a down but not out the occupy wall street movement is making headlines across the country once again as demonstrators cross the six month mark we'll look at how far the movement's come and where it's headed. and the patriot act sounds like a law that supports liberty and justice for all but two u.s. senators are on a mission to show you exactly what this bill allowance could be that weird wording in government agencies an open book to your life. some call it an obligation others

a blood lust of sorts from afghanistan to iraq to libya american military officials seem happy to send firepower to whichever region comes calling but given all the trouble still plaguing the middle east and a disagreement over how much is actually going to cause is the u.s. experiencing intervention over long. good afternoon it's monday march nineteenth four pm here in washington d.c. i'm christine friends out there watching our t.v. . well over the weekend one hundred gathered to mark an important anniversary six months since the occupy wall street movement all began the rally was in zuccotti park new york city and organizers say the sun is out spring is here and that we're going to be seeing a lot more of them but it was just a few months ago there were thousands of them and some critics say it's not just

the occupations that are gone but the momentum as well i want to talk more about this movement with christina gonzalez she's an activist with occupy wall street and she was out this weekend rally. hey there christine let's talk first about the rally on saturday what was it like and what message do you think it sent to new yorkers and to the rest of the country. hi christine so i was out. for a few hours on saturday and it was beautiful i mean i i got that same feeling that i had back in september six months ago when there was nothing in the park except the people and the love and of course the drums and people you know the spirit of our q i felt it again in the park that day it was really nice to see people as you haven't seen in a while you know of course everybody was still involved in the movement but we've been indoors or we've gone back to our homes and have everybody out there was just really an overwhelming feeling it was amazing what do you tell us about people

being arrested i know i heard that the police did kick some people out of the park saturday night about seventy people arrested what did you see and what are you hearing there. so i actually had some other things to do that evening so i left pretty early i left at about eight pm but when i was leaving across the street from zuccotti i noticed hundreds of officers and there was there were like in blocks of about twenty and there were about five different blocks next to each other and then behind them was another row and behind them was another row and i was thinking to myself wow that's really surprising to see such a presence you know it's you know this is pretty much the first time that we've been in the park like this in a while i don't see i don't see why there would be such a large presence and i even joked with them saying hey guys you know there's no riot going on here why don't you come celebrate with us we're singing happy birthday you know and they kind of laughed it off i didn't expect them to come into

the park the way that they did and i saw some very disturbing videos i was actually watching a bunch last night where i saw a man just be shoved down by a cop like this he was standing on so he got shoved down to the ground and then tackled i saw a woman who had a skirt on being thrown down to the floor her peace process against the concrete everything under her skirt was being exposed for the whole world to see i saw cops with their hands all over her i mean you know the brutality and just and it's just very disturbing to see that they're treating human beings like this it's almost as though they forgot that they're human beings and they're treating them like animals i was very shocked to see it almost feel like that's the most brutal that i've seen so far because you just see everyone sitting down on the ground locking arms they didn't want to move and they were just being ripped up by their arms by these officers it was it was atrocious that's very interesting that you say sort of the feeling that you experienced six months ago was there among some of the activists

and protesters but it seems that police readiness hasn't gone away either i want to ask you this christina some people's. expected this six month rally over the weekend to draw a lot more people than it did certainly we saw pictures archie had a crew there a few hundred people but a lot of people saw this comeback as being a little bit anemic they say there's still lack of direction and a lack of message here i'm wondering if you know christina are there plans and if so what do they entail in terms of overcoming this perspective that the movement is we found direction. i would say that there of course we're going in a direction but there's so many things that we have to focus on that with their action as it is all over the place but just because we have a lot of a lot of messages that those they need you know. our point is unclear our point is very clear and it's we need to value human beings and not money and not

