if you trade ability. struggling with. late to become writers. who are. playing the waiting game six months ago today julian assange 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 thrusted back into the spotlight so will there be new gun restrictions here in the us a little bit the issue in just a moment and to the surprise of exactly no one time magazine named president obama the two thousand and twelve percent of the year so is this ritual of naming whoever

wins the presidency the person of the year just another waste of time. it's wednesday december nineteenth five pm in washington d.c. i'm maggie lopez and you're watching r.t. today marks the six month anniversary since wiki leaks founder julian assange onj took refuge in the ecuadorian embassy in london to refresh your memory a songe was granted political asylum in ecuador to escape the 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. and ecuador arcee correspondent on a stasia truck and takes a look back at what the past year has been like for julian a sausage. at 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. distinguish between them and we of course always. to increase individual privacy as well as overseeing corruption with. secrecy continuing to release secret cables put out not one but a million documents in the year two thousand and twelve they tried 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 museum history did not begin in december two thousand and ten and mohammed bouazizi 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 showed

a lot of focus and determination to be so productive and the oblique 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 book 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 for it 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. the u.s. is rubbing its hands that assad will eventually have to step foot outside be around

them to sweden for questioning for an alleged sexual assault and potentially extradited to america to face trial for belief in 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 has sparked a conversation with much wider implications in battle for the global population and about whether we want to live in an era of truth chains berenstein the rule of law what a whether america will continue down this course of acting as a rogue nation in terms of the real national security which i care about profoundly as an american this case is meaningless i mean nailing julian assange 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 leaks 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 there were in a different world there were no 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 paul was reluctant. to. make headlines. she knew that. after six months of the embassy songes case provides crucial insight into how our world will look moving forward julian will be remembered for what he did you know

someone who was quite courageous. decided to make these documents available once he had them to the world as that's he initially tried to do it in collaboration with some of the leading used those 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 to massage agrees and in a way what's happening to do it is on a particularly important except that it is part of a much wider process and that you took enough r.t. do you. now given the pace that things are moving out now joining us onto a likely spend the holidays in the embassy he'll be giving a christmas space to his supporters at the ecuadorian embassy in london tomorrow

evening. it's been just five days since an unspeakable tragedy forever changed newtown connecticut several of the children and teachers have been laid to rest in their final resting places and more funerals are still to come in the following days as president obama mentioned in 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 those victims were children with no way to defend themselves. now president obama did announce that he will be appointing vice president joe biden to lead an interagency panel to discuss the issue the president also addressed 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 vale then 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 in the u.s. and ask what can be done to curb gun violence in the country to do that i was joined earlier by jim soko yack and kevin powell kevin is the author of the book barack obama ronald reagan and the ghost of dr king blogs and essays i started off by asking jim who is pro guns what solution could curb the gun violence here's his response. twenty years virtually

all of the. democratic national convention which might as well be. called target rich environment. victims of mass shootings. the common denominator in all the. data. not talking about the numerous. things that if. it is the be pointed out two hundred. back. of. him i want to go ahead and stop you right there i can't help but to bring up two instances where that theory just doesn't hold water first is for her to wear major nidal hassan kill three people and hold on the me finish and i mean that was on a military base kill those people that had weapons to defend themselves in the second

instance i want to bring up well i finished second and says i want to bring up is that during the chaos of the tucson arizona shooting represent a representative gabrielle giffords there was an armed person on that scene who confused giffords aide for the realist 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. for good believe it or not the military in the room in the area where the shootings occurred everyone. allowed. on the military. i live. in georgia i go there all the time they're not allowed to tell. died are a lot of where the shooting occurred those tournaments. are so i have to

correct you there was a shooting about two or three days ago in fact that in the movie theater two people kill an off duty police officer into the. by the guy had. also the organ all shooting all right kevin i want 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 that will be able to get their hands on these weapons are people that break the law. 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 assassinated a million people in our country because of gun related deaths we are bitch about nine thousand gun related deaths a year which is far higher than any of the developed country in the world we're talking about countries like england like germany like for instance cetera we're talking about the 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 the print court decision on two thousand and five waited five point five us to have a rock art that's good dollars that the police have no legal obligation to provide protection all the connecticut shooting of the police showed up twenty minutes

after they boarded and upon making visual contact that's one issue to decide to and that's why you know. the thing about it is we're getting doc and. all these murders that occurred i got the criminal for getting a lot of the criminals got on the black market we know the government has done a poor job after a period 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. million incidents per year that. by brandishing a firearm in my case my favorite. eleven with a fifty brown bag with hydro shot. point. brandishing a firearm as provided by the private. what the best way for a woman to prevent. hanging with or around

a component 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 i'm going to start my erudite and i'm trying to keep the dialogue moving don't i don't get me wrong so something else to know kevin is that gun violence has gone down since one thousand and seventy just to kind of piggyback off of a point 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

conflicts of any kind i mean you know john 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 higher level of domestic violence miller against women in this country and many of these men have actually pulled the guns than 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 absolutely unacceptable and then he also to talk about issues of mental health and mental illness 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 we know that women didn't have the right to vote and have an empowered. 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 babies being murdered in

