backley this could happen. praise the spontaneous protest that started on twitter the arab revolutions may actually have taken a decade of expertise to prepare millions of dollars to follow this story along with many others available on the web site r.t. dot com. the world's top whistleblower has made his appeal to the u.k. supreme court and now it's up to the judges to decide his fate. is wanted in sweden on medications of sexual assault but we could leaks founder denies the accusations insist the case against him is politically motivated smith is outside the supreme court in london. because into the supreme court they will deliver the verdicts in what they're calling a number of weeks so we're not sure whether that means two weeks or whether it means eight weeks but certainly we have now reached the end of this two day hearing in which both sides have put their cases to the panel of seven judges that are sitting on this case in the supreme court and this hasn't been about whether julian

assange committed the sexual assault that it's the sexual assaults that is alleged that he committed by the swedish prosecutor this is being about the nitty gritty of how the legal system works as far as it pertains to the european arrest warrant and whether in fact the warrant has been issues to extradite julian assange it was valid to toll associates team to say that the only people who can issue a european arrest warrant are judges who are impartial and independent where is this warrant was issued by the swedish prosecutor who is party to this case on the other hand the swedish prosecutor's team have been arguing that the european arrest warrant which the u.k. has of course signed up to can be issued by both judges and prosecutors it has to be that the jury mccool's of today particularly the judges appeared to have a little bit more time for us on his team's case when it came to what the swedish prosecution was saying they questioned a bit more they got

a bit more and see and they were seem to have a little bit less patience for it where is diana raised she might have to raise a bit of laughter and it seems like a bit of a life of proceeding this is the last chance saloon for julian afghans in this country this of course is the supreme court is the highest court in the land has come up through other courts including race recently through the high court he's made it here if he does lose here then there is a chance that he could take this to the european court of human rights in strasbourg that's by no means a given but i mean he's always said that he would do that if he did lose in this country's course he's always maintained that the charges are politically motivated he says that it's. connection with his work the wiki leaks release that huge previously secret documents which embarrassed governments including the u.s. government and also many international business but his greatest fear of course is that he would be extradited to sweden and then.

when he would face these sorts of. serious charges it will be a number of weeks before we find out. you know possibly. human rights possibly. possibly possibly not we'll have to see. the united states has made the surprise announcement that it will halt combat operations in afghanistan earlier than expected u.s. defense secretary leon panetta said the country wants to switch to a role of supporting and training local forces before the end of next year afghan officials claim the decision is ruin the whole transition plan and force preparations to be rushed through to discuss this i'm now joined by war correspondent and author eric margolis and eric scott a lot of experience on afghanistan the u.s. said it would pull out then by twenty fourteen now of course it wants to go earlier was it changes mind you think. first of all pressure from this year's elections poll shows sixty percent of american voters are fed up with the war in afghanistan or against that the price is approaching one trillion dollars

a time when washington's very hard of cash is cutting budgets and obama wants to be leander john democratic party member he was he's presidency out of. states and this is a very important step i think a lot of people will be pleased by you know i also suspect republicans are going to raise a great crop does it really imply what it means a comb about withdrawal a troop withdrawal all those who would be involved in combat that we are seeing people staying back in a supportive role what's the difference well we're not sure yet what this is going to need we have the example of iraq where the u.s. did in fact slowly phase itself out of ground combat operations so the situation air above iraq remains uncertain but u.s. is now moving fifteen thousand troops to kuwait and keeping the lurch so

that the states of poor presence there so there's still a footprint in afghanistan i sent the u.s. we drove to a smaller number of form of bases with a duck drone attacks. special forces it's not over yet and the looks of them have a thousand u.s. paid mercenaries who are in afghanistan remains uncertain the afghan officials are not happy about this decision i think a good reason to be nervous. they do indeed because without the without the bayonets this military and nato troops the afghan government must carry one hundred fifty thousand man suppose the army and police force is going to do not reliable a lot of it will go a little bit on this happened when russia was in afghanistan that's well it's the government forces. and certainly the america's allies in