property and not materials we need to value human beings and i think that there are a lot of plans going on there are people who are doing way more organizing in occupy than i am i happen to be a person who likes to be on the front lines i'm in the marches i'm not afraid to speak my mind i have a loud voice but there are people who are doing a lot of ground work and i want to really think them for what they're doing within this movement we're planning on having marches we're planning on you know boycotting certain places ok and we're planning on taking over lots of space in new york city and people are going to see a lot of us and although the six month anniversary it's symbolic however however there are so many other things going on just because you don't see a large presence in the park on the exact six month six month anniversary it doesn't mean that there aren't more people planning on coming because i mean there are more events happening so you're saying there's going to be a lot more coming in the weeks and months ahead that this wasn't sort of the big

comeback that everybody's been talking about. oh no no there's nothing i mean this is a you know it's important to celebrate our six month anniversary obviously but you know because it's that warm weather is just coming and there's lots of planning going on i don't know if you know about may days votes may first and everybody is supposed to be striking from school from work from shopping whatever it is that's keeping this capitalist system going everybody should stop doing that and that's what a strike is about that's what a boycott is about really quick christine i want to talk about something that a lot of people seem to be making a pretty big deal out of today a tweet sent by someone in occupy wall street sympathizer who apparently made an online threat against police it says it's the twitter user snack and no one writes we won't make a difference if we if we don't kill a cop or two i'm going to increase you know if you're concerned about these types of activities of people who sympathize or sort of use occupy wall street to get people to listen to them or follow them and make statements like this. you know i

mean the same is very disturbing to me and i am one who believes that this movement is going to happen through peace it's not going to happen with violence ok we've seen that in the past and we just know that that's how it's going to go i would beg of anyone who's following occupy wall street not to take that statement and use that to blanket the sentiments of everyone throughout the movement the same way that we can use one police officer's actions against protesters to say that all cops are bad they can look at that one statement and now group everyone in occupy wall street are saying that we're violent people you know you see people angry outside and you see people frustrated and maybe it seems chaotic but we're looking to do this peacefully and so that statement right there is really sad that that has to come out and unfortunately i'm i'm sure that people are really going to focus on and i would hope that they don't i would hope that they can see past that and see that there are a lot of people in here who believe that peaceful peaceful protests is the only way

that we're going to win this thing christine. we do appreciate you having you on here from our new york studios and letting us know a little bit about what this weekend looks like thanks so much thank you. all right so here's an interesting story if you remember earlier this year when the founder of the web site made to upload was arrested and thrown into jail his website was promptly shut down and all of his property seized that man was kim dotcom and he spent a month in jail accused of running a criminal enterprise and they got upload that helped millions of people pirate music and movies oh that's what a court has now ruled that the restraining order that allowed authorities to seize his assets in the first place is normal and void essentially that means new zealand police illegally invaded dotcoms home and also illegally took all his things are talking cars and jewelry electronics all without a valid court order to back them up and he will say he may be getting all his stuff

back so the u.s. justice department is trying to have him extradited to stand trial here in the u.s. and they say that he made nearly two hundred million dollars illegally off copyrighted materials uploaded by users of his website now i know all this happened in new zealand but much of the case was in coordination with the u.s. justice department and right now there are a few questions being raised about the way the business is conducted at the department of justice a major complaint right now of the constitutionality of the patriot act and how it's been interpreted since it was signed into law more than ten years ago it's gone to the point where two u.s. senators organ senator ron wyden and colorado senator mark udall have written a letter to attorney general eric holder asking him to reconsider some of the ways the patriot act has been used throughout the years and how it will be used in the future they say there's a significant gap between what most americans think the law allows and with the government secretly claims the law allows them to talk more about this with david

seaman a journalist and host of the d.l. so. hey there david let's start with the patriot act you know when it was first passed it was supported by nearly all of congress and most americans as well do you think things are changing. as far as the patriot act goes things really are changing there hasn't been all that much oversight into how this is being used by the government we do know that it's being misused originally this was always supposed to go after hardcore terrorists and most of the time it's going after drug cases and tax evasion cases things that have nothing to do with terrorism and in addition president obama renewed the patriot act and this was a radical piece of legislation signed into law after nine eleven designed supposedly to protect us in a time of crisis and it was supposed to be retired at a later date when we were at peace again and when we didn't need something that

