lol. coming up on our team despite mohamed morsi as removal from power the unrest in egypt rages on morning clashes have left scores dead more on the growing conflict up ahead the bradley manning trial resumes today today the army whistleblowers defense team begins to make their case we'll have a report from the court room coming up. whistleblowers are now revealing abuses by big banks bank of america is accused of giving employees bonuses and gift cards for a lying to homeowners and in-depth look at this story in today's show. it's monday july eighth five pm in washington d.c. i'm meghan lopez and you are watching r t well let's begin this hour in cairo where

protesters are protests are no closer to settling down after the egyptian military deposed president mohamed morsy and his government last wednesday instead to a protests are underway in the country some supporting morsi it in the muslim brotherhood and others backing the military and the opposition. at least fifty one people were killed in today's clashes alone bringing the death count to around one hundred and fiftie those are conservative estimates at least five children are among the dead meanwhile egypt's army chief sisi and his troops are attempting to restore order to the country using tactics that protesters say are tend to mount to outright suppression and egypt's top muslim cleric is now warning the people of an all out civil war earlier i was joined by our teams policy are in cairo for the very latest. well as you can see i'm standing here into his

way of a still it crowd here well those significantly smaller than it has been on previous evenings. the focal point this evening israeli army pro morsi demonstrators which are about a twenty minute drive away from where i'm standing they are calling what happened this morning the deaths of some fifty one people and some two hundred and fifty three people injured in a massacre what they saying is that they want the army to run search for what they say was the army's execution of a members we're hearing conflicting reports in terms of exactly what happened this morning the army saying that they were acting in self-defense but the muslim brotherhood supporters saying that they were attacked while quietly praying am in the predawn hours of this morning they needs to be some kind of clarity but certainly tension is running high in a lot of anger on the streets of egypt tonight now as i understand economists say the protests are not really that surprising can you explain why that is and also the financial toll that these protests are taking on the country.

will certainly be protests are political in nature that there and depends by the very real economic issues at this country faces if you look at the statistics some forty percent of egyptians below live below the poverty line which is some three dollars a day at the same time this country faces massive unemployment you have food prices that have hikes you have an economy that's not growing you have international investors that are pulling out against the backdrop of all of that this revolution ole for want of a better word these protests are costing the egyptian economy some one billion dollars a year now one of the reasons given for why mohamed morsi became so unpopular after just one year in office is partly because he spent their church trying to consolidate his grip on power on the country people here are saying he did not spend enough time addressing the real economic concerns that they have so this new

interim government that is being established is going to have to pace place a lot of attention and he cannot. concerns but first and foremost we need an interim government to be formed and here the interim president is trying to find a prime minister and to find other government ministers to make up this government that would be acceptable to all sides of the opposition as well as be the supporters of morsi so poll let's talk about that some egyptians are saying that they want a new constitution to be drafted first others are saying that they want to new election for us is there any idea what will happen first and what would possibly be better politically for the country in order to ensure stability. no there is really no clear indication of what goes next i mean this is uncharted water the one from the army is that they temporarily in control they say that they've dissolved the constitution they're going to call for fresh parliamentary and presidential elections at the same time they're going to put forward some kind

of road map the question is of course whether or not they stick true to their word and there is a lot of concern on the egyptian street that the army is not going to hand over to civilian rule but let's put that aside for a moment and assume that they are even if they do they need to be some kind of interim establishment in the meantime many in here as i say to you we have a problem with the current interim president two days before his announcement had just been appointed the head of the constitutional court here he needs to find a government that is satisfactory to all the parties the name mohammed el baradei is being bandied about he is the former head of the international atomic energy agency he's now being put forward as the deputy president there is a popular left wing lawyer being bandied about to be the possible prime minister a man by the name of ziad behind eldin but again because we have so many different conflicting political viewpoints it's going to be quite touchy to try and get everybody to agree to all of this and then what's the next step will the next step

