but of course. the breaking news out of montreal students taking their words and rhetoric to the streets police bring right here stun grenades and pepper spray to curb the crowds we'll take you to the protest. and world finance ministers are in washington d.c. in the hopes of stitching together a global economic solution from the fragile euro zone to the growing influence of the brics nations we'll give you a live look at what's in store for the annual summit. and money isn't the only thing wells fargo is keeping locked up safe these days turns out this bank has a huge stake in the private prison industry make enormous profits for kicking people behind bars we'll follow the money.

it's friday april twentieth seven pm in washington d.c. i'm abby martin you're watching our t.v. . we begin this hour with breaking news montreal has been rocked by student protests right police have been issuing multiple arrests using stun grenades pepper spray and tons to beat back student protesters during a rally against two mission hikes has happened after they try to disrupt a speech by quebec premier drawing sure a the story is changing by the minute i'm joined by bernard desson yeah he's a citizen journalist and called back. bernard what is going on there on the ground . well what is going on is that the students and not only to students but many citizens are mad. i don't shoot of the government he doesn't want to discuss at all about the raise of student fees which was decided. i actually were according to the prime minister a year ago and they don't want to accept this because they feel that it will

prevent a lot of deserving students to attend university and to eventually get a degree and find out a good job and today the prime minister he said. with a laugh he scorned to students he said and then tell you want to give them a job as far north as possible so that to ensure you need a lot of people and there were violent clashes between police and protesters into street and also in the conference center and this happened also. today is not the first day the clashes happened yesterday and the day before yesterday massive arris hundreds of people were blasted given huge fines four hundred dollars fines for just walking in the street in there in a residential area chanting and singing and here is just cornered by the police and

the same thing happened to yesterday in a university and here where i live so it's very very repressive the climate is very is degrading by the hour right now a lot of people. just public figures politicians showing their disapproval publicly today about the prime minister is or it's or not tell us a little more about the arrests that have taken place over the last couple days today and also some of the police brutality that you've seen firsthand and that you've heard about well precisely i wasn't onsite to see talent. for. so we have two words during the day when i was able to go to the police station after the protesters were arrested yesterday one hundred fifty people were arrested near where i live and there were you trained for several hours some of them actually are probably still the pain as i were speaking so now it's more than

twenty four hours they were handcuffed they were detained there were were submitted to the rig ations they were. threatened they were told by some one of the protesters that i was able to talk to yesterday at a police station said the police told and as diplomate would be worth nothing because if you have a criminal record from now on and those those are people who were just sitting when they were arrested it was just sitting in the university's cafeteria and they were actually encouraged to come into the university building by the police and once they were inside the police lot the gore arrested them or including some minders and they were as i said handcuffed taking him to take him to the police station and detained for several hours and so i mean i have friends i have people that i know that had their children under eighteen arrested yesterday and that were.

sort of treated that way and so and i didn't think before that was also near where i live which is a small city of needy of three hundred thousand people but there were one hundred fifty people arrested on the street also and they were basically peaceful so today what happens is a consequence of that. keep the protesters have been peaceful and now they're they're they're fed up with the attitude of the government there are women who are asked by the police and being repressed and they cannot walk on the street you cannot see anything they're being i would add that today rubber bullets were. so use against the protesters for an artist sounds very similar to what's happening right here. in new york city with occupy wall street where the n.y.p.d. is interpreted new laws day by day if people get my check and they're arrested it almost seems like the freedom of speech is non void at this point and was interpreted randomly can you take us back really quickly to wrap up the segment

just give us a brief background of how this happened and where do you see this going well it happened because of the increase in tuition fees and that's something that people who consider as fundamentally they think a lot of people in the population think that whoever wants to get a university degree should be able to then shouldn't be prevented because of the money and actually when you look at it from an economy standpoint it pays for society to have more university graduates those people once he or a doctor or a lawyer and there's the earned more money the p. more taxes so it pays for itself and that's the basic that's what how it started and that's guarded about two months ago ten weeks ago there were peaceful protests there were two hundred thousand people marching in downtown montreal peacefully nothing happened no or nothing was broken but then the police recently there was an

