our team is counting down to the third party debate just a few hours from now green party candidate jill stein and libertarian candidate gary johnson will square off in our t.v. studios about foreign policy we will bring you a preview. and the hurricane sandy relief efforts are getting a big boost from an unlikely group of protesters with the occupy movement movement put down their picket signs they're extending a helping hand to the thousands in need for you that story in just a bit. and this election season has turned into a war of words with the two candidates sparring over the issues but one thing barack obama and mitt romney seem to agree on defense spending a look at the defense budget and why neither man is likely to cut it in the years

to come. it is monday november fifth of four pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for is now and you're watching r t how be election eve everyone coming up shortly in our to america's studios here in washington d.c. the final debate before the election it's a third party debate tonight featuring libertarian gary johnson the former governor of new mexico and dr jill stein of the green party now you may remember this debate was scheduled for last tuesday october thirtieth but was moved to tonight due to superstorm sandy so here we are one night before the presidential election and we want to remind you that for most of you across the united states when you go to the polls tomorrow there will be more than two names on the ballot in addition to the two i just mentioned who will be part of tonight's debate you may also see on your ballot virgil goode a former u.s.

congressman from virginia now with the constitution party and rocky anderson of the justice party former mayor of salt lake city utah tonight though we. down to the two candidates based on an online vote taken after that first third party debate on october twenty third and in preparation i'd like to talk more about the significance of this debate and about third party candidates in general with our correspondent liz wahl along with our tease abby martin host of breaking the sat ladies great to have you here and we're going to be here lots to talk about this debate as we know it was supposed to be a week ago kind of fun and i think that it's happening the night before the election it's important don't you think that people know that there are other candidates out there saluting i mean it's just sad that people don't know that i mean a lot of people that i talk to the wall you know it doesn't matter and they're just watching the you know total dog and pony show billion dollar campaign glitz and glamor of the presidential commission on the base which we already know is funded entirely by corporations that totally exclude third party voices in the top and you

know on top of that the corporate controlled media and everything you see on t.v. just completely excludes these extremely important voices that need to be heard and that are totally illogical while i think i want to touch and let me just that that sort of doesn't matter added to i certainly and liz i know that you've spoken to many people about this too that so many people in this country really think they have to vote for one of these two candidates and history has dictated that it's probably going to be either obama or romney but talk a little about what people have told you in your interviews your vast amount of interviews during this campaign season about sort of the attitude concerning the third party well i guess i mean i think there is this perception that voting for the third party is a wasted vote but i think especially with the way things are going in the country now that people are in there isn't as much enthusiasm behind president obama as there was back in two thousand and eight a lot of people disillusioned with the way things have played out during his presidency and

a lot of not even on the republican side they're not all gung ho about mitt romney so i think now more than ever there is. there seems to be space for other ideas. aside from the republican and democratic ticket especially we saw the passion behind ron paul who of course you know is running under the republican ticket but really does differentiate himself from the republican mainstream in terms of his foreign policy his not interventionist approach and we saw a lot of passion and a lot of enthusiasm behind him so we see that there is a hunger in this country for for a different for an alternative yet when ron paul was still in the race it was interesting just how much energy and support the people who backed him had i think it's important what you brought up as you said it's not just about other candidates about it's about other ideas and that's one of the most frustrating

thing i think for a lot of these candidates who did not get invited to the debates during the primaries is not only that their face wasn't shown and that their name wouldn't get out there but that their ideas would not get out there as well so i want to play something really quick this is from that october twenty third debate we're talking about from libertarian candidate gary johnson speaking about the political system as it is in place today. whether or not romney gets elected or obama gets elected three things are going to happen we're going to find ourselves with a continued heightened police state in this country we're going to find ourselves continuing to militarily intervene in the world which results has resulted in hundreds of millions of enemies to this country that wouldn't otherwise exist there's a reason why we shouldn't be using drones it's because we don't just take out the target we take out a lot of innocent civilians in these countries where it was

and then lastly we are going to find ourselves in a continued state of and sustainable spending and borrowing to the point that we are going to experience a monetary collapse unless we fix this. so too much spending and borrowing that is a topic that you know all the candidates seem to have spoken on but drones i remember when a question was asked about drones in the final about foreign policy debate between obama and romney people on twitter are like i can't believe you're asking about drones this is so insignificant but in fact abbie thomas kind of drove it is the opposite of insignificant what i mean it's the leading cause of anti-american sentiment in the middle east we have the foreign minister of pakistan coming out saying that is the number one cause and also the suicide bombings within pakistan after drone warfare started in the country has escalated three hundred percent so when you say that it's insignificant i'm saying people on. you know articles about drones but i mean it just shows you and you know mitt romney kind of saying oh yeah

