until we do a better job communicating our values and building relationships we're going to be faced with this level of instability it is the testimony we've all been waiting for hillary clinton heads to capitol hill to account for her agency's actions during and after the attack in benghazi it was a day filled with drama but did anything actually come from the discussion will question more. was the u.s. trade representative ron kirk has announced his plans to step down from his post next month what this means for the trans-pacific partnership negotiations and american trade coming up. they think they can pursue this and get away with this.

because the society is not on the side an r t exclusive is the man known for creating a mega havoc on the internet now kim dotcom is launching a new internet venture are to travel to new zealand for a one on one with this elusive businessman and we'll have part of that interview. is wednesday january twenty third at five pm in washington d.c. i'm christine and you're watching our team let's begin this hour with the big story out of washington today the testimony of secretary of state hillary clinton on capitol hill about the september eleventh two thousand and twelve attacks on the consulate in benghazi libya you might remember four americans were killed in those attacks including u.s. ambassador christopher stevens. as i have said many times i take responsibility and

nobody is more committed to getting this right i am determined to leave the state department and our country safer stronger and more secure there are several interesting aspects of this including the timing now as we know secretary clinton was unable to testify last month due to illness but several lawmakers have been calling for her to testify before the november election and said they were told they'd have to wait after the election after even the inauguration is that actually and to what would be one of secretary of clinton's final days in her post a lot of people wondering what really was the point of having her testify at all or was there one since it was after the election and after the inauguration many lawmakers took the opportunity instead to sing her praises we thank you we thank you for your outstanding and dedicated service to this nation. and we are proud of you i think we all do respect the tremendous amount of hard work that

you've put forth over the last four years you probably traveled more than any secretary of state in and history madam secretary you have represented our country with tremendous strength and poise i want to start by just thanking you for your remarkable leadership the secretary of state one of many stops in the million miles that you've traveled now it's times the questioning did get a little more serious and legitimate points were raised including one by illinois senator dick durbin i do want to make one point for the record here about whether the american people are told everything right away in the right way so that they can be fully informed and i'd like to refer to five words for them to reflect on your rocky weapons of mass destruction. we were told by every level of government here there were rocky weapons of mass destruction the justify a war the invasion of the united states we're still searching for those weapons

check this out check out senator john mccain's response as well as secretary of state clinton nodding smiling a little bit they seem in part to be a little amused by the notion that libya and iraq could possibly be compared here there are other examples of what became a heated hearing at times lawmakers repeatedly questioned secretary clinton about one of the major issues here the question of security was it good enough why weren't requests for more security met with any action here was one exchange following that line of questioning. with specific security requests they didn't come to me i had no knowledge of them had i been president at the time and i found that you did not read the cables from benghazi you did not read the cables from besar stevens i would have relieved you of your post i think it's inexcusable. well the question of whether the blame ultimately lies with secretary clinton the

nation's top diplomat remains unresolved but benghazi won't be her only legacy take a look at this pew poll of other countries views on the united states it's clear that the u.s. has risen in the esteem of most countries since the end of the george w. bush era however the final column on the right that you see there that shows that the hype and promise of the obama administration may have overshadowed its reality in many regions of the world so as far as today's hearings will they result in any meaningful changes or was it just an opportunity for grandstanding on capitol hill well we don't quite know the answer to that but as always we're going to keep you posted. u.s. trade representative ron kirk has announced he'll be stepping down during his time in office he oversaw one of the most significant trade negotiations in recent history the trans-pacific partnership or t.p. pay which is still going on around her his office has made an issue that despite

his departure t.p. negotiations will continue we want to talk more today about what they may entail but first a closer look at the trans-pacific partnership itself there are currently nine countries involved in negotiations at this time united states australia brunei dar es salaam chile malaysia new zealand peru singapore and vietnam mexico and canada were also invited to participate there are a number one number of things that would do and we laid out a few for you first of all it would link all of those countries involved together in what would be designated a free trade zone investor disputes could also be removed from u.s. courts and then there's a provision in which criminal sanctions for copyright infringement could be adopted and finally temporary reproductions of copyrighted work without copyright holders authorisation would be treated in the future as copyright infringement so i want to take a look at some of the implications of the transfer to. partnership with celeste drake

trade and globalization policy specialist with the a.f.l.-cio and celeste i know a lot of these meetings thus far have been done behind closed doors so there's not a whole lot that we do know but i want to get your take on what we know so far about the t.p. p. if it continues as it's been going who would be the winners who would be the losers . we don't know part of the problem is we don't know how much we don't know but what we do know there have been public statements there's information available on the united states trade representatives website there have been some leaked tax of and if they're correct they give you a. feeling of what may or may not be in it but in general it looks like it's going in the same direction as past u.s. trade policy specifically the nafta free trade agreement the captive free trade agreement the more recent korea free trade agreement and in those agreements the big winners are the multinational u.s. corporations some workers fair fairly well many workers found that they lost their

jobs and that their wages were suppressed so in general it's sort of a you know the rich get richer and the poor get poorer type agreement so these major corporations would be able to you know outsource their those jobs to other countries a little easier some of the workers in this country. could see there are jobs lost that's what you're saying absolutely and that's what we're afraid of and we think that free trade can be great and could be really beneficial for creating economic growth for spring new development new investment new jobs but it really depends on the rules and if the rules for this agreement really follow the rules of past agreements it will do that and when it does particularly for investment and for offshoring is it gives a foreign investor rights in a country that a domestic investor doesn't have and it allows them to take their disputes and their complaints over how the government has or hasn't treated them to these international arbitration forms and rather than to u.s. courts of just exactly it's interesting when you to kind of take

a look at the countries involved in this and i think a lot of people when they say you know the united states and australia and then they look at some of these other countries and they say you know this is an interesting mix here do you think you know the involved countries says anything about the negotiations and what's to be expect. well definitely and first i want to add that mexico and canada have participated in their first round of negotiations in december so they are and they are and ok they are definitely but if you look at countries particularly like vietnam for many multinational corporations vietnam is the new china it's sort of the new export platform with even cheaper wages and in terms of labor in terms actory is ok exactly so we know that there's a big interest to sort of get economically into vietnam and if that creates good economic growth and good things for vietnamese workers that can be a good thing but if it continues sort of labor repression wage suppression polluting the environment that's not really good for american workers or the people

of vietnam i want to get your response because a lot of people look at the t.p. they look at what's going on and they say you know we are in two thousand and thirteen it's a globalized world this partnership is about integration. talk about that sort of argument that's being used in favor of these negotiations well that's your economic integration can scare a lot of people it can make some people feel better but it really is sort of setting in place these rules that allow for these globalized supply chains a circuit board is made here. you know why are some made here there are some old in another place and again that all is not necessarily bad or good in and of itself but it's the profits from all of that how are they shared and how are they distributed and who do the rules really benefit and if it's really just locking in place the current model that's really corporate benefits and not much for workers then that wouldn't be good for workers

a whole lot of people very unfamiliar you say t.p. they have no idea what you're talking about i want to lay out just really quick a timeline of sort of what's transpired so far regarding this transpacific partnership the u.s. first entered negotiations for the new t p p back in march of two thousand and eight that was when president george w. bush was still in off. yes so far there have been fifteen rounds of negotiations conducted and looking ahead just about two months from now negotiations will continue to take place in singapore so celeste just wondering you know what do you expect to take place in this next round we think the next round is going to be pretty critical there are some very controversial issues as you mentioned intellectual property investment there's also another chapter on state owned enterprises and it's a different many asian countries operate on a different economic model than the united states most of our large corporations are private and strictly private in asia a lot of them are heavily subsidized integrated with the government and it creates an unlevel playing field and that's another one where the united states is

proposing let's have fair rules of competition and obviously some of the countries that are in and afraid of the new model are saying no so of all of these very critical and controversy all chapters if progress is made the agreement could be completed this year as ron kirk said is his goal but if not a lot of progress is made this thing may drag on well into the future any to any idea how the t.p. once it is completed will impact you know the average american the average malaysian or will it will definitely impact average workers in all of these countries in ways that are sometimes subtle and sometimes not so subtle it may be that more of the products that you buy are stamped made in malaysia made in brunei than they are currently but it also if america continues to lose more of its manufacturing base that means it loses more of its tax base which means for public services there's less money and so less money going into schools and roads and libraries and all of the things that americans hold very dear so and it's not

necessarily always easy to link those things immediately to trade agreements but they do and there are other issues like what are your rights with respect to copyrights and patents food safety and are the foodstuffs that we're importing as safe as if they were. and here these are all really relevant questions important to working families in all of the countries i've certainly sat in on several hearings on capitol hill discussions regarding free trade it is interesting how often you get you know workers that used to be employed for example in auto manufacturing and deployed in detroit the issue of trade is central to so many sectors of this society and it really has caught sort of changed the way our you know economy is laid out appreciate having you on the show very knowledgeable put this into terms i think a lot of people can understand celeste drake trade and globalization policy specialist with the a.f.l. c.i.a.o. well in the wake of the horrific shootings at an elementary school in newtown connecticut there's been

a whole lot of talk about guns and the rights of gun owners in america it is a constitutional right after all as laid out in the second amendment but what exactly did the framers mean when they said a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed it gave forty seven after all didn't exist back then but slavery did tom hartman host of the big picture here on our t.v. wrote this recently he said by the time the constitution was ratified hundreds of substantial slave uprisings had occurred across the south blacks outnumbered whites in large areas and the state militias were used to prevent both to both prevent and to put down slave uprisings as dr bogeys points out slavery can only exist in the context of a police state and the enforcement of that police state was the explicit job of the militias that's one theory of course there are many others and we want to bring in eric foner to talk more about this in general eric is

a professor of history at columbia columbia university eric talk to me a little bit about the second amendment of course it's part of the bill of rights passed a whole long time ago talking do you do you buy this this theory about slavery or is that a little bit of an oversimplification. i think there's something to it definitely of course remember slavery would still exist existed in the northern states at that time it was on the way out most of the states so and it was but it was pretty small so if you factor in the northern states the need for a militia to protect slavery doesn't really apply but i think in the south it's absolutely correct the white community was armed and they were armed to police the slaves that was essential in a slave society so the right to bear arms was something that white people enjoyed black people did not enjoy it slaves didn't enjoy it nor did most free negroes in the south so i think that has something to do with the passage of the second amendment it's not the whole story but it's an it is an important part how was the

second amendment and interpreted when it was first ratified because it seems like we don't see these well regulated militias anymore i know we don't have much of a militia we have a national guard but it's not like it was back then and the militia was not very well regulated most people who went to militia meetings they sat around drinking and playing cards and that was about it but the right to you know the right to bear arms was important to americans in the context of a militia that's absolutely right you know they did not want to standing on me like we have today a large force of permanent soldiers the you know before the revolution people had been in these militias the revolution was started by militias up at lexington and concord and the idea was citizens would be able to defend their rights if necessary by having arms but you know that was a that was a legacy of the fight against the british a faraway monarch who the americans felt was you know was trampling on their rights

once you have an elected government that represents the people then the whole role of a militia changes is no longer they have to defend the rights of the people the government represents the people so how it was interpreted is open to a lot of question but the main point is only very recently have the courts. interpreted this as a universal right of individuals to own guns the second amendment it clearly states that people should own guns within the context of being a member of a militia but very few people along guns in the united states they are members of militias rebels or you want to i mean your historian i mean what made it change what you know change the public perspective as a whole what made the courts change the interpretation well the courts have only changed that interpretation very very recently it's only in the last ten years that the supreme court which is very conservative nowadays has picked up this idea that there is

a basic right of individuals to own guns irrespective of militias national guard and everything i think this is just an example of how the current supreme court has been pursuing a very conservative agenda in numerous areas and this is one of them. so you know the notion of gun control of regulations of guns was not controversial until rather recently and there are you know many many examples of states and localities that have stricter regulations on guns it's only in the last ten years the supreme court has said no you can't really do that and as i say that's just a conservative agenda that has been adopted by by the currents of the supreme court we also have groups like the national rifle association they claim over and over again that they're protecting american second amendment rights would you call that claim historically accurate. well as i said the second amendment hasn't actually been a subject of a lot of jurisprudence until very recently. the national rifle association claims

to speak for people you know many many americans own guns obviously they like to hunt they want to protect themselves the issues today tend to focus not on whether you should have a rifle and go out and shoot a deer or somewhere but whether people should have the right to own submachine guns assault weapons i don't think you can go after a deer with a k. forty seven or if you do it seems like a fairly unfair way of hunting. so are you allowed to own any weapon you want i mean should people have cannons you know bazookas nuclear weapons the national rifle association seems to think there should be no limit whatsoever on the weaponry that an individual can you know amass in their home but that i think is not at all what the founding fathers when they put the second amendment in to the constitution did not envision people stockpiling large amounts of very dangerous weapons in their homes that's not what the second amendment is about professor

farming adams's story and you are able to dick take the long view so to speak looking at historical trends what do you think is next for americans right to bear arms can history bring on any i think we've gone about as far as we can in the direction of every single person having arms and having the right to bear arms it seems that the. i would expect the pendulum to swing back a little bit the tragic events we've seen in the last few weeks i think of shocked a lot of americans into a kind of realization of the danger of having so many guns just floating around the society as everybody knows we have what is it ten fifteen thousand people killed every year in the united states by gunfire some of that a suicide some of that is people assaulting other people some of it is accidental a kid picking up a gun and i. i was in accidentally shooting it yeah last i read i think it was even as much as thirty thousand per year so whatever it is it's absurdly large it's far

more than the number of americans who've been killed in afghanistan or iraq or in these wars and you know it's far more than any other civilized country in the world if you go to places like britain or japan or france the number of people killed each year with firearms may be one hundred or something like that it's not thirty thousand so i think there is a growing recognition that this is gotten out of control i think you will always have people who like to hunt fine you know like to go to firing ranges and shoot but the tremendous proliferation of weapons is something i think that will have to be controlled certainly an interesting and important discussion to it's i have as the you know conversation around guns continues to go strong here we appreciate having you on the show eric foner professor of history at columbia university thanks so much good to talk to you sure and there's been a rush on guns and ammo ever since the sandy hook massacre guns are big business

after all especially in nevada where tourists are increasingly flocking to gun ranges where they can shoot military style rifles artie's ramona window shows us how gun tourism is actually booming. thank you the sound the machine gun fire is constant inside the gun store. las vegas is known as an adult playground and gun ranges are increasingly becoming the choice for tourists this is not a shooting range it's an amusement park many of these military style weapons are banned in other countries making it more exciting for international visitors every time i come to vegas i kind of enjoy this place so right now i brought my family for the first time. from an a k forty seven to an a r fifteen you can shoot pretty much any gun you want here in las vegas people come from all over the world to sin city to fulfill their gun fantasies. this group is from italy but i

think something that's a huge thing worldwide that happens. that has exploded this this year in the last year we've had six. competitors open ranges offer various fantasies from zombie shooting packages to shotgun weddings gun fire entertainment is more popular than ever that concerns gun control advocates you know there is little bit of an issue when you clam arise the entertainment value of cards that may trivialize the safety nature of guns because guns are a very serious thing we. want to cut down many recent calls for gun control have caused a rush for guns and ammo the public is likely or believes they're likely to lose the ability to buy certain types of guns that of course makes the public want to buy those certain types of guns now it appears in about his gun culture is becoming a bigger part of its tourism economy. in

las vegas ramon the lindo r t. i want to go now to a story you'll see only here on r.t. came down com founder of the file sharing website mega upload had a huge party recently on his new zealand campout compound to celebrate the launch of his new site mega it was exactly one year after mega upload was shut down r.t. america was invited and decided to attend we sent our team web producer andrew blake and he was able to sit down and speak to kim dot com and he brings us this look. they com plane me for the actions of third parties here is internet pioneer kim dot com holding court in his mansion but in the last year he has faced an entirely different kind of trial one year ago exactly kim dotcom was here it is house and coatesville new zealand when authorities came in on helicopters broke into the house arrested him for his assets shut down his website and essentially

put the rest of his life in jeopardy well for first few months ken was under house arrest which is usually quite difficult but then again when you have a hedge maze in your backyard i have magine that. might not be all that terrible but i'm sure you do in new york january twentieth two thousand and twelve dot com was at the guesthouse of his mansion the most expensive property in the country when local police conducted a high profile rest in cooperation with the f.b.i. the u.s. department of justice had just filed an indictment against dot com a german millionaire who changed his name from kim schmitz in two thousand and five if they allege that the website he ran mega upload was a criminal enterprise a simple file sharing site mega upload allowed users to take large documents and send them around the world with ease d.o.j. describe the site differently though and said it encourage widespread copyright infringement that had duped the movie and music industry out of half a billion dollars i'm not successful because people have used my gabino word for copyright infringement and what everyone understand there has been mess if amounts

of legitimate uses on megaupload you know you don't believe that fifty million with that they all just phones for airing piracy that's wrong a lot of people have used it to back up their data you know to send five acquitting to a friend so young artists have used it to get traction get downloads to get no one you know there was a lawful for the chid him and he was on they got upload later this year the justice department will attempt to extradite dot com his associates to the united states where there they could be sentenced to decades in prison the extradition treaty is . it doesn't really allow extradition for copyright so what they did they threw some extra charges on top and one of them is rocketeer ring where they basically say we. can and we set up our internet business to basically all crime network that was set up and structured the way it was just to do criminal

copyright infringement one year after authorities came in with guns blazing dot com seems far from defeated museum officials have largely considered the raid on lawful and he says the united state's case is falling apart day by day instead of just letting things pile up though dot com is determined to keep on going on the anniversary of his arrest in the seizure of mega upload dot com unveiled his newest endeavor mega here from his coatesville home nothing about kim dotcom is small not his bank account or his size or even his parties but when it comes to unveiling his new project it's not even big it's a mega when dot com launched mag over the weekend two hundred fifty thousand users registered with the site in the first two hours something he says is unheard of for a startup he has built from scratch all facing extradition but when you're kim dot com things rarely seem to be out of reach a few hundred people flew in from around the globe to help launch mego with an elaborate party included indigenous dancers pyrotechnics

a recreate of last year's raid and of course an explanation of what is new site is all about just like his last project mega allows users to upload files and easily share them with others after having his entire life investigated by international authorities though dot com says is the term to make sure that anyone that wants to do business on the internet can do without being brought under the looking-glass if they come to attack us it's just going to backfire except the like the megaupload case that the shutdown of our side backfired already mess with me and it's just going to get worse for them if they think they can pursue this and get away with this. they are wrong because the society is not on the site everyone who uses the internet knows what's going on here one year after his arrest dot com maintains his innocence and blames the justice department and obama administration for ruining his business and leaving over two hundred employees without jobs at the same time though he cautions others around the world about the unlawful surveillance he says

he was subjected to during the f.b.i. investigation that's one of the main reasons in fact that is news site mega encrypts everything privacy is a basic human right. but it has become increasingly difficult to communicate private when he wasn't entertaining guests with live entertainment complimentary cocktails and for this reporter a ride in a helicopter dot com uses party not just as a launching pad for mega but as a means to caution against what is becoming of the internet in the next five years dot com says he wants to have half of the web encrypted privacy is about much broader values than just how these things it's supposed to shuman need for refuge from the eye of the community and the importance of maintaining the balance of palm beach to individuals and the state. magpie beliefs and your right to privacy.