this year it will hug of the movement. and although the government is stripping just about every other american right occupy wall street protesters are using the freedom of assembly to take back to cody park going to speak to one of those demonstrators who helped to reclaim to the prover a real ground zero of the movement. and occupy wall street isn't the only movement claiming territory these days ron paul is giving the other republican candidates are a run for their money and the mainstream media is finally taking them seriously or are they. getting it's wednesday january eleventh seven pm here in washington d.c. only seek out an oven of course you're watching our t.v. well it looks like the pentagon has

a potentially nasty scandal on its hands another one that is that the u.s. marine corps says that it is investigating a forty second video that surfaced today on live weekend elsewhere showing what appears to be american soldiers urine eating on dead bodies in afghanistan how's that for winning hearts and minds and the video you see here rather graphic shows four men in full combat gear standing over three corpses relieving themselves the men appear to be joking during the incident at one point you can even hear a soldier say have a great day buddy now at the video does prove to be legitimate and the pentagon is investigating it some experts say that the desecration could even constitute as a war crime and the anonymous person who posted the video included the following caption quote scout sniper team for with third battalion second marines out of camp please human being on a dead taliban's and the video and the photos are sure to be a further strain already tedious relations between washington and kabul and of

course they bring back memories of another embarrassing pentagon scandal the abu ghraib photographs from iraq back in two thousand and four we'll keep you posted on the story as it develops. all right well it was supposed to be a short term fix to place to keep the presidents captured as part of the so-called global war on terror the guantanamo bay prison saw the arrival of its first detainees ten years ago today and since then the u.s. base in cuba has seen more than seven hundred people come through its stores now today one hundred seventy one detainees remain and even though more than half of them have been fully cleared for release if you will see home any time soon and we've heard president obama say multiple times that he would close down the infamous prison but today the facility seems more established than ever are to correspondent christine reports. promises made i've said repeatedly that i intend to close guantanamo and i will follow through on that promise is broken it is the ministration policy to try to close guantanamo we have

certainly run into opposition the problem is he doesn't have a plan to do that or at least what to do with terror suspects they are suspects like moroc or not captured in pakistan in two thousand and one while working for an ngo that helps young people get off drugs he was sent to guantanamo and tortured for five years i got water water. after i had seen a couple things got the couple a couple people got killed in front of me some of them they got just keep on his head until he died and so the other one he was hanging on saying until he died forced to confess he was a member of al qaeda and he told them time and time again he was not it was freezing called it was during winter time and i had no clothes on so i was hanging there for many days when the interrogator came he pulled me back down. and. you know i was going to sign on every time when i said no he just made like this and

they pulled it up it's stories like this that draw fears condemnation even from within this country when one of the most powerful liberal democracies in spading with apocrypha and promoting you know illegal practices and abusing human rights that undermines the cause of human rights everywhere on the planet it is this hypocrisy that others say leads us enemies to more action not less i think the number one recruiting tool for zawahiri and bin laden before he was killed was gone tama and colonel morris davis former prosecutor at guantanamo bay resigned after being ordered to use information obtained during torture he said he was hopeful things would change under president obama he didn't just embrace the bush policies he kissed him on the lips and ran with them many believe the prospect of closing guantanamo bay will now be much more difficult thanks to the passage of the national defense authorization act by congress it was signed into law by president

obama on december thirty first now within our bill provisions that allow the military to indefinitely detain anyone it considers to be a terrorism suspect without charge or trial and with this increased leniency no doubt increased space to hold those prisoners will be needed but the end clearly you know is a major roadblock in this passage really was the death knell for attempts to close guantanamo and i think we're stuck with president obama will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law even applying it to american citizens no person and military uniform ever. volunteer the rams are less that into the military for the purpose of taking action against american citizens it's to protect american citizens protecting american citizens the reason given for guantanamo bay in the first place but ten years later it is having the opposite effect still the once temporary solution now looking more

and more like a permanent fixture in washington christine for south r.t. . all right well you heard a little bit of what he had to say but we wanted to expand the conversation with the former chief prosecutor at guantanamo bay air force colonel morris davis resigned from his position back in two thousand and seven in protest of what he called political interference in the military commissions at guantanamo prisoners he was at this morning's protest here in d.c. one of the numerous actions across the globe and joins us here in the studio morris davis thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us speaking to guantanamo bay once symbolized the american war on terror in your point of view what does this prison symbolize today what does it say about this country i think what it symbolizes now after a decade exactly a decade today is that we turned our back on the law you know for two hundred years in america that's what made us exceptional and unique was we stood on the law and

