spinal cord out me visit to an adult. it's called. playing the waiting game six months ago today julia songe walked into the ecuadorian embassy in london seeking asylum we'll have a report on his time inside the embassy and what's next for the wiki leaks founder . gunning for rights since the mass shooting in newtown connecticut the gun debate has been thrust it back into the spotlight so will there be new gun restrictions here in the u.s. we'll debate that issue in just a moment. and to the surprise of exactly no one time magazine named president obama two thousand and twelve person of the year so is this ritual of naming whoever wins

the presidency the person of the year just a waste of time. it's wednesday december nineteenth four pm in washington d.c. i'm meghan lopez and you're watching r.t. all right today marks the six month anniversary since wiki leaks co-founder julian assan shook refuge in the ecuadorian embassy in london to refresh your memory assad was granted political asylum in ecuador in order to escape extradition to sweden where he is wanted for questioning about sexual assault allegations six months and still this man remains in the middle of an international political standoff between the u.k. sweden the u.s. in ecuador r.t. correspondent ana stasia churkin takes a look back at what the past half year has been like for julian a songe. i least i have a voice. prisoners rarely even have

a voice six long months and counting in a tiny room in london's ecuadorian embassy julian assange keeps himself busy been many messages from we can. distinguish between them and we of course always it's to increase individual privacy as well as exposing corruption with. secrecy continuing to release secret cables put out not one but a million documents in the year two thousand and twelve they try to cut off all his funding he's continued to function they haven't been able to arrest him and he seems to be doing quite well. addressing the world from his balcony speaking to the u.n. to news in history did not begin in december two thousand and ten and mohammed was aisy did not set himself on fire so barack obama could be reelected and publishing a book on cyber security just some of the results of the last six months on

a lot of focus and determination to be so productive and the ably productive i'd say while being sensually imprisoned in the ecuadorian embassy he still has a hand in the game and it's a good thing to do the key message is publishing more we keep the material that is far more important than the address or even the boat not that these are on important that is of course the difference. between being in a swedish prison. and being in the ecuadorian embassy supporter say assad has diplomatic asylum is a major achievement in itself that's absolute proof that the united states of america is pursuing julian in such a way that a sovereign nation considered it a great enough fit to grant him asylum british authorities have warned assad that he cannot leave the embassy and actually travel to ecuador because they will arrest him if he tries. do you want the rubbing of hands that the fans will eventually

have to step foot outside be arrested sent to sweden for questioning for an alleged sexual assault and potentially extradited to america to face trial for releasing secret documents what we queue leaks has released is just one percent of what washington classifies in a given year last year washington classified ninety two million documents that's a quarter of a million documents every day clearly the balance is way off on the side of extreme secrecy apart from a personal fight for freedom a sound has sparked a conversation with much wider implications for the global population and about whether we want to live in an era of truth change berenstein the rule of law or whether america will continue down this cost of acting as a rogue nation in terms of a real national security which i care about profoundly as an american this case is meaningless i mean nailing julian assange is fighting him keeping him locked up or

getting him sent to guantanamo or even to a normal federal prison this does nothing to enhance our security i think we can weeks has been profoundly good for american security and for american national interest simply because we now know what our government is doing creating rules of his own that may turn into a game changer as powerful as the united states is and the united kingdom we're in a different world that we're in a world where big power doesn't necessarily decide the outcome of every single dispute asuncion wiki leaks have no plans to stop releasing classified information always reluctant. to release your. insisting he says. make headlines. she knew that. after six months of the embassy songes case provides crucial insight into how our world will look moving forward george will be remembered for will see you know

someone who is quite courageous. decided to make these documents available. to the world as that's he initially tried to do it in collaboration with some of the leading use in europe and the united states even if this were to end tomorrow somehow they join us on and wiki leaks have already done an incredible incredible service to us the shame going forward will not be about what julian assange has done but about the fact that the major media in this country and essentially abandon him and are not supporting his struggle for freedom julian massage agrees and in a way what's happening to do it is particularly important except that it is part of a much wider process and it's a huge churkin are key to your. given the pace that things are moving now joining us on will likely spend christmas in the embassy he'll be giving a christmas face to supporters as the ecuadorian embassy in london tomorrow evening