whately is drafting a new constitution having me elections but you also going to have to deal with the very real. popular anger on the street and one of their political progress is hopefully going to happen one day you have the very real threat of further clashes so that it demonstrations and further instability here in egypt and paul i am very glad that you brought up the name mohamed el baradei because that name was thrown out as being prime minister the next prime minister wasn't thrown out it was announced and then rolled back and that was because of the salafi us nor party they were jetted him and spoke out against him so if the nor party is so much a part of this process this islamic group was so much a part of this process are we were creating history here what does this say about the role that islamist groups continue to play in that country. this is a sense that history is repeating itself on the point of mohamed el baradei there's a lot of skepticism around him by those who feel that he's ready for lack of

a better way of putting it a puppet of the ways you need to remember that he did stand for the presidency some two years ago he did not get in the criticism at that stage was that he's too tightly and lound with washington and it's sort of criticism that surfaces today there's a lot of anger on the streets towards the united states and it's noticeably growing i mean i was on the streets it say a week ago and it is never been much popular support full point for washington but certainly this morning when i was busy filming and talking to demonstrators they blame the united states a lot of them say that they pushed morsi to come to power particularly here into his square people are very anti america so mohamed el baradei fits into that camp and he doesn't have the credibility of a lot of egyptians when it comes to the islamists they too are very critical i mean they're divided amongst themselves you need to remember you have a party like the newer party which is the second largest islamic party in this country it's a hard time islam as a party and it was part of the negotiations up until this morning this morning when

you had the massacre which is essentially what the muslim brotherhood is calling. the deaths of more than fifty people in the party withdrew from talks and says it may not going to have anything to do with negotiations he needs to be international intervention that's what they're calling for there also and here i'm quoting the brotherhood saying that he needs to be urgent intervention before this country turns into a second syria so you have these allegations of the united states and the way speak involved as for the islamised is growing concerns that morsi was applying his own agenda he was taking this country into a more islamised state and of course this is a big concern not only for the christians in this country but for the move moderate islamist egyptians as well so there's a lot of issues at play here and i think the fairest way to summarize the situation is to say there's a lot of confusion a lot of anger and a lot of issues that an interim government needs to address and address quickly it's a very volatile situation and egypt right now and there is no what saying when there's

sort of these protests will end and who will end up in power at the end of it r.t. middle east bureau chief policy or. politics in protest of wind the country and threaten the stability in the region back here at home many viewers have little idea of how large or hell serious this revolts really are and that's all due to one man soaking up the media spotlight george zimmerman in fact c.n.n. and its sister station headline news have dedicated numerous hours each day to broadcasting uninterrupted parts of the trial the jury must decide if they were men is guilty of murdering seventeen year old trayvon martin or if he was acting in self-defense a rare moment for george zimmerman in the courtroom as this week's testimony could see more family on the stand the mothers of george zimmerman and trayvon martin testify still egypt's protests continue but there was one decisive moment when c.n.n. did focus on egypt when its reporters became the story i'm told we're told. here

. on the middle. and that's what appeared to be. in there in the middle of giving a super live report and he was some of the egyptian military. but it's not only the military that has issues with c.n.n.'s coverage someone created an anti c.n.n. facebook page and twitter account they posted on the facebook page that what's happening is a revolt not to be confused with a coup saying quote c.n.n. is giving you a totally fake and untrue picture of what is going on now in egypt and the anti c.n.n. sentiment goes further over the weekend protesters in new york took to the streets also over c.n.n. use of the word coup the supporters of the opposition argue that the egyptian

military kicked morsi and based on popular will for an in-depth analysis on the media coverage during the egyptian protests i'm joined now by iman else i.e. he's co-founder of existence is resistance hi there thank you so much for joining us so why is there so much opposition to c.n.n. in egypt in particular. there were several issues that led to people being angry at first they reported. morsi rally as being a pro morsi rally i believe they apologized for that but you know a lot of people are pissed off that c.n.n. was one of the first to call it a coup and a lot of people don't want to be called because there. he was taken down the way the way i feel about it is that i'm against morsi in the muslim brotherhood but at the same time i don't trust in terms of the military butting into the conflict basically and stopping to hijacking the revolution in my opinion but it has to go beyond the word coup because we also saw other news stations using that word during