then after nine eleven people were scared and they were politicians that they could damage that fear and pick guantanamo because they thought it was outside the reach of the law so for a decade it's become a symbol of turning our back on our strength which is the law and you know it's one thing to talk of the political climate that took place right after the terrorist attacks but we have essentially changed sense right i mean the country we haven't seen another attack on our soil things have changed why do you think there isn't more of a sort of public outcry or reaction to the fact that this president remains well it's interesting to go back to two thousand and eight member president bush before he left office said he wanted to close guantanamo and then you had both candidates you know john mccain and barack obama bipartisan want to close guantanamo and president obama took office on the order and then immediately before right dick cheney liz cheney in that group went on the offensive in this to the american public is either you're with us or you're with the terrorist you know there was only one of two choices and the president didn't stand up and tell the other side

of the story so i think a majority the american public bought that narrative and they think these men are the worst of the the worst. realize a majority eighty nine of the hundred seventy one of been cleared you know through the cia and dia and beauty and all the other agencies have said they didn't commit an offense we're not going to charge them they're not a threat we don't want to keep them but congress is now locked them in at guantanamo solely because of their citizenship and that's just not american values you know it's while unfortunate kind of understandable that people wouldn't really pay attention to something that doesn't seem to affect their everyday lives and talk about us citizens but it also seems like the laws didn't expand it and shifted it in a way that could theoretically put american citizens at risk of suffering similar fate to guantanamo i mean is that just a totally crazy idea or that something we could see down the line i think you're exactly right you know benjamin franklin said you know people are willing to compromise their liberty for their security they deserve neither for the past

decade and people right for league were scared after nine eleven but the fear is continued and they've let things like the patriot act and the drone missile program and targeting americans without trial in guantanamo to remain you know every once in awhile like the tenth anniversary a few people pay attention to come tomorrow and majority the public will be out of sight and out of mind again for another year and that is scary implications and terms of who's a terrorist i mean that's one thing when it's a fight abroad but what if i don't know occupy wall street or even the tea party i mean you know how how broadly could could could this whole terrorist definition issue be expanded what is i think some people take a little comfort in that president obama is the decision maker but if you get a rick perry or michele bachmann or someone like that who you know their vents now at the debates the applause lines are you know how many people have been executed in reviving torture i mean that's what people are cheering for earlier actually on this program we're talking about the issue with iran there's the iranian scientists

to die of an explosion there's some potential connections to be israel or the u.s. and we had newt gingrich i believe it was rick santorum saying i. i hope that the u.s. played a role in this you know it this is a bad country and we should be doing things like this for our safety this is posturing is political posturing pandering to thier things for the national defense authorization act was it doesn't really accomplish anything but it allows the politicians to go home and say hey look how tough i am on terrorism nobody wants to campaign in two thousand and twelve on a stood up for the rights of detainees but it's not just the detaining rights it's american values that you know the laws are strength not something to fear and that's what we've done for the past decade or mindset that say well as i kept silent when they came for the. silent when they came for this session they didn't exactly i mean you know it's easy to kind of say you know these guys were the worst of the worst and as long as you keep you safe then i don't care what you do until it's your son or daughter and then this is a different story and you mentioned iran i mean the state department this week was

critical of iran they've convicted an american citizen in this unfortunate circumstances but if you look at the criticism that our government has levied against iran that it was apprehension under questionable circumstances a shoddy procedure conducted in secret with inadequate defense and they coerced confession sounds a lot like guantanamo right i mean we're willing to tolerate it when we do it but then we condemn it when others do and that's just his hypocrisy it is certainly an important one i mean but there's also the financial cost this is the most expensive prison in the world was it like eight hundred thousand dollars a year per prisoner and it's hard to calculate exactly what we spend on one ton of it because you know the navy base but you have you know the cia and department of justice and the f.b.i. and the coast guard a number of agencies that are separately funded at roughly one hundred forty million dollars a year there one hundred seventy one detainees now eighty nine of those have been cleared for release of the really eighty two people that we want to keep locked up and if you do the math on that we're spending about one and three quarter million

dollars per person to keep them locked up on a federal prison here in the u.s. the cost is about thirty thousand dollars per person and at the rate we're going i mean do you think we'll ever see it shut. i don't know i mean to give up hope you know. churchill said never never never quit so i'm going to keep fighting the fight in congressman rand mentioned in your lead in these. i mean it was the talk yesterday that he gave and i was encouraged to there are some saying members of congress that are willing to stand up and try to do the right thing now before we wrap up the interview i wanted to bring in the issue of sort of we talk a little bit about symbolism of what i'm talking at one time our present. and it's a black mark of course our reputation abroad not just in terms of implications for the rule of law here at home there's another unfortunate video that i want to briefly pull up i don't know if we have that on the screen that came out today it purports to show u.s. soldiers i think we're seeing right now apparently possibly urinating on dead

bodies the marine corps supposedly and investigating the issue what do what's your reaction to this yeah i haven't actually seen it i. saw online that it was mentioned and it's unfortunate i mean hopefully it will be investigated and people with it is what it appears to be people will be held accountable my concern is like now we've got the trial going on in washington state the last guy from the deeper mass right accountability seems to be imposed at the bottom but never at the top so people that allowed this atmosphere to be created where anything goes and does geneva conventions or coins. ought to be held accountable to and not just the folks at the bottom of the totem pole and you know unfortunately at the end of the day even if something like this is investigated symbols matter just like montana most of symbol of the grave was a symbol this is a symbol and we can only hope that more people start paying attention to issues like this with work like what you do thank you so much for your time i really do appreciate i don't believe that was

a former guantanamo official colonel morris davis. that's still ahead in our team and it has been called the birthplace of the american autumn park is back in the hands. occupy wall street demonstrators and they're ready to weather anything mother nature or the government throws at them that story up next. just burns your eyes right 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 be by a lobster to lose thousands of times stronger than any kind of bird you ever put your. flimsy low and you raised the frito about these women but nothing people are

suggesting she told her no she says she's a star. well as quickly as they were gone they are now back by wall street protesters streamed back in just a cody park last night as the barricades the infamous barricades surrounding the lower manhattan plaza were finally removed now r.t. spoke to some of those demonstrators about the return to the park the proverbial birthplace of the occupy wall street movement take a look. you can't just barricade people out and you can't say that this park will either be used by no one or only by people that live in this area should be open to everyone and so i think that it's important in so far as people can now come here and gather as we move into the spring and it gets warmer i think that this will return to being for the movement now we have

a space it can be is our spiritual this is the spiritual hub of the movement and people are back here even when the barricades are still there we were always here representing i mean sometimes you only see it in full up in the front but it's we've always been here. they may recall the new york police department kicked out of the protesters back on november fifteenth there was a night raid countless people were arrested journalists in fact two there were members of the media were prevented from even seeing the the shut down in the raid of the park but now they're back so what was the point of the raid and what the heck does this mean for the movement going forward let's speak to one of the demonstrators who's been involved with occupy wall street of gold he is with us now from our new york studio so the only what went on last night. we just had a celebration last night for the rule of law being reinstituted public space should be a public space and it seems like the courts agreed we got it back so what's the point

of wasting all that manpower that police time and the dollars i'm sure they pay the police officers and over time if we're going to keep raiding these encampments and only to let them back in. the secret question i'm not really sure what the point is it just seems to be something that we're really used to doing in this country whether it's overseas or here do you get a sense that this is maybe an intimidation tactic. they don't want to there's yeah they'll do everything they can to intimidate us but but it seems for now they're going to follow the law they don't always follow the law they've there was a judge ruled against them on the eviction date when they have acted as the fifteenth of november and they completely ignored it and waited for another judge to overturn it so now they're listening they may not listen tomorrow we don't really know where they're in having a good sign right now and the last time i was at occupy wall street i was in. late november and i remember that in the area was depressing there was the barricades everywhere police officers were everywhere but there's also the private security

park security car guards are those guys still there and what are they doing i don't really know they they don't know what they're doing there they look really confused they still they're dancing on walls they're still there but they don't know what their role is so they may not last very long and of course you know these reeds are . i'm sure it's not a pleasant experience to undergo one especially if there's police violence involved but at the same time do you think that there's been a silver lining in all this in the sense that the demonstrators have been forced to find other spaces where they could organize and sort of plan activities and sort of could could you argue that this may have strengthened the movement in some ways. i think the movement was already strengthening we were already moving off campus we were already meeting in other places and office buildings and what have you so we were already moving in that direction this is a really great moment for us now to have the park back because it's a great spiritual center it's great to run into people it's great to talk you have

to come back and check it out now well and of course it keeps. to try it also keeps of course the conversation back in the media it's hard to ignore an issue when it's right there day in day out what does the park look like right now i mean is there the kitchen set up is there a media tent is it sort of full and back in action or are just getting started. it's just getting started we don't have any tents or anything in there right now but we did have you know hot tea and festivities last night and our work banners and songs and meetings where we're back to doing what we do which was trying to find a solution to make this world a better place right and of course next next week on january seventeenth is going to mark the fourth month anniversary of the birth of the occupy wall street movement i know there's a lot of activities here in washington d.c. that will be covering what do you guys have planned in new york is there something that we should be watching for. there's a few things in new york to march is being planned to do tomorrow you know in

solidarity with the occupy congress that's happening in d.c. and then the fifteenth and sixteenth is big martin luther king weekend for us and we're drawing the show a lot of solidarity with. all right so it looks like despite the raids and the return the movement doesn't seem to be reacting all that much the police intimidation tactics of that's how you choose to see them still going strong thank you so much for your time that was occupy wall street activist goldie thank you. all right we're going to take a short break but still ahead he's the man giving mitt romney a run for his cash all two hundred million dollars of it now does a candidate like ron paul have what it takes to cross the finish line we're going to take a look at what his new popularity and stedfast message means up next. point

