g.o.p. presidential candidate ron paul may be an underdog but his bark is catching up with his bite the texas statement is picking up delegates left and right so how significant are these pick ups and could ron paul be a kingmaker come november. and the debate heats up over a planned missile defense shield in eastern europe the u.s. and nato are pushing the idea well russia says not so fast will we see another arms race and is this missile defense shield even viable. but that's the goal. now maybe three months later to be another one maybe six months later to be another one if you can disband the occupy wall street movement

why not discredit it if you as long forsman is u.s. law enforcement actively trying to tarnish the public image of the movement r.t. questions more. well good evening it's monday may seventh eight pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for you're watching our team. let's begin with a closer look at an event of an event you probably heard about last week you may have heard of this group known as the cleveland five they are five men self described an artist and how to plan allegedly to bomb a bridge in ohio or so said an f.b.i. informant who apparently got to know them at certain events put on by the occupy wall street movement in cleveland but many of the facts in the case the government is speaking about don't necessarily add up so our t. correspondent kareen important i looked a little deeper into this story and found there are quite

a few layers behind the headlines. what began last september returned with a vengeance on the first of may tens of thousands of americans across the country expressing collective outrage over wealth inequality little preparation and money by the evening federal agents have busted up an anarchist plot in cleveland five people are under arrest the occupy movement made headlines for a very different reason this group here of so-called anarchists are in custody accused of wanting to blow up a bridge in ohio the self-proclaimed anarchists wanted to stop money flow into the one percent and said the federal government a message they have even ties to occupy cleveland as well the f.b.i. says the five ohio suspects were intent on using violence to express their ideological views that allowed some occupy critics to incriminate the entire movement is occupy wall street based on the allegations that we have or that bridge

shouldn't be considered a domestic terrorist organization the f.b.i. not only for you know the alleged terrorist plot it also used a government paid informant to help orchestrate it that man identified as shaquille as ease collaborated with the suspects loaned cash made introductions and then an undercover f.b.i. agent sold these folks according to the prosecution the c. four explosives orchestrated ok it's all or just i was involved in this for a long time i was trained to entrap another game very well f.b.i. informant turned whistleblower craig spent six years working for the agency he says as long as the u.s. remains a threat to washington and wall street cases like the cleveland five will become more commonly. but that's the goal. now maybe three months later to be another one maybe six months later the be another

one where now the occupy movement is really take it and no want to be around them so much because there may be some type of terrorist plan or plot. before the cleveland five came the new birth for a terrifying plot the f.b.i. claims to have boarded f.b.i. operatives provided the fake c four and actually showed them a fake stinger missile the four muslim suspects were arrested and charged with attempting to carry out terrorist attacks no direction by a foreign entity or real terrorist group instead direction came from an f.b.i. informant who monitored induced and facilitated the fabricated plot reportedly paid one hundred thousand dollars for his services in america's post nine eleven decade scores of u.s. muslim citizens have been arrested and convicted through sting operations involving f.b.i. informants. today as the ninety nine percent becomes a bigger challenge for washington some say angry activists could replace scary

muslims as the so-called new face of homegrown terror i think that occupy wall street is dealing with big enough issues and there are enough people who are committed enough to the movement that it probably will have political prisoners maybe sooner than later occupy cleveland issued a statement saying that while the five men arrested were associated with the movement they were in no way representing or acting on behalf of the group and f.b.i. spokesperson also said the incident was not an occupy movement wants facts which so far have not stopped many from branding occupy with an unfavorable state very important i.r.t. new york. i want to look a little deeper into the entrapment aspect of this case many facets of government not to mention wall street are of course ready for the occupy wall street movement to go away and as a marine imagine in her report it's not just these so-called dirty hippie disruptors of the piece being targeted since nine eleven hundreds of muslims have been targeted as well with similar tactics like using so-called informants