i totally agree with obama's policies on drones i think it's a great idea well it's actually not they have a ninety percent failure rate and it's really not surgically precise it also is just terrorizing people on a daily basis and that's just in pakistan i mean this is going this is over warfare going all across the middle east and also opening up drones to you guys soon in a year and it's a shame this wasn't discussed more in the other debate and that's it's interesting that that clip that we just played of gary johnson where he said no matter whether it's romney or obama that the outcome is going to be the same and i think that exemplifies the need or the desire that is there for a third party option we saw in the last debate focused on foreign policy every single candidate i believe brought up drones so we had a lot of third party debate in the last third party debate and then they had the main debate it was brought up once and we had it governor romney basically hail obama's drone campaign so we see that they definitely do agree with it and it seems

to be a bipartisan issue where that is something that is going to continue despite the controversy surrounding it and very little discussion about it especially also in terms of foreign policy we see that right. me and obama agree on iran. romney seems to want to slap more sanctions on iran and that's been the that's been obama's signature the way that he has dealt with with iran is continuing to slap these sanctions on the country that are now crippling the country. it's romney says that he's going to be more strict on sanctions but it's how much more they seem to know much more crippling could this really be and i look like you know obama romney was attacking iran whereas obama we don't know that i mean all we know is that they both kind of you know are putting a really hard line against iran we both know that you know they are trying to compete with netanyahu in who could be more favorable to israel so i don't really

see i don't put anything out of the possibility for obama so interesting regarding iran too because it's seems like people like to play this up as the biggest bogeyman you know facing us right now with the biggest threat right now is iran has been that way for and it was reiterated by one of the moderate really yeah but it's really been like this for decades and i think a lot of people forget that we talk about as you just mentioned the keep the two candidates to main candidates obama and romney really agreeing on a lot especially foreign policy related but i should say and for those of people that are t.v. years who actually have been following these third party debates it might be a little confusing me how we're having a win tonight very soon on the one on october twenty third these are both put on by the free and equal elections foundation but last night ralph nader a very remembers good ole ralph nader he actually moderated debate here in d.c. at busboys and poets and he asked the candidates all four of them were at this debate yes in a series of yes or no questions things like military spending the war in

afghanistan the size of the divan the fence budget the strength of corporate power in washington. and all four candidates pretty much agreed on all of that so you do you think it's hard for some people who do plan on voting third. to choose which third party goes i think that when you're looking at third party candidates and they all agree on things that pretty much is uniform with the rest of american citizens who are just like i don't want to be spending over fifty percent of our tax dollars on the military i don't want to have endless war in afghanistan till two thousand and twenty four i don't want to and drone warfare and so when these third party candidates they all agree on the things that we can all agree to and that's the biggest difference they all have radically different platforms when it comes to you know energy policy and and just their outlook on how to restructure government but in terms of those questions civil liberties protecting all these things i think that is where people can really relate to them because we sure as hell can't relate to romney particularly particularly with the libertarian party i think that really does. represent

a growing segment of the american population. fiscally conservative socially liberal a lot of people especially young people go along with that ideal yet we don't really see it on either side certainly the foundation of the libertarian party is smaller smaller government and you do see some of these ideas that ron paul's been talking about since the one nine hundred eighty s. sort of become adopted by the republican party this year even in their party platform for example they went to an audit of the fed which is something that ron paul has been calling for a long time that was unheard of a few years ago so it's really interesting i don't want to leave joel stein out i want to make sure that you know we play something from her. i know that under president obama one of the most significant things that's happened not because of president obama he was against it but the supreme court ruled on the citizens united case case this of course put very simply money corporations are people who kind of thing so i want to just play something joel stein said about this and about how citizens united has affected our system. we are calling for getting money out

of politics through public financing we're calling for opening up. all qualified candidates we are calling for a constitutional. layer of. money. and corporations are not to take. lives you and i have been all over this certainly you know anchoring the news here at r.t. this has been one of our biggest focal points in this campaign season because first of all it's a very important issue but second of all because the mainstream media has largely ignored it the day that the case was ruled on i think back in two thousand and ten it was discussed but really the impact there are so many different directions that you could go with the impact of this case and how we're seeing the impact of it today i mean a record spending on campaigning i think they're both in the ballpark of three

hundred fifty million dollars and that doesn't take into account a lot of the other spending that was pumped into these to the campaigns and a lot of negative negative campaigning we're seeing unprecedented so absolutely and we just heard the words of jill stein i think it's interesting she said you know corporations are not people romney actually did say the opposite that corporations are people. so it's interesting to hear from a presidential candidate to say otherwise now i don't know are you going to miss campaign season oh my god if you're. not going to miss it i'm going to say a little bit oh maybe i thought i was. going to be talking about on the news twenty four to come on it's right around the no. no we were going to definitely get some monday morning quarterbacking why did this happen and you know why did obama win why did obama lose you know he was election the post-election analysis of voting for yeah it's going to be interesting i think it's exciting i think. you know are