the same kind of time when morsi wasn't being kicked out of power by the military so can you talk a little bit further zero about why what some possible reasons are. i think i think it's not just from what's happening recently it's just a history of mainstream coverage and c.n.n. coverage of the middle east for example egypt palestine and syria just in general their coverage has been really bad and basically supporting whatever the bomb administration wants the narrative to be so a lot of people are just angry about the coverage in general and some people may be angry that they're worried that if it is called a coup if it's promoted as a coup that egypt egyptian military may lose the two billion dollars subsidy that the united states gives them to maintain the peace treaty with israel so a lot of people who are pro military are worried about that you know i stand with the egyptian revolution of the protesters but i'm really worried about the military kind of hijacking it and stopping it for their own interest and it's not for the interest of the people in the revolutionaries who want legitimate change in their

country it's really for their interest the egyptian military want to maintain the status quo at any expense and they're willing to give up mubarak as we eventually saw and they're willing to give up morsi if that's going to silence the people and make them happy long enough for the military to maintain its economic control and control of the country basically they have the real say so a lot of people at the protests did have good intentions they were they were upset at the coverage they were upset at c.n.n. was out there you know i did see the video would be with him in who was interrupted by the military if he was confronted by protesters i wouldn't necessarily have been as upset but seen at the egyptian military came a shut them down i'm not sure how i feel about that well let's talk about the free flow of information in egypt right now we've heard a number of stations say that they're being stifled or shut down altogether so what is it is in your opinion the current state of the free flow of information. i think the egyptian military which has control over all control of the country is wants to control the narrative and want to control what is said about what's happening on

the ground i don't want to seem like i'm defending more student muslim brotherhood because i do not i supported the revolution against them and supported the overthrow of him by the people but i feel that the military intervened for their own interests to stop. will of the revolution from going further than it could have been then it should go and that's him in the economic reforms and reforms. open discussion on the border issue with the military doesn't want to discuss that they want to ultimate control and they want to control the flow of information i mean shutting down news stations or whatever that's what they're that's what they're doing that's what they're willing to do and silence oftentimes when we see this kind of revolt it's usually the media stations that are attacked first but let's go back to c.n.n. and talk about some domestic c.n.n. has obviously your new york versus c.n.n. international obviously domestically as i mentioned we're seeing wall to wall coverage of the george zimmerman case and other kind of things like this so can you talk about it describe international news models worst those domestic news models

and are we getting trapped in this idea of infotainment. exactly i mean to call c.n.n. really a new station that provides news is really in the real this is not really a news channel it's a sensationalist channel they want to promote things that they think will go readings you know do they no matter how very low just to get readings and covering this issue with the george zimmerman case and trayvon martin who was murdered by him but they're doing it for the wrong reasons as world it's all for ratings not because they want to debate in the country about us the race relations or about racial profiling or brutality or the crime that george zimmerman did they're doing it for the sensational coverage to you know to people to tune in to see what's going on you know but when it comes to international coverage but at the present to other countries they might have a little bit slightly you know more news let's say but at the same time to follow the narrative of the obama administration and before him the bush administration and that is whatever it is their interest in the middle east is whatever our israeli interest c.n.n.

is going to promote those interests unfortunately when it comes to the bottom line even the media is subject to trying to find that financial security and just to care about their jobs and their content i mean also you co-founder of the existence is resistant or thank you so much thank you. let's turn now to the other story that has dominated headlines for the past month that of n.s.a. leaker edward snowden and the government's massive secret surveillance program now over the weekend bolivia nicaragua and venezuela offered the former n.s.a. contractor asylum in a swale in president nicolas maduro and nicaraguan president daniel ortega made their offers public during separate speeches on friday however venezuela says it has not heard from snowden and set a deadline of today for him to respond now meanwhile bolivia leader evo morales said that snowden is welcome to his country although he has not admitted to receiving any official asylum request evo morales his plane if you recall was

diverted to austria last week over suspicions that snowden was on board now that he has been offered asylum in not one but three countries the question is whether or not he'll be able to leave russia without a valid passport and if not what measures these latin american countries are willing to take to somehow smuggle him out of the country well the defense team for army private first class bradley manning began their case today lawyer david coombs began by focusing on the video that kicked off the biggest document drop in american history it shows apache helicopters firing down on civilians and journalists in iraq for the latest from fort meade r.t. correspondent liz wahl has been following this trial since day one. today the defense began to present their case in the military court martial here in fort meade maryland we learned that over the weekend bradley manning's attorney david coombs filed motions for the court to dismiss some of the charges the charges combs is asking the judge to throw out include the charge of aiding the enemy computer