afghanistan are worried they're going to take this is a sign that isn't tend to get out or it will have to leave it there thank you very much for your thoughts eric margolis war correspondent joining me live in toronto the blunders all of us politicians have in spite of jokes and parodies for decades with the presidential election campaign heating up as a whole new supply of ammunition now but as we report now report somebody the comments of displays of ignorance and disregard for world affairs and no laughing matter. every four years america's top job is up for grabs. with each new election comes a new batch of candidates with compromising foreign policy credentials when they ask me who is the president of you beki beki beki beki stan stan i'm going to say you know i don't know do you know i'm afraid that it's a very hard struggle particularly given the situation on the iraq pakistan border

you can actually see where russia from land here in alaska africa was a country on the brink on the brink of complete meltdown and chaos geographically illiterate us candidates have supplied comedians with endless material but all jokes aside some presidential hopefuls vying to lead the world's most powerful armed forces know very little about america's military intervention so you agree with president obama with. libya. forming a cohesive sentence on geopolitics can be a struggle i do not agree with the way he handles it will follow riis. now that's that's a different one differentiating between friends and enemies it's also a challenge obviously got to stand with our north korean allies in the case of republican candidate mitt romney mixing up presidents and prime ministers and the

comic i think that president bush represents a real threat to the. stability and peace of the world to be overarching ignorance on international affairs has caused american political commentator bill maher to conclude i think anybody could be president in this country ok sort of like at this point now where i think if you're gonna be it when you register to be a candidate you also have to go take a test about foreign affairs and if you fail the test we might get you one chance to take it again and then i'm saying sorry go run you know for city council in your little town in alaska if a country with the world's highest national debt you even is being represented by politicians with a deficit on international affairs the biggest consequence is likely to be america's credibility around the world and even who we target and let me finish

this i just get lost in a blizzard of words there this is where it gets really dangerous for united states of america it's like wait a minute how could they possibly be right about terrorism how could they be right about north korea are going to be right about iran so-called nuclear program when their candidate doesn't even know that there's a north and south korea i think the u.s. is why and so then the world has this very paranoid view of the united states because of the candidates not understanding basic facts understanding basic principles of international law which. prohibit can withstand if i were president i would be willing to use waterboarding i think it was very effective for me and i think the consistent streak of foreign policy blunders made by u.s. president. hopeful's is quite humorous but it can also be considered a national tragedy if most candidates campaigning to be leader of the so-called free world simply don't know enough about the world outside of america's borders.

r.t. new york. with the main headlines for you in just a few moments from now and then after that documentary the gun fight will take a fresh look at the impact of guns in america through vivid stories of people who have a personal stake in the issue all still to come for you. to stay with us. i

am. were shot four times in total and i have always a. story of the boys who are still in my body. and people should be allowed to defend themselves wherever they are guns in the hands of law abiding decent people are not a problem national rifle association was a group of basically retired military and we love to shoot holes and i'm sorry if you know that the bullet comes out here and this makes it go bang and if what's in front of here is going to die and that's all the training you really really need raise your hand if you know somebody's been shot ok kill him well one of the philadelphia horns over streets. until about a hopefully we will never have to use the weapons for self defense but we should be prepared the full class including the teacher i think was. seventeen students

and city and one of seven was still. because this is twenty four hours a day top stories now a spy saga you the father of a former f.s.b. officer poisoned in london six years ago says he was mistaken when he accused of being responsible for his son's death he gets the story firsthand from. the u.n. considers a new draft resolution on syria which no longer calls for president assad to step down criticism from russia it's also likely to have references about zimbabwe removed from the text. and egyptian police fired tear gas at

a group of protesters in cairo people have been running against the way security services handled the launch of a football match on wednesday more than seventy people killed. more in those stores in half an hour from now in the meantime the second part of our special report that takes a fresh look at the impact of guns in america the gun fight is next. if you want to play god work on your ground. and they will then store good any gun store they're going to write a background check or rather what you buy there. and they are big event is a gun show they have on weekends and this is where the gun store sellers can also go and set up shop but the individual people who own guns the person in question can come and also set up a table and do is himself against the gay seller so who shops are still held to the same regulation that they need to read back then check on every purchase or food to people who come in sell privately off sometimes you know the same gang that device

and sell it has is not required to run a background check said why are you not holding these to sell or selling the same the same product to same standard that's the problem just a loophole. her gun show people hey they have. no header. right back could get. to it. oh. yeah. there is a war or automatic and all the five. point one i. read all. right we're going to never have i heard. your alarm tell you right.