infringes upon our rights and instead he quietly renewed it and now many people even know that. many of his supporters know that i know one of the major concerns about the patriot act is one of the sections and it section two fifteen which basically helps officials top officials get access to people's records now basically it is sensitive the f.b.i. the power to require people to hand things over like business records and books and papers and other items so e-mails or whatever other items means to whomever the investigation is who's conducting the investigation it says it's to protect as you say against international terrorism but also against clan a clandestine intelligence activities so that here seems to be you know to use language that is specific but also leaves room for interpretation i want to get your thoughts on this. well i think the average person out there thinks that this is only being used to pursue radical islam and these terrorist groups but they

don't need a law like this to go after one hundred fifty or two hundred people this is being used on tens of thousands maybe even hundreds of thousands of americans where they just go on these fishing expeditions looking for stuff and you know your viewers out there can say if i'm not doing anything wrong i don't have anything to worry about but we've always been told from a young age in school on word that if you're not doing anything wrong the government in america does not look through your e-mails the government does not look through what you're doing and they're setting up these national security letters at a level and at a pace that is really quite stunning that even congress is looking into this now because they're disturbed by the rampant abuse of these sections i think that's a really good point that is the common argument that you often hear well if you're not breaking the law if you're not doing anything wrong then you shouldn't worry what the government is doing but in fact. there are a lot of people who do worry wepa government is doing even though they're outstanding citizens i'm wondering i mean that we showed you that the letter at the

beginning of this segment that the two senators are sending out and i'm wondering if you think it's going to make much of a difference obviously the senators are very disturbed by the way this law is being interpreted i think they probably know a lot of things that aren't there classified things that are not public knowledge do you think that's going to change public opinion. well there are only two options either the public doesn't know or the public doesn't care and i'm not a cynic so i'd like to think that the reason why there has been more outcry is that the public just doesn't know about this we have a two billion dollar data center being built out in the utah desert to spy on american citizens this isn't wired magazine which is one of our most reputable technology magazines in america this is really happening to spy on thousands maybe even millions of u.s. citizens a c.e.o. use most recent info she says that one point seven billion with the b.

e-mails phone calls and text messages are being intercepted in store by the u.s. government and some of this is happening under the patriot act and that's enough information according to the a.c.l.u. about our own citizens to fill one hundred thirty eight million books every twenty four hours and i think that if the average person knew about this they would be quite upset that this is where our taxpayer dollars are going at a time when thirty million or more people are unemployed or underemployed i think the average person just doesn't know to be honest i hope that they do find out about these grotesque abuses of government power and just massive waste of money recently the department of homeland security they bought their they place an order to buy four hundred fifty million rounds of ammunition and this is a domestic law enforcement agency operating on u.s. soil they are not the u.s. military so even if you're not paranoid the question becomes why are responding so much money on these ridiculous things like spying on our own people and buying

ammunition to protect the government against their own people it doesn't make sense i think the patriot act should have been allowed to expire and it's a huge mistake that obama renewed it it seems to our i mean if you think about two thousand one. the internet was a major part of our lives back then but it has become so much marcel in the last ten years and from wondering if you think that you know because it was extended by president obama that the internet is going to play a much bigger factor in terms of the accessibility of the government to spy on its citizens the availability and how you think that's going to factor into this. oh absolutely i mean the fact that they're already reading their story in intercepting whatever that means billions of our e-mails you know it's just going to get bigger they're just going to use these resources in new ways they're not building a two billion dollar data center twenty five thousand square feet filled with servers the most state of the art servers out there they're not doing that so they can't so they won't use it they're doing it because they do plan on using it they