fraud and theft coombs filed these motions after the prosecution rested its case last week i should mention that this is considered routine the defense will oftentimes ask the judge to dismiss charges when the prosecution rests its case they usually do this by saying the government did not provide enough evidence throughout the course of the trial the defense opened up today by showing the now infamous collateral murder video they showed the video in its entirety all thirty nine minutes of it despite of jackson's from the process prosecution it's a video bradley manning leaked to the whistleblower web site wiki leaks we've showed it before in our tear shows an apache helicopter firing down on civilians on the ground resulting in the deaths to voyagers employee is they were killed in that attack and the military has said that the pilots made a mistake and thought that they were enemy combatants manning has admitted to

handing this secret video over to wiki leaks but says he didn't do it to leak to aid the enemy and that he didn't steal the information we should hear the government's response to the motions to dismiss the charges by either wednesday or thursday and after that the judge will made a ruling now the first witness that the defense called to the stand today was chief warrant officer joshua rouse men he worked with manning as an intelligence analyst in iraq and rosmah talked about how manning was very skilled at using computers when asked about how common burning c.d.'s were he said it was very common he also said that as intelligence analysts they had access to a wide swath of class. supplied information and this could be helpful and refuting the charge the government's charge that manning stole secret information rather this is information that he was able to access with the security clearance that he had at the time as an intelligence analyst now this is the beginning of the defense

making its case and showing that manning did what he did to expose wrongdoing it's expected that the defense will present manning as a whistle blower that just wanted to get the truth out there to the public on the wars that were happening overseas now these are actions that you have manning supporters. very loyal following this trial coming to this trial wearing their true two shirts these are actions that they call her roic here in fort meade maryland liz wahl r.t. a federal judge has denied the legal bit of a guantanamo bay detainees who appealed his force feeding during the holiday of ramadan on the grounds that the court does not have the authority to make such a decision instead she is calling on president obama to make the final call the u.s. district court judge kessler wrote in her decision quote article two section two of the constitution provides that the president shall be the commander in chief of the army and navy of the united states it would seem to follow therefore that the

president of the united states as commander in chief has the authority and power to directly address the issue of force feeding of the detainees at guantanamo bay over judge kessler did express concern that the practice violates detainees internationally recognized human rights for his part president obama has made very few public remarks on the hunger strike and he says that his hands are tied by congress when it comes to closing down that facility entirely and so the blame game continues. well a seemingly normal international flight from south korea to san francisco ended in tragedy over the weekend when it made a crash landing and asia flight two fourteen was attempting to land when somehow the pilots of the boeing seven seven seven lost control three hundred seven people were on board one hundred eighty one people were injured and two people were killed right now f.a.a. authorities do not know what caused the plane crash but in t s b chairperson

deborah hersman said that no distress calls were made the engines were functioning functioning properly there was no disturbance within the airplane itself and the plane was cleared for landing pilots crew members and passengers are all now being questioned about the moments that led up to the tragedy a probe has also been launched to determine whether one of the victims was actually run over and killed by an emergency response vehicle it is important to mention however that the death toll could have been much higher but that innovations in the plane's design and a well trained crew helped to save lives. well bank of america is out of again but this time former employees are pointing out of views seven former employees and a former contractor submitted sworn affidavits to a civil lawsuit claiming that bank of america purposely stalled delayed and denied home loan modifications they even a forced foreclosure quotas on employees and handed out bonuses to the people who

had the most these fraud allegations were broken down in a salon article written by david day in here's how the modification worked borrowers who were supposed to make payments before the loan modification became permanent in actuality many borrowers would make payments for a year or more only to find themselves rejected for a permanent modification and then owing the difference between the trial modification and their original payment causing many families to be foreclosed on and the accusations go on. on so will bank of america face its consequences for lying to customers or is the bank of america too big to face criminal charges tell me break this all down i was joined earlier by richard s. kawhi is a senior fellow at the campaign for america's future and i asked him to be end by telling us how home loan modifications are supposed to work well basically the way it's supposed to work is that the the president's program the hamp program we were