injunction and they want to force universities to teach to students who wanted to take their courses and of course that's we're at war unfortunately at a times the situation is definitely very tense and will be fine and very closely as situation unfolds citizen journalist bernard that's anya thank you. first it was corporate bailouts now it's entire countries that are being bailed out and this is all being done at the expense of taxpaying citizens germany just forked over one hundred thirty billion dollars to dig greece out of debt in the hopes of saving it shattered economy but now spain italy is economies are also on the verge of collapse today marks the first day of the i.m.f. and world bank's annual spring meetings in washington d.c. where they're slated to get at least six hundred billion dollars more in funding to deal with the eurozone debt crisis so other european countries don't fall victim to greece's fate the i.m.f. has fought fallen under her criticism for its structural adjustment policies which

critics say keep underdeveloped nations in a state of perpetual poverty instead of actually alleviating their debt now the organization is expecting the emerging economic brics brazil russia india china and south africa bloc of nations to cough up money to bail out paul pot for more european nations that are teetering on bankruptcy but the brics want more say at the table before they provide the funds to save europe against its failing currency earlier i asked our t's very own lucy catherine off is this trend of country bailouts really just a band-aid to a more permanent problem here's your take. that's exactly the argument that's been made by economists and many of the participating countries and despite that the i.m.f. did succeed in a raising the funds that it had asked for with a group of g. twenty nations coming out committing to pledge more than four hundred thirty billion dollars in money that is largely expected to safeguard against more problems in the burgeoning eurozone debt crisis however as you have mentioned again

there are all of these concerns about the bailout mentality we've seen the eurozone and to officials bailout after bailout which hasn't necessarily resulted in any sort of permanent improvement of the economic conditions especially as concerns about italy's economy and spain's economy loom large ahead. now the united states which is the largest shareholder of the i.m.f. decided against submitting any money for this effort with timothy geitner actually saying the europeans have to take care of their own mess and that these nations need to learn how to balance between a stereo and growth the problem is according to economists how did and how in the world do you balance a situation when your economy is in a recession as it is for many of these years a member nations one of their effectively in a single currency straight jackets that's undervalued undervalued and vera condom is against competitors and sort of forced to adopt policies that really they say

hurt their own internal needs which is why we've seen people on the streets and in greece and all across europe countries don't necessarily feel that this is helping and the problem is that the countries that are now in a position to offer a more funds to help the brics nations as you mentioned say you know what this time if we're going to give our money we want more of a say at the table and this dates back to a sort of caught of you because these these institutions that are meeting the i.m.f. the world bank were especially developed sixty five years ago during a time when the western countries were the ones that were doing well and nominally well the tables half shifted quite a bit and it is now the west that it's in is in need of these emerging leading economies money in order to survive it seems like the elephant in the room is really the issue of. no one's really addressing the fact that the euro is the issue and i mean as many bailouts happen in european countries that's still going to be the underlying issue and it's not really addressed by the leader of the i.m.f.

i didn't really hear her talking about any of her press conferences right i mean she did sort of warn against that this isn't about that at the center of the potential coming crisis but at the same time she's also sort of patted the european countries on the back for the way they've dealt with the problem and this gets back to to your very first question is this sustainable in. is this sort of a band-aid solution to an ongoing problem you have these different countries that have very vastly differing a condom is vastly different ways of sustaining themselves they're essentially form forced to adopt to a single standard in order to maintain this european zone commitments and many economists again are saying this is simply not sustainable it's time to put pull the plug on the euro and try to salvage this one way or another because these bailouts don't seem to be working and this is what we've seen again over the years and months and the brics nations that are talking about that you're talking about

