing

number of them getting arrested to share some insight on this i spoke to a researcher and policy analyst at the justice policy institute amanda. and since the study didn't provide many specifics i asked her what exactly are these young people being arrested for take a look. well you know it's hard to say we do know for example all of that there isn't there's been increasing the number of police in schools for example and there are a lot of young people in schools so for example between two between one hundred eighty seven in two thousand five hundred and thirty eight percent increase in police. and we know that in some districts students have been arrested for very minor offenses things like disorderly contacts or very disorderly conduct so they can be contributing to the number of students or the reason that there's been so many young people arrested over her course of the study and would you say that most of these crimes are violent or nonviolent and how many of them are drug related.

but it's hard to say how many are drug related it is possible that very little love all the drug offenses are driving some of the arrests from school that particular it will be very very minor thing if you see anything it's minor and swearing and it's you germ for example or just generally disrupting class didn't get arrested first swearing at a teacher yes you can absolutely school resource officer it may be called to a classroom and you can be arrested for a disrupting class in that way and so do you think that the problem is that that the youth is growing more troubled or is the power or is it just that as you said earlier there is more police say of the schools and therefore more young people are getting arrested i do think that there's more we think there's more of control of. what i think used to be you just thought i mean if you own behavior things that in the past you had done it's boy there probably would have been you know law

enforcement the principal might have been calling it in. but certainly the not been and so what does this have to say about the system our justice system that we're putting so many young people behind bars these days. i mean unfortunately i think that the justice system is being viewed as a last resort and rather you know relying on it first rather than last is only a stone of hope right you problem you know being frustrated i think is something that has happened generally generationally we don't know why. you know no the way. morning wondering. and. so we are seeing if we are seeing this crackdown i mean how does that benefit our society to crack down and put more and more young people in jail unfortunately

it doesn't you know by by arresting kids by putting them in jail we're just connecting them from the very institution back ensuring their success so whether it's education which leads to a good job and general you know. i used to ensuring that my. students are being. ok so in addition to the crackdown what are some possible social are economic explanations for the rise in iraq or is that part of the picture. you know what i mean it's hard to say i mean it's interesting. in the past that. point it might have something to do with an increase in the press of crime rates but that's clearly not what's going on i think it's hard to say things going on other than the fact that we are starting to intentionally using the justice system more than anybody to do. so it could be a lot of things but we know some of the policy response would be redirect our fund

into positive institutions like jobs and education and even treatment. i also want to add because fairly recent statistics show that one in five teds live in poverty today and a lot of times a correlation can be drawn between poverty and the type of environment that kids grow up in could this be part of the picture. why we've gotten only we can by ensuring that there are fewer children living in poverty no of course this isn't to say that people who are living in poverty are more likely to commit. many of these were to make sure. anyone is that the empowering of access to all. showing that they are no longer living in. again. and so well what gets to be done to reverse this to make it so that these rates

aren't so high to keep our you know that out of handcuffs you know first of all i think that we need to just scale back the number. that are rest of all the washington post recently and have this whole list of things that you could be arrested or you know fishing without a license and you know not how to i mean fire place and in those things might not necessarily have to do with younger in all these things that we could be potentially arrested for it just we need to just scale it back. ok and lastly very quickly just want to ask you these numbers that are have just come out what does this say about the youth in the u.s. and maybe looking at the bigger picture about our nation well i think sort of generally. you know kids are and they're no different there's no change in the way kids are. real danger to start a. generation. or someone or. but

again. any young. man to thank you for weighing in on this that was a man. rudy researcher and policy analyst at the justice policy institute. well that does appear now coming up here at five o'clock on r.t. is it time to kick democrats and republicans out of washington well look at the need for a third party to shake up a broken political system that's all new at five pm for now for more on the stories we covered you can head over to our to dot com slash usa and you can also check out our youtube page it's youtube dot com slash r t america you can also follow me on twitter at liz wall the best capital account with lauren lyster is up next.

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