two of course going to be doing quite a bit of election coverage tomorrow from four pm eastern until midnight or until there's a winner so our t. correspondent liz wall abby martin host of breaking the sat funtime girls come back to me again once again live at nine pm tonight the free and equal foundation's second round of third party debates it's going to be happening right here in our studio so make sure to tune in and find out for yourself what these third party candidates stand for. i do want to talk now about the resurgence of a movement many people have labeled as long gone in significant even dead members of the occupy wall street movement mobilized immediately in the wake of hurricane sandy and are proving that not only are they alive and well as a movement they have become incredibly significant to those hurt those were hurt most and incredibly vital as a force of good in communities like a story of brighton beach east village jersey city the lower east side red hook

rockaway sunset park and staten island here's a look at some of those volunteers in action at saint jacoby in sunset park brooklyn people are pulling together things to go to. rockaway i think this is about to go it's coney island. was actually these volunteers have set up a meeting places that have organized orientations for volunteers to give out food water first aid even to pump water from people's homes and to help with the cleanup of the massive amount of rubble and trash left in sandy's wake remember this is a group that has always spoken out and worked in defense of the homes being destroyed the before it was not by a hurricane but by mass foreclosures and corruption still their presence has been extremely valuable and i want to speak now to sarah jaffe an associate editor for alter net and sara you have seen some of these operations firsthand tell me what you've witnessed. i it blows my mind i mean they're really really they were

always good and the most impressive thing that happened it's a part was always the really strong infrastructure the the ability to feed people get close people to make sure people face it needs one that was always a skill that this movement had and now they're putting it into practice in a way that i mean nothing else in the city is even coming close to what it's doing yeah certainly the need seems to be growing here and you just see i mean hundreds of people really have come out and of course they're not all people who were at zuccotti park a lot of them just volunteers wanting to help it but those sort of central in the occupy movement seem to have sort of taken the lead in organization i mean do you think that sort of what they learned and what they did during occupy wall street sort of got them ready for this. absolutely i mean you they were again and they had a camp in a park and were managing to feed and keep warm and close hundreds of people who

were sleeping in a park those are skills that absolutely trance translate to this also in the time since the park was evicted people have got to be very good organizers in communities have been working with the church that they're organizing in sunset park was connected to rent strikes that were being organized and in part with occupy organizers in that neighborhood and so. the post park skill set is just as important here i think to i know of course the red cross is central to the relief effort but i know they've been focusing on collecting funds that they've said that that's what they need most but still there are people who need things like food and blankets and clothing. and your experience who are these people that are most in need while i was down yesterday in the rockaways in our current which is a little rock what it's for anybody who doesn't know it or a little sandy strip of land that basically was completely washed over by the by the storm surge and there are people out there whose entire homes are flooded with cars were flooded everything in some cases they had is is ruined and those people

kept asking us where speed are you would be even are you with the red cross where are these people there weren't any body from the major disaster organizations there it was community groups and it was that was in these places instead and so when you say the road this effort so far i haven't seen the red cross doing much of anything right paying probably more attention to some of the bigger or harder harder hit areas i know it took a few days even for staten island i mean this is one of the five boroughs of new york and it took a few days for anyone to show up there and then they of course were some of the worst you know way too many deaths there and extreme extreme damage but talk to me let's switch gears for a second just sort of about this notion that occupy wall street was you know all but gone i mean is this a resurrection or just a bigger opportunity for visibility than the occupy movement has had in a while. i think both i mean i was out on to temperature the teams and i've been

keeping up with some of the groups that have been doing different kinds of organizing summer said retain a course for those who don't know that was the one year anniversary if you can believe it of occupy wall street. and so i've been in meetings with the strike that group which is holding people out on november fifteenth and there are plenty of groups that were already doing more this is sort of pulling together all the work people that were involved before pulling in people who had maybe left the movement a little bit and also attracting new people like you said who were necessarily going to occupy a park but want to help and see this is the best opportunity they have to actually provide mutual aid to their neighbors talk a little bit about the similarities with the occupy wall street central messages and how these apply you know to what we're seeing with this devastation from superstorm sandy i mean. when you look back and you trace who's responsible for this if we're going to talk about climate change which the presidential candidates

as you were just talking about have all but ignored this season. we need to talk about who's responsible for climate change and we need to talk about the same big corporations that get traced back up that the occupy wall street movement was protesting in the first place the all connect back to the same places. it makes a lot of sense for a movement that was essentially treated horribly by the city the state the police department to just go and and take care of each other's themselves. to not wait for permission or for somebody to ask them but to just go do it it's interesting too not just the climate change aspect and of course that is an interesting one but sort of the the wrapper cautions of the damage itself who was hardest hit this isn't katrina this isn't a situation where the levees broke but we did see a whole lot of you know people living in housing projects people living in. trailer