there they've been prophesies in about forming their own global bank to compete with the u.s. how demonic power do you think of the feasible goal and what would that mean to the western power structure that we see it certainly seems to be a feasible goal for the timeline no one knows of course is just in the early stages the proposal was initially offered by india and there's a lot of sort of cakes that that the countries have to iron out in terms of internal governance but the broader message that this alternative bank sends to the west acceptably is that these are powerful economies they don't want to be treated worse or take a back seat in the major decisions that are made on the economic scale especially in light of the fact that they have survived the crisis so much better and handled it so much better than europe and even the united states do that trend will continue of course remains to be seen but at the moment the brics countries the five brics countries represent forty percent of the world's population they represent twenty percent of the global of the g.d.p.

these are not just emerging economies but some would say they have emerged and the west doesn't change the power structures at hand they will be left in the dust right exactly and it was interesting to see the tables turn and you know the west asking for money from the brics that was r t correspondent was you catherine. america land of the free not one one out of one hundred americans are currently incarcerated in either jail or prison making america the country with the highest incarceration rates in the entire world the us has only five percent of the population but holds one quarter of the world's prisoners even more disturbing than the rates of the imprisoned is the privatisation of the industry the expanding prison industrial complex has a vested interest in keeping people locked up just like the security industry is growing lobbying efforts to implement harsher security legislation that would implement their products there's a growing trend of for private private private prisons the prison industrial complex which has grown three hundred fifty percent over the last fifteen years has

been lobbying at lobbying congress hard to pass legislation by wouldn't prison more people now the private prison industry is by no means a news story but the growing number of companies reporting record profits by means of locking people up is wells fargo you know that bank that received a cool thirty seven million dollars from the u.s. government taxpayer funded bailouts is also the main investor in for private prisons that's right the people that some say should be behind bars are the ones profiting off locking people up is this just an ironic twist or is it good business practice earlier i was joined by russell baker founder and editor in chief of who what why dot com and author of both family of secrets i asked him what sets the u.s. apart from other nations and why are so many people behind bars in this country here's what he had to say. right abbie what we're doing is we're looking for do excuses to

lock people up that's the figure you cited. out of one hundred is quite alarming but even more alarming is the figure of six million americans who are under a form of supervision they're either in prison or they are indeed parole or probation system that is a staggering figure the correct term to use would be gulag and what we're looking at is essentially to criminalize ation of extremely minor behavior much of it victimless coupled with severe and extremely harsh sentences compounded by putting people who really are not dangerous into very dangerous facilities and turning them into hard criminals. can you talk a little the. arizona and our legislation that's really. from the private prison industry right so this is a vicious circle what we're seeing is as corporations pay less and less taxes

as the economy tanked as a result largely of corporate practices and therefore there were fewer tax revenues the states are increasingly strapped and as they're strapped they're looking to cut costs and so along these private prisons companies saying hey we could do it cheaper than you can and of course the legislators just looking juge show the voters that they were able to balance budgets a great they turn to these companies and companies that have an incentive to the only way they're going to make a profit is to basically do it as cheaply as possible so they hire poorly qualified individuals they have very very bad conditions there are a number of extremely interesting studies on this now so this already happens on its own but then you've got the lobbying you've got this industry working hand in hand with an outfit you probably have reported on it called alec the. american legislative exchange council which is

a business lobby group and they not only lobby for business but they are also lobby on what appear to be social issues like that we need stronger laws that we did a tougher criminal justice system but at the end it's all about business and it's all about profit for this fairly small circle of outfits and i were talking about arizona you know as these prisons are implemented in the states they actually required to be filled ninety percent occupancies that goes hand in hand with these lobbying efforts to for more stringent legislation against immigration and drug offenses why then does the bigger issue i mean this seems like it's a big deal you know lobbying to imprison people in this country why isn't the scene on capitol hill and why i don't really hear about this in the political dialogue. this is part of a bigger problem in this country and i i would hold the street to the fire on this although it's not entirely b.d.'s fault we were just appointed this culture of