told would give people a chance to modify their mortgages to an affordable rate because a lot of people who can't pay their mortgages who are out of work whose homes are underwater if they can't sell them they're paying much higher interest rates than the rest of the country because they can't refinance so it was supposed to help them bridge to getting a better and more reasonable loan but what banks have done over and over is the administration decided to let the banks police themselves in and how they handled this program and what we saw was a massive wave of fraud in criminality what they called extend and pretend where the banks would stretch these stretch out these discussions of the modifications people would continue to pay the banks would collect another year's worth of mortgage money or so and then foreclose anyways for the cruelest kind of deception and this was supposed to be ended with the foreclosure settlement the administration spearheaded last year along with most of the states of the country

revelations show us the banks didn't even slow down at least bank of america continued to defraud its customers with this lying patternist customer fraud known as the extended pretend and obviously we're learning a lot more about this fraud from these whistleblowers but you're saying the bank of america probably isn't alone in this practice do i have your correct. i would be astonished if it were these practices were endemic across the industry banks watch one another and if one bank is cheating and lying need getting away with it i would almost be certain that the others are many of the others are as well do we have any sense of how many people were affected by this loan modification process. well in terms of bank of america it's not clear but we know that many many people have been dragged into this extend and pretend process as we call it i wrote a piece years ago about it and was just inundated with e-mails by people saying i

thought i was the only one we didn't get a full investigation because one of the other problems with the settlement deal last year is that it ended the ongoing investigation so we don't have the full numbers but we know that it was massive been widespread for our now at the same time richard last year bank of america was part of a twenty five billion dollars settlement for wrongful foreclosures do these new accusations fall under that i mean is bank of america sensually free from liability in a sense tense well bank no because of according to these revelations some of these fraudulent activities took place after the settlement which should if we had which we don't and aggressive administration and justice department that should have validate the settlement and leave bank of america open to prosecution to further suits for fraud but of course we're seeing none of that because the pattern has been not to pursue banks but to know the fact that some of these revelations involve activity after the settlement was was find suggests that if our government

wanted to we could go after bank of america big time let's step away from the banks for a moment rush out and let's talk now about non-banks service or is that a bank american others who are working want to sell millions of mortgages companies like nation star almost when and greentree as i understand it these companies are not subject to a lot of the guidelines that the guy. government set up after days foreclosure crisis is on can you tell us little bit more about why that's important and what these companies have been up to as of late while there have been patterns of abuse that involve banks for example stretching negotiation with the struggling homeowner and collecting large sums of money while these various mortgage service organizations continue to collect and administer the mortgage then they'll switch servicers and the new servicer will quote unquote have different rules and they will say well those negotiations don't apply now that we're stepping in and

handling this mortgage and when that happens you see these homeowners basically being told everything you've been paying for negotiating for for the last year or eighteen months whatever it is doesn't count anymore and we're starting from scratch and that's often being used as an excuse to foreclose yes or no will we ever see a bank executives fired as a result of this not unless people march in the street demanding it because we don't have a government that wants to do it neither political party has shown us are going for it thank you cell lines that richard asked our senior fellow at the campaign for america's future. one student at sonoma state university is giving a whole new meaning to the phrase getting crossed adri jarvis was working at a student orientation for her university while wearing a cross necklace in late june a staffer told her to take the necklace off or tuck it into her shirt because its religious content could offend some of the students jarvis has made her case public

now arguing that she wants to bring forth a new conversation about tolerance and how it should include the tolerance of religion as well now sonoma state is calling the action of its employee inappropriate r.t. reached out to the california school which told us that the campus has no policies or practices against displaying religious or cultural objects when mr jarvis returns to campus that will be no issue with her wearing her cross or any other type of religious or cultural items we hope she returns to sonoma state as soon as possible looks like the school was ready to admit that its employee crossed the line and that's going to do it for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america check out our website r t dot com slash usa and don't forget to follow me on twitter at meghan underscore lopez leave me your comment story suggestions and feedback i'm always listening and chances are i will respond but for now stick around because breaking the set with host abby martin

starts at the top of the hour. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything is ok. i'm tom hartman welcome to the big picture. mission free cretaceous free. store judge is free to arrangement free.