now. that they have never seen anything. like am. i an attorney. or. the way. this entire transaction that we just recorded braid broke no law federal or state law this is why i want to do is has to show these simple transactions and say this is something that's perfectly legal for countless shot i think we are like most americans who

didn't have much involvement with gun violence and never to show lives and we weren't really involved in the issue or didn't know a lot of the facts i knew that there were a lot of deaths in the newspaper it should be added and that many were treated to guns but i didn't really realize how big the problem was i to my son was sitting in french class in a small college town and he got shot for comes. that makes it to me makes it any could be anyone could anything anybody could get. after i recovered. the hospital and physical therapy and went back to school. i was thinking about this is. the gun show loophole is one of the simplest steps we can search for to improve the safety of guns falling into the wrong hands. so this is going to be a talk primarily about the epidemiology of violence the prevention of violence some research that's been done you all know that my area of expertise in general

is on what happens upstream in that chain of events that brings people to the emergency department having been exposed to it i decided this was something that needs to be quantified it's a story that needs to be told. the whole report will deal with what i see is the problematic aspects of what goes on a country knows how guns are bought and sold anonymously how they're bought sold illegally what kind of weapons are bought and sold some aspects of the relationship between gun shows an extreme right wing politics neo nazi ism video confederacy. one of the things that i've been able to document is a straw purchase that is illegal everywhere and here's how it works let's say that i'm prohibited from owning guns i'm a felon but you are not i'm going to hire you to buy a gun for me from

a licensed retailer there's one in phoenix the real purchaser is handing cash to this truck purchaser in the red t. shirt which the straw purchaser then puts in his pocket. the two of them walk around the corner where the real purchaser indicates the gun that he wants to buy the straw purchaser gets hold of a sales clerk indicates that that's the gun the straw purchaser is completing the paperwork and to a more senior person and at this retailer he gets on the phone as he is required to do and he calls the national instant criminal background check system but he's got the straw purchasers identification not surprisingly keep has passed the background check the straw purchaser hands over the money the real purchaser moves in and helps pack up the gun nobody had the sense a body was watching nobody had to sense if they would get in any trouble so that

felonies were conducted right out in the open there the kind of transactions that make it easy for criminals to get guns. not too many years ago the air force commissioned a study of these weapons pointing out the fact that no airport civilian or military was entirely safe the range of these weapons was such that a determined bad guy could be well outside the security perimeter of an airport and still have a fair shot of an airliner as it took off or landed these guns are available from private individuals for cash no background check no waiting period no questions no record. more hate mail to. the for this is on the list for the house for who we think could be

a likely co-sponsor on the legislation that we have twenty three twenty four the gun show loophole bill and as it's a day we can move a couple more marks right here for example. as you mark each one you know it means they have agreed to co-sponsor our bill in the house. the basic requirements hold everyone at these gun shows everyone who sells guns to the same standard that's the first step it's not all private sales which is however much we would like to see all private sales but it's it's kind of the most from the most reasonable the most common sense first step with that. forum and we're doing the video collins undercover video and when you're speaking your house how is this going to be for that first game and what he said in minutes we'll be doing about seven minutes be the forum or be the biggest event that i've ever spoken i think you can a lot of your story i think it's important to have and i've spoken at rallies but

i've never spoken in front of congress so this would be for me it's definitely a big day the main thing we want to see you know is to tell the story to tell well to answer the questions you know you're laying the groundwork for us to build on for the next year or two years to come ok but i feel good. i feel nervous we'll do great if those people agree that felons should be able to buy guns why shouldn't we do a background check on us thanks to the gun lobby in the n.r.a. try to think of every argument they could to stop this thanks paul and they do it with the idea that we're really out here protecting your right for gun ownership but what they're really doing is they're protecting the gun manufacturers and the gun dealers and ending up supporting the illegal gun distribution system in this country. richard feldman spent two decades working with one of the nation's most secretive organizations the national rifle association his new memoir ricocheted it

confessions of a gun lobbyist chronicles his time with the n.r.a. and other gun groups you write that the n.r.a. often likes to draw lines of us versus them do you think they're unwillingness to compromise has contributed to the success now that's a fair very fair question yes if. define success is fundraising it certainly has been very successful when you do fundraising you want to have an identifiable enemy you want to keep the issue black and white the word compromise to the n.r.a. is a dirty word never give an inch is the slogan fighting is good for the n.r.a. doing battle is good but they have to make issues sometimes when issues don't really exist just to keep that fund raising going well when they were asked to comment on your book a spokesperson told the washington post we don't comment on works of fiction. we all know that the n.r.a. is powerful and that the n.r.a. is really what's but when they turn on one of their own and he decides to turn back