parks and these are the people that were sort of hurt the most and that didn't get that immediate response so it's interesting sort of how it brought to light some of the income inequality issues don't you think. yeah i mean this is i mean i remember i lived in new orleans not during hurricane katrina but before that i remember people saying oh this is like a third world country and i was just going i of course it does this is how many many people in this country live. in public housing out in the rockaways people are stuck on thirteenth fourteenth floor apartments with no elevators in some cases elderly and disabled people who can't get up and down stairs very well and. their neighbors are the only ones who bring them soup the red cross in some cases i'm ali and john the full reported showed up at the end of the day with a whole bunch of egg salad sandwiches which is anybody who's ever had themselves in which no they don't keep very long. so yes is that the impact this disaster is

absolutely. effected by race and class we knew that we knew that was going to be how it was and we were talking about where it crosses the marshaling of people that i. know they know who our for the with they know where the red cross is has upstaging locations that know where even is and they know it's their neighbor real quick sorry we're almost out of time but in your reporting on this what have some of these occupy sandy organizers said are the plans how much longer they can continue these i just saw on twitter that there's even more locations as of you know a few hours ago i was just looking at an interactive map that they have a plan to go about with all the locations where you can drop off supplies i mean they want to keep this going and they want to keep it growing if they want to pull it back into what they always saw as a movement of my favorite line from the piece that i wrote for jack of the was we at the thought out of one of the first people to go out on to say night and she said we're doing what we expected to do but nobody else i mean they knew that they

were capable of doing this kind of work and when they're demonstrating that they are there people are willing to join yeah absolutely and quite a few people are surprised but you know i think it's important to point out and i think it's a good thing to show that this is going on that occupy standing is certainly has become a vital for some vital part of the recovery efforts in new york and new jersey areas we thank you for your firsthand reporting sarah jaffe associate editor of alter net in new york city thanks. well everyone it has been a long road to election day and on that road plenty of contentious issues for president obama and governor romney to disagree upon and to bicker about from abortion rights to tax cuts to health care there is one issue we've heard only a little bit about most likely because most both candidates agree on it and that issue is defense spending as are to correspond a marine important i explains whoever wins the presidential election most likely won't have a major impact on how much money is spent defense our military spending has gone up

every single year that i've been in office we spend more on our military than the next ten countries combined china russia france united kingdom you name it america has a responsibility and the privilege of helping defend freedom we've got to strengthen our military long term will not cut our military budget in a post nine eleven america the pentagon's budget has grown more than forty percent averaging half a trillion dollars per year critics say a new party or presidents in the white house won't change the policies firmly cemented in washington yalla he said both of these men are very much continuations of the military industrial complex is domination of our political system in our democracy so when they keep talking about how they're going to supply jobs increasingly that's where the jobs come from. both foreign interventions and also

this giant so-called homeland security department price of defending the homeland critics say continues to come at a cost to civil liberties this war on terror you know what. we discussed before the end of the day now you have north carolina's leaves you know cracking down on protesters now you have this massive empire in order to sustain move there . you need to have peacekeepers. to make sure that the war rages are earlier this year the former cia director applauded president obama for closely following the controversial policies of his part assessor and despite a campaign that was based upon a very powerful promise of transparency president obama and again in my view quite correctly has used the state secrets argument. in a variety of courts as much as president bush more than six and a half thousand u.s.

soldiers have been killed fighting america's post nine eleven wars and nearly fifty thousand have been wounded in action are reported quarter million americans who have fought in iraq or afghanistan have been diagnosed with mental health injuries from combat service even as america's wars wind down the suicide rate among troops has surged to a thirty year high according to the pentagon this year's total may reach as many as one suicide per day it's not just what happens in war when the deaths and big injuries or what happens afterwards you know you have these there are basically barrels coming home you know to two broken communities and families with broken bodies and moms and then in terms of society is that something that wants you know do we want a society where we have important members of our community. coming coming home with problems and that's the reality of war in the two thousand and

twelve fiscal year payers funded a u.s. defense budget of five hundred forty four billion dollars it's estimated that some could provide two million military veterans with free medical care for thirty five years talking about national defense has been almost sacrosanct you know sort of like the thanks department one something. to question that is to question. something that is unquestionable and that has meant that the largest part of the u.s. government spending has been beyond analysis beyond public scrutiny in four days americans will elect a leader for the next four years regardless of who wins the legacy of war cemented under the past two u.s. presidents indicate that the world's largest. offense budget will continue ballooning this causing many to ask if hundreds of billions of dollars are being

spent to increase security or even rude stability for forty fifty or more enough for niamh party. all right everyone that's going to do it for now but we're going to be back here in a half hour. the submission. cretaceous three months for charges free to make amends three. three. free. download free blog counseling video for your media projects and free media r t v dot com. the globe.

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