oftentimes sending them into mosques to try to forge relationships and get information and this continues to go on and quite often there's really just a fine line between a plot being thwarted and one being orchestrated by the f.b.i. or the cia or whomever joining me now to talk about this is associate professor of law in texas was in university hey there's are we heard in this report we heard from a former f.b.i. informant who said he was trained to orchestrate some of these this is standard practice does this surprise you. unfortunately it does not this is part of a much broader strategy that occurred since nine eleven and it's called the preventative paradigm and facially it's very legitimate in that we all want to stop terrorism the border and terrorism can kill hundreds if not thousands if not tens of thousands of people the problem is how you go about implementing that

preventative strategy and so on the one hand what you could do and what you should do is if there is an existing plot you stop it the problem here with this case and with many other cases involving the defendant the question of whether or not the government in fact created a law that then it then it then stopped and then advertised the public hey look we're keeping you safe your counterterrorism dollars are in good hands and well spent and therefore give us more money so and that's a question nobody knows the answer to in some cases mother came i think you pretty clear that it's borderline entrapment but but that's really what it comes down to is how do they implement the program it is strategy absolutely sometimes these agent provocateurs that they use are not necessarily you know the right way i mean in this case they're using someone who was a criminal is the thirty nine year old to kill as these he was paid nearly six thousand dollars had prior convictions for cocaine possession robbery four

convictions for passing bad checks i mean is this a trustworthy source. this is a very typical resume of an informant particularly in a counterterrorism context if you look at most of the cases where entrapment was issue or people were worried that entrapment was in fact at play and you look at the resumes of the informant they all usually are either a felon have felony convictions have some kind of immigration problem and when they've made a deal with the government to stay in exchange for being an informant they are under serious financial constraints or financial hardship or they are very dubious credibility problems so what you have is people who already have no credibility that are abusing the system then and because the public is willing to unquestionably accept that that muslims in particular are willing to engage in

terrorism and are inherently prone to terrorism they don't go underneath they don't go under the surface and ask well who was this informant and who actually started the plot and who led the plot as opposed to just accepting it at face value what's interesting about this occupy case is how the race of the defendant and the identity of the defendants is going to come into play because these are all five white males and the tendency in the united states is if they see white male in gauging in a terrorist plot mentioned timothy mcveigh or the you know bomber or the like the public tends to say ok this is one individual who is a bad actor and that does not anyway shed light on how other white males or christians are portraying or are that is not the case with muslims so i think was going to be interesting is how the public whether the public is skeptical or why they're it accepted at face value that ok they're accused of terrorism so they must be terror and and we won't question a government motives or this dubious use of is dubious informant well

a couple things about what you said are first of all when this case first happened when it first came out. it was very difficult to find anyone on in the media call any of these guys terrorists you know or even there's a terrorist plot and i wonder if the color of their skin may have had something to do with that but it's really interesting when you do see something like this would be agency involved whether it's the f.b.i. or the cia they almost always make the case that the american people are safer now than they were before what do you think about this argument. well again i think the devil's in the details it depends if this was a plot that was already started even if it was at the initial phases and i think it i agree that they should stop it and they should arrest them but there's a lot of questions and reasons for concern that this informant was the one who's going to end them on and triggered it now with regard to the law of entrapment

which is an affirmative defense meaning that the defendant has the burden of proving that he or she was in fact entrapped by the government the defendant has to show that he or she did not have a predisposition was not already predisposed to commit a particular crime and that the government informant essentially convinced him or her that they should engage in a criminal activity however if they can prove that at all they can prove is that the government provided the defendant with opportunity and means then they will not win their entrapment defense so in some entrapment is a very strong prosecutor. body of law doctrine of law and it is structuring or it's the fact of status is that it is very difficult or defendants to win that defect even though in a lot of these cases the informant seems to have an incentive to try to you know make the hypothesis of the government come true i do have to say though in this

cleveland case one of the accused did buy a bricks of c four and also mentioned that he wanted to blow up a bank this if i were in law enforcement this would be i think in my opinion a good lead good evidence to go on what is your response to that well again it's all amount of timing so if that person did that before the informant gone involved or before the informant essentially join the conspiracy then i do agree that it would not be entrapment and this is essentially are going to what i think is a legitimate run in paradigm in that they got the informant convolve before the bar . actually came to fruition and then stopped the question is wasn't essentially maybe a radical ideologically radical person who sat around the corner and express a lot of political then the senate was controversial unpopular but never really serious or disposed to commit any violence and then the informant came in and egg them on and essentially kind of push them to go out and buy the chemicals and push