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internal mirror military. do the work to bring justice or accountability. i have a right to know what my government should do if you want to know why i pay taxes. i would characterize obama as a charismatic version of american exceptionalism. see . people calling like you said for free and fair elections. and they're still reporting from there.

you can hear behind me loud explosions. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tarred as a big picture. now i was watching the mainstream networks yesterday evening and a lot of the pundits seemed genuinely taken aback when

a wrong paul and they're placing second in the new hampshire primary and the seventy six year old texas congressman does seem to be emerging as a serious threat to the republican establishment and while his popularity may be a little bit confusing to some that's not necessarily the case for those who have been tuned into this network take a look there is no doubt in my mind that the majority is on our side we represent the maturity of the american people for what i have. read and pro-american. well you heard the man himself now we've been covering ron paul the candidate and his message since two thousand and eight but back then they were little bit different his ideas were still dismissed us for engine that of touch with reality fast forward to today it almost seems like we're in a whole new world right i mean then different narrative seems to be emerging here one where issues like civil liberties ending america's numerous wars and conflicts abroad as well as at home not to mention corruption on wall street and k. street are suddenly not so crazy anymore and although the political establishment

and the mainstream press will still continue likely to dismiss them as a fringe candidate we want to talk about what wrong ron paul surge means and what it says about this country is that the country that's changed or is it us now earlier i brought in the editor in chief of reason magazine to answer this question that welch is also the co-author of this book here the declaration of independence how a libertarian how sorry how libertarian politics can fix what's wrong with america and i asked matt welch why he thinks ron paul is now surging. i think the first thing to recognize is how much of the searches then mitt romney has gotten about the same amount of votes in two thousand and eight in iowa basically the same number in new hampshire the percentage point more awful triple his vote in new hampshire and even more for the vote in ohio i think what's going on august lee's

that's and then we've got a financial crisis a lot of which was predicted by people like wrong paul and his kind of school austrian economics which bodes very heavily on the federal reserve and government created bubbles and what damage they can do when they collapse real estate bubble has since collapsed and we've seen the damage done since then and we've also seen in these sort of bailout economics bipartisan bailout economics look the kind of wish that mitt romney and everybody else supported this transfer. of money from everyday taxpayers who lost the bankers and then let it. run and this is an experienced people a lot of them the right and wrong hold up the only guy out there who has a coherent kind of articulation against that but a plus war i mean wars are not anymore off of network or they're less popular than ever and the abbos guy who out of the democrats he's out of step with republicans he's the only major presidential candidate out there who is talking about bringing

the true ending the drug war and heading off to africa we're seeing by drastically reducing government encroaching into our lives so i'm going to try now man i want to bring in the whole element of the youth vote into this discussion i mean we have seventy six year old congressman whose biggest base consists of young voters many of whom weren't even born when he first ran for president back in one thousand nine hundred eighty eight and the sort of energy that the fan base that he has among those younger supporters i mean it reminds me of a beatle mania or even obama back in zero eight and i want to play you a quick sound bite of sort of illustrating that let's let's let's play that. i believe it is about liberty. i believe it by the there is a man who has been in the congress independent living in congress i was my personal political hero now he took

a whopping forty seven percent of the youth vote in new hampshire forty eight percent in iowa i mean it is ron paul in two thousand and twelve what obama was to the youth vote back in zero eight not quite but there's definitely some commonality there a little talking on. the day with some of these young. and people in. you know or people who in their twenty's they have not been adult that upon war you know eleven years now and loved us and i'm a lot of people are really sick of that that there's something to be said about a god who's completely on board and i was the editor in chief of reason magazine matt welch well unfortunately that does it for now if you missed any of the stories tonight or want more info on anything that we've covered you know is go to our website for more details that are to dot com slash the usa and as always all of the interviews are also available on our you tube channel you can watch those by

pointing your browser to youtube dot com slash r.t. america if you want to get in touch with me to weigh in on any of the stories we've covered to see what i'm following just follow me on twitter that addresses at lucy catherine of one word and we'll be back in about thirty minutes see isn't. the end. led mission free credit patient free transport charges free. agency free list free stereotype free clinics the old free blog video for your media project a free media. player liberal science technology innovation.