and is asking supporters to bring food and candles. well it's been five months since an unthinkable there five days excuse me since an unspeakable tragedy forever changed newtown connecticut several of the children and teachers have been laid in their final resting places and more funerals are still to come the following days as president obama mentioned in his speech his speech at newtown high school this is the fourth time in his presidency that a massacre like this has happened each time the conversation inadvertently turns to gun control laws and every time little if anything comes out of the debate but this time this time is different perhaps because so many of the victims were children with no way to defend themselves now president obama has announced that he will be appointing a vice president joe biden to lead an interagency panel to discuss the issue the

president also address the nation just hours ago about the subject. that those of us who were sent here to serve the public trust can summon even one tiny iota of the courage those teachers that principal in newtown summoned on friday if cooperation and common sense for bail i'm convinced we can make a sensible intelligent way to make the united states of america safer stronger place for our children to learn and to grow so we here at r.t. want to take the time to take a critical look at gun laws here in the u.s. and ask what can be done to curb gun violence in the country to do that i'm joined by jim stokoe yank and kevin powell author of the new book barack obama ronald reagan and the ghost of dr king blogs an essay so jim i'm going to start with you i know that you're going to say that gun control is not the answer but i want

to show you a chart before i get your answer i mean this this chart that we're showing right here is a list of just a few of the shooting massacres that we've seen in twenty twelve alone so if gun control isn't the answer what is well what's really and truly on the chart is this shooting back the mass shooting the last twenty years virtually all of the big one at the democratic national convention which might as well be gun free zone have occurred and what we call target rich environment to go where the victims of mass shootings were able to defend the. idea that the common denominator in all the. data in our government are not talking about are the numerous.

in the second instance i want to bring up let me finish then the second is i want to bring up is that during the chaos of the tucson arizona shooting represent representative gabrielle giffords there was an armed person on that scene who confused giffords aide for the realest assailant and almost shot him while that aide was actually tackling the real assailant jared last night so how are more guns going to increase our safety in a mass shooting situation. the people actually being killed what you can do is reduce your reports for good believe it or thought the military in the room in the

area where the shootings occurred everyone says well the military has. allowed and don't carry. on the military installation i live right outside of george i go there all the time they're not allowed to carry side are on him and the where the shooting occurred those tournaments where are so i have to correct you there was a shooting about two or three days ago and protect the theater two people to kill an off duty to help lead the officer into that real quick by the guy had a chance to shoot. off of the or get all shooting all right kevin i want to try to go ahead and get you in here if we're talking about making a lot of gun purchases illegal does that mean that the only criminals will be that will be able to get their hands on these weapons are people that. personal thank you for having me i just think it's really tragic that we're talking these

children these little children were murdered in cold blood in connecticut about putting more guns out there steadily megan since that incident happened seven states including the state of connecticut have had an increasing gun sales over the last five games and we need to deal with the basic fact there's this nine hundred sixty eight when dr king and bobby kennedy were assessed needed a million people in our country because of gun related deaths we are was about nine thousand gun related deaths a year which is far higher than any of the developed country in the world working with countries like england like germany most for instance cetera we're talking about this but we have three hundred million guns in america but also a population of three hundred million people so it's one gun per person and it's more guns are actually the solution to deterring shootings of any trial and it would have this problem in the first place so it's a false statement to make that this is going to stop if we actually are more people

by him the response or response print court decision on two thousand and five league five point five us. rock part that's good solid state that the police have no legal obligation to provide protection of the connecticut shooting of the police showed up twenty minutes after they boarded and upon making visual contact that's when i should side too and that's why you know. the thing about it is we're getting doc and. all the. murders that occurred i got with the criminal for getting a lot of the criminals get the guys on the black market we know the government has done a poor job after periods by putting guns and i have tried to help and providing weapons to al qaeda and others but beyond that he's not talking about the two two to. billion incident per year that. by brandishing

a firearm in my case my favorite forty five eleven with a fifty brown bag with hydro shot. which is the whole point of a pan. brandishing a firearm as provided by the private don't like a woman what's the best way for a woman to prevent. hanging with all around her neck and blowing it or. i want to hold a guy's head you know you know it's horrible to think about it because you're right ari i'm not going to start my air today i'm trying to keep the dialogue moving don't get me wrong so something else to know kevin is that gun violence has gone down since one nine hundred seventy just a kind of piggyback off of ten points what's more is that poll after poll shows that americans favor background checks they favor the idea of a gun ban on felons and the mentally ill but they still believe that americans have the right to bear arms so is strict gun laws are strict gun control really even