do plan on analyzing their internet behaviors our online messages and they plan on doing these things without a warrant and you know we're more than a decade out from nine eleven we've killed osama bin laden we have killed or detained of his deputies so the real question becomes who are we fighting against and if we're using taxpayer dollars to investigate and to fight against american citizens within our our own shores that is a huge issue and it's something that needs to be talked about not only in congressional investigations like the one you were talking about but on the street every this should be a dinner table a dinner table conversation every american should be asking should we be spending billions of dollars on these things when people are out of work when our infrastructure is failing and when other economies like china are you know steaming ahead and we're falling behind is this really what we should be spending our money on spying on our own people and i know something that was a dinner conversation dinner table conversation for a little while there was people at the top island online piracy act and to protect

ip act on so there's this other side of of the internet and from the things that can happen illegally upload case certainly a big event about rebirthing alliance for me here in terms of what you expect to see in the coming months regarding you know online piracy and how you think that aspect of this will be garbled. well i think the online piracy is a red herring these transnational content companies make more money than ever look at how much money was made from avatar look at how much money has been made from the lord of the rings franchise from harry potter from any of these things look at how much money is made from legitimate music downloads of the i tunes they're making a fortune literally billions of dollars every year illegal download revenue and they're saying that they need to crack down on pirates but really they want to crack down on internet communication itself because they're able to keep these issues off the evening news for the most part but they can't keep them off the internet people on reddit people want to do people on twitter they're talking about

this stuff a lot they know about that two billion dollar data center and they know that the patriot act has been renewed and so sopa luckily sopa never happened it was not signed into law because google put a notice on their homepage warning their hundreds of millions of users about it and doing a petition which i believe more than seven million american science read it shut down their site for a full twelve hour span we could pedia did a blackout to raise awareness all right there we are out of time here but a lot of important points raise and that's why we had you wanted it to dig a little deeper into all these issues david seaman a journalist and host of the d.l.c. . well it is an interesting day today march nineteenth first of all today marks the ten years since the end of operation anaconda afghanistan this was the first large scale non-special operations battle for u.s. troops in afghanistan since the war started and mission to destroy al qaeda and taliban forces it would not be the last that many more would be launched from the

very same reason. today is also the ninth anniversary of the u.s. led invasion of iraq a war that lasted eight and a half years cost tens of thousands of lives i'm now going to tell you how much money and these many people today still pretty confused about its mission and today also marks one year since u.s. and nato forces launched airstrikes in libya about the mission itself the case for war was made using our two people responsibility to protect it was a regime change but that indeed is what happened and we also heard predictions like weeks not months in terms of a timeline for libya took a lot longer than as we know now so today we want to take a look back at the history and look ahead to the consequences david swanson is a campaigner with roots action he's in charlottesville virginia to help us dissect this david let's start with libya one year later what was solved there. it is remarkably that we have so many wars that the anniversaries chyle up on top of each

other now if they don't want the ten thousands of deaths in the war in iraq to go without charmant by any rational calculations over a million deaths we have to include the iraqis along with the americans in libya we indeed saw a war launched without congress with a with an intent on avoiding any authorization from congress whatsoever over easily if it had a war launched on the basis of a un resolution that did not authorize regime change but it was used for regime change so that we now have a humanitarian warriors pushing for war in syria and elsewhere arguing that the un nato into libya for regime change when it did no such thing we have libya held up now along with kosovo and the first gulf war as a good war as a humanitarian war no explanation of the the number of

lives killed by nato and by the us in the process the lawlessness of the war the lawlessness of murdering the the ruler of a country and the chaos that resulted so that there is no expectation in the forseeable future of a stable democracy with protection for human rights in libya as might have been predicted from the fact that we never achieve such a thing with our bombs before and you were talking a little bit about how there are some people who are using libya as an example for why you know when we are protecting citizens that action is a good thing but there's another legacy here as well that seems to be holding true russia and china of course abstained from voting with libya as opposed to what happened more recently with syria when they did vote and they veto it i'm wondering if you think the libya legacy here is that mission from under there are to pay doctor and one always be as trusted by other leaders in the future. well i think