them to go out and take the act that's where it's problematic and i do want to know that there have been some cases in the past where there have been questions as to whether the informant like the person mr montell in california was actually tasked to go and. individuals on and coincidentally or maybe not so much is when they got to court the recording the very initial recording were lost or absent so the only recordings the government had to show in evidence or the later recording and the key recording than any kind of entrapment defense the very early recording between the informant and the target is that's when you know for sure whether that person was predisposed predisposed to commit a criminal act or not so that has also raised suspicions among some members of the public as to the evidence most in those recordings are missing i think those are all really important questions hopefully they find the answers as they do dig

a little bit deeper into this case are as he's associate professor of law at texas wesleyan university thanks so much and you. well let's go now to taking a look at some of the changes in terms of delegate count for the few republican candidates left in the race now the numbers are a little fluid and we won't have an exact count until the republican convention in august but we do want to show you some of the weak headlines that we saw after this weekend headlined like how ron paul could mess with romney at the convention ron paul power play in maine ron paul wins a majority majority of delegates from maine and ron paul announces nevada delegates from romney now of course for many in the mainstream media ron paul continues to be ignored but more and more respected publications are catching on saying at the very least ron paul is a force to be reckoned with now for more on ron paul's grassroots strategy i was joined earlier by austin peterson director of the interactive media of freedom works and here's his take. well you know we started this campaign for liberty back

in two thousand and eight really and we understand that the democratic process works a very complex matter these these rules are very arcane so we were very inexperienced in two thousand and eight with take over the g.o.p. so we were unsuccessful but at the time we were able to take over some leadership positions in the g.o.p. at the time which has given us power in this election because the thing that only matters is the selection of delegates much of the straw polls that you saw which gave santorum or romney a victory really didn't mean anything because what mattered was that you stayed to become an elector or the electoral college is the system that the founding fathers gave the americans and once we started to master the electoral college process the ron paul delegates have been able to successfully start to take over these parties because they put themselves in leadership roles and we saw in maine in nevada over the weekend also i was so interesting iowa because first romney won iowa then centaur and won and now we're seeing that ron paul in fact has the most delegates right right well they say mitt romney won or rick santorum won but what did they

win they won a straw poll in the straw poll is over at night they say ok everybody can go home but what happens after that is that they say ok now we're going to do select some delegates and if you don't know the rules then you might just go home so what happened was romney supporters went home santorum supporters went home ron paul supporters stayed and that's how they took the delegates and we're not sitting here or at least i'm not sitting here and trying to make the case that ron that mitt romney probably won't become the republican nominee but i do want to put up a map just to take a look at what it's looking like so far these are the states that ron paul has won the ones in red that you see that looks like about eleven of them and in some ways this doesn't look like an election that's all over this strategy you know again this is not a secret that ron paul's people have been using focusing on the delegate tally do you think some people are surprised when they look at this map they're surprised but if they're watching television there they can be said. rise because the

mainstream media is mostly not reporting on what's happening in this it's also very complex it's difficult to understand ron paul supporters want to win we're pushing for number one we want to take the presidency we want to take the white house we want to restore the republic that's the big goal but there are all sorts of little victories that can be won along the way we have to keep pushing in a stair stepping manner there are things that we can do like we can affect the platform which would essentially give us more power to change the dynamic of the country change the conversation towards the issues that we really want like auditing of the fed or or things like abolishing the t.s.a. or abolishing the i.r.s. things like that so we can affect the dialogue by pushing for the number one victory trying to win the presidency but even if we didn't even if we lost there would be all sorts of little battles that we could win along the way and come back in twenty sixteen if we need to and i think you are pressed to say that the conversation has not already changed when you talk about the things that you mentioned things like the fed in some cases the gold standard the t.s.a. there are many sort of mainstream or more mainstream conservatives getting onboard