a feasible not just the only issue we live in a culture of violence i mean as i'm listening to your guest and i respect his opinion but i really also respect you disagree with my knife sort of things you saying you know he's part of the problem which is we're advocating more and more violence and so what i'm saying is that we have to examine as american people the society that we live in where we think that this is the only way to deal with conflict of any kind i mean you know joe let's talk about if a woman is raped or put a hole in someone's head i mean you know there's also the fact that most of these mass murders have been committed by men we have a high level of domestic violence in against women in this country and many of these men have actually called done some women over their heads and part of the lingo down the list a range of things that have happened and so what i'm getting at is that we need to examine the culture of violence and the issue of gun control and how we define manhood in this country because it's just kind of cowboy mentality that he's expelling that is actually unacceptable and then he also to talk about issues of mental health littleness in this country it's all of those things together not one

thing and you know for folks to say well it's our second amendment right in the constitution well there was also a time of the constitution where you know we know that women didn't have the right to vote didn't have any power to actually know there was when there was slavery that was legalized in this country so some point in our history we've said over and over again you know what enough is enough we need to change and we have children. children david being murdered in cold blood i mean i need us and we need to think about this this is no different than the full of the girls who were bombed while purring at a church in birmingham alabama and one nine hundred sixty three this is as egregious as that and we can understand that we're now out loud in the lives of children to be jeopardized by this out of control guns love we need to check ourselves as a country. and jim can i can i get your thoughts all of those things that that kevin just said well you know i agree with some of the things that you know there's a variety of factors jordi the client have been committed by men but you know i do have to say that i don't want to be labeled

a radical on it i'm going to quote one of the founding fathers the strongest reason or citizens to own firearms and protect us against tyranny in government you know the very fact that i hold this is a real way to deal with the other room. and i have high. is basically we have to take back our government you know the whole thing about it . was just our population becomes an inflated population and the roots of gun control the very beginning of gun control laws were started when the black americans were freed with the thirteenth amendment and wanted to prevent black people from having the ability to defend itself against the k.k.k. and i suggest everybody get the book dial nine one one and die if you really want to see what the reality about whether you do or do not have proper place to protect

our rights and i'm going to have to end the conversation there guys i had so many other questions to ask you but unfortunately we are just out of time thank you so much for your time kevin powell activist and author of the book but rock obama ronald reagan and the ghost of dr king blogs and essays and gents a color yakka constitutionalist and freedom advocate who apparently has less to say and i he supports doesn't support gun free zones and on my web site freedom fighter radio. all right still ahead on our team can the u.s. lock you up with any with out any due process the battle over indefinite detention is playing out in the u.s. congress will have an update on the issue in just a moment. welcome

back it's one step forward two steps back for civil civil liberties advocates in the u.s. today last month the senate approved an amendment that would bar the military from detaining american citizens suspected of terrorism indefinitely without a trial the move was regarded as a huge surprise as well as a confidence booster for groups who have been working for years to end indefinite detention but just yesterday lawmakers in both the house and the senate dropped the

ban also known as the feinstein amendment during their negotiations for a new national defense authorization bill so is this the end of the indefinite detention discussion while tendering bolen is the founder and director of revolution truth and also one of the plaintiffs in the case against indefinite detention and joins me now to answer that question hey there tangerine thanks for coming back to the show the program so is this the end of your fight against indefinite detention. absolutely not unfortunately today's developments surprising but not necessarily if you was not the most ideal amendments that were not used and we were going to wear one on this eventually and one of the lawyers representing you carl now he had put he had said to the business insider yesterday i want to read a quote from you really quickly he was upset about the congress decision to nix the

indefinite detention ban he said as president abraham lincoln who so many of these politicians profess to admire said you can fool some of the all some of the all of the time you can fool all of the people some of the time but you can't fool all the people all the time from day one we have said that this issue will be decided in the courts from from day one advocates of freedom and liberty have prevailed in federal district courts and we will pursue this fight to the supreme court if we have to do so is this what is going to come down to a fight in the supreme court well yes we hope we lose the appeal court i do a micro win there and leave it we don't win there and we certainly hope the supreme court case a critical case so it may go away that area. and the n.e.a. is approved every year though i mean getting this case to the supreme court is