on them it's kind of like peering into a burlap sack full of ill tempered mix so i just ask you on a personal level having been a top lobbyist at the n.r.a. having been essentially forced out of the gun lobby by the n.r.a. being unhappy with your approach to things how is this been for you personally to have been really kind of booted out well they needed to get rid of me because they want to be the only game in town and when i cut that voluntary child safety law deal with bill clinton without getting the table blessing from an ira we were threatening their gemini over this issue thank you it was a remarkable gathering in the rose garden this morning because here with the head good industry and the president actually agreeing on something i'm pleased to announce that eight of the largest handgun manufacturers will now provide child safety devices with every new handgun they sell back in one nine hundred ninety

seven there was legislation in the senate to mandate child safety locks on guns there was pretty much universal agreement in the industry that we ought to do this on our own get the credit for doing it we thank you mr president without having led . slate of all regulatory mandates on the way we had to do it the n.r.a. came unglued after that announcement i sort of went from the guy who came from n.r.a. representing the industry to being an r a's public enemy number two. well we had really done was and several fundraisers for them i mean once we made the decision to include child safety locks was no sense opposing something that's already a done deal. i don't think n.r.a. senior leadership like that too much to feel secure in.

thirty to forty aisles of booths probably fifty thousand people going to be here over the next four days and this is just one of three false. n.r.a. volunteers yeah they need a lot of volunteers because they pay that staff so much. and he was good or you're the police. are now out and they've been watching us i guess. maybe we got your. way you didn't have to prepare a party for me. earlier this. week where i just heard. well we have to check the jitters and it's not just the n.r.a.

has said and done any interviews with anyone that n.r.a. every writer has an angle. here i'd like to know that angle on this particular issue is very yeah i mean it's you know we don't die. every church. every. i don't know if you've heard we got pulled off the floor earlier today really yells you criticize the n.r.a. why don't think i said it on film where they had a alley some people were nervous. this is one for the history books the first ever supreme court declaration that america's right to own a gun self protect. it is the first time the us supreme court has ever taken up the right to bear arms under the second amendment since it was ratified back in seventeen eighty one the second amendment rights justice antonin scalia protection

individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia and to use it for lawful purposes such as self-defense justice scalia was careful not to throw out all gun control laws stating flatly the second amendment right is not unlimited. what do you see as being the current state of gun laws you know taking into context the history in american gun laws and where you think it's going i think in large measure the firearm debate in america is really over in ari's kind of a supporter and if it's cause goes away it goes away they need a dragon to slay in order to continue to develop their membership in order to motivate their members and in order to fundraise from their members i get a fundraising letter from the n.r.a. about every other or every third week. and some a lot it is and some of them are really pretty intense and here's one from

from the summer dear mr feldman some of congress' most powerful anti gunners a demanding a registration list of every american gun owner they want your name this to tell them and they want to know where you live your address that's pretty frightening stuff i kind of disagree with the idea of scaring your members out of their hard earned dollars precedented government intervention chipping away at your rights to believe your freedom the n.r.a. instills a tremendous amount of fear in its members and the thing is it works. it mobilizes their members but you can stop them if you look at the historical moment there's really very limited threats to gun rights i mean we just came out of eight years of george bush in republican controlled congress we saw gun rights legislation during that period not gun control legislation two thousand and seven we see the worst single shooter killing spree in the history of the country at virginia tech and here we are a few years later we have virginia passing gun rights legislation right so

repealing some of the earlier gun control legislation that was passed do you believe in your right to own a gun you so you may be an endangered species called one eight seven seven n.r.a. two thousand men and join the n.r.a. i think there are a range of n.r.a. members and among the most committed are the true believers the diehard n.r.a. members those are the gun crusaders. maybe one of three n.r.a. members would fall into this category there's a huge chunk of gun owners in our country who are not n.r.a. members the n.r.a. has a membership of about four million or something like eighty million gun owners in our country but the n.r.a. is driven by these gun crusaders he's really hard work in the business. and they're able to create the agenda. of the biggest celebration and they're going to use their the n.r.a. is able to recruit intensely committed members because they're framing done.