starting to adopt these arguments. however there are other things that ron paul has come to represent an end to the wars a position that is not overly loving to israel these are things that i think a lot of conservatives just can't get onboard with you say the number one mission is to get him elected would you say that those are your biggest barriers perhaps i mean some conservatives would disagree with us on things like ending the war some of them and tend to be more overtly pro israel but you know well paul does argue that his position is more pro israel in the sense that if we had a position of neutrality in foreign affairs we wouldn't be telling israel what to do when it comes to their border skirmishes they might have a little bit more national sovereignty such as the united states to decide what they want to do so when you talk about things like that you know some people can say that maybe his position is a little bit more pro israel rather than sort of anti israel but things like ending the wars which wars you know there's so many wars going on you know not all conservatives support all the wars you know some wars are damaged. that was the war

in libya for example that was obama who started the nato bombing with france and britain to to unseat khadafi that was however you had some of the most well known hardcore republicans lindsey graham john mccain saying libya should have lasted longer and been more hardcore sure absolutely but you also had some hardcore tea party republicans like michele bachmann come out who you would say might be pro-war in certain cases come out against the obama administration for this because they did not seek authorization of congress and it was totally unconstitutional very true i want to get your reaction austin to the people who say that the only reason that ron paul is doing this is a staying in the race be continuing to campaign is for his son that he wants to get his son now kentucky republican senator rand paul eventual be in a spot where he might run for president in four years or eight years what's your reaction to that i mean it might be that that just doesn't sound like ron paul to be so singularly focused on something like that i think ron paul is more the type of person who wants to carry the torch you know he wants to light up the minds of young people like the brushfires of liberty i think the rand paul issue is

something that is significant i think that if we were to lose this election and rand paul came back in two thousand and sixteen running for president he would have the machinery of the ron paul campaign to be able to do with i think that would be really exciting and interesting probably ron thinks about that too but he's not the type of person to really predict the future he's really a very pragmatic person as much as they say he's you know this ideologue who lives in this fantasy world he really doesn't make very practical steps to advance his cause and so if he was thinking about something like advancing the cause of senator rand paul or something like that then it's probably more on the side the side issues of his mind something that he would hope for but not necessarily know that it's going to happen let's look ahead to the republican national convention i got ron paul the only other person still in this race and a lot of people are asking first of all we haven't seen in the same way that we saw newt gingrich and rick santorum really come down hard on mitt romney we haven't seen ron paul do that there's there's a lot of talk in the inner circles that you know these guys are but they get along what it a lot of people are wondering. what is it that ron paul wants. from romney in

exchange for either his delegates or has endorsed meant is there going to be some sort of exchange that we see happening that's really that's really the exciting little story that's going on behind the scenes that's a really good question you know i talk to libertarians all the time about this you know the secret romney paul alliance and i asked him i say as ron paul supporter what could get you to vote for mitt romney and i actually have found that a lot of libertarians have said to me that the only way that they can vote for mitt romney is if they do a deal with ron paul or something it's something like he's the v.p. or senator rand paul is the v.p. we have like a judge entered politics know as an attorney general and we have an audit of the fed and firing in public shaming of ben bernanke now that would be the kind of thing that a libertarian could get behind and say well if mitt romney has changed so much then he's flip flopped over to be a libertarian that a libertarian might be able to pull the lever for him now that's a really small chance of course but if the kind of thing that gives libertarians hope and keeps working for the working forward and i think is an important thing to

look out to because right now i mean it is only may but you're looking at these polls in your same romney obama in a dead heat if. romney loses the ron paul supporters if they just don't vote for anyone after all i think you're going to see a different race and some different numbers appreciate you having on having you on the show often peterson director of interactive media freedom mark thanks so much thank you. well let's go now to a developing story about the u.s. missile defense shield based in europe and put in place to help protect european allies as well as the u.s. now for months president obama has said this is necessary to counter threats coming from iran but leaders in russia are opposed to this and especially its placement which many russian leaders say is actually aimed at russia's missiles just last week russia's top military official threatened a preemptive military action on the missile defense facilities and the whole thing has certainly created a rift in u.s. russell russia relations now there's some new information out as well that major