going to take so much longer than that so what can really really expect a change and what kind of timeline to really expect it to change in. well you know the f.b.i. when upset about our case is that it is an expedited so unlike most other cases of this nature we are being seen very quickly and we expect to be an appeals court in early january and possibly the supreme court sometime shortly thereafter so a lot of attention as you know allowable in this country and around the world and as a government has been court i don't know what law to use to indefinitely detain you they can't use any a right now and of course we aim to stop that and we will give up this fight that at the level now as i mentioned the ban did pass an initial a sixty seven to twenty nine in the senate was a feinstein amendment disregard of this time in your opinion. well that's a really good question and i think that the answer to that falls out is really opposite ends of the spectrum here i think that republicans although they pay lip service to the idea of not letting us that is as they're fighting this do they all

they they always they're on the side of national security in this as a completely stripping out our right of our right the democrats i'm not sure i don't know whether it was the vague language that bothers them because we made quite a to do about that bad language or whether they lost their political will so i don't way either side of congress is really standing by any by the u.s. constitution i do want to mention though i don't know if you and i had r.p. but we had a few groups just because rates on our behalf but government accountability project which represented thomas drake the n.s.a. whistleblower and william binney and also the core mafia center which represented a family friend of the families who were interned at the japanese internment camps during world war two they both agreed on our behalf and they're very powerful to read i highly recommend your audience read them if they would like to thanks for the information and earlier in the interview you said that it's not really two steps back so you're talking about the feinstein

a minute here what wasn't right about the fly inside and then that what didn't do enough of in your opinion. well there were some unfortunately so many things wrong with it i think feinstein meant well but she should have consulted that strong civil liberties attorney prior to the writing about him i maxed out why it was highly discriminatory and only provided a legit coverage to u.s. citizens not residents or tourists or other foreign nationals it also did not circulate any difference between a military tribunal and it's not going to civilian trial so although they were having the fact that it allows people to have a trial but it does give you a different that would mean in the military tribunals which means maybe it's really is the only thing that is available to people who are indefinite indefinitely the team and as we've seen in one con about that can take five hairpin year you can rot away and presidents will only have us really it's not enough not constitutional so tender and we're almost out of time but it is indefinite detention just

a wartime strategy or do you anticipate that it'll do go beyond the war in afghanistan and in fact the war on terror well the war on terror have the geographic or temporal boundaries so unfortunately under the guise of national security and we are losing our rights in a war that really will never end and a politician who's being honest actually admit that it's never going to end so we have to find a better way to balance national security and civil liberties right now congress is not doing a good job and unfortunately neither is the obama administration all right heads are involved we appreciate your time she's the founder and director of revolution truth and you. it's the moment we've all been waiting for drumroll please ladies and gentlemen the time magazine person of the year for twenty swells is president barack obama q because that he gives the band the go ahead to play stars and stripes forever release the dogs ok but in all seriousness is this

announcement really that surprising to anyone i mean he's a man who overcame crippling unemployment numbers to win back the presidency number so debilitating no incumbent in the history of the country has ever won under those circumstances he's a president who reform the health care system put the one percent back in their place and killed osama bin laden so look at all of those things that really come as a surprise to anyone that he won well as it turns out it's possible that none of those factors actually contributed to his winning time's person of the year nomination it could be the sheer fact that he is the leader of the most powerful nation in the world that qualifies him to hold that position we look at history to set the precedent president obama also in the title back in two thousand and eight after his first election before that george w. bush was time's person of the year in two thousand and four after his election and

also in two thousand in fact every election year since one thousand nine hundred eighty six has resulted in a u.s. president being named time's man of the year with only one exception president bill clinton he earned the title in one thousand nine hundred two but was surpassed by aids researcher dr david ho as the man in the air in one nine hundred ninety six so call it predictable call it surprising but whatever you call it chances are you'll probably read it and know that the oval office is still the highest position in the land as well as on magazine stands. and that's going to do it for the news for now but for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america r t dot com slash usa.

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