people's attention spans are so short there are fewer and fewer good outlets out there and they're looking for stuff where they can get a quick bite these are what we're talking about here are complex extremely important issues but there is no shortage of to it it takes a few minutes at least to discuss it there are a lot of statistics and i think the tendency is to just avoid the conversation if we had the g.a.o. were to could change covering this as as a kind of a heat let's say the human rights if we were to cover it regularly i think the public would care about this would wake up and it would be a lot of pressure to take a hard look at the direction that this country is going and arizona just recently blocked a review of the cost and benefit analysis of their state prisons why do you think that is seems almost counterintuitive to hawk a review to see if these prisons are actually insuring public safety and saving money. clearly there is something wrong there nope no government and

city should ever rejected an opportunity to evaluate what they are getting for their money or what the public is getting so obviously this is something very very suspicious i'd like to see the explanations of why they don't want to know what is happening but the reality is arizona is leading this country in many ways in the race to the bottom on just so many different issues and you know we're seeing various states on our website who what why we just did one about an article about tennessee where they're making it easier and virtually courage teachers to question evolution and climate change so this is part of this larger problem where these corporations not just corporations but also extreme social forces in this country are pushing for very very low common denominator policies in particular states and then through outfits like alec and their adult legislation program they spread it

from one state to another they've got the money to lobby they've got the money for the ads and they've got the upper hand right now. and i favor their explanation while i can and i'd imagine that it's because it actually shows that it doesn't ensure public safety there's violent crimes that are way more apparent at these prisons and the standards of living are way lower and it actually doesn't save money as shown that they're actually more expensive and more costly to the taxpayers so you know i would imagine that's why they're blocking the review for us just to wrap it up and in her pocket and us spreading democratic ideals and freedom abroad at the same time here at home we have the largest incarceration rate in the world which well absolutely and of course this statistic where i think it's something like one out of seven young african-american males are in jail largely for personal use of. and for for shelley it to get

customers who wanted these kinds of things across the border one issue after the other they are fundamental human rights violations that the public in the united states we are under to extreme duress pressure from a very small group of people who really just don't care but i did values on which this country was founded exactly and in receipt of federal trumping of state laws with the nonviolent drug offenders in the marijuana the legislation just recently in oakland california that was russ baker founder and editor in chief of who what why dot com and author of the book family of secrets and the private prison practice is not the only industry being strong armed by big business as the great energy debate rages on in the u.s. and more and more questions over america's constant quest for energy independence the answer to our problems might not be below our feet but in some of the smallest elements on earth it's called tronics fuel and it could one day be the cheapest

cleanest and safest energy ever invented an unlimited source so to speak but there's just one big problem big oil companies our chief correspondent on stasia churkin takes us into the battle over america's energy future. when gas prices sky high nations consumed by energy wars and nuclear meltdowns there may be an alternative huge and is basically the process the powers the entire universe if light to the sun. reproducing this process for commercial use on earth has been the holy grail of science since the sixty's and during the cold war gorbachev and reagan decided ok we will cooperate on a big expensive approach to fusion now they chose a really big twenty story tall thing that takes decades to build that's probably not the best way to do it skeptics say trying to come up with ways to produce fusion energy is as tough and as costly as finding

a cure for aids electrodes where the device these scientists however see they're well on their way with a machine set up in a new jersey garage we have proven that we have can. for a certain amount of time. temperature that has been obtained ever with a fusion fuel which is energy's equivalent to about one point eight billion degrees that's actually two hundred times hotter than the temperature at the center of our sun. this was done in a device costing less than a million dollars called the dems plasma focus the scientists use this demonstration device to explain what their process is all about it's a sphere where plasma currents concentrate into strings of electricity the fusion generator used in this lab is also said to channel instability to focus the energy instead of trying to make it stable which is traditionally seen as the much more mainstream approach and they the last step to success is the hardest one we have to

the three requirements to make a fusion reactor and turn that into a generator we have the confinement time and we have the temperature now we just need the density and so that's what we're working on. the group says their device is see further than others what we're talking about here is a specific type of hewison called a neutron fusion which means that the fuel you doesn't emit any neutrons and that's good because that means we don't have any radioactive waste the physicist discovery b.c. will change the world for ever energy poverty you know wars over resources if we switch from a resource based energy to a knowledge based energy like fusion we can begin a whole new set civilization for humankind our machine fits in a garage sized space and an actual generator could just sit in the neighborhoods garage or near the high voltage transmission system and the power in one thousand

homes some would call this utopia the jersey scientists say the key problem is money huge and research seems to be funded by the government through nots up until a decade ago when investments were terminated the scientists say it's because their technology could put oil and gas companies out of business certainly there's a lot of suspicion in the fusion community. you know the government simply isn't funding this because there's too much interest in keeping the price of oil and gas and when and how are we going to make it happen is the question of politics and investments and right now no it isn't best thing it is because wars are more profitable as its oil wealth skepticism over man made fusion is widespread. in this group insists it's cracking the political not not the scientific one that is the main challenge and station churkin are our t. middlesex jersey. well it's always good to get some clean energy news considering

how two years ago today the worst maritime oil spill in history plagued the gulf coast workers fishermen and communities up and down the gulf were affected and want to be keys rigs exploded and dumped millions of barrels of oil into the ocean eleven died in the explosion and many more lost their jobs in an entire ecosystem fell into disarray these are the images that filled television screens and enraged environmental activists as well as the scientific community images of birds up to their necks and oil tar balls filled beaches and muddy looking waters for many this event touch close to home it was a tangible result of human error and the effects that our need for black gold has on the planet. negligence resulted in the most catastrophic environmental disaster in history yet the u.s. government still awards them with over two billion dollars in annual contracts and gets the majority of its oil and gas exports from the corporation and sort of focusing on legitimate cleanup operations seem to focus more on its p.r.

to maintain its image by using prisoners to stage photo ops of cleanup operations spraying corrects it on the gulf a highly toxic dispersant that some say have caused more harm than good and providing thirty million dollars for a marketing campaign to louisiana to favorably promote its two point four billion dollars seafood industry which took a massive hit after the spill but here we are two years later and the gulf coast is booming once again or so b.p. would have you think take a look at this commercial advertising the region as a vacation destination. sunstone large beautiful the deep sea temperatures are. not horses are old and are then right to set special rights and migrating water well paula for example for water power so if you missed it earlier this year. if you've already gone back to mississippi or louisiana alabama america is going to die and i don't know where you will come and help me

twenty twelve an even better year for tourism. and all of us recall the gulf. wow clear beaches good food happy people looks pretty great unfortunately that's not the case and the smiling faces don't tell the whole story of what's really going on in the region while b.p. boasts how normal life is images like this keep popping up in the news six fish with lesions on their bodies mutant shrimp with no eyes and more that the f.d.a. continues to make the claim that the seafood coming from the gulf is perfectly safe for human consumption scientists are in the process of trying to find a direct link to the sick fish and the oil spill but the problem extends beyond fish to deep water coral sea weed beds dolphins mangroves and other species of plants and animals and yet none of this is making much of a difference b.p. has proven that it's willing to bite its hands of the situation while continuing

risky offshore and deep water drilling techniques and even with tougher regulations here in the u.s. experts say that another oil spill isn't only possible it's inevitable so on the second anniversary of the b.p. oil spill the question shouldn't be whether or not the gulf is recovered but how much are we willing to risk for energy addiction just something to think about this friday. well that does it for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash arts and erika check out our website r t dot com slash usa and you can also follow me on twitter at abby martin. r g is the state run in english speaking russian channel it's kind of like. russia today has an extremely confrontation.