other countries beyond those you name saw what happened in libya and were bitterly resent soul of having supported a resolution for the supposed protection of civilians that was then immediately used for other purposes and the war extended and the rich and the it all turned into a regime change and so there is less trust why there was never any trust in the motivations to begin with i don't know but there is less trust now that their humanitarian excuse is always just that we hear about the ruler in syria we hear about his abuses we never hear word one but they came in bahrain is that uses kids in humanitarian this and for other purposes but russia of course as military interests in syria and sells weapons to syria just as the u.s. as weapons for the rest of the region so there are conflicts motivations noble and otherwise from all merging syria i want to turn now to iraq and said at another

anniversary as we mentioned. for some many americans this is a country that they've forgotten about the troops are gone the war is over i want to say you've been hearing they've been in terms of how that country is doing and what that legacy might entail on this anniversary. well i saw a story recently about ceroc refusing to buy crops from u.s. farmers and turning to other countries and be outraged from these u.s. farmers quoted demanding that bed rock show some gratitude for what we have done to their country and of course we've kemal ish their country we've destroyed what was one of the most advanced civilized countries with the highest standard of living in that region we've destroyed it further over twenty years meath out here of wars and endless bombing and sanctions and it's we cost them millions of lives just in the past nine years and we've killed over

a million people and created four million refugees at the refugees in the world or now from iraq or afghanistan we've ruined their infrastructure trillions of dollars worth of damage to infrastructure to the natural environment pollution has you know higher cancer than hiroshima every woman giving birth asks the same first question is it normal any we have destroyed that country and to seek gratitude rather than to be insisting on paying reparations is just reprehensible and finally david a lot of people talking today about an executive order issued by president barack obama on friday giving the white house absolute control over all the country's national resource the natural resources into in the case of a natural disaster or during a time of war not a president used the defense production act of one nine hundred fifty and some economy and free media today are saying that this is peace time martial law and that other people think you know this is an old law it's youth all the time what do

you make of that. well how it will be used will depend on what congress has to say for itself you'll recall back in may of zero seven bush put out an executive order with giving himself the right to declare emergencies and to take over the entire government with a new government in time of emergencies and refused the house only of securities requests to see a secret agenda to that order so we don't even know what was in there and obama of course he's this is that and everything that went before him as well back in the day that created some of these things that harry truman was nearly impeached for seizing still factories it is almost inconceivable that this congress or any congress in the in the near future would impeach a president for such a thing presidents have been given the incredible power and it's you know it's not just this one new order and it's largely a restatement of a previous order i may not be no matter how you interpret it that i think one

question a lot of people are asking on both sides is why now why this era not last year are the year before they were out of time a david swanson campaigner for rich action in charlottesville virginia thanks. well the capital account is up next on our team let's check in with lauren let's start to see what's on today's agenda laura how do you monday happy monday christina i'm sure you didn't miss the barrage of headlines about apple apple announced it was getting a dividend initiating a stock buyback program really illuminating everybody with the answer to what apple is going to do with some of that one hundred billion dollars in cash that it's had piled up we're going to look at the flip side of the trend of apple though which is the way it's manufactured manufactured in china based in china like so many other companies that's what they do what impact that's having on america's ability to control its economic future all right i'm sure everyone will be very excited to see

we have to say about that for us here that is going to do it but for more on the stories we cover r.t. dot com slash usa or you tube got com slash r.t. america where you can follow me on twitter at christine for us our. culture is that so much fun which of course is why. we can to see what makes him to going to be so popular among young voters why do republicans sneer at him while. the admission is free the critics say should free the sons for charges free the arrangements free. three stooges priests a mold free blog counseling videos for your media projects a free media dog card t.

dot com. for. the for. the sake of. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for you think you understand it and then he lives something else and you hear see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew.