coming up on r t the guantanamo bay hunger strike reaches its three month mark how much longer will this last and how we get to this point we'll dive into the topic just ahead. the syrian war might have turned very seriously a corner that actually shows reports surfacing of the use of chemical weapons who is behind sarin gas that question might not have a straightforward answer a deeper look at the latest developments coming up. on the private space industry continues to shoot for the stars from trips to the international space station to possible asteroid mining and even putting people on mars look at the effort to make money in the new space race.

it's monday may sixth at five pm in washington d.c. hi meghan lopez and you are watching our t.v. . well starting off this hour out of the shadows of military limbo and into the spotlight of american political debate for years the government has ignored the cries to close guantanamo bay and to end the indefinite detention as well as the torture at that facility but u.s. officials and the american public are now paying attention what did it take well and massive drawn out hunger strike involving over sixty percent of the detainees twenty three of whom are being force fed through nasal tube the guantanamo bay hunger strike is entering its third month and still no end in sight negotiation attempts up until this point have failed and the situation is becoming a life or death decision for many of these detainees so what will it take to end this standoff well i was joined earlier by colonel morris davis he is a professor of law at howard university and i started off by asking him what

options the administration has to ending this growing hunger strike. well i think right now the administration has two bad choices either force feed people which is in violation of medical ethics or just and then let them die i think the solution is is to honor their word and close guantanamo is you know as you know a majority the men at good move been cleared to be transferred out you know eighty six of the one sixty six so they could they landed a plane but the fifty six humanities that have been clear to you many government wants back send them home and i think that would in the hunger strike if they saw some positive steps forward and not just being forgotten for years and us talk about the short term demands of days of these detainees as i understand it at first started off with them just wanting their cells not be starched and for proper or improper handling of their holy text the koran is there anything else that's coming out of death well i think part of it is as well as then the just being forgotten you know they've spent you know in some cases more than a decade sitting there in many cases cleared for years and being held because of

their citizenship and i think it was a sense of frustration so that started over the searching of the krantz not think it spread beyond that to an opportunity to get some attention called to their plight. barry on america that it takes putting your life in jeopardy to get anyone to pay attention at the same time we have seen so many people we've heard of cases of detainees dying while in their custody at guantanamo bay and that didn't change policy so if one or two or several of these inmates and these detainees actually die well it changed anything well i hope it didn't come to that i mean you're right more people have died at guantanamo they've been convicted at guantanamo so i mean that's not the way to find out the population is by attrition but you know the president brought this up last week at his press conference said he still wants to close it said all the right things laid out all the right reasons for why it's a bad idea we started the petition to be a week tomorrow and we've had almost one hundred fifty thousand people that changed

or backslash close g. t.m.o. that have come on board and said it's time to close guantanamo so there there is no good reason to keep it open to me fiscally policy was legal was there is no good reason to keep kuantan him open now you brought up two good points one thing i do want to ask you is why do you think it is that president obama keeps reiterating this promise to close it and yet no action has been done what could he or the american people possibly gain from those reiterated promises just the words are going to do anything it's going to take some action and he's to the right word since two thousand and seven that you know he wants to close guantanamo there's some abomination to discredit to the country that does a lot of harm as a recruiting tool for extremists so he said the right thing for a number of years and who perhaps maybe was happen predicting maybe as he said it president bush's library dedication where people discuss the bush legacy maybe it made him stop and think about the obama legacy does he want to be remembered as the a president that condemned guantanamo and then for eight years kept it open now i

do want to bring up a chart kind of showing the number of inmates that are currently residing in the guantanamo bay detention facility so as i can see from the tip. it's not here to two thousand and thirteen the numbers have gone down there are still people there but the numbers are going down is this possibly a forward movement in your opinion are is it the fact that it's still open a black mark on the u.s. well i think it's a black mark on the u.s. i mean if you look recently china issued a human rights report criticized the u.s. for guantanamo you had president putin in russia you know when the u.s. blocked diplomats from coming here he said who's the u.s. to criticize us when they have kuantan him out. and he said there's no real upside to keeping it open and we have prisons here that can handle the detainees that need to be confined we have federal courts that have successfully prosecuted hundreds of terrorism cases all the military commissions have floundered for eleven years we've

got eighty six people that have been cleared for transfer we need to send them home the ones that can't leave like the chinese weekers for muta took in some detainees the u.s. has never taken or won and we're supposed to be the home of the brave who had to be at least as brave as bermuda and finally i want to ask you about your petition very quickly you said that you have one hundred fifty five thousand signatures is that we're approaching one hundred fifty i looked just told that it was one hundred forty seven thousand and change but we're approaching one hundred fifty thousand after less than a week that's quite impressive and after one hundred thousand signatures if i'm correct the president has to respond right now this is on changed out of work are you going to move it to a place where the president has to respond i don't know i mean hopefully this will make make him pay attention that this is just. you know the liberal left and we've been a lot of people that have come on board inside retired admirals retired judge advocate general's of the service retired state department intelligence community folks nick kristoff from the new york times a lot of folks have come on board and sign this petition urging him to keep his

word and close guantanamo once and for all if there's one thing that we are learning is that this is just the beginning of a very long process in order to close that we're going to have to say how it develops but obviously these men and these detainees that are on the hunger strike are now. backing down colonel morris davis he is a professor of law at howard university thank you for joining us well in the fog of war there is always a lot of confusion about right and wrong and who's responsible for what atrocities the line between good and bad and heroes and villains is oftentimes blurred the civil war in syria is no exception the united nations independent commission of inquiry on syria has compiled evidence suggesting that rebel forces and not president assad's army might have been the ones using chemical weapons the investigators interviewed doctors and with victims and also witnesses about the use of the nerve agent sarin gas in the country and investigator carla de ponty actually told the b.b.c. that there is quote strong concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertibly proof

that rebels were using the gas since then the u.n. commission of inquiry on syria has stated that they have not yet had this confirmed and i was joined earlier by our to correspondent on a stasi a charkha and i asked her to tell us a little bit more about this commission and what it is and what the latest developments are out of that country. well let me get these developments are certainly very significant when it comes to the whole syrian crisis this commission in particular it was established back in august two thousand and eleven it's geneva based and comprises really big experts are veterans of human rights and the goal of this commission is to follow the human rights allegedly human rights violations taking place in syria and particularly with this latest revelation we are in fact hearing from the commission saying that they have gathered enough testimony from casualties and local doctors on the ground treating the injured in syria basically showing enough proof enough suspicions as they say to claim that the rebel groups

the opposition groups are using sarin gas a chemical weapon considered a weapon of mass destruction on the ground this is of course against international law and they did themselves say that they are kind of flabbergasted by discovering this and in fact they're not saying that it's the syrian government as the u.s. has been claiming that's using chemical weapons but in fact the opposition groups so honest also when can we expect those of findings to come out the final decision from this inquiry. well let me get this is a work in process of course as we both mentioned this is not been firmed up yet and they're working on finding more evidence at this point and their next report is expected to come out next month which should shed more light on exactly what because we still they haven't said anything on when these instances took place and how they took place so this is yet to come but you know it's important to note that all of this comes at a time when just days after the u.s. started really beating its chest saying that the syrian government the assad regime

has been using chemical weapons with you know so-called as they called it a varying degrees of confidence so that this is definitely a big game changer and if this position the claim from this international commission is supported by facts and if they do this is definitely a good big game changer when it comes to this. in crisis i don't want to talk to you on one hand we had president obama come out last week and say the same exact thing that you just said that there are varying degrees of confidence that he's not willing to put all of his eggs in one basket and say concretely that this is being used by the all assad regime but in the press conference today white house press secretary jay carney was skeptical of this report's findings so why is the u.s. outwardly rejecting this report without possibly looking into it further maybe you know that's a good question in fact yes the white house statement was that they're highly skeptical about this latest reports but you know the answer to this question is simple the united states has a specific kind of line of interest in this in this crisis and of course remind our

viewers there has been a major kind of standoff between russia china versus the u.s. and the west in particular at the united nations where they were trying to kind of find some kind of solution to the syrian crisis because russia has been blocking any attempts from the u.s. and the west to try to put in place a regime change in syria and so you know it's not in america's interest to support this line too to say that it's actually the rebels and not the syrian government as they have been claiming that is now said to have been used chemical weapons and of course also importantly this week u.s. secretary of state is going to be in moscow trying to argue the case that chemical weapons are used by the syrian government in moscow to convince more to try to convince moscow to change its position something that's going to be very hard to do with especially these latest statements and on a stasia we heard over the weekend of republican senators actually come out with the graham and john mccain and mike rogers all saying that the red line has been

crossed and that u.s. needs to take decisive action they all were very hesitant to say that boots need to be on the ground but that yes decisive action needs to happen and considering the fact that this information is still coming out a lot of critics are comparing this to the weapons of mass destruction claims in iraq can you talk a little bit more about that. right me and that's an interesting comparison definitely one that comes to mind because the iraq war was started under false pretenses claiming the existence of weapons of mass destruction that were never to be found later and in this particular case again we're hearing the w m d cheers used as a pretense to kind of you know rally up the public opinion when it comes to the syrian crisis and certainly the comparison is legitimate and it is quite dangerous according to many analysts to try to take any further steps without establishing exactly who it was and how and what kind of chemical weapons if any were used so definitely you know while the republicans are cheering the usual to win certainly

many people are asking for cautious and the cautiousness and that's certainly something that hopefully the officials will consider. specifically here in the united nations for one that was r.t. correspondent ana stasio with that report and this you and independent u.n. commission report isn't the only development coming out of syria over the weekend israel launched an airstrike on a military complex just outside of the syrian capital of damascus. at least forty two soldiers were killed in the attack according to information coming from the military hospitals but the exact number has yet to be released this is the third air strike israel has actually conducted on the country this year although the government has yet to formally confirm its involvement in the strikes now in the past israeli officials have said that they will use force to prevent the transfer of advanced iranian weapons into the hands of hezbollah militia for more

our national correspondent paula slayer reports. the israeli military is still refusing to confirm or deny reports that it was responsible for these try to fly in the in the early hours of sunday morning but if you ask just about any israeli here almost all of them will tell you that they do believe that the israelis were responsible for that operation while it's still not clear exactly how many people were killed it is expected that more than one hundred died on sunday morning now thirty one has said that it will not accept a breach of its sovereignty or security and they have turned the artillery to face towards israel the syrian deputy foreign minister sides that are next ad says that the attack is a declaration of war and as such syria will respond in its own time and its own weight we are being told that serious is that options on the table although no details have been given as to what exactly this means iran which has a defense agreement with syria has also said that it will respond and it is urging

neighboring countries to stand up to what of course israeli aggression now the syrian president bashar assad has reportedly given the clear orders to will miss operators as well as anti aircraft weapons officers to react to what he says are any unknown objects were godless of that type or based force immediately and without any reference to a high administration that is also reported to have said that he will allow any palestinian organizations operating in his country to wage attacks against israel from the golan heights so that is why you have something that is all seems to have shot itself in the foot essentially because now the northern israeli border is very vulnerable it's looking much more vulnerable than of was just a few days ago but the israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu has not commented on the issue the only comments he's made since sunday is that israel israeli security is paramount now is wrong and says that it was targeting

a military convoy that the israelis say was making its way from he ran. through syria to his villa in lebanon the syrians say something quite different they say that one of the targets was a military research same time on the outskirts of damascus damascus on monday evening two mortars fell from syria and landed on the israeli side of the golan heights now the israeli army has lodged a complaint with the united nations although they say that they don't believe that the shells were purposely directed at israel but would rather stray and israel has opened the no fly zone that it imposed in the north of the country or the lebanese media is reporting right now that israeli air force planes are operating in lebanese airspace the lebanese army has significantly fortified itself along the lebanese israeli border and unique for the united nations interim force in lebanon it has heightened the lives of its troops in the area to see our team television.

while the rest of the country continues the debate over responsible gun ownership in the wake of tragedies like sandy hook and the most recent incident of a five year old boy accidentally shooting and killing his two year old sister the national rifle association of america has elected a new leader sixty four year old alabama lawyer jim porter was picked by members to be the new president of the association over the weekend outgoing president david keene described this gun lover as a perfect match for the job now if there's one thing that we actually know about mr porter it is this he dislikes president obama almost as much as this man loves his guns here's part of a recent speech he delivered i guess you should do all these people with this they phrased it we get it won't you say well you know you had a thing for going over so let me tell you some of the. ministration. of freedom. that a min. and he certainly isn't one to keep his opinions to himself as you just saw

first of all he refuses to call the civil war anything other than the war of northern aggression as you just heard he called president obama a fake president and he says the n.r.a. was founded to teach civilians how to use military style weapons in the civil war porter has been involved with the n.r.a. for decades his father was the n.r.a. president from one nine hundred fifty nine to nine hundred sixty and he is sure to be a force to be reckoned with as the gun debate heats up in the coming weeks and months in this country. shooting for the stars paying out of pocket ever since president obama decided to end the shuttle program we have watched one private group after another step up to fill nasa shoes there have been some historic and exciting developments for space exploration and americans are beginning to get that sense of all back again when it comes to the possibilities that the final frontier has to offer r.t. correspondent liz wahl flew down to new mexico to find out what one of these

private space programs is working on here's her report. here in the remote desert of the old west an entrance to the final frontier. spaceport america and southwest new mexico was described as the world's first purpose built commercial space port sort of similar to an airline industry only this is the space line industry conditions here are ideal for a commercial space port we are at an altitude of bor thousand six hundred feet so for space travelers that means the first mile is free as you can see it's a very remote location with a low population and over the san andreas mellons is the white sands missile range so that is where the u.s. army test launches missiles making this location one of the only places in the u.s. with flight restricted so far the space ports main tenant is virgin galactic this version galactic gateway to space building is set to serve as their headquarters it

was built specifically for virgin galactic who is our incur tenant much like delta airlines is in atlanta. virgin galactic recently test launched its space ship two in the mojave desert it's a milestone for the company that plans to be the first to send paying customers on sub orbital joyrides their passengers are going to have quite a ride when they'll be able to experience weightlessness at that altitude take off their seat belts and float around a little bit so it's going to be really quite an experience the price tag for the out of this world experience two hundred thousand dollars so far hundreds of people have put in their down payments of twenty thousand dollars among them celebrities like ashton kutcher and angelina jolie a sign that has space travel becomes privatized the face of astronauts as we know it will change i believe they've sold virgin galactic has sold five hundred seventy five tickets to date and i believe that's more than all the people that have ever

been in space so it's pretty exciting to that think that. time is now as of now only the russian space agency has transported private citizens to space and only a handful of astronauts have been to space as part of a private venture greg olsen is one of them it was a life changing experience for me you know i launched on a russian soyuz rocket from kazakhstan. as you know nasa doesn't do private citizens into space the only way you can do that is through ross cosmos the russian space agency so i got to train in russia for six months for astronauts like olson the opening of space to private passengers is exciting especially as the future of government space programs in the u.s. is unser and other companies also are going to begin launches a next year or two so i think the opportunities for tourists are great companies like space x. early march they launch their dragon capsule capable of sending seven people to

a space station for now space entrepreneurs won't set an exact date for when they'll send the first paying passenger to space virgin galactic estimates it will happen in two thousand and fourteen but as the space race becomes more of a private business venture those with their eyes about the skies hope the competition will be healthy and i think it will help international cooperation because you know if there's anything competitive about it this is the kind of competition we should be having is that a lot being bombs at each other in new mexico. r.t. and joining me now to discuss in further jeff the future of space exploration is phil smith senior space analyst at the tory group thank you so much for joining us the people are very they were very upset at president obama when he did actually decided to end that space program the shuttle program that is it cost people jobs after all but could it be argued that this was just a kick in the bomb for the private industry and that's exactly what they needed to

get going and that's an absolutely reckoning and thanks for having you know. nasa has invested a fair sum on commercial cargo services for instance to the international space station with the belief that doing so will save the taxpayers money but that effort through space x. for example in orbital sciences corporation. these companies employ people to do that kind of work and as we see this year both companies have started to launch their rockets toward the i s s so there is definitely a lot going on and there's also development on the crew side as well and we expect those lights to begin around twenty sixteen or so now whenever scientists have explored places like the rain forest for instance they found a lot of room for profit and medicines and other developments that they've come upon is face the next big place for even bigger discoveries and huge profits i mean

you're saying it's saving money but could the government have even come in and taken some of this money. well to give you a sense of the size of the space industry worldwide it's about two hundred ninety billion dollars that includes government budgets as well as commercial revenues to give a sense of scale the telecommunications industry is about four trillion dollars so the space industry is large but in the context of other nation needs such as telecom it's a fairly small of that one hundred seventy billion is dedicated to satellite telecommunications mostly direct to home t.v. and broadcast television so. a lot of people do think that there's some money to be made in space and certainly satellite service is a proof that what we're seeing now is the industry is shifting toward making money cargo transportation crew transportation and those might enable further.

markets to develop including for example resource extraction and processing sure and we actually have a statistic that says that planetary resources that's one of these private spacecraft that this asteroid mining could actually be and multi-trillion dollar industry in the future but let me ask you a lot of people when they think of private space companies they think about launching people into space now what is the point of this and is it just kind of a way for them to pay for more serious missions. in a way it is for instance as we heard earlier the space ship to fly for a supersonic flight using a rocket like that that's licensed by for example the f.a.a. here in the united states. the idea is to start to. address the demand that's out there for people as you see about five hundred seventy five tickets already pre-sold but the idea behind the development of these vehicles which are sub orbital so they only go up to about one hundred ten kilometers and the jury

people that go up on their experience about five minutes. weightlessness but the idea is to develop experience turning around these vehicles quickly and launching them frequently each day and that informs how to develop more capable vehicles that could reach orbital. velocity as for instance and then those in turn could enable those markets i indicated earlier in terms of crew cargo transport to the moon for instance in your vast roys the resources that would be extracted up there game start would serve people on the ground here that are also understood to help establish people who would start to settle in space like on the moon and so forth and as you said obviously phase the private industries are learning a lot from these launches into sub orbital space and also nasa is potentially learning a lot i know that nasa said last week that it would award up to one hundred twenty five thousand dollars to acard astronautics for

a software system that would actually allow a spacecraft to maneuver autonomy fully in close proximity to near earth asteroids so it's not only going into private industry this is also going back into nasa right the findings that these places are finding that's absolutely right in fact that's a very good point you bring up nasa is role is to explore. high cost high high risk activity and then the commercial you could think of is kind of doing the backfill so for instance the commercial side of things is focusing in terms of orbital flight in launching satellites of course but also servicing the international space station which is about three hundred fifty kilometers above our heads and nasa is going further they're developing the space launch system a very large rocket their rivals that that was used to send humans to the moon that vehicle will come online around twenty eighteen to twenty twenty that vehicle will send cargo and people beyond low earth orbit. so so there's

a lot of exciting things happening out there there's also a lot of commercial flights that are karada russia as well as the year europe so there's quite a bit of activity quite a bit of activity in a lot of jobs as a result of that was quite an interesting and exciting time for the space industry both private and commercial phil smith who is a senior space analyst at the tories are effective for your research and your input thank you meghan. well if the common housefly annoys you to no end you could soon have another reason to be running around the house trying to swat things out of the sky here's why harvard scientists have been working now for decades in order to create a robo be a term of researchers from harvard school of engineering and appliance sciences recently released this video that you're watching right now it's a robo bees a first controlled flight it's about the size of a quarter and its wings flap up to one hundred twenty signs per second now the hope

is that these little devices will one day be used to do everything from environmental monitoring to crop pollination and even search and rescue operations also the u.s. military is looking into developing similar products of its own now this latest development really does put a whole new meaning to the phrase being a fly on the wall but that's going to do it for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america and don't forget to check out our web site or to dot com slash usa follow me on twitter at and i'm going to underscore lopez see right back here at eight pm eastern. is. it possible to navigate the economy with all the details such as dixon misinformation and media hype hokey view up to date by decoding the mainstream had

. it been your right. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so poorly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harvey welcome to the big picture.