cold. blood i mean i need us to we need to think about this is no different than the florida girls were bombed while purring at a church in birmingham alabama in one nine hundred sixty three is as egregious as that and we can understand that we're now to the children to be jeopardised but is not a control gun a love we need sugar so that is a country and jim can i can i get your sponsor all of those things that that kevin just said well you know i agree with him part with some of the things that you know there's a variety of factors majority of the crimes 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 want to quote one of the founding fathers the strongest reason for that is to own firearms and protect them against tyranny in government you know the very fact that i hold that this is a real wake up to a three way gathering. and i have high pet magazine is

basically we have to take back our government you know the whole thing about it. what a disarmed population becomes an inflated population and the roots of gun control the very beginning of gun control laws were started when black americans were freed with the thirteenth amendment and wanted to prevent black people from having the ability to defend itself against and take take a. that was kevin powell activist and author of the book barack obama ronald reagan and the ghost of dr king blogs and essays and also gems to co-ax constitutionalist and freedom advocate. and we have left off earlier today the russians built of solar use spacecraft blasted off from the baikonur cosmodrome in kazakhstan it's mission to carry a new crew to the international space station the additions including the u.s. astronaut mash tom mashburn russian cosmonaut roman romanenko and

a canadian agency flight engineer chris hadfield once there the crew will join three others who have been manning the one hundred billion dollar research center since october this launch marks a bright spot in a recent rough patch for the russian space program just last year a profile meant to collect soil samples from mars successfully launched but failed to make orbit story and another mission involving a cargo ship carrying supplies headed toward the space station failed to leave earth crashing into siberia instead for the next five months the crew is scheduled to undertake two spacewalks and continue research abroad that aboard the space station the crew is slated to make it to the international space station this friday. still ahead on our team can the u.s. a lock you up without 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. you know. look

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i mean the guy who cares an awful lot for you sir are a fool you know what that is my self you don't want to listen to feature isn't the only ball that chris. can securely but it's. going to over to distract us from what you and i should care about because there are profit driven industry that sells us sensationalistic garbage he calls it breaking news i'm not me martin and we're going to break that.

iraq. welcome back it's one step forward two steps back for 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 trial the move was regarded as a huge surprise. 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 the new defense authorization bill so is this the end of indefinite detention as we know it or as the discussion of it anyway earlier today i was joined by tangerine bolen she is a founder and director of revolution truth and also one of the plaintiffs in the case against the measure and joined me earlier to answer that question 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 intentionally and one of the lawyers representing you karl mayor he had put he had said to the business insider yesterday i want to re 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 the advocates of freedom and liberty have prevailed in federal district courts and 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 yeah we hope we leave the appeal court i'm doing my can win there and leave it we don't win there and we certainly hope a supreme court case a critical case so it may go away the area. and the n.b.a. is approved every year though i mean getting his case to the supreme court is going

to take so much longer than that so what korea really expect to change and what kind of timeline to really expect it to change in well you know the upside of a fight 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're being if you will court in early january and possibly in a few supreme court sometime shortly thereafter so a lot of attention has been allowed on the country and around the world and as the government has been in court i don't know which law to use do it i guess hey you know you can use and be 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 initially 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 the answer to that falls out of the really opposite ends of the spectrum here i think that republicans although they pay lip

service to the idea of not. getting us that is as they're fighting this do they all they they all always they're on the side of national security and the fence 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 weigh either side of congress is really standing by any by the constitution i do want to mention though i don't know if you saw that arkie 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 i and three that i 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 strong civil liberties attorneys prior to the writing about and i meant that one it was highly discriminatory and only provided a legit coverage to u.s. citizen and 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 trials so although they were you know having a fact that it allows people to have a trial but it does give you a different that being in the military tribunals which means maybe it's really is the only thing that is available to people who are indefinite in government a team that we've seen in one town about. that can take five or ten years you can rot away in prison with 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 has rainbowland we appreciate your time she's the founder and director of revolution truth thank you. it's the moment we've all been waiting for drum roll please ladies and gentlemen the time magazine person of the year for twenty twelve is us president barack obama cue the confetti get the band to go ahead and play stars and stripes forever release the dogs of ok what in all seriousness this announcement is

it really all that surprising to you i mean he's the man who ever came crippling unemployment numbers to win back the presidency numbers so debilitating no incumbent president 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 killed osama bin laden so looking at all of those things doesn't 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 won the american presidential election that qualls us qualifies him for the honor we look at the history as the president president obama also earned 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 and again in two

thousand in fact every election year since one thousand nine hundred two has resulted in a u.s. president being honored with the person of the year title with only one exception president bill clinton he earned the title in one thousand nine hundred two was but was surpassed by aids researcher dr david ho as the man of the year in one thousand nine hundred six wow time must have had a lot of time on its hands back in one nine hundred ninety six. so call it predictable call it surprising but whatever you call it chances are you'll probably be reading the magazine and you'll know that the oval office the still the highest position in the land as well as on the magazine stands that's going to do it for now but for more of the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america and if you missed any part of today's show don't worry we post all of our segments online in full just go to our.