doubts are being cast by top people here in the u.s. about whether the missile defense shield will even work properly earlier i spoke with bruce gagne on the corner for global network against weapons and nuclear power in space and i asked him what his thoughts were on the program. well i think it's number one a paper to general bernie mac's corporation helped obama got elected get elected they gave him collectively the crown family in two thousand and eight with the majority stockholders general dynamics they gave obama five hundred thousand dollars and also raise money for him within the military industrial complex so they have to go right up to the election if we can space technology magazine reported that obama received more campaign donations from the military industrial complex than the right wing war heart john mccain did so that certainly this can't just be about you know favors for friends if it's going to cause as much of

a rift as it has without other countries namely russia well that's right that's right but i think the payback is a key element in it but. because the aegis destroyers that are being outfitted with missile defense systems are made but by general dynamics i just want to get to a point in beyond that absolutely the united states is now surrounding russia with these missile defense systems and expanding nato and i believe the reason is because russia has the world's largest supplier of oil and significant excuse me of natural gas in significant supplies of oil and by now we should know that the pentagon's primary job in the world today is to serve as a resource extraction service for corporate globalization at the same time the obama administration announcing a pivot of u.s. foreign and military policy into the asia pacific region is also surrounding china

with the same missile defense system so clearly restarting a new arms race that again will benefit these weapons corporations yeah i think it's interesting you bring up china this missile shield. you know has said to be put. in place to help contain china we also saw that the u.s. will be adding several hundred maybe even thousand troops in right off the coast of australia so it is it is interesting what we're seeing there but i want to say i mean it's not just the leaders in russia who have a problem with this plan with this missile defense shield i have a letter here written by the national academy of sciences this is calls into question many parts of the system now the people who wrote this these are top people here in the u.s. whose job it is to advise the government on science and technology and they say they have doubts about whether this missile defense shield will even work properly talk about that that's right. from the national academy that. there's been considerable. cost overruns and can sort of technology problems with her

missile defense program and it's less than optimal way to defend the continental united states clearly i think one. puts too much emphasis on the problems with the program. it's part of a larger strategy to control and contain both russia and china and that is i think the most important point to be looked at here and indeed there are problems with almost every big technology program that comes along has problems if you get enough time and you give them enough money and they're going to work some of those things out they've already used a missile defense system on an aegis destroyer to knock aside why the other space showing that it could be used as a down time weapon so there are considerable capabilities of these systems

and again you lot of money they're getting a lot of money about nine billion going into the missile defense agency. in time i think they can really make this thing boil will technology just sticking momentarily with the geo political aspect of this of course just today vladimir putin inaugurated in russia sworn in for his third term as president and of course much of the negotiating up to this point under president obama was done with president dmitri medvedev we know prudent has already said he won't be attending the nato summit at the end of this month in part to protest the missile shield which will be formally deployed then talk a little bit about how serious this is for international relations and in particular for those between the u.s. and russia. you know absolutely i think the you know the hard line is growing between the u.s. and russia in fact i see in mainstream media across our country here in the u.s. that russia is increasingly being demonized as is china and i think there's no

there's a reason for that and i think it's you know whether to make. russia and china the enemies in the coming period it will benefit the military industrial complex but i think the greatest issue here is the competition over declining resources on the world with the climate change it's happening which by the way is our real problem we should be investing in that rather than a whole new arms race on all sides we should be dealing with climate change but as we see the arctic melt increasingly they're now saying that they're going to be very well corporations are going to be able to do drilling for oil and natural gas in the arctic region which puts us in huge conflict with russia particularly so i think that this nato expansion of this missile defense systems going into poland romania turkey and so in other countries throughout. the russia's

neighborhood is all about trying to control russia and russia has access to resources russia's control resources and the same goes for china reason why we're so money china is because it's the only way the united states can really compete with china's growing economy is control their access to resources it is certainly an interesting point you raise that how important overall resources around the world and they're increasingly limited supply plays in some of the decisions major countries make gaghan and coordinate or for the global network against weapons and nuclear power in space joining us from friends like me. all right guys well that's going to do it for now but for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r.t. america or check out our web site r g dot com slash usa and you can of course follow me on twitter at christine for is out for now i hope you have a great night.